Casey Shelley

>If you have a "school day" you're not unschooling. If something changes at
>3:00, you're still dividing the world into "educational" and "not
>educational."

Oh my gosh. Yikes! You are so right! I can't believe I didn't see this!

>
>If your son has a hard time going to sleep and then wakes up in the middle
>of
>the night, it is very, very likely that he's being expected to sleep too
>much. Not all kids need 8 hours of sleep, and if you're expecting MORE
>than
>8 hours (he has a bedtime), he will wake up when he's had enough sleep.

I have always known he had "night owl" tendencies. I want to honor that, but
am not quite sure how to get it to all "fit" in the family.
I have a feeling I'm going to be sorry I just said that! lol, grin
>
>Maybe if you let him stay up as late as he wants playing video games in his
>room or reading then he'll sleep through from the time he goes to bed.

I don't want to appear ignorant :-) but is this seriously ok to do?? The
video games, I mean. He doesn't want to read when he wakes up. I've tried
setting him up with a reading light and books so they're handy at the time
and he doesn't have to go searching. Incidentally, this is our 2nd year of
hs. He went to ps for K-3.
>
>It works for us.
>Sandra
>I'll give it a try and see how it works. You can probably all tell I did
>not come from a hs/follow your interests/do your own thing kind of family!!
>heh heh
Thank you!! :-)
Casey
>
> From: "Tami Labig-Duquette" <labigduquette@...>
>
>We have always had a family bed,
my oldest is 11
>yo and she does rarely, but our 10 yo son and 7 yo daughter does alot.
>Tami
>Thank you Tami :-)
>
> From: Kerry Kibort <kkibort@...>
>Subject: Re: kids dont always need z's
Finally,
>after a year of begging, pleading, yelling, crying,
>and still no sleeping, we discovered unschooling and
>the fabulous parenting ideas that go with it. Why do
>they have to go to bed at 8pm? Well, for my sanity,
>for one! We have made a great compromise---- they can
>stay up as late as they want, IN THEIR ROOM, BEING
>QUIET. It worked! They play quietly, read, even
>learned all the states on Nick's leap pad!
>By the way, as someone who is just learning these new
>parenting skills, I appreciate all the ideas, advice,
>and chatter. I feel at home and am finally able to
>shed the limiting ideas I grew up with.
>Learning all the time,
>Kerry
I guess it's just taking me awhile longer than I expected to "catch on!"
This is another great idea, that just may help--in fact, I already can feel
it will!
>
>**I think you are wise beyond your years and probably helped the mom in
>question more than you know. Thank you for sharing that.
>
>--Valerie in Tacoma

Valerie is absolutely correct here! I tried to send a reply out to your
wonderful post, Ren, but in case it didn't work (I was having a rough time
with it :-) ), thank you can't say enough for what you wrote. -Casey :-)

>We did this recently too. Our 10 year old daughter loves to stay up
>half the night, and sleep half the day. Until she begged us to let her
>watch Nightmare on Elm Street, "everybody else has seen it". After
>several months of this I let her try the movie. As I expected, she
>didn't last too long and has slept with us every night for a week now,
>going to bed at our bedtime and up early.

Just want to say, that is one scaaary movie, isn't it?? I had to leave the
theater just to get my bearings while I watched it. My oldest wants to watch
stuff like that, too. I'm perplexed, I guess.
>

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com