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With my impecable 20/20 hindsight, I wish I would have had long, long talks and intense reading assignments about the importance of SLEEP!!  My sons have not given me a drop of concern about drugs, sex, violence, or even healthy eating.  Now that they are in college, the place where they seem to be dropping the ball is SLEEP.

Teach your babies the value of SLEEP.  It can help you think, it can make you nicer, it will give you the ability to cope with life.  It can also help you keep off the “Freshman 15″ – that all-to-frequent initial college weight gain.  Pulling an “all-nighter” has a “diminishing marginal return” effect on studying, too.  If you stay up all night, eventually the thing you are studying will make less and less sense, and take longer and longer to learn.  At a certain point, you may as well just go to bed and get a good night’s sleep for the next day’s exam.

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How do you know when you have succeeded in teaching your child English? When I was homeschooling, I was SO stressed out about literature analysis. It seemed like we always failed at reading comprehension and the review questions that were provided. I knew that I wanted my kids to LOVE reading, but I was still stressed about literature analysis. Every year, I spent so much time looking at Progeny Press, Learning Language Arts Through Literature, and other curriculum choices. Why was I failing? Why couldn’t I teach literature analysis??? Every time I asked my kids “how did you like the book?” all I ever got was “it was great mom – where’s the next one?” When I read aloud they would laugh at the funny parts, and ask me to read more (or faster!) at the exciting parts. Still, we never really had a good discussion about the deeper meanings of the literature we read.

Update: Just this past weekend, I had one more piece of evidence suggesting that I had, in fact, succeeded. My younger son founded a Jane Austen Fan Club at college. Last weekend he organized the “Pemberly Ball” at the college, complete with period costumes, decorations, and food of the era. It was a huge success! You can see the photos below. My sons both LOVE the Jane Austen books and movies, and they enjoyed the Jane Austen inspired Pemberly Ball.

Yeah! I WIN!

Hang in there – you can succeed too! You may be stressed about some topic, but give those seeds time to germinate, and you’ll see some fruit yourself!

The HomeScholar provides a free monthly e-newsletter, daily blog support, low cost DVDs and private consultations — everything you need to successfully homeschool through high school.

As I mentioned before, we’ve been reading the book “Love and Respect.” I keep wondering, though…. How do you show respect for a young adult who sometimes does, well, dumb things. I’ve decided that I need to have a boundary for my 18 year old men. My husband and I try to only intervene if we believe the boys are doing something that is “life-threateningly” dumb, that is, doing something that could negatively alter the course of their life. If they are just doing something that isn’t up to our “expected standards of responsibility” (i.e., dumb) then perhaps it’s just a demonstration of independence, or a personal preference that we wouldn’t make ourselves.

When our men turned 18, we want them to make choices for themselves based on the instructions they have received over their lifetime. We try to show respect for the men in our household and only intervene when we believe it is necessary for their future well-being.

I hope that helps someone!

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