Back to School with Preschoolers (Establishing Perimeters)

All over the country, families are getting ready to go back to school.  For homeschooling families, back to school poses special challenges when young pre-school age children are in the house. For that reason, we are re-posting Joyce's popular series entitled Preschoolers Are People Too.

For homeschooling mothers, dealing with preschoolers while they are in the classroom can be a real challenge.  There is no fail safe method for ensuring that you will have no mishaps, but by setting up some simple guidelines, you can prevent most disasters.

Since I had preschoolers for many years, I had to learn how to cope with them from the very beginning. The first thing that I did was establish perimeters for the preschoolers. I found that by setting up strict guidelines for my preschoolers, I was able to let them know exactly what was expected of them. Consequently, I was able to help them not to overstep their bounds.

The babies were easy. I either held them on my lap, or they napped.  When Benjamin, my sixth child, was born, someone gave us a baby swing.  One day when he was about five months old, I took the swing into the schoolroom to see whether he would enjoy sitting in it for a while. At eight-thirty I deposited him into the swing. Immediately his eyes glazed over, and he sat completely motionless as the rhythmic motion of the swing lulled him into a deep sleep. By eight-forty I was laying him in his crib where he slept soundly for the next several hours. We repeated this scenario every day for several months.  The baby was sleeping, my lap was free, and life was good.

The older preschoolers presented more of a challenge. I always put the oldest preschooler in charge of the younger ones. I then told the one in charge that it was his responsibility to tell me immediately if any of the younger children did anything they were not supposed to do. I made it clear that he was not supposed to try to make the younger children behave. He was just supposed to tell me if they misbehaved.

I then told the younger children that if the one in charge did anything that he was not supposed to do, they were to tell me immediately.  In that way everyone was responsible for making certain that no one was breaking the rules.

This arrangement worked well.  The oldest preschooler gained the prestige of being “in charge” and took his position very seriously. The younger children liked the idea that if the one in charge stepped out of line they were to report on him. Everyone figured out pretty quickly that if they broke any rules, they were going to be caught right away.  This gave them plenty of incentive to behave.

I cannot tell you how many bottles of shampoo were saved from being dumped down the toilets or how many tubes of toothpaste from being squeezed down the bathroom sink drains. I do know that because of this system most of our school days were fairly uneventful.

The second thing that I did was let the preschoolers know what they might and might not do during school hours. Every day before school began I took my preschoolers aside and reminded them of who was in charge.  I then asked them, “What do you want to do while we are in school?” and I laid out the various options:  l. They could watch a television program that I had approved.  2. They could watch a tape on the VCR.  3. They could play with toys in the playroom.  4. They could come into the schoolroom and color or play with clay if they worked quietly and did not talk.  5. They could bring a toy into the schoolroom if they played quietly.

Although the list of options was always the same, each day I asked the preschoolers what they wanted to do while we were in school.  When I had their responses, I helped them get started on their chosen activities. I then told them that when they were ready to do something else, they were to come to the schoolroom and tell me so that I could get them started on their new activity.

This approach kept everyone focused, and we had surprisingly few mishaps. Yet, even with the most careful planning on my part, we did have some incidents that made me realize that their ideas about acceptable play did not always line up with mine.

One day as I sat teaching my children, I heard the sound of metal clanking.  It was not loud, but it was constant.  Realizing that this could not be a good thing, I got up to investigate.  I walked into the family room to find two and a half year old Israel and three and a half year old Benjamin having a “sword fight.” Israel was armed with a large meat fork and Benjamin was brandishing a butcher knife.

I confiscated their weapons and sat them down for a talk.  I told them that I was not going to spank them this time, but if they ever did it again, I was going to give both of them a spanking.

I knew that simply forbidding them to “sword fight” would never work, so I went to the cabinet where I kept the school supplies, found two wooden rulers that Calvert had sent with their program, and handed each boy a ruler. “You can sword fight with these,” I said “but these are the only swords you can use. Do you understand?”

The boys nodded affirmatively and instantly resumed their sport. Although I instructed them to keep those rulers for sword fighting, from that day forward, no ruler in our house was safe. If the sword fighting urge happened to strike when a school box was nearer at hand than their designated weapons, Benjamin and Israel took rulers out of their older siblings’ school boxes. As a result, every one of the several dozen rulers in our house was badly dinged, but from that day forward, the wooden Calvert ruler was the only weapon ever used for sword fighting. By the time our preschoolers were old enough to lose interest in sword fighting, most of our rulers were little more than really long splinters, but the boys had been able to indulge their love of sword fighting without posing a danger to one another.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother Her newest novel, The Warrior, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/ or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup

Preschoolers are People Too—Be Respectful

When my daughter Victoria was five or six years old, I purchased a Bible Trivia game that I thought we would have fun playing together as a family. One afternoon as I sat reading questions from the cards to the children, I came across one that said, “In Chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel, whose hand wrote on the wall?” Victoria’s eyes widened, and she instantly replied, “It wasn’t mine!”

This incident clearly illustrates the struggle we had in our home with people writing and drawing on the walls.  It seemed that no matter how much I lectured/punished the graffiti artists, they continued to use the walls as their canvases. I found crayon pictures and scribbles on the walls of the playroom, inside the bedroom closets and even inside dresser drawers.  It did not matter that we kept a huge supply of drawing paper at all times.  There was just no substitute for a freshly painted/washed wall.

Not long ago I was moving a beautiful bedside table that John and I had purchased in 1965 into our guest bedroom.  It has an antique olive finish and is in perfect condition.  I was congratulating myself that it had survived all of those years and all of those children and had emerged in like-new condition when I opened the top drawer.  To my horror, the bottoms and sides of both drawers were covered with crayon scribbles in various shades of red, green, black, and blue!

Long after my crayon-on-the-walls days were history, an exciting new invention emerged—the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  By using it I was able to remove every trace of crayon from the wood interiors of the drawers, and now my bedside table really is like new. The experience, however, reminded me that keeping up with my preschoolers was a full-time job.

I was also reminded that my preschoolers played a vital role in the success of our homeschool. Their cooperation was critical, and in order to get that cooperation I employed a number of strategies that made it apparent to them that I not only loved them, I respected them.

I tried always to put myself in their places and imagine how I would feel if I were they. Consequently, I learned to think of them not only as children who needed to be taught and corrected but also as people who were just as deserving of my respect as the adults in my life.   

For instance, I never said to my preschoolers, “We are busy; leave us alone, and do not interrupt us.” That is just rude, and nobody wants to be treated that way.

Imagine that one day you go to a friend’s house for an impromptu visit. She opens the door, looks at you, and frowns. Just before she slams the door in your face she says, “I’m talking to someone else. Don’t bother us. We’re busy.”

You would be hurt and embarrassed, and you would be so offended that you would probably never go to her house again. Yet, this is the way we sometimes treat our children. We react to them as if they are nuisances who do not deserve to be treated with the same respect we show adults.

Always keep the Golden Rule in mind when dealing with your children. Treat even the youngest member of your family with the respect and kindness you want others to show you. Children have the same emotions that you have. They feel the same hurt, anger, and humiliation as adults. Treat them with the respect that you demand they give you. Help them to feel included rather than excluded.

Your preschoolers are vitally important to the success of your homeschool. Every day let them know that you are counting on them. Tell them that you are proud of them for behaving so well; tell them that you appreciate their contributions. Never be afraid to tell them that their good behavior makes your homeschool possible. They will be proud of themselves for having played such an important role.

About once a month in the late afternoon I called all the children together.  While everyone was present, I thanked each of them individually for something specific that he or she had done that month that had been a special help to me. For the very little children, their contribution was often that they had made me laugh or had made me feel loved, but when I listed their contributions, they felt just as special as the older children. It was a little thing, but I wanted them to know that I appreciated their contributions.  It is a practice that I highly recommend to all homeschooling mothers.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

Preschoolers are People Too: Establishing Perimeters

For homeschooling mothers, dealing with preschoolers while they are in the classroom can be a real challenge.  There is no fail safe method for ensuring that you will have no mishaps, but by setting up some simple guidelines, you can prevent most disasters.

Since I had preschoolers for many years, I had to learn how to cope with them from the very beginning. The first thing that I did was establish perimeters for the preschoolers. I found that by setting up strict guidelines for my preschoolers, I was able to let them know exactly what was expected of them. Consequently, I was able to help them not to overstep their bounds.

The babies were easy. I either held them on my lap, or they napped.  When Benjamin, my sixth child, was born, someone gave us a baby swing.  One day when he was about five months old, I took the swing into the schoolroom to see whether he would enjoy sitting in it for a while. At eight-thirty I deposited him into the swing. Immediately his eyes glazed over, and he sat completely motionless as the rhythmic motion of the swing lulled him into a deep sleep. By eight-forty I was laying him in his crib where he slept soundly for the next several hours. We repeated this scenario every day for several months.  The baby was sleeping, my lap was free, and life was good.

The older preschoolers presented more of a challenge. I always put the oldest preschooler in charge of the younger ones. I then told the one in charge that it was his responsibility to tell me immediately if any of the younger children did anything they were not supposed to do. I made it clear that he was not supposed to try to make the younger children behave. He was just supposed to tell me if they misbehaved.

I then told the younger children that if the one in charge did anything that he was not supposed to do, they were to tell me immediately.  In that way everyone was responsible for making certain that no one was breaking the rules.

This arrangement worked well.  The oldest preschooler gained the prestige of being “in charge” and took his position very seriously. The younger children liked the idea that if the one in charge stepped out of line they were to report on him. Everyone figured out pretty quickly that if they broke any rules, they were going to be caught right away.  This gave them plenty of incentive to behave.

I cannot tell you how many bottles of shampoo were saved from being dumped down the toilets or how many tubes of toothpaste from being squeezed down the bathroom sink drains. I do know that because of this system most of our school days were fairly uneventful.

The second thing that I did was let the preschoolers know what they might and might not do during school hours. Every day before school began I took my preschoolers aside and reminded them of who was in charge.  I then asked them, “What do you want to do while we are in school?” and I laid out the various options:  l. They could watch a television program that I had approved.  2. They could watch a tape on the VCR.  3. They could play with toys in the playroom.  4. They could come into the schoolroom and color or play with clay if they worked quietly and did not talk.  5. They could bring a toy into the schoolroom if they played quietly.

Although the list of options was always the same, each day I asked the preschoolers what they wanted to do while we were in school.  When I had their responses, I helped them get started on their chosen activities. I then told them that when they were ready to do something else, they were to come to the schoolroom and tell me so that I could get them started on their new activity.

This approach kept everyone focused, and we had surprisingly few mishaps. Yet, even with the most careful planning on my part, we did have some incidents that made me realize that their ideas about acceptable play did not always line up with mine.

One day as I sat teaching my children, I heard the sound of metal clanking.  It was not loud, but it was constant.  Realizing that this could not be a good thing, I got up to investigate.  I walked into the family room to find two and a half year old Israel and three and a half year old Benjamin having a “sword fight.” Israel was armed with a large meat fork and Benjamin was brandishing a butcher knife.

I confiscated their weapons and sat them down for a talk.  I told them that I was not going to spank them this time, but if they ever did it again, I was going to give both of them a spanking.

I knew that simply forbidding them to “sword fight” would never work, so I went to the cabinet where I kept the school supplies, found two wooden rulers that Calvert had sent with their program, and handed each boy a ruler. “You can sword fight with these,” I said “but these are the only swords you can use. Do you understand?”

The boys nodded affirmatively and instantly resumed their sport. Although I instructed them to keep those rulers for sword fighting, from that day forward, no ruler in our house was safe. If the sword fighting urge happened to strike when a school box was nearer at hand than their designated weapons, Benjamin and Israel took rulers out of their older siblings’ school boxes. As a result, every one of the several dozen rulers in our house was badly dinged, but from that day forward, the wooden Calvert ruler was the only weapon ever used for sword fighting. By the time our preschoolers were old enough to lose interest in sword fighting, most of our rulers were little more than really long splinters, but the boys had been able to indulge their love of sword fighting without posing a danger to one another.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.