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Dr. Dave, I am in tears as I write this. I have my 10 year old grandson living with me because of his anger issues.  His Mother is in trouble at work for missing often to go get him due to running from school or trying to hurt someone.  My grandson is in trouble with the law - AT 10 YEARS OLD! - because he tried to get away from the cop and bit him when they forced him to get in their vehicle. Then he comes to live with us. Most of the time he is so much fun.  He is kind and caring and smart and funny.  But when he gets that "look in his eyes" be careful.  He is going to blow.  When he got here, we had so much to overcome.  He was scared to do anything because he would make a mess or fall or break something. He had a lot of anxieties. When he would go into the anger overload he would want to run.  We got that down to running to his room.  He slammed the door a couple times but we got over that.  Then it was down to yelling and running ...

Back in November 2014, I wrote a  blog post  about hosting my hero, Sally Clarkson, in my home in Oxford, England, for a lunch date. This is a follow-up post after I attended her Renew My Heart conference in Dallas, Texas, last weekend. Meeting Sally for the third time in my life First of all, if you don't know who Sally Clarkson is, I would suggest it's time to get acquainted. She and her husband wrote my all-time-favorite homeschooling book, Educating the Whole-Hearted Child. She also wrote my second-favorite homeschooling book, Seasons of a Mother's Heart. These were some of her earlier titles, first published around the millennium but now updated and re-issued. Basically, her books were (and are) a lovely blend of experience, wisdom, and well-told stories, all based on a Godly foundation. She has since moved into a more supportive role for Christian mothers everywhere, releasing titles like Mission of Motherhood, Ministry of Motherhood, and her latest, Different, which ...

Dr. Dave -  I ran across your article several months ago and thought - he just described my son! I am pretty sure my 9 year old son has anger overload. Tonight's episode went something like this: Him, his younger sister and I go downstairs to work on a Lego set he received for Christmas. I move the set we are working onto the table, he begins to look for the figurines that go with it - he asks his sister where they are, she says she doesn't know. He starts moving things around looking for them, blaming her for loosing them and then it begins - he totally looses it. He starts crying and yelling that it is ruined - without those figurines, the set is worthless. I tell him they are here - we'll find them (they have a lot of Lego's and aren't good about keeping them confined to an area). He continues on saying that they are lost and now the sets are ruined.  This quickly escalates to him lamenting about tearing down multiple Lego sets when a friend of his tricked him (a...

I was cleaning out the hard drive on my computer today and came across this article I wrote but never published about getting jobs done around the house while homeschooling young kids. The memory of those days with four kids under 7 is a hazy one, but reading my advice from then feels surprisingly relevant still today, and I can see a lot of the fruit from some of those routines and diversions. Hope you'll be blessed by this if you feel unable to release those grasping hands from your "skirts" when all you want to do is clean a toilet or fill the dishwasher. Trust me: this season will pass! WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK: 5 SURE-FIRE WAYS TO KEEP THE KIDS BUSY (WITHOUT RESORTING TO THE TELLY)* *This should now read: without resorting to electronics As a home-schooling mum with young children, I�m often asked how I can get any jobs done with kids always around. I won�t lie and say it�s easy (I�m definitely no super-mum), but with my five sure-fire tips, you, too, can keep your ho...

Let me take you on a journey - the way that I apply the Charlotte Mason method to a subject like history. In this case, it�s Texas History, a requirement for public-school children in this state at both 4th grade and 7th grade, and again, at university. Of course, as homeschoolers, we didn't have to do this study -- ever. However, we decided that we would because my kids have grown up in England and only just moved to my home state in June 2016. It also would be a great way to invite along some other homeschoolers in a co-op, and widen our social circle. In Texas - time to study Texas history! The challenge was to map a well-documented study that's normally for ages 9/10 and 12/13, onto a more rigorous expectation for high schoolers. Further, to move away from the textbooks used at these years and even at college, and find some living books that would cover the sweeping timeline of the territory. Just a reminder of what I mean by a living book �  A book that engages the reade...