Crazy parenting ideas

Ha! Yes, that IS crazy! Do you want to know how crazy? Bear had the same idea years ago, but wanted to do it by motor home. The thought of a year in a motor home with five people ... CRAZY!!!

Taking Jillian camping A LOT and teaching her how to identify what she can and cant eat, how to chop wood.. and basically survive outside





but I don't know that **** so I don't know how Im gonna teach her..

What about Daddy?

or the Girl Guides

I'd love to do it by motorhome! And yes, we would probably want to kill each other by the time we were done.

We're already planning a Great American Vacation for the summer after next. We haven't decided whether to rent a camper or buy a mini-van (which we already want) and take a tent for camping. But a whole year, including homeschooling would be different.

Hah! And this is always the problem. I want my kids to be bilingual... but I'm not so I can't teach them. And that's a lot of it, isn't it? You want them to know and do things you never did.

There's always "let's learn it together". We're doing that with French.

What ABOUT daddy?
he wouldn't survive one night in the woods..


Ohh lord.
I have been thinking of actually starting a thread about the things I want to teach Jillian that I dont know myself.

I bet it would bring about some interesting answers..

Fud, my childhood had some of that, though not a year at a time, and I think my sense of place expanded for it. I won't regale you about it, just to say it was all good, one way or another.

I don't get that a child can't miss two weeks of fourth grade.

Although.. my parents followed the rules, thus me playing jacks in the same grammar school I went to in 1st and 2nd grade in, for probably a month and a half in fourth grade... half a continent away.
Later, and I get these times confused, we went to california to be there for my grandmother, and when my dad was directing commercials, one of which I got to be in. Heh, I had a school system tutor for probably two hours.
Photos here some day. Sheer nepotism.

Point, I think of myself as a lucky child in all that, and it is probably the genesis of my interest in the world and love of travel. I always kept up in school. I guess I don't get the concretification of calendar years for childhood.

Yeah, and I'm starting to see the grind of regular school as inspiration squashing, thus my feeling that my kids need an adventure. Of course, we have the summer for that, but it just feels like they (and maybe I) need more.

Wait until she gets into the "why?" mode, shewolf. It will drive you
crazy, and sometimes those kids ask the darndest things.

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Hm, crazy parenting ideas. I can't think of any now...driving cross country in a motorhome would be a nightmare for me.

I know a family who took a year off. They went to Colorado, stayed
in a mountain lodge and did the home schooling. The father is self
employed, so I guess they had saved enough money to do it. They're
back now, living the "normal" life. They liked it a lot though.

It would be nice to live in another country in South America for a year -
that I could tackle as a challenge. Get the kid enrolled in school there, and try to blend in with the Hispanics.

Well, if kids are having problems and are beginning to do better in whatever school system, I can see not yanking them out.

I'm glad I lived in California, Ohio, California, Washington, California, and New York and Chicago as a child, as, as an only child, those were identifiers for me. Children might disconnect, but for me it was great.

I don't really have advice, as people have so many variations... but at first glance, adventure sounds good. Depends.

One of the wealthiest couples I know... got together when he was not being employed, and she was a nurse. They moved north and had a small property where they gardened and kept talking, at some time getting married for tax reasons at the time.

I'll never be against taking time off, as such, given your basic interest in living.

When I was a young teen my father took long service leave.

Do you have long sevice leave in The States? Its basically a 3 month paid holiday as a reward for 15 years or more of service to the one employer.
By taking the leave period between two lots of school holidays the time away was extended by another two months.

We towed a caravan and toured most of the east coast of Australia all the way up to cairns and into the center as far as Broken Hill. The caravan had a canvass annex which attached to the side of the caravan basically doubling the space available.

Teachers at our school set some lessons but my parents found it hard to discipline us 3 boys enough to actually complete many days of schooling.

We generally stayed a week or so in each place we stopped. We fished the beaches and rivers, swam got suntanned, explored mountains and historic towns.

Well worth it if you ask me.

smilin' to dadpad

I would also recommend and thoroughly endorse The Rotary clubs student exchange program. This is for kids around 16 or 17 years of age.

My daughter went to Sweden knowing seven words of Swedish which were "Would you like to see my dog" and came home 12 months later fluent.

We hosted a swedish girl and think of her as our swazzie daughter.

So crazy parenting Idea #2 Host an exchange student through a reputable exchange program and expose yourself and your children to another culture.

We definitely want to start traveling more in the summers. Just hasn't been the money for it... still isn't, but we can start to see the possibility of being able to afford such things. Unless I go back to teaching, really want to get some serious travel in during summers, when E.G. doesn't have to teach, before I go back to work full-time*. There are also sabbaticals -- he has invitations to spend a summer or a year pretty much anywhere you can imagine. And we do want to start taking advantage of that kind of opportunity.

*That's another crazy parenting idea, I guess. I'd always kind of thought I would start working once sozlet starts school. I'm currently content with my work-from-home job and the freedom it provides, and have been reading more and more about the benefits of having an at-home parent for older kids. So I don't have any immediate plans to go full-time. (Recently saw an ad for a job I could so do, starting salary $35,000/yr, and thought of how nice it would be to remove the vice grip of thinking about money all the time pretty much completely -- but there are too many things I'm enjoying about our current set-up, and I'm lucky enough that while money is tight, there's enough.)

Yeah, we can't really afford it right now either.

It's funny what you say about having an at-home parent for older kids, because I'm starting to think it may be even more important now than it was when they were really little. That's probably got more to do with my baby amnesia than anything though. It just seems like they need a lot of guidance right now, and the windows of communication are only open at certain times. And I'm tired when I get home and don't give them the kind of attention they need. I wish we could afford for me to go part time so that I could be around after school. That's my next crazy parenting idea, I guess.

My crazy parenting idea, as a father, is coming home after work every day instead of stopping off for "one" at the bar.

Spending time with my children and teaching them about the stuff I know. And teaching them how to look up the stuff I don't know.

Being there for them when they need me.
Hugging them often.
Singing to them at bed time.
Telling them I love them every day.
Praising them for their talents and abilities.

Sorry, unfortunately there are too many fathers out there that don't do these things. That's why I call these "crazy".

I am not a perfect father. But at least I'm giving it my best effort.

shewolf, go to a used-book store and see if you can find a copy of the Boy Scout Manual. You'll find all kinds of info about being outside: how to build a fire, how to build a fire when the wind is blowing, how to build a simple shelter, what plants to beware of, how to tie knots in your tent lines, how to cook outdoors with nothing more than a fire and some sticks... lots of stuff that's fun and not too hard -- to be supplemented by a simple Coleman stove and some weiners-n-beans, of course... Get out there and have fun!

Wont take long then. :wink:



Go ask your mother.