Hippiemommy

Category: Book Talk

  • Fall Reading Challenge!

    I’m always up for an excuse to read, so I simply had to join the Fall Reading Challenge. We’ll see how much I get done now that I have less than a month before my baby should be here….

    Non-fiction

    This book was introduced to me by Sarah Clarkson when she spoke in Colorado Springs a few weeks ago. It was written by an Eastern Orthodox theologian who wants to help parents make the right choices when it comes to which books and stories they should read to their children. I ordered it on ILL and it just arrived. I am anxious to read it!

    This book was recommended to me by a few GCMers. It looks interesting. We shall see.

    I found this book through the Making Home blog. Her entry was convincing enough for me to pick up the book.

    Fiction

    It is seriously embarrassing that I have not yet read this book. Its a super fast read though, and I am almost through it in a few sittings. So far I’m loving it 🙂

    Family Reads

    We started this last night. Somehow I escaped childhood without reading anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Sad but true… This is our current bedtime story. We quickly finished St. George and the Dragon and before that we read Pinocchio. I think this book will be a nice follow-up.

    We’ve loved every d’Aulaire book that we’ve touched so far, so I’m sure that will be the case again!

    Please feel free to join up and read along with me! I’ll do my best to post my progress and thoughts as I read.

  • Dream houses and fantasies

    This is my new favorite book!  There are so many great sections, but I want to focus today on her chapter on the fantasy of housekeeping and “dream houses”.  There are all sorts of high-end gadgets that are marketed to people who don’t even clean their own households. People want to dream and fantasize about their perfect house, and yet the time that women spend on average cleaning has dropped by 50% since my Grandmother’s day. During that same time, no other members of the household have started spending more time on housekeeping. That’s not good.

    Clothes and toys lie strewn from one side of the house to the other, there seems to be nowhere to put anything, and we find ourselves wondering whether the whole family is likely to come down with typhoid if the bathroom is left uncleaned for yet another day or week or month.  And in the midst of it all, there too often sits someone who is reading a magazine or watching a TV show about the dream house rather than tidying up the house he or she is in.

    Our culture completely encourages this kind of fantasy life and house-porn over the real day to day, unglamorous (but worthwhile) act of keeping house.

    There has surely always been a gap between the way people keep their houses and the way they would like ideally to keep them. But many of us, I suspect, are demoralized by the task of keeping house in part because we know that our houses, no matter how well kept, will never look like the palaces in the dream house publications. And so we give up, preferring unattainable ideals to less than perfect realities.

    It is so easy to get caught in this trap. We moved about 6 months ago from a house that had become my “dream home” by the time we left. It had the floors I always wanted, the perfect layout, a great yard, and it was painted in my favorite colors. We moved to a great new home, but it has carpeting in the main living areas, a red wall in the living room, and a smaller kitchen. Our furniture was bought to fit in our old house, and doesn’t match properly in our new house. This house has some great new features, like we now live on an open space (a preserved nature area) and we have a full guest living area in the basement, but I found myself having such a hard time being motivated because I didn’t *love* it the way that I loved my old house. I made a few changes – first in my attitude, and then in the rooms, and it has become much easier to take care of the house. I am finally enjoying it again. I never realized how important my attitude was until we moved.

    The other thing that I’ve recently learned, and that this book reinforced, is that my goal as a stay at home mom is not to have a perfect house. My goal is to take care of everyone and help them to feel comfortable. This includes a clean house, but not one with the finest furnishings or artwork. It just needs to be clean and welcoming.

    I think we will realize that elaborate, spotless perfection is really not the point. The point is the continual re-creation of welcome and nurturance, not in some theoretical or disembodied sense but in simple, practical provision for the needs of the body: food, clothing, a place to sit, a place to sleep.

    Ironically, perhaps (given what is often called the materialism of modern society), these basic needs are too often met with neglect (no one makes any effort to provide clean clothes or meals) or resentment (whoever is providing the clean clothes and meals sees that work, and is encouraged by others to see it, as “drudgery”). The result is that those needs become something to indulge in fits of commercialized excess (“treating oneself” to a day at a spa or a weekend at a hotel, for example) rather than through happy daily routines of baths and meals and clean sheets.

    Yeah, why do we do that?!

    The rest of the book goes on to talk about the simple details of sheltering, clothing, feeding, and keeping a household. It is both simple and profound at the same time. It is not the kind of book that makes you feel like you need to start working yourself into a frenzy. It is a simple encouragement to bless your family and those outside of your family by making your house into a place that will nurture souls. I really recommend this book.

  • Imaginative and Non-Toy Play

    I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic ever since it came up on GCM. I was shocked to see that my kids are possibly in the minority when it comes to non-toy play. In that thread, which asked what kids do if they don’t have toys, I wrote

    I think my kids would do great without any toys at all. They have way more fun when it is just the two of them.

    We have a LOT of dinosaur play around here. They made up this one game (which is probably played for several hours a day) where one pretends to be a certain dinosaur and the other tries to guess which one. A variation on that is for them to go off and decide what dinosaur to be and then dh or I have to guess what they are.

    They absolutely adore spelling things out on the refrigerator don't know They love to sing and dance if I put on music or they make up their own songs if not. They pretend to be animals, or pretend to be completely made-up things with made-up names. They tickle-fight and blow raspberries or play hide-and-seek They read books constantly. They will pretend with anything.

    On our cross-country trip (5,000+ miles in the car with no toys), they made “toys” out of seatbelt ends, shoes, whatever! They do that around the house too – they’ll make pretend things out of pillows, their hands, socks, whatever. We have SO many toys here, but they just aren’t preferred don't know

    They also love to practice jumping and tumbling. They jump over each other or try to do headstands or whatever happy smile

    Its good stuff. Its what I remember doing as a child too

    As I read through the responses, I saw that many kids do not play in that way. It has really been nagging me, because I remember how much my brother and I played that way when we were little. We didn’t need things that told us how to play, we just played. Right now, as I type, my kids are downstairs playing leapfrog and pretending to be dinosaurs. Life would be so boring if they only played with toys!

    I recently started reading How to Grow a Young Reader by Kathryn Lindskoog, and I’m still withholding judgement, but this section spoke to me and made me wonder if maybe some of the kids who don’t do much imaginative play just haven’t had a chance to develop the skills yet.

    Author and scientist Isaac Asimov brushed aside the menace of widespread television addiction by claiming that, without television, people who watch a lot of it would be doing other things equally as empty–such as staring into space. He assumed that they would be passive even without their television sets, accomplishing nothing.

    That is a radical assumption to make… in fact, people who have to do without television for a time generally resort to reading, hobbies, games, studies, longer family dinners, earlier bedtimes, and even improved sex lives, according to some reports.

    I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of great google hits now that I have the phrase “improved sex lives” on here, lol.  Seriously though, this is very true in my life, except replace the word “television” with “computer”  ;)  We do much better with less electronics.

    Asimove seems to be considering children as basically inactive because children watch television more than any other group. But when they are not watching television, children are about the busiest people in the world. They are constantly exploring themselves and their environment, chattering, reflecting, insisting, and probably keeping at least one adult very busy. Their brains, the most complicated things on earth, are developing daily. Most of their healthy growth activity falls into one category — play. Play is child’s work.

    So I am wondering now if there is some kind of correlation between the types of play that kids engage in and what they are doing during the day. I started thinking back to when my kids were watching a lot more tv (or it was at least on in the background). Back then, many of their games reflected what they watched on tv. They were not very imaginative, and when they played it was usually with toys. Of course, this doesn’t prove that the two are related, but I started thinking about it as I read.

    So now I’ve been pondering whether or not passive activities (like tv or computer usage) can make the initial transition to free play more difficult. As my mind considered this thought, I came across this quote in The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs

    An added benefit to less TV is, surprisingly enough, boredom. Keep reading! Boredom is especially good for children. Jerry Mander, who wrote Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, said this:

    …Slowly, I’d slip into a kind of boredom that seemed awful. An anxiety went with it, and a gnawing tension in the stomach. It was exceedingly unpleasant, so unpleasant that I would eventually decide to act–to do something. I’d call a friend, I’d go outdoors. I’d go play ball. I’d read. I would do something.

    Looking back, I view that time of boredom, of “nothing to do,” as the pit out of which creative action springs.

    …Nowadays, however, at the onset of that uncomfortable feeling, kids usually reach for the TV switch. TV blots out both the anxiety and the creativity that might follow.

    So I know what I’ll be pondering for the rest of the day (while keeping my tv and computer off)…

  • “The criminalization of natural play”

    I just started reading Last Child in the Woods, and I am finding it enjoyable so far. I’m not sure if it is going to make it on my “favorites” list, but I think he makes some really good points about the way that childhood has changed in the past few generations. My mom has stories of spending the whole day on homemade boats in the canal systems in Miami. My dad has stories about going shrimping at night and building tree houses all day. My brother and I are a step further removed. We have stories of treehouses made of treated lumber and playing in the woods, but they were torn down during our elementary school years. When we moved we no longer had access to any woods, and most outdoor games were not allowed by the homeowners association. Now my children experience the woods through our backyard open space and hiking, but it is not the same as it was when my brother and I explored. Each generation is getting further away from the creative play in nature and more into outdoors activities that are more rigid in scope. Obviously my kids don’t get to explore too much on our hikes because much of the land is protected.

    Richard Louv talks about the many reasons for our change, but I wanted to write about his discussion of private (homeowners association) laws that have changed the way that kids play. I think I find it particularly interesting because the same thing happened to my family when we moved.

    A few years after moving to Scripps Ranch, Rick started reading articles in the community’s newsletter about the “illegal use” of open space. “Unlike where we had lived before, kids were actually out there running around in the trees, building forts, and playing with their imaginations,” he recalls. “They were putting up bike ramps to make jumps. They were damming up trickles of water to float boats. In other words, they were doing all the things we used to do as kids. They were creating for themselves all those memories that we cherish so fondly.” And now it had to stop. “Somehow,” says Rick, “that tree house was now a fire hazard. Or the ‘dam’ might cause severe flooding.”

    I wonder when this happened, because I remember a similar dynamic in the late-80s and mid-90s in our neighborhoods. All of the sudden you needed a permit for everything.

    Authoritative adults from the Scripps Ranch Community Association chased kids away from a little pond near the public library, where children had fished for bluegills since Scripps Ranch had been a working cattle spread many decades earlier. In response to the tightened regulations, families erected basketball hoops. Young people moved the skateboard ramps to the foot of their driveways. But the community association reminded the residents that such activities violated the covenants they had signed when they bought their houses.

    Down came the ramps and poles; and indoors went the kids.

    I find this funny because my parents were ticketed for our basketball court in the mid-90s. My dad had to take it down. It sucked. My dad and I used to play at night before bedtime, and the community association fined and ticketed us for our hoop. There was no legal way to have a hoop, so my parents had to take it down. That was such a bummer.

    I was thinking about this the other day because my kids were interested in the native grasses that grow in the canal behind our house. They wanted to pick them and investigate them, and I realized that it was probably illegal for them to pick the grasses. I’m pretty sure that when I read our open space laws that there was a clause that said that you can’t pick or cut any of the vegetation. Its a little sad because that is how my brother and I learned so much about the world around us. I understand why these small areas of remaining nature have to be protected, and it is because there is so little other nature around most neighborhoods that even a few grass pickings here and there can be a big deal if every kid at the thousand or so houses nearby did it.

    Similarly we have forced wild animals to live very close to our houses since they don’t have much land left. At night we often hear coyotes right behind our house. I’m sure that if they had thousands of acres to choose from then they wouldn’t want to be in our backyard, but there aren’t many other options for them here. That means that playing in these spaces is less safe for my kids because the wildlife is much more dense. Louv talks about this as well, but I’ll save that for some other time.

    So anyways, I’m finding the book interesting. I think that we are far better off than the majority of Americans when it comes to nature because Colorado is known for its great open spaces and nature. My kids are able to do a lot more than most children their age. At the same time, it is a little sad to realize how different childhood has become in the past 50 years.

  • A free replacement for LibraryThing

    http://www.shelfari.com/

    I really like this site!  It imports your LT bookshelf with just a click, and the layout is much more user-friendly.  Did I also mention that it is free no matter how many books you have?  It allows you to see discussions about the books that you are reading or have read, and some of them are pretty interesting.

    Let me know if you join and we’ll buddy up!

  • Comfort foods

    Today I was reading in Mindless Eating about comfort foods and the differences between what women choose and what men choose.

    What’s the big difference between men and women? When asked why they preferred pizza, pasta, and soup over cakes and cookies, men generally talked about how good they tasted and how filling they were. But when we probed a bit deeper, many also said that when they ate these foods they felt “spoiled,” “pampered,” “taken care of,” or “waited on.” Generally they associated these foods with being the focus of attention from either the mother or wife.

    And women? Although they liked hot-meal comfort foods just fine, these foods did not carry the associations of being “spoiled,” “taken care of,” or “waited on.” In fact, quite the opposite. When women thought of these foods, they were reminded of the work they or their mothers had to do to produce them. These foods didn’t represent comfort, they represented preparation and cleanup.

    For women, snacklike foods–candy, cookies, ice cream, chocolate–were hassly-free. Part of their comfort was to not have to make or clean up anything. It was both effortless and mindless eating.

    Isn’t that interesting? Men chose foods that made them feel cared for or spoiled. As I think of Joe’s favorite foods, they are all warm and full meals. Mine are not. Last week I made lasagna because he asked for it, and I couldn’t fathom why someone would want lasagna when it is 99 degrees outside. I even talked to some friends at my yoga class about how all I want is a salad or to eat out. I need to keep our different preferences in mind, even if Joe’s tastes sometimes confuse me. I do this for my children, but I don’t always think a ton about Joe’s preferences, especially since he likes a lot of unhealthy comfort foods. Making those foods healthy and serving his comfort foods is another little way of honoring my family 🙂 I hadn’t really considered the deeper “why’s” behind that before.

    In Turansky and Miller’s Say Goodbye to Whining, they point out that the Bible tells us many times to love, honor, serve, and encourage others. I sometimes think of that as being a loftier goal than it is. The fact is that many of my day-to-day decisions can be done in a more honoring way. They say,

    It’s amazing how one family member can behin a chain reaction of change, resulting in a greater sense of honor. Maybe that one family member is you.

    There are so many little ways to show honor and love. I am glad that I am starting to recognize some more ways to do this. It blesses me to bless my family.  Who would’ve thought that a book on subconscious eating preferences would give me more ideas on how to bless my family?

  • You can’t set boundaries on other people

    Back when I was first married – when dinosaurs roamed the earth – someone gave me this book. I think I picked it up for a moment and realized that my problem was not in setting boundaries, but rather in respecting others boundaries ::ducking::  I put the book down and didn’t think about it again.

    I was looking at my bookshelf the other day and decided that I might as well read this book so that I can paperbackswap it. I’m really glad that I picked it up  🙂

    There is a section early in the book where the author is speaking to a client of his who is talking about boundaries she “set on” her husband and said that he could not talk to her “that way” anymore. This is how the author responds

    “What you have done is not boundaries at all,” I replied.

    “What do you mean?”

    “It was your feeble attempt at controlling your husband, and that never works.” I went on to explain that boundaries are not something you “set on” another person. Boundaries are about yourself.

    My client could not say to her husband, “You can’t speak to me that way.” This demand is unenforceable. But she could say what she would or would not do if he spoke to her that way again. She could set a boundary “on herself.” She could say, “If you speak to me that way, I will walk out of the room.” This threat is totally enforceable because it has to do with her. She would be setting a boundary with the only person she could control: herself.

    Hmm, yes. Perhaps I have not been setting boundaries quite as much as I thought I had been. I have told people that they may not speak to me disrespectfully, although I suppose that was just an attempt to control. I’m going to be pondering this for a few days.

  • Socialization

    The older that my kids get, the less that I am worried about “socialization”. I went to a mix of public and private schools. My dh was homeschooled up until 7th grade and then went to private school. I never even considered homeschooling before my children were born, because I thought that the way that I was raised was the best way. Meeting my husband definitely changed my mind on that one 🙂 Today I was reading some more Charlotte Mason while at the park with my kids, and I really loved this section on children with their peers.

    The Society of his Equals too stimulating for a child.“Let us follow the little person to the Kindergarten, where he has the stimulus of classmates of his own age. It certainly is stimulating. For ourselves, no society is so much so as that of a number of persons of our own age and standing; this is the great joy of college life; a wholesome joy for all young people for a limited time. But persons of twenty have, or should have, some command over their inhibitory centres. They should not permit the dissipation of nerve power caused by too much social stimulus; yet even persons of twenty are not always equal to the task of self-management in exciting circumstances. What then, is to be expected of persons of two, three, four, five? That the little person looks rather stolid than otherwise is no guarantee against excitement within. The clash and sparkle of our equals now and then stirs up to health; but for everyday life, the mixed society of elders, juniors and equals, which we get in a family, gives at the same time the most repose and the most room for individual development. We have all wondered at the good sense, reasonableness, fun and resourcefulness shown by a child in his own home as compared with the same child in school life.

    I love this.  It is so true.  Why is it that our country has become so fixated on the thought that healthy development can only come by being surrounded by people only your own age?  John Taylor Gatto addresses this in his book, Dumbing Us Down, and I wrote about it once before.

    Discovering meaining for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How this can be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me.

    Yesterday I went to the library and saw the vast number of books in the collection that were devoted to getting kids excited about going to Kindergarten.  It was really really sad.  Kids aren’t made to be taken away and taught by their peers just because they turned 5.  Now that my son is 5, I am feeling more sure about this than ever.

  • “100 Mile Diet” / “Plenty” book tour in Boulder and Denver

    Sorry for another “local” post, but I just want to get the word out.

    The authors of the 100 Mile Diet (also called Plenty here in the states) will be speaking in Boulder and Denver this week. They wrote a book about their experience on eating local (within 100 miles) for a year. I think it is a really interesting concept.

    If you’re interested in the movement to eat local, then you should definitely come check it out. Even if you don’t live in Colorado, feel free to check out their website. They have a lot of other book tour stops, and the website is interesting even if you never hear them speak or read their book 🙂

    http://100milediet.org/home/

    Boulder, CO
    Tuesday, May 1
    Boulder Bookstore
    7:30 – 8:30 pm
    1107 Pearl Street
    with Boulder Going Local!

    Denver, CO
    Wednesday, May 2
    7:30 – 8:30 pm
    Tattered Cover LoDo
    1628 16th Street

  • Why do I lay books down?

    I have this terrible habit – sometimes I am in the middle of reading a really good book and I put it down and completely forget about it! I don’t know why this happens, but I guess I end up getting distracted by another book. This happened to me several YEARS ago with Anna Karenina, and I am just now picking it back up. It is SO good. I loved it when I was reading it. I love it now. What was I thinking?

    In other news:

    A book group that I am a member of, The Classical Review, is starting back up again. If you are a homeschooling mom who is using Charlotte Mason philosophies and wants to read (or re-read) some of the greats that you will be teaching your kids, then I invite you to join us. We are starting Mansfield Park, and I am super excited 🙂 I think there should be so many more groups out there to encourage moms to read what we want our children to read, and this is a great way to do it 🙂 Come and join us!

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