Every Mom Knows…

Summer has gone. There’s a crispness in the air, yellow buses once again dot our country roads, piles of school books spread across the tables. And if there's one thing “Every Mom Knows,” it's that tonight's dinner dictates tomorrow's math...tomorrow's grammar...and tomorrow's KID.

If you've known us long at all, you know we've got 5 kids.

You know we've homeschooled from the beginning.

And you know that this year is the FIRST year in a long time that I'll be homeschooling just one. So indulge me for a moment as I meander down Memory Lane.

Brendan, the first… Note the hopeful perfection…the neat array of matching books, the pretty globe…the scissors and pencil in the pencil cup! He’s probably “dressed down to his shoes,” a nice little rule that gradually faded over the years.

…and Caleb, the last. Worn-out taped-up books, unbrushed hair…and he might even be wearing pajama pants. (But by jingo, that boy knows how to learn, and that just MIGHT matter a little more than neatly brushed hair!)

Folks make their school choices for all sorts of reasons. Personally, for us, homeschooling was not because we had anything against “regular schools.” I just had some wonderful mentors, trail-blazing women who had gone before me. These women are intelligent, but they are also “just plain moms” like me, and I knew that if they did it, so could I. With their example and the loving support of my family, somehow I was able to skip a lot of the self-doubt that many women have going into this journey.

(Funny, that, because “Self-Doubt” is my middle name! Jennifer E. Self-Doubt Collins. Nice to meet you. 😏 )

I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and I actually didn’t think I would homeschool all the way through graduation. Starting out, I figured I’d go “as long as I could,” (my words exactly) and then put them into school.

Except…I sort of turned into The Little Engine That Could. Turns out NOBODY has to jump into the middle of trigonometry! Turns out that you learn Advanced Math the same way you learn Basic Math: one step at a time. Who knew? So we just kept a-steppin’, and we “I think I can I think I can-ned” our way right through graduation.

So. Here we are, 19 years later.  Mama's better educated, anyway, if a little worse for wear. (Stoichiometry, Anyone?  No? well, then…angular velocities over coffee?) Brendan is a full-time remodeler now, running his own successful business.  (Ahem...Elevated Carpentry Solutions in Memphis, Michigan.  Just sayin'.)

But one of the biggest lessons I learned - and continue to learn, as I crash now through the marvels of middle age, "the change," and the fact that my middle finger just MIGHT have the beginnings of...noooo...can it be...arthritis? - is that tonight's dinner dictates tomorrow's math, tomorrow's behavior, tomorrow’s body, and tomorrow's brain.

Yeeeaaaah…that grin on Brendan's face in that first picture? remember...that was day one, kid one.  Three thousand four hundred twenty school days times five children later, I may honestly say...it ain’t all grins and giggles!

We had our share of boredom. Anger. Stubbornness. Bad behavior…

And then there were the kids. (Oh, wait. You thought the KIDS were behaving badly? 😬)

But you know, through it all I learned that SO MUCH of the “bad behavior,” so much of the foggy-eyed wailing of “I just don’t GET IT!” could be fixed by…drumroll…

fixing dinner.

Yep…as in FIXING what we ate. SO easy to say, SO hard to do.

But it’s what I HAD to do if my kids were to succeed. If they were to thrive. If they were to THINK. Because it didn’t take this mama long to figure out that Mrs. Butterworth poured over white flour pancakes tasted good for about 3 minutes…to be followed by days of foggy eyes, pale faces, and whining wails of “I-just-caahhhnnn't-get-it!” That if Brendan had yet another rash, the solution was NOT a pharmaceutical cream, but a break from the sugar. That if Nick was congested and couldn’t think, I needed to look at his FOOD and his SLEEP, not give him an antihistamine! That if Bekah’s face was pale and peaked, beets on the dinner table that night would pink those pretty cheeks up by morning.

After all, there’s not a single one of you who, if you saw that the gas pouring into your tank were full of debris, would say, “Oh, that’s what fuel filters are for,” and keep pouring.

And that’s the point. While my kids were learning their multiplication tables, I was learning that proper fuel in the tank could make or break that endeavor.

So. ENOUGH with the Froot Loops and Cocoa Puffs for breakfast…topped with an organic banana to salve our consciences! 🙄

Rather, as we move forward this year, let’s set our kids up for success by making sure they are well-rested and deeply nourished. Create simple meal plans that fit your busy lifestyle, but focus on nourishment instead of “fun.” Those chicken livers and hearts tucked inside your Cluckery chickens? Fry ‘em up in a little butter and a sprinkle of salt. Save your chicken bones to make a nourishing stock, and keep it in the freezer for some immune-building during the inevitable cough/cold/flu season each year. Make or buy an elderberry syrup made with local honey and give them a delicious teaspoon each day…more immune building. Make a batch of “fire cider” to dose ‘em with at the first sign of a sniffle.

Now, we’ve got to hold fast, because our kids may object at first when we STOP giving them PBJ’s, potato chips, and Snack Packs for lunch. Feed them last night’s “substantial” leftovers, and they may (okay…they WILL) complain. “Mooommm, leftover bean soup is BOORRRRING.”

But when their bodies get used to what it feels like to be nourished by good food, they WILL develop an aversion to the bad. Just wait for it. Most of my kids now, when presented with a piece of white bread or some fast food, make a face and say, “Oh, gross…that stuff is NASTY. Ugh.” They can’t stand it. After an exhausting day at work, they come home asking what’s for dinner, and they are SO happy when I tell them it’s Chicken Noodle Soup and my homemade sourdough bread, or Roast Beef, or any other nourishing thing. Hey, it works this way with good music, good preaching, good friendships, good anything. Get used to the real deal, and over time you’ll develop an aversion to the fake.

And, yes. I will be honest and say that not ALL of my kids avoid fast food! I’m a real world mom with real world teens, and ALL of them have gone through - or are still going through - the fast food phase. They DO avoid most white bread, right down the line. Woohoo for that! And when they’re sick, they know to ask for my garlic medicine, my chicken stock, my herb teas, and my homeopathy kit. But when I see them believing fast food doesn’t affect them, I just remember the principle of “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” And it has been amazing to me to see them, one by one, coming back around. It happens. Wait for it.

So become friends with a local farmer. Seek and ye shall find. We’re out there. For chicken, I’m your girl! Be persistent until you find farmers who focus on deep nutrition for their land, their animals, their fruits and their vegetables, because your food CANNOT be any better than what it eats.

If you’ve got some great tips for getting deep nutrition into YOUR kids, let me know in the comments below!