The Boss'

Here’s a little sheet that I made up to be hung up in our house. I thought some others might find it useful. Here’s a PDF if you want to print your own.

This is not something that I came up with on my own. I’d heard this discussed on an HSLDA interview, and so I put together my own little reminder. We’ve found it pretty useful to have around the house. We can easily refer to it and remind the kids if they’ve said something that would fall under the heading of a curse. As parents, I think we all want to discourage our kids from cursing, but then we’ll find ourselves having trouble classifying exactly what a “curse” word is. A list of “bad words” simply doesn’t cut it. As any parent knows, even “okay” words can be said in a way that would fall under the heading of a curse on this chart. Hopefully this will also help to highlight the good and loving things that our kids do occasionally say. In the chaos of everyday life, it’s easy to miss it when one child does say an encouraging or selfless word to a sibling or, better yet, to you. Feel free to print the PDF or, better yet, modify this to suit you and your family.

In our quest to help Ben improve his spelling, we’ve (I’ve) decided to employ technology to assist him. With the old pencil and paper method, I was having a hard time correcting the number of spelling errors that I was seeing. Likewise, Ben was having to erase much of what he wrote and attempt to rewrite it. It was messy all around. Being a Gmail user, I decided to set up a simple Google document that Ben could add to everyday, thereby serving as his journal. The advantage of the Google document being that spelling is being checked in real time. The one thing that I prefer in Google Documents versus something more robust, like Microsoft Word, is the fact that it notifies you of spelling errors, but it does not fix them automatically. A word will be underlined with red if it’s spelled wrong, and you have to right click on it in order to get suggested words to pop up. Some of his misspellings are so far off that no suggestions are offered, and in those cases he needs to ask his mom or Emma for some help. Overall, I think it’s going pretty well. He loves using the computer, so that serves as motivation to do the work everyday. I like the fact that I can check the document later in the day from my office, and correct the work and add notes if necessary. It’s sort of a crude use of technology at this point, but it seems to be helping. Other suggestions? Leave a comment.

Let’s crank up the trusty ole’ time machine and take a peek back at the last decade, shall we?

2000 An exciting year to be sure! While on vacation in Michigan, Lindy went into labor prematurely. The fine folks at Spectrum Health managed to postpone the delivery for two weeks, so I had plenty of time to get to Michigan from Colorado. In June, Benny is born…10 weeks early, but otherwise in fine condition. He stayed in the hospital for a few weeks, but the folks at Spectrum got him off to a great start. In January, I was let go from AdvanceWare and started working for PeakOne in Littleton, Colorado, creating installation packages for their software. AdvanceWare and PeakOne mark my first pure programming jobs. I leave the dream of working as an industrial designer behind me. However, my training as an industrial designer makes me incredibly handy around the house.

2001 In April of 2001, we made the move from Denver, Colorado, to Holland, Michigan. It was hard to leave so many great friends behind in Denver, but we felt like all signs were pointing us toward West Michigan as home base, and we have not regretted the decision. We have, however, missed the abundant sunshine of Colorado. Makes me tear up a little bit just to think about it.

2002 We added a dog to our family. Woody the boxer came to live with us on Father’s day weekend. He has been the bane of my existence ever since. Lindy became licensed to provide daycare in our home. We soon had a house full of other people’s kids, and we used her income to pay off an auto loan, among other things.

2003 Emma turned 5 and learned to ride a two wheeler on the same day. Emma goes to preschool, and we begin to toy with the idea of home schooling. We make the transition to digital photography, and have probably taken 10,000+ photos in the last six years, with one major loss of data. The summer of 2008 is gone forever.

2004 In July, Grace is born! It’s hard to believe that four years passed between Ben and Grace being born. The years of only having two kids are such a distant memory at this point. A miscarriage or two in the intervening years is to blame for the 4 year gap. We officially keep Emma home and begin our home schooling odyssey.

2005 I begin recording all of our adventures on this very blog, thebossfamily.com. Been doing it ever since.

2006 In May, Anna is born! In June, just before he turned six, Ben was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. His diagnosis rocks us back on our heels a bit, but we continue to fight the good fight. Since June of ‘06, Ben has poked his fingers to check his blood glucose level approximately 6,000 times. It hurts every time. In October, we took a family vacation to Colorado. Ben begins his more formal home education, and it seems a good fit for him as well.

2007 In May, we move to an old farm house in Bentheim from our suburban house in Holland. In October, Jack Allen is born! We fully embrace the rural/homeschooling lifestyle, and we don’t look back.

2008 We settle in at our new house, while the economy begins to completely unwind. Once again, we’ve bought a house and prices immediately begin to fall.

2009 In March, the company I work for gave us every other Friday off…Yay! Except that our pay was also cut by 10%. Boo! In April, Will Daniel is born! Also in April, we got 13 chickens and two pigs for our little farm. We take a shot at our first garden. We learn a lot. In July, our whole family stood in stunned silence as the butcher came in and put an end to our two pigs, right there on our lawn in front of God and everybody. They now reside in our freezer.

What jumps out at me when examining the above list, is the fact that we added five kids to our family in the past 10 years. I can also see that for Lindy and me, our parenting and family philosophies have changed a lot. We feel like we’ve really turned our hearts toward home and tried to resist a lot of what the world tells us is worthwhile.

It’s hard to imagine what the next 10 years will bring. In a decade, I’ll have a 21 year old daughter! Yikes! I should probably start saving for the wedding.

Here’s how a nerd tries to get a handle on the daily schedule when they’ve got six little ones to manage. Windows Live Calendar! It’s a work in process.

I grabbed a couple of pics in the “school room”. Will is occupied with his toys while Lindy works with Emma. Grace is in the middle of the room working on something else.

Excellence and scarcity. That’s what I’ve been mulling over in my mind low these many nights. When something is really, really great, it is also likely to be somewhat rare. Does that make sense to you? Part of it’s apparent greatness is likely to be due to it’s scarcity. Take diamonds. Please. Take them. If you could walk down any gravel road, scuff your feet and uncover loads of diamonds, would they be the stone of choice for engagement rings? Probably not.

Consider consumer products. There is a WalMart version of almost everything. A while back, I saw a deal on Woot.com for sleeping bags. Two mummy style bags for $20. What a steal! I snatched them up on the spot. Are they the greatest bags on earth. No. Would I put them up against the latest North Face bag in a side by side comparison? No. People understand instinctively that because of the scarcity and expense of the North Face bag, it is likely to be far superior. Now, if it turns out that the North Face bag is really no different than my $20 Woot bag, then North Face has a problem. The marketplace will hand them their hat and say, “Thanks for playing, but you lose.”

I was listening to an audio show the other day where Jay Leno was interviewed about his Pratt & Miller Corvette C6RS. That car illustrates this point perfectly. Jay took an already rare car, the C6RS, and the folks at Pratt & Miller turned it into a completely custom, one-of-a-kind automobile. And, as we would expect, Jay paid a premium for it. It’s not cheap to get something really excellent. Are there exceptions to this rule? Maybe…but I can’t think of any. If you think of one, leave it in the comments.

We know this without even being told. Then…why am I telling you? Uh, because we tend to forget this when arguing about public policy.

I have an idea! Let the government design your next cell phone. It will include all of the latest and greatest technology, as determined by a committee, and will be state of the art hardware-wise…well, almost state of the art…because of the length of the contract and negotiation process, the hardware will be a little dated, but it will still be awesome! And it will run all of the latest apps…nobody’s apps will be left out or discriminated against. Everyone’s apps deserve an equal shot to run on this great phone. Except maybe if it’s an electronic Bible app, cuz we don’t wanna be cramming religion down anyone’s throat. And the best part about this wiz-bang, slightly outdated but still really awesome phone? It’s free! You read that right. Free phone kiddies. Come and get it.

Any takers? Undoubtedly some will find this phone to be really useful. Some folks may have found it impossible to buy a phone and so will really appreciate the free gov’t plan with it’s free text messaging and unlimited minutes. Is the phone really great? Well, maybe it’s not the best phone in the world, but at least it’s free, right? Now that the government has designed our phone, do we really expect it to be excellent, or merely adequate? I would argue that all of us would expect something adequate at best.

Now, can the same be said of something like, say, public education? Really, I’m asking. Not trying to start a flame war here. When the government rolls out a scheme to educate EVERYONE, for FREE, do we set aside everything we know about the market and how things work in general, and hope against all common sense that what they deliver will really be world class? If the government is going to guarantee access to something, a product or service, at no cost, to everyone, wouldn’t it likely be the most rudimentary version of the product or service. When the government provides assistance via food stamps, we don’t expect that we will be taking home lobster and filet mignon from the grocery store. We rightly expect that the government will supply us with food to keep us alive, but certainly not the highest quality foods from boutique producers. I feel the same must be true of healthcare. MediCare is a useful government program which helps lots of folks, but I don’t think anyone is going to go out on a limb and claim that the treatment available via MediCare is as good as it gets. If anything, it serves as a baseline upon which private sector plans can improve.

I wish policy makers would admit that there is a tradeoff…between real excellence and universal availability. Think of anything you’ve bought on the open market, and imagine the government providing a low/no cost version to every person that wanted one. How do you think the government version would stack up against the one you bought?

The one exception that I can imagine to this rule would be our system of national defense. Our nation has one of the most well equipped and highly trained military systems in the world. But even in this case, isn’t it often private firms competing aggressively against other private firms to develop cutting edge weapons systems which they in turn sell to the government?

For the sake of clarity I referred above to the government providing something at no cost, but of course we know that anything that the government provides comes at a cost…often a very high cost, paid for of course with our tax dollars. Public education is a prime example of this as well. What’s per pupil spending at these days? Around $10K? Bang for our buck? Not so much. However, if the motto of our public schools was something more realistic like, "Teaching you just enough to get by", voters might feel like we should ratchet back that per pupil amount just a wee bit. However, I feel like that motto would be more accurate, and more honest.

The appeal of mass public education is that it is available to everyone without exception, I just wish we were more realistic about what the government is capable of providing. I somehow imagine a bronze statue of a bureaucrat with fist raised in the air, head thrown back, tie flapping over his shoulder with the inscription, "Mediocrity For All!"

Is it possible for the government to provide a world class education to everyone? Or healthcare? Or…fill in the blank? You may argue that the school that YOUR kid goes to really does provide a top notch education, and that’s great. But the fairness police would say that others who are less well situated deserve access to exactly the same resources that you have access to. How do we take that same program and make it universal? Seems impossible to me.

Don’t take this as a screed against public education, per se. It’s not that I’m against it, I’m just confused by it. It doesn’t seem do-able, or work-able, or afford-able.

I snapped this picture of Ben the other day as he removed plaster and lathe from a wall in a bathroom that we hope to remodel. I’ve made this demo project part of his unofficial school work. You should have seen his eyes light up when I led him into the bathroom with various hammers and pry bars, and told him that he could use whatever tools he needed to remove the plaster, lathe, and nails from the walls. He has attacked this project with gusto. Every afternoon, when his more academic school work is done, he’s free to go in there and see what else he can accomplish. Emma and, to a lesser extent, 4 year old Grace, are also getting in on the act. There’s something about breaking things with a hammer that a kid just can’t resist. I honestly didn’t expect him or the other kids to be able to get all of the lathe and nails removed, but they have surprised me.  The walls are virtually picked clean as high as their little hands could reach. All I have left to do is the top two or three feet, all around the room. They’ve actually saved me a lot of time and have made a very valuable contribution to the project.

I look for opportunities like this everywhere. When I spot an appropriate job for Ben or one of the other kids, I tell them that I really need their help with something, and that I’m not sure how they’re going to do it, but that I know they’ll be able to figure it out. I might suggest a few tools that they may or may not need, and then I just get out of their way and watch them go to town. I find that this sort of thing really builds confidence and makes them feel that they are valuable part of the family. It’s also a valuable learning tool. I find Ben “teaching” the girls how to use the tools and how to work safely. I can see that he’s really learning the “material” as I watch him teaching others.

Lindy has been hard at work the last several days putting together a schedule for this fall. I’d hurry to say that it is much more than just a “school” schedule, it’s more of a home management plan. She asked for my input a few times, but, for the most part, the management plan is her own creation. I think the best part of the day was wrapping up by 9 o’clock this morning. That’s not to say that the rest of the day hasn’t been great, but from 8 til 9 was our family worship time. This morning we used the book, Hymns for a Kid’s Heart. We looked at the hymn “This is My Father’s World.” The book contains some background on the hymn and the author, and also the hymn itself, along with the music. It’s quite an experience trying to sing a hymn like that a’ cappella, but I think we did okay. I’m no singer by any stretch of the imagination. I appreciate good singing, but I can’t do it myself. Dogs and cats run and hide when I sing. There’s even some evidence that bats are disoriented by my attempts to carry a tune. Despite this, I still think it’s important to at least try to have a singing and praise time each day with the kids. We are created for fellowship with God. We are to walk with Him each day, when we sit in our houses, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up. (Deut. 6 – paraphrase) Often I fear that we get so caught up in making our own plans, that we fail to give the LORD any room to work. In light of Deuteronomy 6, does it sound like “Bible” is like any other subject that can just be tacked onto our schedule any old place? Seems to me it must be central. All else should radiate out from this point.

Anyhow, that was my favorite part of the day. The kids stuck to the schedule for the most part. There was some resistance to academic endeavors, which is typical after a long break away from the books.

This will be an exciting year. Emma is 10, and getting to the age where she can handle more challenging academic work. It will be fun to see how she meets that challenge.