At times being my daughter’s homeschool teacher in addition to being mom creates a few challenges. I want more than anything to be her cheerleader, but as her teacher I still need to be constructive in her learning. Most of the time I juggle it alright, but other times it gets a little messy.

One of the greatest things I learned when we started homeschooling was how each of us processes information differently. I wished I discovered the information sooner! There is a gem of a book that I have listed in my Resource section called “The Way They Learn,” by Cynthia Tobias. Whether you homeschool or not, this book will help you discover your learning styles and I assure you it will help in your communication as a family.

My daughter and I’s minds work differently. I’m very concrete and sequential–there is step 1, 2, and 3 and they go in that order (most of the time). My daughter is also concrete but very random–even though fully aware of the steps, the order they fall is not so important because her way might work better and faster. I loved Algebra in school, she hates it. I can understand why … random and Algebra don’t mix.

But sometimes regardless of information, communication just fails! Right now in one class, we are working through library skills such as computer catalogs and indexes. One of the assignments provided a catalog entry and then asked a variety of questions about the supplied information. When I read one of my daughter’s answers, I knew she wasn’t being sarcastic; she just answered the question with her literal mind.

Question: How would you type the author’s name in the computer?

Her answer: With your hands

Isn’t communication like that sometimes? A complete miss. All I could do was laugh!

I love vacations. The chance to go somewhere just as a family and spend uninterrupted time together–fabulous! I’m such a researcher and planner, so each year (at least nine months in advance), we start planning where we want to go on our next vacation. After brainstorming ideas and gathering initial facts, we book the condo. Then I get to work researching everything there is to know about the place we are going.

For the following months, I share my findings with my family as I go along, and we talk about our favorites we each want to do. By the time we leave on vacation, I have a 3-ring binder of goodies about the destination, activities ideas, and helpful tips about the area.

Well, last year we booked our vacation for this year but I never got a chance to start researching. I dove into planning and starting our homeschool year and life took off. Fast forward to this week, my daughter asked me, “What sort of vehicle rental can we get to see the whole island?”

“I don’t know,” I said. She stared at me like I had been abducted by an alien.

“Do they have different currency there?”

“Uh … I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope. I haven’t started my research.”

“That’s not right,” she said with the alien abduction look glaring at me.

You see, we leave in just a couple short months and I haven’t begun–outside of a few discussions with my hubby about airfare. Even though my family gives me a hard time about my 3-ring binder, it’s obvious they’ve come to depend on it and miss that planning and dreaming of our vacation before we ever leave. I think I’d better start.

No matter where you go as a family this year–whether in the backyard, tropical, or mountainous–make it memorable!

YouTube. What a phenomenon–loaded with information and a platform for upcoming star-hopefuls. At times, I’ve used the site’s biology, historical, or inspirational videos for teaching purposes in our homeschooling day. I’ve listened to a few songs posted and I’ve followed a link or two from a friend to a must-see video. But what I read about recently in a newspaper article about the trend of new YouTube videos, shocked me. Self-injury.

I knew there were graphic videos of all varieties posted on YouTube that I would never wish to view, but I had no idea of this glamorization of an issue that commonly plagues so many young people. Over 5,000 such videos were found by one psychologist and from just 100 videos focused on, the viewer count exceeded 2 million. Sheer tragedy is all that came to mind.

I think of all society’s teens and young adults struggling to make it through this difficult journey called life … many searching for answers. They need information to help and encourage them to travel in a positive direction, not give them more avenues to throw their hands up in defeat.

I know as parents we can’t overturn society’s access to these hidden dangers in an internet hub, but we can make a difference in our own families. A few years ago we chose to limit the YouTube access for our teen. It was a mutual decision we made with our daughter as we all recognized the dangers of such a wide range of information–completely unfiltered and accessible.

It’s not about isolating our children from the realities of this world, but instead teaching them positive tools to cope in life without barraging them with destructive choices displayed on a computer screen. Our daughter isn’t naïve to the realities as we talk about them openly.

There are no cookie cutter answers, but as parents we need to be informed. We need to be the source of information for our children. Society is ready to offer them a variety of solutions to their problems. Are we ready to teach healthy parameters and positive alternatives? Let’s get informed and be proactive.