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Congratulations Betsy! I will contact you by email and get your mailing address. I hope that the Yankz! will help your daughter feel like she can do things more successfully! We love ours! 
 Twenty-five percent. That’s how far we are into the Bible now! I never thought I would love it this much, on my third time through. It is all familiar now, the stories. The telling. Falls from grace. Provision and miracles. Repentence. God’s anger and second, third, fourth (and more!) chances. It is amazing.
David is the key character right now, as I read through 2Samuel. David, the man after God’s own heart, of whom was said “And he became more and more powerful, because the LORD God Almighty was with him.” (2Sam 5:10) A man with a fallen, sinful heart so much like mine. He willingly followed the Lord and his prophet. He also saw something he wanted, took it, hid the sin, committed another sin to cover it up, and then tried to make things right again. How familiar this is to me! So often it is that we hide what we did wrong, which is wrong too, and then try to make it right somehow. Marrying Bathsheba was his attempt at righting the wrong, but God knew.
God knows us. He sees our downfalls, our cover-ups, our justification for wrongs committed, and he just shakes his head. I’m sure he is like an irritated father, wondering when I’m going to figure it out, that His way is best. I fall. I justify. I hope no one saw/noticed/finds out. And I cover it up. “Good Christians don’t do that,” or at least I like to tell myself that.
But wait? Good Christians? Most Christians I know are just people. Oh. Okay, all Christians I know are people. People aren’t perfect. We’re all works in progress. If I were perfect, I’d have no need for Christ. Imagine! No need for Jesus. The man I could never live without. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that perfect.
David knew that God was for him. The consequence of his sins was that his newborn son, just seven days old, was taken from him. The son conceived in sin, causing an avalanche of sin to follow. And yet when his son died, David worshiped God.
May my heart be soft and open enough that even when I know I’m wrong and God calls me on it, that I will worship only One who can bring me through!
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 Learning is natural.
Schooling is not. First time homeschoolers always encounter so many different methods and opinions on this new venture that they are beginning, that it’s easy to get caught up in the curriculum game. Which curriculum is best? Which will make my kids the smartest? Which will pour the most literature/math/science into them so that they can pass the (fill the name) exam? Which books are on that book list again?
Back up a minute. You are teaching children, not testers. You are in your home, not an overpriced classical Christian academy. Take a deep breath. Children are naturally curious about the world around them. They naturally enjoy being read to. They naturally like to move and have fun. Notice a theme here? Not to state the obvious, but kids will learn anything that they are naturally interested in.
Why make this harder than it has to be?
Curriculum is well and good, but it is a tool. Use it as such to reach the goals that you have for your kids, but don’t live by it. If you and your kids are slaves to your curriculum, how long do you think you will enjoy homeschooling?
Life itself is a great teacher. Gardening, grocery shopping, filling out job applications for the first time, learning to budget money, finishing reading a huge novel, or finally making that volcano erupt after six tries… these are experiences that will stick with them!
YOU are a great teacher. Every smile, every story read, every glue-sticked project, timeline figure memorized, or random bird fact explored has meaning. Your time with them is precious, and even when it’s hard you’ll still wish you had that time back years later. Don’t waste it.
You can do this. Your KIDS can do this. It’s not hard. It really is very natural. Enjoy your time as a homeschooling mom, because it won’t last forever. Enjoy the trips to the library, backyard soccer, games of Tag and Duck Duck Goose, collecting leaves, and reading Narnia aloud until your voice is hoarse.
Learning is natural. Schooling is not. Encourage interests, praise strengths, build up weaknesses, love, learn, and pray. Mothering is as natural as learning.
“I wanted to show you these shoe laces I’ve been using. I think that D1 would really benefit from having a pair of these, with his fine motor struggles.” His occupational therapist pointed to her shoelaces, called Yankz!, and explained how they work.
“You just lace them in, cinch them down, and go. He could just slide his feet into his shoes and eliminate a whole bunch of steps in getting ready for the day.”
Seriously?! Eliminate steps? Just slide his feet in? Save time?!?!
Having kids with fine motor difficulties, shoe tying has been a bit of a blessing and a bit of a curse. It has been a blessing because they finally learned HOW and were ABLE to get them tight enough that they stayed tied. Mostly. It’s also been a curse because now I depend on them to get ready to leave. And it takes time. Lots. of. time.
Motor planning that comes naturally to you and I does NOT come naturally to a child with developmental dyspraxia. Motor planning is the whole issue. When you give them a task that has a lots of steps, it’s hard enough. Give him a task that has lots of fine motor steps, and you’ve got…. enough time to make lunch for four people, and EAT, while you wait for him to put on his shoes and get them tied. Yes, really. What I need is a way to save time. Enter Yankz!
I asked for, and received, some Yankz! to try out. I discovered that they were MUCH more generous than I ever hoped for, when this arrived in the mail:
We immediately set to choosing and, er, installing them. It is rather a bit of a process, lacing in these elastic strings with the plastic pulley hook thingy, but we followed the directions on the inside of the package, and went to it. Even the boys set to work on their own. D1, our budding pre-adolescent 11 year old, chose royal blue laces, the same color as the trim on his Cons. D2 chose light blue, which didn’t exactly match his shoes, but he’s a 9-year old boy. They don’t care about things matching. He just likes blue.
As for me, I was super excited to see REFLECTIVE Yankz! Laces, with reflectors on them! You may think I’ve lost it, but you don’t go running at 6am, when it’s still dark out. The only thing that would be cooler is if they lit up. With our newly laced Yankz!, we went about our business.
Our experience:
Yankz! have definitely improved our time-out-the-door. I can tell the boys that it’s time to leave, and they can have their shoes on their feet in moments. Record time! D1 has really appreciated them because he knows how long it takes him to go through the process of putting on his shoes. He likes that he can easily tighten or loosen them, depending on how his feet are feeling, with just a tug or two. His occupational therapist was right. These are perfect for him!
Our other son, 9-year old D2, also likes his Yankz!, but his experience hasn’t been quite as good. This boy is the human equivalent of the Tasmanian Devil. He CAN tear apart a steel anvil, on accident, and not even slow down to view the destruction. Things disintegrate in his presence. So did his Yankz! It is probably also due to the fact that he has these really heavy, wide skater shoes and Yankz! were definitely NOT made for skater shoes.
For me, Yankz! are fantastic. My running shoes are happy. I am happy. I am reflective!!  And my shoes never, ever come untied any more.
And now I have goodies to share with you! Enter to win a family pack of FOUR pairs of Yankz! for one lucky winner! How does 3 Pairs of Yankz! and 1 pair of Yankz! Reflectives sound?!
You have two chances to win:
First- mandatory entry, leave a comment telling me why you need them! And second, follow me @MommaKnows on Twitter and come back here and let me know that you did! One winner will be drawn Saturday morning and announced here, on Twitter, and on my Facebook page.
Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links which, if you click over and make a purchase, help to support the costs of keeping this site running. Thank you!
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