Joy & Austin 32: Living the Fundie Dream with Rifles, RVs & Babies

[JermajestyDuggar]

1 hour ago, Idlewild said:

Joy has put in her stories that she and Austin are going off social media for the month of January. Given everything that’s happened, I think that is a healthy choice.

There are many fundies that would benefit from a month long break. The top of the list:

Braggie

[Audrey2]

7 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

There are many fundies that would benefit from a month long break. The top of the list:

Braggie

I nominate Jill Rodrigues.

[Bad Wolf]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

I nominate Jill Rodrigues.

Then we'd have nothing to snark on. She never ceases to amaze.

[JermajestyDuggar]

Joy took Gideon for a speech evaluation. And I say good for her. I’m really glad she’s being proactive. I could see her parents not bothering with something like that. And it looks like he’ll be doing speech therapy. But one thing she said talking to the speech therapist is that she wanted to take care of it before he starts school. Ok I’m starting to think she might start the kids in school in kindergarten like jill. She might homeschool for preschool and then start them in school for kindergarten. Of course she just said “before he starts school.” But she already does homeschool stuff with him. So it wouldn’t make that much sense if she meant homeschool. Because she already does that. 

[Idlewild]

It is good she is being proactive - didn’t one of Jessa’s children have some delayed speech issues? It may be she saw what to look out for.

I hope she is realising that parents can make choices for their children that have an impact on their development and wellbeing, and JB & M, despite having a load of children, didn’t always base their choices on the well being of the child.

[SunnySide]

On 12/28/2021 at 8:45 AM, backyard sylph said:

 

These days I work full time at a fairly low-paying "essential"  job that requires no formal education beyond, oh, 8th grade. You do need to be somewhat clever and good at managing details, and in my case, sometimes people. There is a woman in my department who probably seems neither of those former things to most people, and she is not very articulate, plus has barely ever left her little town except to go to work and take an occasional trip, so the amount she knows about, well, anything, is bewilderingly low to me.

But whenever I need a solution to something puzzling me, or to talk through a little problem out loud, she's the one I go to. She sees the picture with the missing piece fit into it, every time. I tell her this, too, you gotta help people know they are valued when you can. 

This reminds me of the old saying about street smart versus book smart. Some people can go into any classroom and pick up the subject immediately and do very well with little to no effort. Some people are intuitive, read people very well,  see common sense solutions and implement them. Some people are both. I’m a big believer in “different kinds of intelligent”. I like what you say about letting people know they’re valued.

[clueliss]

48 minutes ago, Idlewild said:

It is good she is being proactive - didn’t one of Jessa’s children have some delayed speech issues? It may be she saw what to look out for.

I hope she is realising that parents can make choices for their children that have an impact on their development and wellbeing, and JB & M, despite having a load of children, didn’t always base their choices on the well being of the child.

It was Henry enjoy said this is the same people that Jessa used.

[JermajestyDuggar]

Speech issues can run in families. They run in my family. Since it may run in the Duggar family, it makes me wonder if any of the 19 kids could have used speech therapy but never got it because the Duggars were too overwhelmed to bother.

[Bastet]

I’m just now reading the discussion of early reading from a month ago, and as someone with an MS in infant and toddler development and over twenty years experience teaching high school English, there is much I want to add. 
  Please do not feel you need to teach your preschool age child to read. Denmark does not have children reading until 7-8 years of age and they do extremely well in international assessments. They instead focus on encouraging creativity and curiosity.  Recent research shows that what makes an older child a great reader is the breadth of their knowledge about the world. They comprehend what they read because of their background knowledge. This is where parents can have the greatest impact on their children’s educational success. Talk to your kids about what they are seeing or doing, about what you are seeing or doing. Read to them. Follow their interests. Take them to parks, museums, libraries, and walks around your neighborhood. (This is all much more fun than teaching phonics, by the way.) If you allow screen time, join them to discuss what they view.  So often what we mean by learning to read is successfully sounding out the words. If your child is interested in this, fine, but you can be sure that your school system does this well and you are more important in other ways for your child’s success.  
   If you decide to teach reading, be ready to bail if there is any resistance from your child. Kids are individuals and your very bright child may just have other fish to fry. 
  And be aware too that not all school systems handle early readers well. If your system sees few pre-K readers, then your child may spend a lot of his first two years watching the rest of the class catch up. 
  Again, it is not wrong to teach younger children to read, but don’t feel guilty if you choose not to or worried if your child is not yet interested. But by all means encourage in your child a love of learning and an interest in the world. Watch your child bloom. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Bastet

[JermajestyDuggar]

3 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I’m just now reading the discussion of early reading from a month ago, and as someone with an MS in infant and toddler development and over twenty years experience teaching high school English, there is much I want to add. 
 Please do not feel you need to teach your preschool age child to read. Denmark does not have children reading until 7-8 years of age and they do extremely well in international assessments. They instead focus on encouraging creativity and curiosity about the world. Recent research shows that what makes an older child a great reader is the breadth of their knowledge about the world. They comprehend what they read because of their background knowledge. This is where parents can have the greatest impact on their children’s educational success. Talk to your kids about what they are seeing or doing, about what you are seeing or doing. Read to them. Follow their interests. Take them to parks, museums, and walks around your neighborhood. (This is all much more fun than teaching phonics, by the way.) If you allow screen time, join them to discuss what they view.  So often what we mean by learning to read is successfully sounding out the words. If your child is interested in this, fine, but you can be sure that your school system does this well and you are more important in other ways for your child’s success.  
   If you decide to teach reading, be ready to bail if there is any resistance from your child. Kids are individuals and your very bright child may just have other fish to fry. 
  And be aware too that not all school systems handle early readers well. If your system sees few pre-K readers, then your child may spend a lot of his first two years watching the rest of the class catch up. 
  Again, it is not wrong to teach younger children to read, but don’t feel guilty if you choose not to or worried if your child is not yet interested. But by all means encourage in your child a love of learning and an interest in the world. Watch your child bloom. 

My older son was not an early reader. We’ve always read to him every night. But we never pushed him to read. He went to a play based preschool that weren’t trying to teach them to read early. By the end of kinder, he wasn’t fluently reading. He was always pretty average when testing for reading. But he’s been steadily going up and up with reading. And now in 3rd grade, he’s identified as gifted in reading. He loves to read. We never pushed early reading yet he’s gifted in reading now. It’s interesting how reading develops. It’s interesting how early reading isn’t always a great predictor for future reading. I’m not a child specialist or anything. But it’s still interesting. 

[mstee]

You guys are making me feel a lot better. My 3 year old is chatty and spunky but doesn’t know her letters. We read to her and she goes to preschool 2 days a week. Her preschool did an assessment and she did poorly on recognizing her letters and numbers. Of course I was frustrated and feeling like a failure but I also haven’t prioritized teaching her them either so I wasn’t surprised. Her little friends know their letters and I was surprised to find out they do. I was like oh crap am I holding her back? I’ve always been more focused on activities for her rather than flash card type things. 

[Jana814]

45 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Speech issues can run in families. They run in my family. Since it may run in the Duggar family, it makes me wonder if any of the 19 kids could have used speech therapy but never got it because the Duggars were too overwhelmed to bother.

I know a family who’s kids both had the same speech issue. With the second child the parents put the kid in speech as early as they could. 
 

I know someone else who has a speech issue. She never had speech therapy & probably needed it. She has 3 kids & none of them have an issue with speech. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Jana814

[Bastet]

19 minutes ago, mstee said:

Her little friends know their letters and I was surprised to find out they do. I was like oh crap am I holding her back? I’ve always been more focused on activities for her rather than flash card type things. 

Don’t go the flash card route—your anxiety will likely be obvious to your child.
   You have two good choices. You can see what her kindergarten teacher thinks. Early elementary teachers are great at distinguishing normal development from any that might be problematic. Or you can have her assessed now. If you are an American, she can be evaluated for free through the school system. If she struggles with some aspect of her visual memory, she certainly can still be taught to read but may need to be taught differently. 
  Either way, she’s going to read. Being chatty is great! She’ll tell you what she’s interested in and you can follow her lead and feed her curiosity. Wonderful that you are reading to her. If the worst is true and she needs more time to learn to decode, you are showing her the world that books hold to keep her interested. 
   She sounds like fun. Enjoy her and try 😏not to worry. 

[GreenBeans]

1 hour ago, mstee said:

You guys are making me feel a lot better. My 3 year old is chatty and spunky but doesn’t know her letters. We read to her and she goes to preschool 2 days a week. Her preschool did an assessment and she did poorly on recognizing her letters and numbers. Of course I was frustrated and feeling like a failure but I also haven’t prioritized teaching her them either so I wasn’t surprised. Her little friends know their letters and I was surprised to find out they do. I was like oh crap am I holding her back? I’ve always been more focused on activities for her rather than flash card type things. 

Ummm… is it normal for 3 year olds to be able to read in the US? Here (Germany), kids will usually learn to read in first grade (~ age 6). Some may have picked it up before, most will at least be able to write their name, but being able to read is definitely not expected before you start school. And yep, we’re not a nation of illiterate people.

3 years seems awfully early to me! And I’m not sure if most kids that age would even be able to understand what they are doing. Memorizing flash cards doesn’t mean anything (other than… it’s been drilled into them to memorize flash cards).

[JermajestyDuggar]

1 minute ago, GreenBeans said:

Ummm… is it normal for 3 year olds to be able to read in the US? Here (Germany), kids will usually learn to read in first grade (~ age 6). Some may have picked it up before, most will at least be able to write their name, but being able to read is definitely not expected before you start school. And yep, we’re not a nation of illiterate people.

3 years seems awfully early to me! And I’m not sure if most kids that age would even be able to understand what they are doing. Memorizing flash cards doesn’t mean anything (other than… it’s been drilled into them to memorize flash cards).

No definitely not. I think she was only talking about knowing some letters. I think at age three, my kids could sing their ABCs and recognized some letters and numbers. But they were no where near reading. Usually that starts in kindergarten. And they don’t have to be reading to pass Kindergarten. By the beginning of first grade, reading levels are varied amongst kids. 

[Bastet]

5 hours ago, Bastet said:

Early elementary teachers are great at distinguishing normal development from any that might be problematic. Or you can have her assessed now. If you are an American, she can be evaluated for free through the school system. If she struggles with some aspect of her visual memory, she certainly can still be taught to read but may need to be taught differently. 

I have been thinking more about this, mistee. Your daughter may not be learning letter identification because it seems like nonsense to her, and she will take an interest later, but if she hasn’t by age 5, or a year before she is starting kindergarten, I would have her scheduled for an evaluation through the school department. I say this because there is often a backlog of kids to be looked at and if you wait until kindergarten, she might have to wait many months, meanwhile perhaps getting frustrated in school.  (If they give you a date more than five months or so into the future, become that squeaky wheel.)

 

[Bluebirdbluebell]

5 hours ago, GreenBeans said:

Ummm… is it normal for 3 year olds to be able to read in the US? Here (Germany), kids will usually learn to read in first grade (~ age 6). Some may have picked it up before, most will at least be able to write their name, but being able to read is definitely not expected before you start school. And yep, we’re not a nation of illiterate people.

3 years seems awfully early to me! And I’m not sure if most kids that age would even be able to understand what they are doing. Memorizing flash cards doesn’t mean anything (other than… it’s been drilled into them to memorize flash cards).

Americans seem to believe that learning everything at younger ages makes kids smarter. I'm not sure why, but this has been the trend my entire lifetime. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Bluebirdbluebell

[JermajestyDuggar]

55 minutes ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

Americans seem to believe that learning everything at younger ages makes kids smarter. I'm not sure why, but this has been the trend my entire lifetime. 

Braggie sure thinks she’s amaze balls for graduating homeschool early and graduating college early. And as we all know on FJ, she’s far from it.

[Travelfan]

9 hours ago, mstee said:

You guys are making me feel a lot better. My 3 year old is chatty and spunky but doesn’t know her letters. We read to her and she goes to preschool 2 days a week. Her preschool did an assessment and she did poorly on recognizing her letters and numbers. Of course I was frustrated and feeling like a failure but I also haven’t prioritized teaching her them either so I wasn’t surprised. Her little friends know their letters and I was surprised to find out they do. I was like oh crap am I holding her back? I’ve always been more focused on activities for her rather than flash card type things. 

I never did any flash cards but I have taught letters to many 3 year olds. I was the 3 year old teacher at a daycare many years ago and then taught my own children as well. It’s best to make everything into a game. For letters you could make up a bingo type of game. Make several cards with random letters.  Give her one of the cards and put a mini M&M on each letter square and then show one letter at a time and tell her what the letter is and have her look for it on her card. Every time she has one of the letters she gets to eat the M&M on that square.  

Once she knows her capital letters well you can teach the lower case as well. For this take 52 index cards. Put capital letters on 26 and lower case on the other 26. Choose about 10 pairs at a time (20 cards) Put the lower case ones on the table spread out. Give her one capital letter at a time and help her find the “letter’s baby”  Basically matching the baby letter to their mommy letters

A few random other fun games…take a small poster board and divide into 100 squares. Number them 1-100. Put one small mini M&M on one of the squares and then you and the child count together with your fingers pointing to each square. Once you get to the number with the M&M they get to eat it.  Start off with low numbers in the teens or 20s and once she can count those well (with you counting along as well) start putting the candy on higher numbers. If you play this a few times a week your child should be able to count to and identify all numbers well before kindergarten. 
 

On another small poster board draw vertical and horizontal lines to make several squares.  Write start on the middle square. Give the child a small candy to put on start. Give directions like move up 2 squares, move right 3 squares, etc. eventually direct them back to the start square. Once they get back to start they get to eat the candy. This teaches right from left and simple counting. 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Travelfan

[Rowan]

We have lots of different alphabet books in my house - and never actually set out to teach my little guy. He just started to pick them up with the repetition over and over (and over and over) again. He also has foam letters for in the bathtub - but that led to some confusion in the beginning with M and W especially, since they wouldn’t be in the correct orientation most of the time.

I agree that flash cards and drilling isn’t necessary and could be counter-productive. (I wouldn’t consider Travelfan’s games as drilling at all, to be clear.) But if they are given lots of different ways to interact with and experience the letters and numbers, many kids will just pick them up, in their own time. 

[Audrey2]

If you take your little person to the grocery store, grocery stores are a wonderful place for a letter Safari. The little guy I used to care for enjoyed looking at the cakes in the bakery so we played the game find five of a target letter or 10 of a target letter and then we got to go look in the bakery at the cakes. It also kept him engaged on those days when I needed to do a little bit of grocery shopping while caring for him or on the days that he just needed an outing.

[treehugger]

Awe 3 is so young to be stressing about this!  Let those beautiful little babes play and have fun and climb and explore and get dirty.  Childhood is too short to burden them with such expectations so young.  Have fun showing them things, but I wouldn’t worry about it yet.  Letters and numbers are not the only important things in life. Children learn so much non-academic but hugely important stuff about the world and life while they are playing and exploring. 

[GiggleOfGirls]

Absolutely don’t stress about teaching reading so young! I was hyperlexic, reading when I was ~20 months old (which is ridiculous to me, but my mom insists and I can’t remember ever not knowing how to read so she’s probably remembering correctly), but my own children were much older (ranging from 5-9) when they learned how to read. 
 

And once they were ready they all caught up to the level I’d been reading at their age.

 

 My parents kind of freaked out about my kids’ late reading because I was their oldest and set the accepted norm for the family. 
 

But it was really not a big deal at all.

[QuiverFullofBooks]

11 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Speech issues can run in families. They run in my family. Since it may run in the Duggar family, it makes me wonder if any of the 19 kids could have used speech therapy but never got it because the Duggars were too overwhelmed to bother.

I think Joy may have had speech therapy. Her voice changed a lot between childhood and maturity. Listen to this clip: 

 

[feministxtian]

I don't think she had speech therapy, she just grew up. 

Teaching kids to read. My oldest and youngest must have come from the womb able to read. They both read way above grade level from the beginning and I do not remember teaching them. Middle took his sweet time. He may have been 2nd grade-ish before it all really clicked. Didn't push any of them, I figure they'd graduate from high school able to read and housebroken.