*Understanding Your Right-Brained Child
Is your child interested in one or more of the following: art/drawing, theater/showmanship, music/dance, computers/video games, building (LEGO!)/electronics, cooking/gardening, puzzles/mazes, math/numbers (concepts/spatial), or fashion/sewing? Have you heard people make comments about your child such as he does not live up to his potential, or she is smart but lazy, or he may have a learning disability? Does your child resist your teaching methods? Your child may be a right-brained, creative learner. Cindy will share the characteristics of this learning style to help parents discover their child’s path to learning with joy. Celebrate the gifts of the right-brained learner while understanding why certain subjects may develop later or differently (like reading, math facts, handwriting, spelling, and writing).
*The Collaborative Learning Process:
A Strengths-Based Education Approach
How do you homeschool all your different children and meet each of their needs and still help them find their gifts? What is your role as parent-educator at the various stages of learning? How do you let all your children lead out in their own learning lives, but still bring in the wisdom, experience, and perspective one can offer as the adult in their lives? Cindy discovered there were distinct learning stages that supports discovery of one’s passion and subsequently develops the skills needed to turn that passion into a purpose. We will discuss each stage of learning and how it correlates with brain development, what the parental role is during each, and how the child leads out in their strengths and particular learning style in order to achieve their adult pursuits.
The Middle School Years
Cindy feels that the middle school years are the trickiest and most misunderstood years of growth and change for children, and hers were no exception. No wonder middle school has such a poor reputation. Schools are ill-equipped to support children during easier developmental years, let alone the tough ones. Why is it that home/unschooled children most often talk about going back to school at this stage? Why do they seem like wandering, lost souls all of a sudden? Cindy will discuss what’s going on during this time of development as she discovered through her children and confirmed through listening to other parents and the research she unearthed. She will share what she did to support her children both academically and emotionally, and what the outcome looked like when high school arrived.
Individualized Education: Identifying Learning Styles
We often hear that homeschooling is the perfect setting in which to truly individualize your child’s education. To accomplish this, Cindy has found it has a lot to do with honoring your child’s learning style in regards to how they enjoy discovering and exploring a subject, as well as respecting the time frames in which they grasp and embrace the subject. How do you identify the learning style of your child? What impacts their learning lives most? Cindy will share with you the characteristics of various learning style attributes and how these shape learning. She will give examples from her three oldest (now adult) children’s different learning styles and how it impacted various subjects such as reading, writing, math, science, geography, foreign language, history, spelling, etc. to form their individualized education.
Recognizing Your Educational Value System
Whether developed consciously or unconsciously, we all have an educational value system. What’s important to us? What traits, subjects, or strategies do we value over another? How and where did we develop these educational values? Do our educational values strengthen or hinder our children’s homeschooling progress? Once we recognize and begin to verbalize what our educational value system is, we can decide if it needs adjusting or not. Come join Cindy in an interactive discussion that helps you begin to recognize your educational value system.
*Transitioning to Adulthood: What About College?
Do you remember when everyone asked your 5-year-old, “Are you excited about going to kindergarten?” As a person nears 18, you get a similar question, “Are you going to college?” What if you choose to forge your own way in life instead of college? Cindy watched as each of her three adult children made these decisions. Some went to college. Some went their own way. And some did both. What was tough? What was easy? Cindy’s daughter, Abbey Miles, will share her perspective on doing both. And Cindy will share her role in this process with her children.
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Living with the Right-Brained Child
Does your child need the tags taken out of their clothes or they will only wear sweat pants? Is change difficult for your child or are transitions from activity to activity or even life phase to life phase a balancing act? Does your child have a strong sense of fairness and everything is negotiable? Is the glass always half-empty? Cindy will discuss the emotional, social, and sensorial differences that often accompany the right-brained learner. She will discuss strategies available to facilitate positive experiences, incorporate skill-building tools, and adjust our value system to create a balanced approach to living harmoniously with this complex learner.
*Homeschooling Special Needs
Cindy believes in the paradigm of strengths and weaknesses. For most of us, we seek after and highlight our strengths first and foremost. But for those labeled “special needs,” we automatically think of weakness first. What happens when children are viewed through a weakness-based lens instead of a strengths-based lens, especially in the early years? Shouldn’t serious and obvious weaknesses be worked on at a young age for best outcome? Is there a place in our world for different? Cindy will share what mattered most in helping support her children with autism and global delays to become happy and productive adults who are creating their life of passion and purpose.
Mental Health: How Does Homeschooling Help?
Does your child chew holes in his shirts? Does she clear her throat or do odd blinking movements? How about excessive fears or the inability to make a decision? Does your child worry a lot or have a strong sense of right and wrong? How about perfectionism? All of these can be early signs of an anxiety disposition. Right-brained people are highly sensitive, emotive, and perceptive, which also makes this learner more prone to depression, bipolar, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, tics, and other related mental health differences. Cindy will discuss how she supported her children through many of these challenges as well as explain how the relationships of trust and respect developed through homeschooling positively contributed. Abbey will share her own personal journey with anxiety, what she has learned about herself, and how she’s maintaining emotional health. (The tough subjects of suicide, cutting, sexual promiscuity, drugs, and alcohol as symptoms of mental health issues will be touched on.) No wonder fixes in this workshop; just plain hard inner work, learning, and personal growth.
Exploring Freedom
Cindy realized that one of the most important attributes she learned about through homeschooling her seven children is what real freedom looks and feels like, both for herself and for her children. Free-range parenting, unschooling, and self-regulation are some of the vocabulary that Cindy discovered allowed her children to experience personal freedom. Independent thinking, societal awareness, and self-worth are some of the vocabulary that she deeply explored in herself so that these things could be reflected by example to her children in finding their place in our world separate from external expectations that leads to cultural freedom. Cindy will lead a self-evaluation discussion to help individuals attain as much freedom in their lives and the lives of their children as they are comfortable giving.
I have spoken on many diverse topics, so please contact me if you’re looking for a specific category. I’ll send you an individualized write-up.
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