Guest post by parenting columnist and psychologist John Rosemond

    A mother asks why I don’t believe in ADHD. Her son has ADHD. After administering a battery of tests, a psychologist said so. According to the mother, the psychologist also said the boy probably inherited the disorder—a biochemical imbalance—from his father, who admitted to having been bored, inattentive, and fidgety in school. ADHD must have something to do with biochemistry, she said, because her son is now taking medication and it has helped a lot. (Note: I am not able to speak directly with the psychologist in question; therefore, I am assuming that the mother has represented him accurately. Regardless, I have heard very similar stories pertaining to psychologists from lots and lots of parents.)

   I asked if the psychologist had ordered a brain scan, blood test, or genetic testing. After a moment’s reflection, and with a puzzled look, she told me that he had not.

“Psychologists are not medical doctors,” I said. “They are not qualified to make statements concerning a person’s physical condition without consultation with a physician or physicians who have made the determinations in question.”

“Then why did he tell me that?” she asked.

That’s what he believes, I told her, and I do not question his sincerity. She asked what I believed, so I told her that no physiological anomaly has been reliably found in children diagnosed with ADHD. Said differently, there is no compelling evidence that ADHD is caused by faulty biology. Furthermore, the idea that brain chemistry is “out of balance” supposes that one can determine the proper state of balance. Brain chemistry is in a state of constant flux. According to experts with whom I have spoken, it varies according to mood, situation, prior history, and other factors too numerous to mention. Brain chemistry in “balance” is whimsy.

As for ADHD being genetic, that too has not been proven. Furthermore, it fascinates me that whenever I have heard a story of this sort—and I have heard hundreds—the parent who supposedly passed the gene to the child in question is almost always the father (I estimate the preponderance to be above 90 percent). Yet girls are diagnosed with ADHD, so one is prompted to ask, “If girls possess the gene, how is it that they seem to pass it on so rarely?”

The criteria that define ADHD are found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.* Those criteria are subjective, which means the diagnosis rests on no objective standards. Furthermore, they are replete with such unscientific words as “usually” and “often,” as in, the child “often has problems finishing tasks.” In other words, children diagnosed with ADHD sometimes act like they have it and sometimes act like they do not have it. The only rational conclusion to draw is that they do not “have” anything at all.

It is worth noting that none of the criteria are test-based; therefore, a psychologist who administers an battery of tests under the pretense that tests are a diagnostic essential or claims to have made the diagnosis based on test results is misrepresenting the nature of the tests. If one believes a diagnosis of ADHD is appropriate, there is value to knowing the IQ of the child in question, but an IQ test is not a valid diagnostic tool.

Last but not least, the medications in question are stimulants that have the predictable effect of lengthening attention span and increasing ability to focus…in everyone. It is not true that certain people (those “with” ADHD) have one reaction to these drugs and certain other people (those “without”) have an opposite reaction. This canard is put forth to support the unproven claim that the ADHD nervous system is substantially different from the non-ADHD nervous system. As for the oft-observed fact that when highly active children take these drugs they become less active: an increase in attention span results in a decrease in activity level.

   “So,” I asked the boy’s mother. “What are your thoughts now?”

   She told me she was going back to the diagnosing psychologist prepared to ask some tough questions and insist upon clear answers. More parents should do the same.

(Author’s note: “Before I published this column, it was reviewed and approved by two psychologists, one of whom has published extensively on the subject of ADHD, the other of whom is skilled in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, and two pediatricians, one of whom specializes in treating children who exhibit ADHD symptoms.”)

* The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatic Association.
	Family psychologist John Rosemond answers parents’ questions on his website at www.rosemond.com.
Is your son’s inattention and fidgeting driving you both to distraction? Whether your son is taught at home or “sitting” in a classroom, you can find helpful ideas in our popular workshop, Ballistic Homeschooling! (And if your son is bouncing off the walls, you know why we gave it that title!) One hour workshop recording – CD $5.00

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Several years ago, a friend of ours decided to eliminate gender stereotypes from her children’s upbringing.

As it turned out, her kids weren’t buying it—neither one of them.

Much to Mom’s dismay, her little boy would drive the hapless doll around on its stomach making vroom-vroom sounds. His big sister, on the other hand, did pretend to drive the little trucks around the carpet, all while narrating a story of archaic domesticity: “Mommy’s putting the baby in the car seat, and they’re going to the grocery store!”

Though raised in a very up-to-date, trend-conscious family, these young children had a natural bent toward traditional gender roles. Sometimes gender “stereotypes” aren’t an evil invention of a patriarchal world but instead reflect tendencies built into us by a loving God. And we can use those tendencies—in fact, we ought to use them—to improve our homeschooling effectiveness.

What about the stereotype that boys like science and girls don’t? Maybe it’s not the subject but the way it’s presented. When researchers in Luxembourg asked a group of eighth- and ninth-grade students what they thought of a suggested science program for the coming year, they found that girls were more interested in science when scientific concepts were presented within the context of real-life feminine topics. Likewise, boys were more interested in science when scientific concepts were presented within the context of masculine topics:

Girls showed considerably more interest in topics such as “how a laser is used in cosmetic surgery” and “how to calculate the probability of a miscarriage” than in topics such as “how to calculate the force a rocket needs to take off” and “how to calculate the probability of a car accident.” One of the authors . . . said that girls were more interested in social and real contexts such as the decline of forests, whereas boys clearly found mechanics and technology more compelling.

When you introduce a scientific principle in your home school, can you think of different ways to apply it to appeal to your children? Let’s say you want to discuss heat, the expansion of gases, and their relationship to pressure. It’s equally valid to think of the forces exerted by steam in a locomotive boiler or a pressure cooker. The physical quality of fluid viscosity works the same with motor oil or vegetable oil. Ultrasound imaging is used for both non-destructive testing of mechanical parts and non-surgical diagnosis of soft-tissue injuries. In fact, when we show our children that scientific concepts–God’s physical laws–work the same on the kitchen counter as they do at Cape Canaveral, they will grow to appreciate the wonderful consistency of His creation.

How about the stereotype that girls like to read, and boys don’t? Sadly, there is plenty of statistical evidence for this school of thought. Boys are in fact reading less and getting less benefit from it than ever before. Last year I interviewed several school and public librarians who were stocking their shelves with dozens, even hundreds, of Japanese comic books in a desperate attempt to get boys to read something. Anything. One librarian told me, “A solid quarter to third of what I circulate is graphic novels,” mostly to boys. The catalog of the public libraries of Charlotte, N.C., lists more than 600 titles of manga alone.

This is not just an American concern. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that in 2009 girls were, on average, a full year ahead of their male classmates in reading proficiency in every one of the sixty-five countries studied.

However, the problem may be that librarians and teachers have misjudged what is appropriate reading for boys. Sociologist Morris Massey describes schoolboys on a playground arguing about the wingspan, airspeed, and engine thrust of the different airplanes flying overhead, then dejectedly leaving recess to go string beads indoors. No teacher would assign such technically advanced information for second-graders, but the kids will eagerly dig it out for themselves if the subject grabs their attention.

We’ve seen this over and over with our six sons. If they have a personal passion for a subject, they will willingly plow into the most remarkable books. We’ve had sons who researched transcripts of Constitutional debates in our state in order to write a script for a video project. (It didn’t hurt that they won a prize for it!) Our children have acquired startling amounts of information about reptiles, fish, European military history, web design, and application programming simply because they had an interest these subjects.

Maybe instead of assigning predigested textbooks and anthologies, you can point your young learners to popular histories, biographies, and topical books from the adult section of the library—the same ones you might read to feed your own curiosity. Well-written novels like historical fiction by G. A. Henty and first-person accounts by explorers, missionaries, generals, and presidents introduce history in an engaging way (and beef up kids’ vocabulary, too). Practical manuals on subjects like carpentry, electrical wiring, or yard maintenance will provide them with hands-on application of physics, chemistry, and geometry.

We must be alert to the unique character God has built into each one of our children. Maybe Susan wants to learn biology by studying horses and wildflowers, while Robert prefers to think about dinosaurs and amoebas. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The key is to embrace the student for the unique person he or she is, not for the demographic others may think they represent.

———-

Along with his other projects and duties, Hal is the editor of Apologia Educational Ministries’s monthly newsletter, Apologia World. This article originally appeared in the October 2011 issue.

You can subscribe to their free monthly e-newsletter here! 

Life is one of the biggest challenges – and blessings – of homeschooling for us, how about you?

There’s just so much to do and so often we don’t feel like we’re doing it all well. Today’s Carnival of Homeschooling has some help! Jenny Herman is pretty convicting for us plugged-in parents in Limiting “Tomorrow’s Homeschooler” posted at Home Educating Family Publishing, though maybe I should have saved this one for the end! If you’re in computer angst, check out Jacqui’s post with Tech Tip #88: 20 Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix « Ask a Tech Teacher posted at Ask a Tech Teacher.

The house seems overwhelming for most of us at some time or another. Mrs. White encourages us to get up and get busy with Only Rich People Have Clean Houses posted at The Legacy of Home and Angela Gray faces the challenges of Autumn head-on in It’s That Time Again – Team Gray! posted at team Gray!.

And Gidget encourages us in these difficult times to get our children involved in Giving in Order to Get posted at Homeschooling Unscripted.

Sometimes You Need School Stuff – Great tips, inspiration and ideas

Gina Glenn challenges us to focus on what’s important in The Tyranny of Tidbits! posted at A Cherished Keeper.

Nancy Kelly intrigues and inspires us with My Calendar of Firsts posted at Sage Parnassus, while Jenny Herman uses schedules to help her son on the autism spectrum in Back to School with a Simple Schedule | Many Hats Mommy posted at Back to School with a Simple Schedule.

Adam Faughn shares Children’s Project: Bible Time Line posted at The Faughn Family of Four. I really enjoyed seeing his family’s unique timeline — my younger ones could really get into this!

Jamerrill Stewart posted this Free Literature Based Civil War Study at Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling | Living the Life of Faith.

Lisa presents Memory Monday posted at Golden Grasses and Denise tells us How to Conquer the Times Table, Part 5 posted at Let’s Play Math!. Also, with regard to teaching math, Alexander Bogomolny presents Thought provokers to start a class with posted at CTK Insights.

Jennifer posts a very interesting Lesson 14: Dairy – Cheese, butter, milk, curds & whey, buttermilk, yogurt posted at Nutrition for Healthy Kids, while Aunt B reminds us to keep our children safe with Fire Safety for Homeschool at Homeschool 4 Free.

Great things to think about – or discuss

Nancy Flanders talks about The Cooperative Toddler posted at Parenting Squad and Kelly, a public school teacher planning to homeschool, reflects on Keeping Curious: Retaining Our Love of Learning posted at The Homeschool Co-op.

Darlene Franco is looking to the future in Life on the Franco Farm: Message to My Daughter posted at Life on the Franco Farm and Barbara Frank presents a guest post by Rachel Poling, who’s already there in “Debt-free College Grad at 19″ on Thriving in the 21st Century.

Christian musician Stephen Bagasao brings up some important issues in The Death of Steve Jobs: The Real Story posted at Stephen Bautista Music.

Pamela presents Relaxing Family Yoga…. Well….Not Really posted at Blah, Blah, Blog and Alasandra wants to explain that homeschoolers are diverse in NOT a Republican Foot Soldier at Alasandra’s Homeschool Blog.

Henry Cate, the father of this Carnival, asked one of his daughters what she liked about homeschooling and wrote A benefit to homeschooling – the flexibility at Why Homeschool and Linda Dobson reminds us all our sacrifice is worth it in Yes, You May Have to Give Up Some THINGS to Homeschool posted at PARENT AT THE HELM.

Matt Binz, Lee Binz’s dh, Mr. Homescholar posts a video blog on how parenting sons changes as they get older. It’s Raising Boys v. Raising Men at The Homescholar Record.

And Mike Smith of HSLDA, wanted to me to tell you something: “Melanie, tell the moms that the legend has it that Notre Dame’s star player in the 1920′s, George Gipp, lay dying in a hospital, his famous coach visited him and the last words of dying Gipp to Rockne were, “When the boys are up against it and they seem to have no where to turn, just tell them to win one for the Gipper.” Ronald Regan played Gipp in the movie. When the moms’ backs are against the wall and they can’t see light at the end of the tunnel and all hope is gone, tell them, “God didn’t call them to raise their children for Harvard but for Heaven.. Focus on that and God will take care of the rest.” We’ve certainly found that to be true – the more we focus on Christ, the more satisfied we are with what we’re seeing in our sons, whether the Lord takes them to a top university to shine for Him or whether we just see it in doing a messy job for the family cheerfully.

Our final contribution is our own. Tonight Hal’s mother took us all out to the movies. The ladies went to see Dolphin’s  Tale (I’ll review it in a few days) and Hal took the boys to see Courageous. It impacted him so much he came right home and wrote a review of it for you. Read it here!

Thank you for joining us for the Carnival of Homeschooling today – be sure to share it with others! While you’re here, we hope you’ll take a moment to sign up for our newsletter (you’ll get one of our most popular downloads free once we add your email if you do!), like us on Facebook, and check out our book (Raising Real Men was Christian Small Publishers Book of the Year this year!) and other resources. Thanks for stopping by!

Hal & Melanie

Swan Boats in Boston Public Garden by Daderot

We’ve gone so far as to sit in Boston’s Public Garden reading a copy of Make Way for Ducklings purchased at the Corner Bookstore, then riding the swan boats afterward. How sweet to hear that little guy in my memory, since he’s all grown up now, shouting with joy, “Mama, it’s Mr. Mallard!” as a fine drake swam by.

Moonfinder by Jay Ryan is one of our kind of books. I love books that are gentle and sweet and memorable for young children. I also love books that stretch their minds and spark interest in finding out more about the world. Moonfinder is just our kind of book.

In Moonfinder, a young boy is led by his father to learn to watch for the moon and to understand why it changes phases. The family relationships between David and his father, mother and siblings is portrayed in just the right way – happy, secure, joyful. Just right!

The lovely paintings, which are also by Jay, are pleasant and peaceful and full of joy. I especially love the facial expressions – so delightful! They are just right for reading to young children. My two year old, though the information was a little much for her was so delighted with the paintings she absolutely demanded I read the book to her. Our six year old was fascinated by the explanations and tried to figure out exactly how the moon worked. Our nine year old enjoyed reading it to his younger siblings, especially the science behind it all.

Jay Ryan is the author of  Signs and Seasons: Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy, an astronomy curriculum we’ll be reviewing soon, and that is yet another thing that told me I’d love this children’s book even before I opened it. Have you ever wondered why the old Landmark books are so, so good that they haven’t been matched in decades? It’s because they are each written by an expert in that field, instead of some so-called expert in children’s books. There’s something irresistible about a fanatic! In my experience, no one can pass on the joy and essense of a kind of knowledge better than someone who’s made it a passion.

Moonfinder is a beautiful book that is sure to become a picture book classic. Beautiful paintings, science, family life, and nature study all combine to make a volume both boys and girls will love. This is one you need on your shelves! Highly recommended. 

Moonfinder by Jay Ryan, Fourth Day Press, 8.5 x 11, Full Color Hardcover, 32pp. Buy here from the author’s site to keep great books coming out!

A sampling of online catalogs in larger North Carolina cities uncovers hundreds of titles, everything from books about cartooning to Asian teen romance comics and educational titles like The Manga Guide to Calculus. Enter the term “manga” at the website for the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, and over 600 entries come up in this one category of comics.

“A solid quarter to third of what I circulate is graphic novels,” said Meg Harrison, the teen services coordinator for the Forsyth County Library [Winston-Salem, NC]. “Most of my readers are boys. If it’s in manga or comic book format, they don’t care if it’s targeted for girls — they’ll read it.”

(Carolina Journal, 8/31/10)

So if you start them with Japanese romance comics and Captain Underpants, somehow they get a taste for Shakespeare later on?  I have to think content matters.  I’ve read my share of superhero stories and other fluffy stuff, but not as a school assignment, and not as the preferred, promoted format.

We don’t think boys should settle for stupid stuff, even when they’re young.  Thomas Spence had an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently:

Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised “so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education.” …

This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are.

One obvious problem with the [pandering] philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.

And the content issue extends beyond avoidance of the disgusting – we ought to be realistic about the interests of boys, outside the gross-out variety.  Even while promoting the use of comics, the Canadian Council on Learning got this much right:

“Boys are much more likely [than girls] to enjoy reading science and nonfiction books, informational texts, and ‘how-to’ manuals,” the authors wrote. “They are also more likely to enjoy fantasy [and] adventure stories … [yet] these genres and media are generally underrepresented or even unavailable in school libraries, a reflection of the views of teachers and librarians who judge such material inappropriate.” 

So what do we do?  Here are some ideas we found helpful with our boys …

Set the Example:  Do your children ever see you reading a book for pleasure? No, really – a book, not the newspaper, not online.  I used to do my Bible reading on Bible Gateway or The Blue Letter Bible, — both useful websites, by the way – and carried my PDA to church (Multiple translations in my shirt pocket — cool, huh?)  But then I realized my children couldn’t tell at a glace whether I was deep in the Scriptures, or deep in my email and to-do lists.  I went back to the big, solid study Bible as a testimony to my kids.  Let them see you pick up a book for fun, too.

Read to Them.  We know we’re supposed to read to the little ones – try reading aloud as a family sometime.  We’ve gotten tremendous enjoyment out of sharing classics like The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and The Swiss Family Robinson (we wore out a copy!)  Even the teenagers will hang on for the next chapter.  Great fun, and it keeps us off the Internet in the evenings.

Introduce Them to Worthwhile Stuff, Early.  Certainly there are the classic children’s books like the ones above.  There are some great biographies and histories written on a grade-school level, too.  The Childhoods of Famous Americans series is good, and even now I enjoy the Landmarks series of nonfiction titles – they’re better than Wikipedia for a quick overview of a subject! That’s just scratching the surface.  Sarah Clarkson has a new guidebook, Read for the Heart: Whole Books for Wholehearted Families (you can get it from Apologia), with lots of summaries and commentary to suggest what to look for.

Our own list of favorites includes, in no particular order,

Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Ralph Moody, Little Britches (the series)
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous
Grace Livingston Hill, The Witness
John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity and the Space Trilogy
Josh McDowell, More Than A Carpenter
R. M. Ballentyne, The Coral Island and The Gorilla Hunters
Everything by G.A. Henty! 

(By the way, Vision Forum has Henty on sale this week — see their website here!)

Those are some ideas.  What have your boys found fascinating?

CARNIVAL OF HOMESCHOOLING
September 14, 2010 …

Renae at Life Nurturing Education is bravely climbing “Middle School Mountain” with the help of friends who share the load of lesson planning … and provide a little peer pressure:

Projects are so easy for me to drop when we get busy, but now I know other families are taking the time to create hieroglyphics. The pressure to give my children the same opportunity compels me to purchase clay and slip it in my children’s workboxes …

Marbel of Two Kid Schoolhouse describes how she is tweaking math for her son, while Lizzie writes about this year’s curriculum at A Dusty Frame and includes a lot of links for Civil War resources.

I’m still following Charlotte Mason and doing things the same way. We’re just stepping out of the rotation for a year. I really enjoyed choosing my own books. Now that I got a taste of picking everything myself, I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to being told what to do! (My rebellious streak coming out!)

God Made, Home Grown: Tiana has young homeschoolers, a potty-training toddler, and another on the way. That spells “interruption” – as well as fatigue and nausea – but God shows her the solution.

Laura Grace Weldon takes her daughter to the symphony, enjoys beautiful music, and deals with a sublimely rude man.  Even better, she offers six ways to introduce fine arts, using the happy idiot method.

We probably all know how Charlotte Mason taught children, but Nancy at Sage Parnassus writes about how Charlotte Mason taught teachers — that’s us! “It’s why teachers made a commitment to her philosophy.  It’s also why, after 15 years, I’m still anticipating the upcoming school year,” she says. Jen at Living Charlotte Mason in California does a fantastic job of explaining this philosophy beyond the couple of things we think we all know. Get inspired.

Speaking of Charlotte Mason, do you keep notebooks?  Not just fill them, but keep them?  Susan Gaissert at The Expanding Life explains why she does in “Notebooks, Notebooks Everywhere.” So what do you do with all those notebooks – and textbooks, lined paper, art supplies, and on, and on, and on … Leave it to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to find creative ways to run a household and a school in the same space — Kris shows how she does it!

Micro Business for Teens: Carol Topp, CPA, shares advice from and for teenaged businesspeople.  One of her clients, an 18-year-old entrepreneur, was interviewed by USA Today!

Someone said there are two kinds of people in the world – those who divide people into two groups, and those who don’t.  Barbara Frank looks past the Christian/secular divide, or even the multi-faceted classifications-by-methodology, and sees two complementary camps — which need each other:

Instead of viewing other homeschoolers as those using a different method, we can look at them as being proactive or reactive homeschoolers. We all fall into one of those two groups, and each is the perfect helper to the other. We need to have a cooperative spirit with other homeschoolers instead of feeling different from them, because the assault on homeschooling freedoms continues. As Benjamin Franklin famously said upon signing the Declaration of Independence, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Tea Time with Annie Kate shares natural ways to teach your children another language in “How We Study Dutch,” and Robin Phillips helps them remember it in “Homeschooling a Foreign Language: 7 Additions to Make It Stick” at Crack the Egg.

“Queen of Carrots” doesn’t use a math curriculum when Introducing the World to her young students (5 and 6) — she has lots of other ideas that sound like fun ways to combine basic math with literature, fine arts, traditional games and more. Lynn at Eclectic Education has gathered resources for file folder games that she’s hoping will help out her son, who’s facing some challenges in learning. She links to a nice directory she’s made.

At Online Education for Kids, J.T. Gaddy asks “Where are the Patriots?” and inspires us to get busy raising some! Janine, at the originating blog for the Carnival of Homeschooling – Why Homeschool, shares a fascinating and surprising story about technology in education.

Having one of those days and trying to remember why you are homeschooling? Linda Dobson at Parent at the Helm will help you out with some shocking truths about remedial classes in college. Karen at Homeschool Girls posts pictures and thoughts that help her remember why, too. If you’ve just figured out you need to homeschool, Carol Alexander at Everything Home…With Carol has a great resource list to help you get started.

As the parents of six boys, you can imagine that we like to discuss raising sons! At Four & Twenty, Kim’s boys are having a “Da Vinci Summer” and learning that ancient boy skill of using refuse to build dreams on. At Books for Boys, children’s book author Max Elliot Anderson answers the question, “How Can You Interest Your Boys in Reading?” Kim at Homeschooling Peeps is talking about that, too, in “Instilling a Love of Reading.”

We love adventure, too, especially the kind you find in the midst of ordinary life and Pamela Jorrick of Blah, Blah, Blog (Love the name!) decides there’s a better way to cross the Golden Gate Bridge than merely driving across it.

Katherine at No Fighting, No Biting, is struggling over the transition from summer freedom to school year discipline.  Her twelve-year-old son isn’t responding consistently to either incentives or punishment. Katherine, we’ve gone through that stage with several sons and it ain’t pretty! Our entry in the Carnival may give you some encouragement:  Arrrggghhh Hope For Teenage Boys & Schoolwork

We’ve had a great time reading all the encouraging and informative posts in this week’s Carnival. I hope you do, too!

Technorati tags: carnival of homeschooling, blog carnival.

That’s one of the things I love about Simply Draw - it comes with a CD that includes a pdf for each page your child will need to draw on – all together, so you can just print a set for each child. That makes this curriculum much more affordable than similarly priced art books that are consumable. I printed those pages on regular typing paper, but I think it would be even better to use card stock like the rest of the book, as Mr. Parsons recommends. So, you might want to pick up a pack of that with the notebooks. There are 74 pages you can print out.

As soon as we got it all set up, three of our middle boys glommed on to it and started reading it together. Simply Draw is an extremely boy-friendly art curriculum. It’s full of jokes and humor and the drawing examples are things like jets, robots, Rube Goldberg-like machines and vicious-looking fish. The boys loved it! I don’t think our girls will find it very appealing when they get to that age, though. There’s nothing much in the way of houses, queens, flowers and butterflies – the things my girls like to draw.

The Simply Draw CD also has 25 video lessons that demonstrate how to do the techniques in the book. They are very basic, but they make it easier to understand how to how actually do what is described. The CD is viewable on a computer, not a DVD player, and there’s an icon to show you where in the book you should stop to watch a video.

Then it was time to get started drawing, “Hey, this really works! Mom, come look!” The guys were excited to find out that they were able to produce drawings that looked an awful lot like the author’s. My 13yo said, “It’s cool, really cool. He teaches how to do a whole lot of things I’ve been wanting to learn for years.”

Then someone got jealous that the boys were getting so much attention, so she climbed up on the table to see if she could get in the pictures. I was glad to oblige, but she wouldn’t be still for more than a nanosecond.

The results of the first lesson were pretty neat. I had to go look in the book to see which one was the student’s work. One of my boys shaded the arm at the top.

I think you’d probably need to be eight or older to succeed with this art program. Bob Parsons teaches some pretty complex techniques, though in a very non-intimidating, fun way. Anyone up to an adult could benefit  – there were things I could sure use some help on – but I think the age most likely to jump at it is going to be 8-14 or so. The only possibly objectionable things I noticed were a drawing of Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette and a little name calling among cartoon characters. That was only a couple of pages, and the rest of it more than made up for it with its terrific boy oriented humor.

All the boys who tried it want to continue with Simply Drawing on their own whether or not I include it as part of school – now that’s an appealing curriculum!

Simply Drawing with Bob Parsons, 2010, 192 pages with video CD, available from Timberdoodle for $37.50. Highly recommended for boys.

We received a free copy of this curriculum in return for our honest review. If we don’t like something we’ll say so.

1. It is more important that your boys grow up masculine than that they grow up musical. You don’t necessarily have to choose, but if you have to choose, you should know which way to go, and should go that way without hesitation.

I doubt anyone loves music in worship better than Doug Wilson, but his point is well taken.  If we’re raising our boys to be men, we expect them to be men in whatever they do – hunting elk, changing diapers, and if so inclined, singing madrigals.

He’s also right to suggest that the problem, for those of us concerned, may not be interesting our sons in music, per se, but in particular kinds of music.  He touches on the role of discipline, the importance of role models, and our own humility and wisdom in getting inside our boys’ heads on the question.  Read the whole thing! (And scroll down through the comments as well … some of them are pretty insightful.)

Learn to Study the Bible grew out of the author’s effort to teach the youth in his church inductive Bible study methods with, at first, little success. His search for an easy to teach and understand system led him to realize that there were many approaches that had a place in the Christian life, and perhaps he needed to make those ideas accessible to a wider audience of Christians than those willing to research and search through the many books he did.

The opening chapters of the book explain why we need to go beyond light reading of the Scripture and consistently spend time in real study to truly get all the Lord has provided for us in His Word. They also lay out the foundational principles of Bible study: that we should observe, interpret and apply the Word to our lives. This was an extremely valuable part of the book and I can’t wait to have my sons and read it and discuss it with them. I did find the author’s repeated use of lists and underlining a real distraction. This style, while well suited to the latter part of the book where the methods are taught, encourages the reader to skim, when the explanations under each heading contain points too good to miss. I’d love to see these chapters rewritten in a prose style – they would be fantastic!

The second part of the book describes forty different methods we can use to find the rich treasures buried in the Word of God. I must confess this part was much more interesting than I expected. I wanted to pull out my Bible right then and get going. The author includes basic methods, such as using the words in 2 Timothy 3:16 (doctrine, reproof, correction, etc) to analyze a passage, traditional methods such as word study, creative methods, such as a translation comparison, methods appropriate to specific parts of Scripture and innovative methods that might appeal to a younger crowd. Really, there is no excuse for not approaching your Bible study with anticipation after you’ve read Learn to Study the Bible.

The section on study methods treats each suggestion separately, describing in detail how each is done, but it doesn’t stop there. Each method has a handwritten example of the notes someone might produce if they used that approach to study an appropriate Scripture. Seeing the system “in use” on an actual Bible passage greatly aids comprehension, as well as clearly showing the usefulness of it since you can immediately see the conclusions and applications the author found while using that method.

This is a great resource not only for teaching our children step by step how they can approach the Word of God as “a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth,” but also encouraging ourselves to get back into the Scriptures and take a look at them with a fresh eye. That’s worth a lot!

I would love to see the author add a chapter, or perhaps do a follow-up volume, that teaches folks how to use Bible helps, such as Nave’s, Strong’s, a Bible atlas, etc, in just the same way that he teaches these Bible study methods. How about it, Andy?

Get a copy (and you should!) of Learn to Study the Bible at the book’s very cool website: www.LearntoStudytheBible.com.

The author provided us with a free copy of the book for our honest review. AND… he’s provided us with another copy for…

A Contest!

I have one free copy of Learn to Study the Bible to be chosen from those who comment on this post by noon Friday. I would love to hear what you have done to teach your children to love the Word of God. You can get additional entries by posting about this contest on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or a forum or email loop. Just leave us a comment telling where you posted it!

That’s spiritual advice, but it’s wisdom to consider in everyday things, too.  Here’s a story from Britain that says the old way of teaching kids to read actually works better for boys:

Boys can learn to beat girls at reading if they are given old-fashioned teaching methods, claim psychologists.

The use of more traditional phonetics-based lessons helps boys catch up with girls – even doing better on some tests – and prevents some children from needing ‘special’ schooling, according to new research findings.

A study of synthetic phonics also found children from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those from better off homes.

The research, presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference in York, has underpinned changes being made in the nation’s classrooms.

They have been introduced after damning revelations that four in 10 children have failed to master the three Rs by the time they leave primary school.

There has also been concern about the growing gender divide in achievement, starting in primary schools.

The rest of the story from the London Evening Standard is here.

The story compares groups of classmates with each other, but I’ll bet they also found that all children, boy or girl, do better at reading when they learn phonics.  I learned to speak a little Mandarin but I’m totally illiterate — the only recourse is to memorize symbols one at a time.  That’s not very different than the “look-say” methods used in a lot of schools over the years–don’t sound it out, just remember the shape of the words.  I’ve known college graduates who were taught that way and still struggle to read unfamiliar words.  Why did we ever think kids would benefit from learning English as if it were Chinese?