Help! I’m a Self-Learner, and I Can’t Figure This Out!

With the advent of the Internet and search engines like Google, many of us have become self-learners simply because information is literally at the tips of our fingers.

It’s AWESOME, isn’t it?

Yes! It’s so awesome that my daughter Lilienne, who will be 11 on Saturday, deduced recently that school really wasn’t necessary once you learned to read because you can now look up everything you want to know on Google as you need to know it.

I concur with her….to a degree. Nowadays we have no excuse not to know the answer to a question (that actually has an answer) aside from lack of time to research or laziness or lack of motivation or something lame along those lines.

I’m not a Webhead, but I enjoy playing around with my websites and junk online. I can usually figure stuff out on my own with a little persistence, sometimes accompanied by tears and frustration. Recently I ran into a situation where I needed to figure out how to put an RSS feed both here and on my Author Page on Amazon.com.

Step one: I googled something about RSS feeds. Well, after going here and there ~ info specifically for wordpress blogs, etc. ~ I wasn’t getting it. (Perhaps a mental block because I was born about the time color television hit the American scene.) Google really wasn’t helpful. Not because I was lazy, but because I was kinda overwhelmed with the lingo.

What is a self-learner to do when stumped?

Step two: Ask someone else who might know the answer to the question at hand.

I asked my fabulous son-in-law, Brandon, but he couldn’t help me right that minute. I asked my daughter Lauren, who is a whiz at setting up Websites (www.beadboxbargains.com) but she had something else going on at the time, so she couldn’t help me either.

So I did what I do best: I moved onto another project and forgot all about it.

Until this week during a conference call with my publisher who asked me if I had put my RSS feed from this very blog up on my amazon.com author page. Heh heh. Oopsie. No, I hadn’t done that yet.

After the call, I mentioned to my husband that the RSS feed thing was driving me nuts, and I was fixin’ to cuss (not that I would actually ever DO that. no way. not me.)

Yesterday Tim came over to my desk (one of them, anyway. I have desks all over the house) and he told me how to add the widget and what to put in the URL. I knew how to do the widget thing, but the URL is what had stumped me.

Isn’t widget the cutest word EVER?

Tim had done a little research for me and figured out the missing piece to the whole thing! Wasn’t that nice of him? Yes. It was. Thank you, Tim. And now I will make him salisbury steak and smashed potatoes for dinner tonight. 🙂

So now I have an RSS feed!! AND I’m still a self-learner because I learned how to do the RSS feed thing. I know you think I’m not a self-learner because I had to ask around, right? I can read your doubting mind.

Self-learning simply requires knowing where to go to find out what it is that you don’t know.

I had to ask someone else ~ multiple people, in fact ~ before I found someone who was able to help me learn what I needed to learn. I now know how to set up an RSS feed.

Self-learners tend to think they shouldn’t ask for help; they should be able to figure things out on their own. That is not always true. Asking for assistance is a really good way to learn at times, although seeking out the answer yourself first is kind of the rule of thumb in our home school.

But if you’re stumped, don’t be too proud to ask for help.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her best-selling book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

How to DE-Motivate

Scenario 1:

Let’s say my eleventh-grade son wants to be on a debate team. If he has an interest in debate, then by all means, I will look into the possibility of getting him involved.

So he and I do some research and find a local team, and I step back and allow my son to set his goals from there. I won’t harass him with how I think he should do things. I may give some guidance if asked, but for the most part, I’m letting experience be the best teacher.

A self-teaching student who has a yes-I-can attitude will head into the activity wanting to be the best. Why do something if you aren’t going to do your best? That is the attitude I find that my children naturally have.

I have not taught them to be competitive—I don’t have to push them; they just feel that anything worth doing is worth doing full-out. There is no halfway. They are intrinsically motivated to do their best, and when they are pitted against other debaters who feel the same way, the results are going to be quite interesting.

Scenario 2:

However, if I as the parent decide that I want my son to participate in a debate team apart from his own choosing, he is not going to be enthused, and I don’t blame him.

As parents, we need to give our young adults support when they choose an area of interest. I may tell my son 24/7 that he could be a wonderful debater if he would just try, but if he lacks the interest, I am wasting my time.

Sure, I can insist that he do it, but what will that yield? Frustration and discouragement—on both our parts. I am just creating a battle scene.

Here is a third scenario:

My son comes to me and expresses an interest in being a part of a debate team. I ask him, “Is that something you really think you can do? I mean, you’ve never been good in front of people, and logic isn’t your strong suit. Don’t you think you should try something else?”

Wow, I have just totally motivated my son to never ask me to help him in the future!

Parenting self-propelled children means encouraging them to spread their wings and fly, to branch out and try new things.

In this last scenario, I caused my son to go from yes-I-can to maybe-I-can’t.

I shot a hole in his self-esteem.

Maybe logic isn’t his strength at the moment, but if he has the desire to hone that skill, then I surely can help him find opportunities in which to develop it. It is a joy to help children find opportunities to engage and develop their skills.

However, it is never acceptable for me to decide what I want my young adults to excel at and then push them, micromanaging their lives so that my dream for them comes true.

May it never be!

Our job as parents is to equip our children to become the people they are created to be.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

Motivation: Seeing the Big Marshmallow

This is, like, my fourth post on Motivation for students, primarily, but helpful for other species of humans as well. If you missed yesterday’s post on Motivation and Marshmallows, you may want to scroll down my blog here and catch that one first. This post concerning the Marshmallow Study will make a heckuva lot more sense if you take just a couple seconds and read it first. If you’re a rebel, feel free to skip the advice.

If you are interested in the application of the Marshmallow Study, as it’s been dubbed, to success in business and in your personal life, I recommend a book entitled, Don’t Eat the Marshmallow…Yet! The Secret to Sweet Success in Work and Life by Joachim de Posada and Ellen Singer. This gem of a book looks at why intelligence and hard work don’t necessarily equal success, and how you can utilize delayed gratification in your daily life to reach your own goals.

Common sense dictates that if you are smart and work hard, you will be successful. Not necessarily, according to Don’t Eat the Marshmallow…Yet.

After reading de Posada’s book, it became apparent to me that the real secret to success is seeing the big picture, which is an incredibly motivating thing to do. When we only see the little individual marshmallow instead of the benefits of waiting to eat it—doubling our reward—we miss out on half of the benefits. We lose opportunity as a result of our impatience and shortsightedness. It takes foresight and vision to hold out for the rewards that are ours when we keep our eyes on the big picture and finally reach our ultimate goals.

Incidentally, Don’t Eat the Marshmallow…Yet! offers a “Five-Step Marshmallow Plan.” Following this simple plan really helped me focus and see what I needed to change and do in order to begin reaching my goals via delayed gratification.

Seeing the Big Picture

What motivates a student who thinks that he is at the mercy of his teachers and that he must do whatever those teachers tell him to do?

Very little motivates him when he has no control over his environment.

A home-educated student is also unlikely to be motivated day after day when he doesn’t see the big picture, when he doesn’t see a purpose in the work he is doing. A big part of motivation is understanding the why behind what we are doing. I will be much more intrinsically motivated when I see how what I am doing right now will benefit me in the long run. How will what I do today or what I am asked to do by my employer or by my teacher be moving me towards my goals?

If we have no goals at all except to get through the day, chances are good that we will be unhappy. The human spirit thrives on challenge and success. Motivation, both extrinsic and intrinsic, is necessary for a well-balanced life.

I admit that I have worked simply for a paycheck before. Perhaps you have too. Because I could see the big picture—putting food on the table—I was willing to work for that extrinsic reward. Eventually, my situation changed. Remember me saying that motivation changes? It sure does. Now I am self-employed, and I’m very intrinsically motivated to work for the sake of helping others and not for monetary reward. In fact, I hate taking people’s money. If I could, I would give all of my products away.

The self-propelled student is motivated intrinsically by seeing the big picture, setting simple goals, and then moving closer and closer to those goals. By teaching our children to see the big picture, teaching them how to set goals, and helping to remove any obstacles that would prevent them from reaching those goals, we are giving them an edge. We are giving them the tools with which to master themselves, and as a result, they will hang in there not for immediate gratification, but for the purpose of reaching their goals. That is delayed gratification at its best.

Marshmallows and the SAT

Interestingly, another follow-up to the original Marshmallow Study was done in 1990, and it found a correlation between the ability to delay gratification and higher SAT scores. Those who did not eat the marshmallow scored higher on the SAT than those who gobbled up their marshmallows. Isn’t that fascinating? I think so.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

The Self-Propelled Advantage Is for All Parents!

For Home Educators and Non-Home Educators Alike

Students who are self-motivated and purpose-driven are like the cream in a bucket of farm-fresh milk: they rise to the top. They can go wherever they choose to go in life. Self-motivated children thrive in the public, private, and home-education realms.

Most often they are raised by loving, involved parents, although some children must fight against the grain to achieve their success because they lack parental support.

Loving, involved parents educate their children in public schools, in private schools, and in the home.

Each model of education contains parents who care deeply about their children and their children’s educational processes; theirs are the children who will thrive anywhere.

Making sure your child is in the best learning environment possible is one of your primary jobs as a parent. While I will be discuss the merits of education at home most often, I do not believe that home education is the answer for every family. I do believe that in most cases, where there is the will to home educate, there is a way to home educate. But there simply is no one-size-fits-all way to educate children.

While not all parents want to home educate, parents (worth their salt) do want the very best for their children. If you don’t think you want to go the home-education route, please hang in there with me. Parents can raise self-propelled children regardless of where the learning happens—be it in a classroom or in the home.

In my book, The Self-Propelled Advantage, I present concrete ways for parents of private- and public-schooled children to work toward developing self-propelled learners.

I leave you to make your own decision about what is best for your child.

At the end of most chapters of the book, I’ve written a Parent’s Corner containing things children can do in order to gain the self-propelled advantage while in a classroom environment. If your child is in such an environment, you can enhance and build on the education he is currently receiving by modifying your mindset, enabling your child to modify his, and plugging in the handful of strategies I give you.

The model of education that you choose for your child will hopefully be selected after much thought, soul-searching, and careful research. It is my hope that you will find valuable information to help you in making the all-important decision of which educational model to choose according to what best meets the needs of your family.

May you have courage to make a change in your child’s current educational environment should you deem it necessary.

I am excited to share with parents the three-pronged secret that can propel a student down the road of self-discovery and ultimately into a world that will be blessed by his gifts and abilities. I hope you’ll happily discover that you can raise lifelong learners who love to learn independently and who do so with passion and excellence as you begin to follow the simple steps to implement the strategies that I lay out in my book.

May your child become joyfully self-propelled: motivated, confident, and successful in whatever he or she pursues in life.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

The Greatest Choice a Parent Will Make

The fact that we as parents have the ability to influence our children in every facet of their lives is something I’m sure you don’t take lightly.

As a parent, you have the ultimate control over your child. You make decisions every day based upon your philosophy of how children should be raised. Your philosophy is reflected in the choices you make for your kids in areas such as diet and exercise, for example, and in the not-so-basic choices such as how children should be put to bed at night.

One of the more complex choices you’ll make for your child is education: you are the one who has the authority to decide how your child will be educated.

The educational model that you choose for your child will affect the course of his or her entire life.

It is a fact that a child’s formal education does not need to be separated from his home life. This runs contrary to the classroom model of education, where the child leaves the home for the majority of his childhood years and consequently is outside of his parents’ sphere of influence for years and years.

Excellence in education does not require a child to leave home. A parent does not need to give up control over a child’s environment in order to educate him.

Incidentally, a parent doesn’t need superpowers in order to home educate. I am a home-educating mom, but I don’t have to know calculus. The self-propelled model of education doesn’t require a parent to be a member of Mensa.

If you have ever felt intimidated by the thought of home educating your child or children, may I assure you that you are already equipped by the fact that you know and love your child more than anyone else on the planet does? Teaching your child to read and write and perform the basic operations of mathematics is a privilege.

You don’t have to; home education means you get to.

In our society today, public and private schools are the primary vehicles used to deliver education to the populace. Both use the classroom model to teach groups of children together at one time. In my book, The Self-Propelled Advantage, I examine both the classroom model and the home-education model, and I provide parents of children in both the classroom and at home with strategies for raising their kids to be self-propelled.

But I have a bias toward home education for a couple of reasons, one of the basic ones being that it is the method that currently provides the best environment for becoming self-propelled. Home education incubates the self-propelled student, whereas classroom education holds him back in comparison.

I look forward to sharing more on this topic as we go along.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

So How Does a Child Become Self-Propelled?

Great question!  How DOES a child become self-propelled?

The answer is gradually and steadily.

Think about how you teach a child to ride a bike. Initially, you may take your baby or toddler for rides via a child-size seat on the back of your bike. But once the child is capable of learning to ride a bike independently, you offer him his own little bike as well as support in the form of training wheels. The child rides around the garage, around the driveway, and maybe even around the block with training wheels on his bicycle. Those training wheels are what support him, what keep him upright at that stage.

You also begin to teach him the rules of the road, right? You are going to make sure that the child understands the basics of bike riding. Learning safety rules is essential. We don’t expect the child to learn those on his own; we make sure he is well versed in safety and cycling rules before he is allowed to proceed to the next step. Before long, the child is ready for the training wheels to come off probably long before you are ready for the training wheels to come off!

Once the training wheels are off, the child needs to develop his own sense of balance. He has had a small taste of balance with the training wheels on, but the ultimate test comes once they come off. When the parents and child feel he is ready, off they come. How exciting! However, before the child learns to totally balance on two wheels, Mom or Dad needs to hold onto the bike seat and walk (or run) beside the child as he learns to balance on his own.

Before long, though, he is ready for you to let go.

You do.

He wobbles a little, but off he goes on his own. There may be a fall in the near future, but hopefully not many. You trust that he will obey the rules of the road, and you watch to be sure that he does so when he is within sight. Once he is out of sight, you have to trust him.

You begin to allow him to ride further and further from home, as you are confident that he is able to ride safely. You will make sure he is out of high-traffic areas as he begins to ride independently. He will not have the endurance yet to ride for long periods of time or to ride up long hills that require focus and greater athletic ability than he possesses initially. All that will come later with time and experience.

When you let go of that bicycle seat, your child becomes truly self-propelled!

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

The Results Project

I’ve gotten quite a few questions lately about helping children with ADHD. I’ve read some really amazing things about ADHD studiies, but I do not consider myself an expert by any means.

I do, however, have a go-to-guy to whom I direct people with ADHD questions. His name is Steve Plog. He has ADHD himself.

Years back when I was writing my first book, I came across Steve’s stuff online, and it was such insightful, real help that I asked him for permission to repeat a portion of a study he did. He quite happily granted permission to use his material in the book. That book is out of print now.

If you or someone you know struggles with ADHD, I want to recommend an excellent resource for solutions and helps along the way.

Take a peek at The Results Project:  http://www.resultsproject.net/.

Steve is not against medication, just a warning. He is all about being SURE that you or your child needs the medication you are on.

The thing I like most about Steve is that he calls children with ADHD  “Quick Start Kids.” If you read his website, you’ll see why. ADHD kids are GIFTED!

Feel free to pass Steve’s Website on to those who can benefit from his insight and experience.

Know what? I’ve always suspected that I am ADHD. Turns out after studying Steve’s materials, I realize that I’m right. I am. And here I just thought I was weird! Oh, to have had such insight when I was a kid. If you suspect that you are ADHD, check out The Results Project and see if you’ve been right all along.

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

 

 

Ten Thou$and per Child, per Year?

How much does it cost to educate a child in America, per year?

This is the question that was going through my mind while watching the last debate of the 2012 presidential race. Throwing more money at education ain’t gonna do a da*n thing to improve it. Pardon my fren*h.

The most recent study I found compares costs from 1961 up through 2008.

Current expenditures per pupil in fall enrollment in public elementary and secondary schools: Selected years, 1961-62 through 2007-08
School Year	Current expenditures in unadjusted dollars	Current expenditures in constant 2008-09 dollars1
1961-62	$393	$2,808
1970-71	842	4,552
1980-81	2,307	5,718
1986-87	3,682	7,105
1990-91	4,902	7,857
1995-96	5,689	7,904
1996-97	5,923	8,002
1997-98	6,189	8,214
1998-99	6,508	8,490
1999-2000	6,912	8,765
2000-01	7,380	9,048
2001-02	7,727	9,309
2002-03	8,044	9,482
2003-04	8,310	9,586
2004-05	8,711	9,754
2005-06	9,145	9,865
2006-072	9,679	10,178
2007-08	10,297	10,441

So then I did some figgurin’.

My son, Nicholas, was born in 1989. If we had sent him to kindergarten, he would have started in 1993. Do you know–roughly–what the government would have spent to educate my child for me over the course of 13 years?

$112,270.00.

Know how much my husband and I spent educating him ourselves over the course of those 13 years?

$2,500.00, maybe.

What is wrong with this picture? It shouldn’t cost the government $112 THOUSAND dollars to educate a child through 13 levels of school. Keep in mind this was years ago as well. A child entering kindergarten today can expect the government to pay closer to $140,000.00 for his education by the time he graduates, and IF he graduates at all.

This is insanity.

What adds to the insanity is the fact that many students fail to make it to high school graduation, and a high percentage of those who do make it to graduation still read at a low level and cannot problem solve at a ninth grade level!

The problem of education is so freakishly complex, that it is going to take a miracle to solve the issues plaguing the System. I agree.

In the meantime, I’m not waiting for the government to solve its education crisis. I’m very happy that my kids can read and problem solve at a very high level. Without ever entering a classroom. Without a penny of government assistance.

And their Mama ain’t even that smart! Logic? Are you kidding me? I’ve got precious few logic skills!

But I set expectations for behavior and enforced them. Moms do that sort of thing; it’s not unusual. If I can raise kids who can read and problem solve pretty darn well, anyone can.

Nicholas grew up to be a perfect SAT scorer. For less than $2500 COMBINED expenses throughout his 13 years of schooling. Accidental? Not at all.

I know what it takes to raise smart kids. Most teachers know, too. But they are hamstrung in the classroom situation. They CAN’T MAKE kids learn. They desperately  need the help of parents. Many parents, however, can’t even control their own kids. How can teachers control kids whose parents can’t control them? This is insanity!

What is the general attitude of students today towards their own education and attending school? Positive or negative? As goes the attitude, so goes the student.

But Wait.

If we plugged in mastery learning when kids are mentally mature enough to handle presented concepts, they would ALL have an equal chance at success. One size does NOT fit all in the realm of education, but America is all about educational OSFA.

Give early elementary school teachers liberty to present concepts to children as they feel each child is ready, not when the textbook says all children should be ready. Restructure this system and enable students to start young building success upon success upon success. Mastery learning completely eliminates failure in young children because the teacher doesn’t move the student on until the current lesson is truly absorbed and understood. This takes time and teacher discretion, something that is not currently built into our system of schooling.

Give me a child and $2500. I’ll give you a student who reads well and can problem solve at a high level within 13 years or less. I can do it if the parents are supportive. If the parents work with their children at home. If the parents set high expectations for success for their students. If the parents encourage reading at home. It doesn’t cost a lot of money to educate a child outside of the politics of the school system.

I will always salute the classroom teacher. But he or she is crippled without the assistance of motivated, involved parents. But parents have to be teachers as well. They have to model the kinds of behaviors they want to see in their children.

Parents who are involved in their children’s education ensure that the government reaps a marvelous ROI. Thank you to those parents. America needs you now more than ever!

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

The Dimension of Deliberate Do-Nothingness

I came across an article today that I wanted to hang onto for future reference. I don’t know about you, but I’m really bad about filing stuff on my computer. Come to think of it, I am really bad about filing stuff in real life too. I see a pattern here. Perhaps I should learn the basics of good filing habits. But that is off our subject more than slightly.

THEN I had the bright idea of blogging about the article so that I will not lose it!  So here we are.

I love learning about how people learn. I love studying about the brain and how it affects behavior and shapes its owner. What makes one person able to reach into his creative self and pull out innovation after innovation?

I am a BIG fan of giving kids time to ruminate, ponder, and dream.

Entrepreneurs are passionate individuals, and their passions vary widely according to how they were wired in the womb as well as what opportunities have been available to them along their pathway. Nature and nurture and all that junk.

Sadly, there is one thing missing in a lot of kids’ lives these days which is conducive to creativity: what I call deliberate do-nothingness.

Screen time is prevalent among the youth of our culture. Like you hadn’t noticed, right? Parents need to set parameters on the amount of time their kiddos spend behind screens if it is at the expense of free-thinking time, deliberate do-nothingness time. Kids who lack opportunities to read books (or to choose to read books because there is absolutely NOTHING ELSE TO DO) and who lack opportunity to putter around in their rooms or in their backyards, just lolling about thinking are missing out on a childhood of deep thought opportunities.

America NEEDS entrepreneurs, but where will they come from if kids today don’t take time to explore their very own THOUGHTS?

I want my home-educated kids to have a plethora of time on their hands. Sure, there are seasons to our lives, and some seasons are busier than others, but there needs to be a distinct dimension of deliberate do-nothingness which permeates their young lives. Why? Because thinkers create. 

Back to what I wanted to keep to read later:

Below is a list of The 4 Phases of Ideation. (I learned a new word today ~ ideation. Cool!) If you are a thinker and a creator, you’ll most likely see how these phases cycle in your own life.

Thank you, Katie Christensen, for your creativity in putting this list together. 😉

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“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”  – Steve Jobs

Phase 1: Knowledge Accumulation

This initial stage of ideation is all about absorbing as much information as possible. This stage is all about hunger for knowledge which you can attempt to satisfy through reading articles, joining discussion groups, or attending events that educate us on our domain of interest. As you process these new concepts, you end up with many more questions than you started out with. This is your brain telling you what pieces of the puzzle are missing, to encourage you to continue feeding yourself more information.

As Steven Johnson explains in his study of scientific pioneers, “Ideas are built out of self-exciting networks of neurons, clusters of clusters…When we think of a certain concept, or experience some new form of stimulus, a complex network of neuronal groups switches on in synchrony.” The more information you feed your mind, the quicker your brain can establish new connections to generate ideas from.

Phase 2: Incubation

With all that newly acquired information, it’s always best to step away to let it all sink in. Your subconscious knows your goals, desires, and needs more clearly than your conscious does. Once you rest from knowledge absorption, the incubation phase begins transferring that information to your subconscious which reorganizes and strengthens neuron connections.

The brain incorporates past experiences and knowledge with our conscious accumulation of information, to find unique solutions to our interests. From this, it can identify gaps and will attempt to work itself using the information it has. As the difficulty of finding a solution increases, the level of creativity required does as well. If you are still stumped, it means you don’t have enough of the puzzle put together yet to see the big picture, so the best solution is to return to the absorption phase and build on from there.

Phase 3: The Idea Experience

If you are having trouble getting from Phase 2 to 3, some proven ways to speed up the transition are to; contemplate the idea some more, switch up your work environment, participate in monotonous activities to relax your mind, address tasks that are distracting you, and write down any thoughts that pop into your head. These actions will help you relax and clarify your mind so you can extract those ideas more effortlessly when the time comes.

This next phase occurs when your mind overcomes a gap and you have your notorious ‘aha’ moment. Suddenly, your confusion is simplified and clouded thoughts seem much clearer. Once the subconscious can piece together a creative solution in a way that makes logical sense, the solution is brought into conscious awareness where you can then decide on a plan of action.

Phase 4: Implementation

The Implementation phase is where you find ways to incorporate your idea into daily life. Persistence is a key factor as each idea worth implementing will most likely run into temporary setbacks before it becomes successful. It will take several attempts at restructuring your idea before it will achieve its final form. In the meantime, begin testing your idea, ask for consumer opinion, and most importantly, don’t let your hunger go satisfied.

Don’t forget there are many different fields of innovation, such as in coordinating events, improving services, inventing products, writing programs, and throwing parties among countless more. Once you realize the creative capability of your brain make a commitment to incorporate your ideas into all areas of your life. With a taste of your own potential, it very well could be your words that appear at the top of the next article.

References: Kuratko, Donald F.; Hornsby, Jeffrey S.; Goldsby, Michael (2011-09-30). Innovation Acceleration: Transforming Organizational Thinking (Prentice Hall Entrepreneurship Series)

Katie Christensen is a senior at Loyola University Chicago studying entrepreneurship, and currently works as the Director of New Business Ventures at Loyola Limited. You can reply to her directly at ktchristensen@live.com and follow her on Twitter @ktfromchicago

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About the Author

Joanne Calderwood has been called America’s Homeschool Mom. She is an underwhelmed Mom of eight great kids, owner of URtheMOM.com, and an author and columnist. Her new book, The Self-Propelled Advantage: The Parent’s Guide to Raising Independent, Motivated Kids Who Learn with Excellence, enables parents to teach their kids to teach themselves with excellence.

~ Weeds ~

This weekend one of the topics I will be speaking on at the MTHEA Expo is 10 Things I Wish I had Known as a Young Mother. I’ve got more to add to that presentation now since this morning when I took a break from office work and took a foray outside to get some fresh (cold) air. It’s been rainy and chilly for five days in a row now, and it’s mid- to late May. Weird.

Anyway, I love to take a turn about the gah-den in the mornings and see what is blooming out there. We have an acre and a half, but since we are on a wooded hill overlooking a lake, there isn’t a lot of yard that gets enough sun for a garden. Erosion is an issue as well.  Ugh. BUT I do have two garden spots, and this morning since it was so cool and damp out, I thought it might be a good time to pull some weeds. I would have taken a “before” picture if I wasn’t so ashamed of how weedy the flower garden had gotten.

As I was wildly grabbing fistfuls of weeds and yanking them out by their roots, I began to think about my “garden” of children and how relevant the metaphor of raising children and tending a garden is. I remember writing a piece on this topic once when I was much younger and my kids were as well. But today I had much more to think about regarding this particular metaphor due to hindsight. I thought I’d share some of the things that I’ve learned over the past 21 years of child-raising that may be worth sharing.

It’s best to weed when the weeds are small. Big weeds not only are tough to get rid of, but they hurt more to remove. (See pic above) The time to pull those weeds of bad attitudes, whining, disrespect, anger, and all things crummy is when children are young. If these weeds are pulled when the soil is soft and loose, the pullin’ is much easier.

Pulling weeds takes effort on the gardener’s part! It is part of the daily care of the garden. So it is our daily task as parents to lovingly correct our children with consistency and diligence and effort.

Fertilizing plants is a good thing. In our metaphor here, fertilizer is praise. Give praise liberally and with all sincerity.

Weeds may look pretty, but they ultimately steal nutrients and space from neighboring plants. For example, the sweet pea vine looks pretty, but it strangles everything it touches. Beware of stuff that appears to be good for your garden, but in reality, it steals, kills, and destroys…all while looking pretty.

Some kinds of weeds I need my husband to pull for me…such as poison ivy. He has no allergic reaction, so I let him tackle all the poison ivy since he is better suited to dealing with it. Same thing w/children’s behavior. Some behavior (weeds) myhusband will deal with because it is beyond what I want to deal with, quite honestly. For example, after a day of weed pulling, I am tired. It is sometimes necessary for dad to back up mom after a long day of weed pulling. I have said before, “You’ll be dealing with your dad when he gets home,” on occasion when I simply am worn out and the child needs to also deal with daddy. Mom and dad form a partnership (or a landscaping crew, if you will). It takes two to weed.

For a beautiful and rewarding garden, the gardener must be attentive to weed pulling. If the gardener slacks off, the garden reflects it!

Wouldn’t you agree that a gardener shapes a garden? How much more do parents shape their children?

If you can’t make it to my seminar on the 10 Things I Wish I’d Known as a Young Mother, it is available for Kindle download on Amazon. 🙂