New Survey on Dating, Courtship and Boy/Girl Relationships!!!

THANKS SO MUCH to all of you who have responded to our home schooling survey and told us what you want to hear more about. If you still haven't taken survey of what you want to hear more about, you can GO HERE NOW and share your opinions.

But now our son Blake would like your input. This is from him::

I grew up listening to James Dobson and reading Raising a Modern Day Knight, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Boy Meets Girl, Best Friends for Life, Five Love Languages, etc. 

Lately God has been really putting on my heart the study of dating/courtship, honoring of the opposite sex, conservative boundaries, etc. 

So my question to you is this: If you had an opportunity to sit down with Dr. Gary Chapman, James Dobson, Joshua Harris, and anyone else whose opinions you respect about dating/courtship and boy/girl relationships, what five questions would you ask them?

Please take a few minutes and respond to my dating/courtship/relationships survey. It won't take very long and I would appreciate it very, very much.

And if you have a personal story about your dating/courtship or getting married as a home schooler, I'd love to hear it. You can contact me at cblakedavis@gmail.com.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY ON DATING/COURTSHIP AND BOY/GIRL RELATIONSHIPS.

The Importance of Encouragement and Mentors

by Ellyn Davis

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In the last newsletter, I shared that I recently finished reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Anything Gladwell writes is well worth reading, but this book is especially so because it's an analysis of hidden factors in people's childhoods that are critical to their success as adults.

The book asks and answers the question, "Why do some people succeed far more than others?" and makes the case that the achievements of "outliers"--those people whose achievements fall outside normal experience--are less about talent than they are about about opportunity and hard work.

The first critical success factor is what's called  "The 10,000 Hour Rule." In numerous studies of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, and even master criminals, ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being "world-class" in anything. It takes the brain this long to assimilate all it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Still other studies call it "The Ten Year Rule." It seems you have to put in at least a decade of focused effort to master anything and become a leader in your field. A study of 120 elite athletes, performers, artists, biochemists and mathematicians led by University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Bloom concluded that every single person in the study took at least a decade of hard study or practice to achieve international recognition. Olympic swimmers trained for an average of 15 years before making the team; the best concert pianists took 15 years to earn international recognition. Top researchers, sculptors and mathematicians put in similar amounts of time.

In a large collection of expert reviews, the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, the conclusion is that what we commonly call "talent" or "genius" arises not from innate gifts but from the combination of adequate (but not necessarily extraordinary) natural ability, quality instruction and mentoring, and lots and lots of work.

Exceptional Kids Come From Exceptional Conditions

The ability for anyone to put in 10,000 hours towards mastery of something requires resources - time and space to work, parents who encourage the effort, raw materials, and mentors - and the subjects of Bloom's study, like most elite performers, almost invariably had access to these types of resources. Bloom, in fact, came to see great talent as less an individual trait than a creation of environment and encouragement.

"We were looking for exceptional kids," he said, "and what we found were exceptional conditions."

Few of the study's subjects had shown special promise when they first took up the fields they later excelled in. Instead, they were encouraged as children in a general way to explore and learn, then supported in more focused ways as they began to develop an area they particularly liked. Another retrospective study, of leading scientists, similarly found that most came from homes where learning was revered for its own sake.

This process is best explained in the work of sociologist Annette Lareau. Laureau studied a group of third graders. She picked both blacks and whites and children from both wealthy and poor homes. What she discovered were that there were only two basic parenting "philosophies." Parents who noticed their children's interests, encouraged them, and  became heavily involved in their children's free time and parents who didn't.

The parents of the most successful children talked things through with their children, coached them on how to interact with adults and get their questions answered, exposed them to a wide variety of different experiences, and showed them the "rules of the game" of life. If their children were doing poorly at school, for example, these parents met with the teachers and intervened on behalf of their kids, arranging private tutoring if necessary.
Lareau called that parenting style "concerted cultivation."

In contrast, the other style of parenting was what Lareau called "accomplishment of natural growth." These children were mainly left to their own devices and didn't know how to navigate whatever environment they were in for their best purposes. They were characterized by "an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint."

This study of two different types of parenting reminded me of another important book I read--Endangered Minds. Author Jane Healy explains why children (and adults) today have difficulty navigating life. It's because they don't know how to think. And why don't they know how to think? Because when they were growing up they seldom interacted with adults in ways that encouraged thinking things through, making associations, and learning basic skills for navigating life.

It's Crucial to Have Mentors

The second critical factor to success is having a mentor. Most studies of successful people, including Bloom's, found that almost all high achievers were blessed with at least one mentor at a crucial period of their development.

In her study of giftedness, Dr. lena Subotnik found that students generally realized their potential more fully if they had one-on-one relationships with mentors who prepared them for the challenges they would face after their studies ended. You can read a summary of her research here.

Dr. Subotnik says:

Parental involvement needs to take the form of providing space to work, getting materials, mentors, courses,  etc. It’s very important to expose talented students to teachers who excel in the child’s area of expertise. This too should be done in stages — as children progress, they need different types of excellent teachers because they need different types of instruction at each stage in their development. According to Benjamin Bloom the first teacher nurtures the young person’s love of the field. A second teacher guides in the development of expert skills and knowledge. A third helps with professional contacts and insider knowledge.

Parents should model persistence, resilience, and good social skills for their children. Talented children need to learn how to deal with failure and be graceful in success. They must understand that setbacks are part of the growth process and that they shouldn’t fall apart when it happens. Bumps in the road are part of the game of life.

So, it seems to me that home schooled children have a natural advantage. They have the time and resources to spend 10,000 hours pursuing their interests, they have concerned, encouraging parents who are heavily involved in their lives, and they generally have access to mentors. In short, they are destined for success.

Until next time.... 

Ellyn

Resources

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This book deserves a spot on everyone's bookshelf and should be required reading for high school students, along with Gladwell's other two books The Tipping Point and Blink. It is a discussion of the critical but usually unacknowledged factors that contribute to success in any endeavor.

Endangered Minds by Jane Healy explains why children (and adults) today have shorter attention spans, are less able to concentrate, and are less able to absorb and analyze information than any previous generation. In short, people today do not know how to think. And why don't they know how to think? Because when they were growing up they seldom were in the company of thinking adults.

I Saw the Angel in the Marble

With over 4,000 copies sold in just a few months, I Saw the Angel in the Marble is becoming a home schooling best seller!

This book represents the best of 15 years of Elijah Company articles. Find our more HERE>>

Turning Hearts: Davis Seminar Set (8 CDs)

The Best of Chris and Ellyn Davis, this set contains seminars given by Chris and Ellyn Davis of The Elijah Company at home schooling conventions. The set contains all of the favorites that home schoolers ask for over and over. People have told us this set of CDs changed their lives. Find out more about them HERE>>


Angel in the Marble/Davis Seminars Set
Order a combination of I Saw the Angel in the Marble and the Davis Seminars CDs HERE>>

Making a Living Online within 279 Days

Several months ago I stumbled across an interesting little guide called 279 Days to Overnight Success. This book chronicles one writer's journey to becoming a full-time, self-supporting writer in 279 days through a blog and several products he created.

The report was incredibly encouraging to me because I’ve wanted for some time to revamp my website and turn it into something that was a real expression of what I believe about home schooling but that also helped others.

 So I resolved to start working on my OWN 279 day path to success. My goal: achieve full-time, self-supporting writer status in 279 days or less. Call it my personal 279 Day Challenge.

You can follow me in my journey to making a living on the internet HERE.

Creating Your Life on-line course at 1/3 off. This is an online, video-based self-study course in which Robert Fritz is your teacher and you learn to create your own life just as an artist paints a painting, a composer composes a symphony, or a poet writes a poem. In this course, Robert further develops the special insights that he introduced in his best selling book The Path of Least Resistance. The course has five lessons that will take you from 5 to 10 weeks to complete and includes a copy of Robert’s book Your Life as Art as well as the course materials and use of tools on the website. This course online is normally $299 and if you took it in person in Vermont it would be at least twice that. But with this special invitation code you can enroll for $199. I highly recommend that you take this course as a family—husband, wife, and high school age children. To enroll in this course, go to www.wisepond.com and enter this invitation code: AFF1455.

Organic Play Dough at great savings!

Our friend Susan is a home schooling Mom and she is very concerned about her children's health. Her son, Liam is allergic to almost every chemical known to man, so Susan has to be very, very careful what she allows him to play with. When he gets together with other children and they play with Play Doh, Liam can't play. The dyes and chemicals in the dough can not only make him very sick, they might kill him.

To read the story of how Susan solved Liam's problem and how you can benefit from what she did, GO HERE>>

Home School and Home Business


Let Your Mortgage Make You Rich. A friend in my internet marketing group discovered this technique for paying down your mortgage incredibly quickly without making an extra payment or refinancing. Using her method, people are cutting a 30 year mortgage down to eight or nine years. It’s true; without extra payments or refinancing – you could save tens of thousands of dollars - even hundreds of thousands - on what you pay for your home. And the best part is that the book comes with a money-back guarantee. If you don't save more on your mortgage than the book costs in the first 18 months of using the techniques, you'll get your money back.
Find out more about this money-saving book NOW!

SALE PRODUCTS!
Limited Quantities 30% Off!

We have the following WRITING IN NARRATIVE books available: The Reluctant Writer, Writing Man 1 & 2, and WIN Twin. GO HERE.

Home Schooling and Home Business Resources


Building the Home School of Your Dreams is a 6 CD set taken from the From Home School To Home Business Seminar and features sessions by Chris Davis and Mary Hood. Find out more HERE>>

From Home School to Home Business
(14 CD Set)

If you missed one of our From Home School to Home Business Conferences, you missed a great time.People who attended told us that it changed their lives—not only in the area of home schooling, but also in the area of creating their own sources of home income.This set is huge and filled with useful and encouraging information about how to be successful at home schooling and at home business! Find out more about this life-changing set of CDs HERE>>

Building the Business of Your Dreams (8 CD Set) We've had requests for just the business portion of the From Home School to Home Business Seminar, so have developed a set of the business CDs from that set. It contains 8 CDs and includes sessions on The Entrepreneurial Mind, Multiple Streams of Home Income, Discovering Your Ideal Life and Ideal Business (2 CDs) , Developing a Business Plan (2 CDs), and The Importance of Business Relationships. Plus, there is a very important and insightful interview on Redeeming the Marketplace. Find out about this life-changing set of CDs HERE>>

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View past ejournals HERE>>

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