Isn’t my little guy handsome? I asked him to look tough for that picture.

One of the most important things I can do for my children will be to teach them the value of hard work. I admit, though, it’s not my strongest area of parenting. It’s much easier to clean up a mess myself than to ask my child to do it, show them how to do it, and then watch and wait while they get it done. But I guess parenting isn’t easy, is it?

When ARM & HAMMER®* Baking Soda asked me how I used their Baking Soda around the house, besides just baking or sticking a box of it in the fridge, I thought immediately of how I love to sprinkle it on my carpets right before I vacuum. It helps lift up the dirt, and freshens even the most dingy carpets.

But I don’t have carpets where I live right now, so I couldn’t demonstrate that for you.

I have been wanting to do a post on encouraging kids to do chores around the house, though, and since ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda has such a multitude of cleaning uses, I thought I could teach my kids how to use it to do their chores.

The beauty of using ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda as a cleaning agent is that it is 100% safe for children to use. It won’t scratch or corrode, and, most importantly, is non-toxic. That’s something I can really feel good about.

My oldest son used it to scrub the kitchen table which had little bits of food stuck on it since breakfast.

My daughter used it for the bathroom—in the tub and in the sink. She discovered it was great for scrubbing all the grime in the sink and making it shine.

I would have had my youngest scrub the baseboards with it, but he said he was tired and just wanted to hold the box for the picture.

Never said I could teach them to love cleaning overnight. But this was a start.

What about you, what do you find are the tougher things to teach your kids?

And what do you use ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda for? What are your secrets? If you have one you’d like to share, be sure to share it in the ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda/Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Sweepstakes, which you can find out all about here.

*As a Martha’s Circle Blogger, I have been compensated for this post, but all views and opinions are my own.

The last few weeks, I have been having an age crisis.

My niece just turned eighteen, the very same one I taught in Nursery at church. The very same one who, when she was a year old, I remember pushing her in a shopping cart, when she rubbed her sweet little hand over mine. Her skin was so impossibly soft, that the moment left an indelible impression on me.

Next, my son will be turning twelve on Friday. How in the world did that happen? Add greater significance to that, my youngest child just turned six, which means he only has twelve years until he’s eighteen. And though I know one never stops being a parent, this month marks the technical mid-point of raising my children.

Then of course, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. And I was feeling very thirty-six, and very single.

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Every summer when I was a kid, the neighborhood girls—which consisted of Caitlin, Amy, and myself—were always scheming up some sort of business. One year there was a magic show, which starred my brother Josh, his buddy Seamus, and me and the girls wearing leotards cast off from Amy’s former dance recitals. What nice neighbors and parents we all had—that they would actually come and sit on the yard to the side of my house and watch our last minute production. Oh, and pay us for it, too.

Though I can’t remember any particular lemonade stands, I’m sure we had many. And I just want to thank everyone who bought something from us.

I think anyone who buys crappy lemonade from a sticky nine-year-old will get a wing added to their mansion in heaven. If anyone thinks this country has lost its humanity, then I say, look around at all the lemonade stands. How many people, solely for the purpose of doing a good deed, plunk down their money, stare into little eager faces, shove any germaphobic tendencies aside, and gulp down a paper cup full of lukewarm Kool-Aid?

That, my friends, is altruism.

My kids have wanted to have their own lemonade stand since . . . oh, since they were born. But I was always a chicken about it. We either didn’t know our neighbors well, or the street was too busy, or who knows what else? There were always excuses. Apparently, the phrase “err on the side of caution” is tattooed on my prefrontal cortex. I just can’t over the idea that life isn’t as safe as it was for me and the neighborhood girls when we were peddling Girl Scout cookies. So I always hesitate.

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Here’s just a quick book recommendation.  Though I don’t own it yet (wish I did), I  borrow it from my mom every time I visit her.  

Susan Wise Bauer, who with her mom wrote The Well-Trained Mind, outlines a vast literary curriculum, and shows the reader how to interpret the material like a scholar.  The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had is basically a manual for homeschooling yourself as an adult.  If you follow most of the book’s guidelines, it can provide you with the equivalent of a master’s degree, minus the diploma.  

I plan on one day actually finishing the book, along with all the reading.  Then I will be at ease around snooty intellectuals and hold my own at stuffy art galleries and cocktail parties.  I do dream big.

As a teenager, I never excelled in any one area.  I was a mediocre violinist, a undistinguished scholar, an agonizingly pathetic athlete.  My indifferent attention span for any skill prevented my buckling down and achieving greatness.   The “jack of all trades, master of none” maxim bothered me like an inescapable self-fulfilling prophecy.  But then, on a boring Saturday, I happened to watch the Danny DeVito movie Renaissance Man. The only thing I remember from the film was when Danny DeVito explained what a renaissance man actually was, a person who excels in many areas.  After years of a public school education, rampant with the notion that we must each be pigeonholed into only one field (brain, jock, band geek, etc.), watching that movie was the first time I realized that it was possible to shine in several disciplines.

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I promised myself to only watch a few minutes of Lost last night, and then sat through the whole thing.  That show is scientifically calculated to get you shamelessly hooked.  I honestly don’t know what’s going on half the time since I missed a couple seasons in there, but now I know that whenever anything bizarre happens, no one else knows what’s going on either.   You just have to keep watching for explanations, which of course, never come.

Last night, “the others” character Juliet was talking about how they all speak Latin because it is the language of the enlightened.

Certainly plenty of people through the ages believe it is the language of the educated.  If nothing else, it couldn’t hurt to know it if you’re practicing law or medicine.  So, here and there I try teaching it to my son.  Though I never learned it, it’s pretty easy as far as foreign languages go, because you only need learn to pronounce the words, not fuss about with a proper accent.

Recently I found a copy of Olivia in Latin, and bought it as a reminder to practice.  Ian Falconer is a genius at capturing character.  My favorite part is the picture of her wearing a toga and eating grapes on the back.

I’m a huge C. S. Lewis fan.  In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, he takes great lengths to discuss his education.  He said his father bought every book he had ever read, so Lewis was at liberty to read anything lying about the house.  When Lewis’s boarding school experiences proved to be disastrous, his father sent him to live with his own former college professor William T. Kirkpatrick (the inspiration for Professor Kirk in the Chronicles of Narnia), who was his private tutor for years and taught Lewis to think logically.

Since reading it, my dream has been to get wealthy and hire a live in governess to teach my children privately.  She could go on trips to Europe with us and tutor my children in logic, literature, and languages (no alliteration intended).  A couple years ago, when I saw we weren’t getting rich, I thought I’d take a whack at homeschooling and volunteer myself as the governess.  My son was very cooperative, and enjoyed the one on one teaching, but after about six months we abandoned it for several reasons with which I won’t bore you.

Homeschooling was not a waste of time, by any means.  I had based the curriculum on Jessie Bauer and Susan Wise Bauer’s book, The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, which has become a homeschooling standard on classical education.  With it, Stuart learned much more history and literature than public schools would ever try to cover, and we even began Latin.  Since my dream of giving him the perfect education has halted until we have an extra $70,000 every year to pay the governess, he and I try as often as we can to supplement his learning with things the book suggests for people who can’t homeschool: world history, writing, literature, and logic.  That way, when I write my best-selling novel, or my husband becomes a real estate tycoon, the governess won’t have to start from scratch.