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Luv'N Lambert Life

Luv'N Lambert Life

A blog about living with Epilepsy, IBHS, Homeschooling and so much more

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challenges

Overcoming Homeschooling Challenges {Homeschooling} {Epilepsy Awareness}

April 21, 2017 by Dana

5 Days of Homeschooling with Epilepsy and Other Issues:
Overcoming Homeschooling Challenges


Let’s face it.  Homeschooling when you have children with Special Needs present challenges most families don’t have and don’t expect.  We’ve previously discussed the Down Days.  We’ve also discussed Homeschooling with Doctor’s Appointments.

Then there are days when we have meltdowns, Mom and Dad included.  There are days when we feel like we can’t do this anymore or are we sure we even want to do this???  Wouldn’t it be easier just to put your kid on a bus and let the Public School handle all of these issues and challenges we face daily?

Giving up would be the easiest route.  Letting someone else take control while we sit back and enjoy the few peaceful hours that we don’t have to handle all these things.  Only then the phone rings asking us to come in because our child has had a meltdown and punched Johnny.  Or Emmalee has a migraine and needs to come home (yes this has actually happened to us).   So in the end, we’re still having to handle all the things we started with.

Challenges happen every day in life.  Some challenges are huge and some much smaller.  Some seem huge when they aren’t at all.  But all challenges teach us some important lesson in life though we may  not realize it until much later.

Each challenge presents a different result and needs a different way to be handled so I cannot tell you exactly how to handle the challenges presented to you personally but I can tell you what I do to overcome the many challenges I face in my days.

Pray.  Prayer always starts how I handle my day to day challenges.  Sometimes it’s a quick prayer: “Father, please make this happen.”  “Father, please allow things to go smoothly today.”  Sometimes it’s a more in depth prayer that lasts through out my day.  But no matter, prayer is always the best way to deal with my challenges.

Then I evaluate what’s going on.  The baby is crying and whining all day.  Does he need a nap?  Diaper changed?  Sensory overload?  Should we cuddle or is touch too much for him as well? (Sometimes he cannot stand to be held and other times he craves it and doesn’t realize that’s just what he needs.)

Why is Laycie extra whiny today?  Does she need an extra snack because she’s growing?  Did she even eat with her medication this morning?  Perhaps she needs some down time.  Maybe the task is too hard for her to complete yet.

All these things are challenges that I must determine and answer.  Sometimes the answer is easy.   Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to figure out.  Deduction and evaluation of my children is one way I handle our daily challenges and let me tell you, no one knows your children better than you do!

Then there are challenges of cleaning, teaching, keeping up with the Jones.  Well, first thing I did was throw out the competition with the neighbors, exes and other homeschool families.  This is my family and we have to compete with no one.  We do things on our time, in the way that best fits us and that’s perfectly fine.  Sure I occasionally find myself falling back to the old way of society says but then I stop and remind myself that society is not important.  God and His plan for my family is most important to me.

Cleaning: this is managed by setting schedules which sometimes do fall to the wayside.  There are many great apps and programs to help you stay on track.  That one Lady has been a lifesaver to me at times and I’m fixing to get back to that myself.  You have to find what works best for you, be it motivation programs, or things that list the job task to task.

Teaching: When life is in chaos, this becomes another challenge.  I’ve suggested some ways to deal with teaching when you are facing these challenges in my previous posts for this blog hop.  Make things easy on yourself.  Teach curriculum  that allows you to educate more than one child at a time.  Use materials that simplify instead of over exert you.  Teach your child educational independence too, so they can do the work on their own and learn with minimal input from you.  Educators outside of Elementary to High School age don’t hold our hands.  We’re expected to do it all on our own with little input from them.  It’s okay to let your child do the same if they are able.  It’s actually a skill they’ll use throughout their lifetime.

Organize:  I have a hard time with this myself but when everything is in it’s place, it really does help our lives run smoother.  Keep your curriculum in the same place every day so it’s easier for you to access.  This will make you want to teach and make learning easier for your children.  Same with the rest of the house.  When your children can find their clothing, they can get out the door for appointments faster.  When your kitchen is organized, cooking is more efficient.  You also have more time for family time and bonding with each other.

When challenges become too much, take time to reevaluate your home and life.  Take time off from school to relax and just be together as a family.  Go camping, or just to the park.  Change the pace.  Take a look at what small things you can do to make things flow better for your home and life and then make those changes.

Challenges face all of us.  They aren’t the end of the world, though sometimes they surely feel that way.  Challenges just require us taking time to figure them out in order to overcome them.  Once we do, things fall into place again until the next challenge comes along and then you start the process all over again.

Remember with Christ you can do anything!

God bless,

Dana Lambert-Hodge

P.S.  This is the final post in the 5 Days of Homeschooling with Epilepsy and Other Issues series.  We hope you have been blessed by our thoughts on these topics and have enjoyed this glimpse into our life.  Please take a look at our other posts it the series and may God bless you in your journey as He has us in our own.

This post is linked up with the 5 Days of Homeschooling… Blog Hop
from the Homeschool Review Crew!

5 Days of Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017

To Read More…

Filed Under: 2017, awareness, blessing, challenges, crew blog hop, Epilepsy, Epilepsy Awareness, homeschooling, life, living with epilepsy, overcoming, review crew

Thanksgiving Challenges {Thoughts From Me}

November 27, 2016 by Dana

Our Thanksgiving weekend did not go as we had planned.  There were many unexpected challenges that came about.  There was work where we least expected it.

Wednesday, as I was cleaning our room to prepare for Winter and cold weather, I saw a place on our walls where the paint was peeling away so I gently tugged at it because I am planing to paint that room anyways.  But what I did not expect to find behind that paint was a molded wall that had been covered with cheap paint before our landlords purchased our residence.  The previous owner had covered over the mold so the new owners had no idea what they were really getting.  Over time, the cheap paint loosened and the truth was exposed.

Mold.  Seriously?!  At Thanksgiving?!  Just what we needed to find!  Luckily, we do know how to remove and treat the areas that were affected.  And so you can guess how the weekend was spent.

We’ve taken our room wall by wall.  One spot had to be peeled away, trashed and repainted with Kilz 2 to protect and seal the remaining mold which was affected only on the surface area.  But there was more to be discovered.  The opposite side of our room, by our window, the wall was brittle and breaking due to the dampness and mold growing there.  It, too, had been hidden by the previous paint job and then by the furniture we had inside our room.  So these walls had to be completely ripped out and replaced.  I’m thankful to say that this is done and now we just need to finish it all off with paint!

So you’d think that God would say “Ok these guys have had enough” but NOPE.  He decided to challenge us even more.  As I was cooking our Thanksgiving dinner (I had the sides while Don did the Turkey and Ham and my Mom did the Giblet Gravy, Mac N Cheese and the Stuffing or Dressing as you prefer to call it), I discovered our sink drain was not draining out.  Oh boy!  Another challenge!  The water was backed up with no where to go.

Yep, you guessed it!  Our septic was FULL!

Hurricane Matthew still has the water level high, so add to that 7 people using the water, bathroom, shower and that equals a full tank!  The septic decided on Thanksgiving Day that it had enough and wasn’t taking anymore.

Yep!  This mess was our holiday weekend.

I’m thankful to say that Don has fixed the bedroom and our wonderful landlords had the septic emptied completely late last night.  We did manage to have a great meal despite the challenges and we all shared things we were thankful for.  Me?  I was just thankful to have the meal done and my family fed.

Sometimes challenges happen and you come through them together, stronger than you expect to.  You learn from them, deal with them and move forward.  These were some pretty serious tasks we faced but we didn’t let that stop us from enjoying our time as a family or discourage us from our holiday.

When life throws you lemons, you simply add some sugar, some ice and have sweet homemade lemonade!

Filed Under: 2016, aftermath, challenges, faith, Hurricane Matthew, issues, lemonade, mold, septic, strong, thanksgiving, thoughts from me

New Adventures {Thoughts From Me}

April 18, 2016 by Dana

Another month has passed by quickly. With the new found Spring, we find adventure outdoors together as a family. This is something completely new to us all and the kids are absolutely loving it! Well, we ALL are!

The weather has warmed up tremendously – though we currently have a bit of a cold front upon us as I type this – and it has brought the kids, and us adults, out of winter hiding. There’s been a bit of rain but there’s been a lot of sunshine as well. We look forward to this time of new beginning, both inside our home and outside.

Camping.

It’s a completely new adventure for me that began last August before we up and moved to NC. It began with new hope and love, with meeting Donald. Camping is something he loves to do. He’s spent most of his life exploring outdoors.

Camping is something I never in a million years thought I would do. Not unless it involved a shiny RV. But Don encouraged me to give it a shot and y’all, I love it! There’s nothing better than connecting with nature or sleeping out in a tent under the stars.

The kids are loving it, too – well, Winston and Laycie at least. Emma isn’t so sure she’s ready until we have a bigger tent for the family to share. Grandma swears she has never liked camping and doesn’t think she’ll like it now. And Jack has been up and down in his health this Winter with mild tummy bugs and colds, so we haven’t yet taken him along with us. They are slowly being convinced to join us though and hopefully, in a few more weeks, they’ll be willing to take that plunge. For now though, Laycie and Winston are loving the fun with Don and I.

It’s good for Winston to be out and about. He’s learning a lot about nature, first hand. Don’s been teaching him to fish as well. Hopefully, they’ll be out canoeing soon. He and Don have a lot in common which is great for both Donald and for Winston. It’s amazing to see the transformation in them both. God’s blessing shines through.

Win’s growing up fast and his years left at home are limited. I’m so thankful he finally has a man in his life to teach him all about being a real man and I’m glad that Don is up for the task, enjoying it right along with him. It’s a beautiful thing to see them both growing and gleaning wisdom from each other.

Laycie’s right along with those guys. Every time, DaDa Don (as she calls him) takes out the fishing pole, she wants to go, too. He’s taken her several times already and she’s caught a couple of good-sized fish. She’s learning to be patient and a little bit quieter so she can one day catch that monster bass. She’s also getting pretty good at her owl calls with her DaDa Don’s help.

So this is life for us now. A lot of out of the house, sleeping in tents in the great wild yonder. ReWilding. Getting back to nature and learning to love this life God has blessed us with as well as the many people in it. Bringing home close again so these kids of mine have the love, security and life they deserve to have. Life is a beautiful thing and I’m so blessed every day with my family and my little loves.   

Filed Under: 2016, camping, challenges, enjoying life, faith, family, getting back to nature, learning to love again, Love, new adventures, rebuilding, rewilding, summer, thoughts from me

Healing and Moving Forward {Thoughts From Me}

March 13, 2016 by Dana

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes 3 verses 1-8

The first time I can remember hearing these verses was in a song but the words stuck with me through time. To everything there is a season and a purpose for us all. There is a reason for all that we go through. All the hurt, the anguish, the pain has a reason in the end times though we may never realize why while we are living this life.

Abuse is a real thing. It hurts through to your soul. You know it’s wrong, you realize it’s happening to you but when you are in it, you don’t know what to do. You don’t know how to begin to escape, to get out, to move on. Fear freezes you into place and action becomes so far away that you don’t know how to find it.

For most of my life, I’ve lived in one abusive situation after another. I want to share them with you, to free myself from the secrets I’ve kept hidden all my life, but I cannot. Fear controls me. The fear that if I speak out against my abusers, somehow I will suffer from their retaliation, eventually. The fear of knowing that even though I am no longer in their possession, they still control my life.

Fear is a hard thing to let go of. It controls your life and leaves you debilitated. It takes away your ability to speak out, to move on, to stop others from affecting your life.

I am afraid of my past abusers. I’m afraid of the actions they can still take against me. I’m afraid of them controlling my life and with my fear I allow them that control still. They know it and so do I.

My abusers have moved on with their lives. They don’t fear me because they know they have me where they want me. They have moved on to new loves and new things while I still suffer from their hurt and their actions towards me in our past life. This is what those who are the ones that abuse others do, while those they hurt spend a lifetime suffering. I pray for their spouses, their children, their family that they may never know the life I experienced with them and if they do, they see it and find a way to get out.

I have been hit, screamed at, convinced I was the problem, told I was nothing, useless, hated. I have been told I’m ugly, hateful, disgraceful, unwanted. I have screamed back, begged, pleaded, allowed myself to be disgraced, been laughed at and harrassed. These things are the least of what has happened in my life.

Every day it’s a struggle to simply get out of bed without fear of which one of them is coming at me next. I’m in therapy because of their actions. I’m finding my strength again and creating a new life for myself and my children. I’m healing myself and I’m healing my children from the hurt they’ve experienced. Rebuilding our lives for the best and showing my children their Mother is stronger than the Evil she’s endured.

Because abuse is just that: Evil in it’s purest form.

In this season, our lives are starting over. There is so much that you don’t know but the past is the past and the future is yet to come. Pray for me, as I pray for you and we shall all come through as God intends, stronger for His Purpose and Glory than we could have ever imagined in the end.

In this season, I have chosen to start fresh. I will be changing our blog name and setting it up to redirect to our new URL. We have a new home, a new hope and new challenges coming our way. And yes, there is a new love abloom, one like my children and I have never experienced.

Please continue to join us as we grow in Love, our Faith and Graciousness during this season of our life. We look forward to sharing our lives and experiences with you as we continue upon this path.

Filed Under: 2016, abuse, challenges, domestic abuse, domestic violence, drama, faith, finding love, hardships, hope, learning to live again, life, living, Love, single mother, thoughts from me

Overwhelmed {Thoughts From Me}

June 23, 2015 by Dana

So there comes a point in life when you just cannot breathe anymore.  Life becomes too much.  The drama is overwhelming.  Day to day is too routine and you feel like you’re stuck in a rut.

There comes a point in life where you become tired.  Tired of the lies.  Tired of pretending things are not as they are.  Tired of putting on that fake smile just to make the world happy.

There comes a point in life where you stop.  You think, analyze, pray, plead, think some more and you realize the only way it’s going to change is if you make the conscience effort to see that it does.

There is only so much forgiveness that one can give before they figure out it’s not worth it.  There is only so much one person can take.  No one if perfect, and that is completely understandable but sometimes you just have to admit that it’s not changing and it’s not working for you.

Life should be enjoyed.  Life should be shared.  Life should be created through love, laughter and experiences shared by those who make us happiest.

Life should not be filled with remorse, pain, dislike, unhappiness and lack of joy.  Life should not be routine and miserable to live.  Life should not bring us down more than it brings us up.

Each of us has our own struggles and strife.  We are unique among ourselves.  We must each figure out the right and the wrong for us, for our own lives and learn to live, to enjoy every moment like it’s our last.

I look back on my life and I see so many of the joyous moments but lately those have been outweighed and outnumbered by all of the unhappy moments.  I was lost.  I couldn’t find my way out of the darkness that was consuming my soul.  I found myself praying daily for God to ease the pain that I was feeling. I found myself wishing at times that my time in this world was done with.

Yet I don’t.  I have my children to watch grow and theirs to come.  I wish for happiness in my life, to be able to live out my days basking in the glory of their beautiful smiles, wrapped in the laughter and joy.

One day I hope to find the man that was made to love me and to be able to share our lives together, along with our children.  As many days as I give up hope, I still have my mustard seed of Faith to carry me through.  I know the things I want in my life and I wish, hope and pray for it all to happen.

Life changes are already in the process but it’s a long road before I am where I need to be.  It’s a long road to find myself again after so much pain has consumed my life for so long.  But I know I will overcome it all to become the best Mom, best friend, best person that I can be.  At this point in time, that’s all I can do and hope for.

God bless,
Dana

Filed Under: 2015, challenges, changes, learning to live, learning to love, letting go, life is hard, Love, pain, remorse, single mother, starting over, thoughts from me

Mid January Update {Thoughts From Me}

January 16, 2015 by Dana

Another week has passed filled with so many things to do.  The weather hasn’t allowed much outside time so the kids are climbing the walls inside the house.  They’ve invented their own fun, playing with each other, reading, working on building projects – whatever they can come up with to burn off that pent up energy.

January is passing fast and this month is filled with appointments for us  now that we are finally past the Flu and Bronchitis of the past few weeks.  We have neurology, therapy, and genetics.  We are adding in an eye doctor appointment and more therapy as well.  Life is never not busy around here.

All we can do is take it day by day but I’m really hoping some pretty weather comes soon so the kids can get outside, run and play.   Until then we play things by ear.  See ya next time…

Filed Under: 2015, challenges, cold, full life, lots going on, therapy, thoughts from me, winter

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