Slay Your Day - Coffee with Chrystal #alittleQC

These were cheap, like this one was like maybe $12. These were kind of cheap, they were like $5. These were $5. And, uh, it's called Lavender Linen. Really nice. But y'all, I mean, the bottom line is it doesn't matter. I just went into the store, smelled, brought myself some peace, thought I was in a sauna, you know, a beauty parlor, and bought the ones that smelled the best to me. But the issue was mommy time in the— by myself. Okay. All right. So I'm looking for questions. What suggestions for a senior that's on their own? Well, first of all, I'm confused. If they're a senior, how are they on their own? Are they a senior in high school? Are they still living with you? And suggestions for what? So if you want to clarify that question, I don't mind answering it. Okay, diffuser is so much better than a candle. I actually had this guy, he was a maintenance guy, um, he came to— an appliance guy— he came to fix one of our appliances and I was burning a candle and he said, have you ever considered, uh, how candles might not be good to burn them in your home all the time? And I was like, in my head I was thinking, you're here to fix the appliances. I don't, I don't really want your— but I was nice and I said no, I hadn't. I love burning candles all the time. He said, well, you ought to consider it because the soot still has to go somewhere. And you'd be surprised how many people who are burning candles are having like secondhand smoke issues from the candles. I don't know if I'll be able to ever get rid of candles. I feel like people in the olden days burn them all the time and they're okay, but I also did think there are diffusers that could smell just as great and be just as meaningful. So let me consider that. YouTube is acting up. Oh, your, your HVAC guy said the same thing about candles? Really? Huh. We're back. Okay, check out essential oils, diffusion. Yeah, I have essential oils. I have them. I'm oily, but not. I was oily before my whole family was oily. And then they started telling me about oils and I was like, did you forget? I homeschooled my kids. I know how to bake bread. I grew tomatoes in the backyard. I already know about lavender. They thought they were telling me something new, but then they all trying to get me to sign up for Young Living. I was like, I tried to tell y'all this stuff 10 years ago. Y'all weren't listening. So no, I'm not signing up for Young Living with you. Okay, um, I'm looking for questions. Joel, get off my live! Y'all see Creative Gamer in the, in the comments? That's my son. If y'all want to follow him, he would love the subscribers. If, if y'all have children that are— don't come up here, don't come up here, I hear you coming, don't come up here, don't come up here. If y'all have kids who want to subscribe to my son's YouTube channel, he's in here, Creative Gamer. Now I do, I do, um, I do— he does do shooting games, not the horrible grown ones, but he does do Fortnite. So I just wanted to give that disclaimer. Stay oily. Um, I'm not putting the link in the description, Joel. Okay, Scentsy wax candles. Okay, y'all are helping each other. Y'all are helping each other. Lanica says, can we do a weight loss challenge? Uh, uh, the pressure. I have been thinking about doing a fat demon challenge. But I'll wait because right now I can't, I can't do it. I'm holed up here with my Oreos. I can't do it. Okay. Oh, the videos keep stopping. Hmm. Okay, but I see y'all talking about candles. I don't see questions. So if y'all have questions, um, Jess, you said, can you talk one day about how you're organizing your mom's things? I have years of my mom's BSF studies and I can't imagine discarding them. Well, I showed it on a live the other day. They're in binders. Mine are in binders. Um, but as far as my mom's things, I'm not— we haven't really touched them. We've touched a few things, but not much, not much. So I'll have to wait a little bit. My skincare routine: soap and water and whatever moisturizer happens to be at hand. So here is Ahava Here's some Ahava mineral hand cream. It's at hand. So if my face is dry, I just— I, I wash it and I moisturize it. I don't really have a routine. How did you teach your special needs when he was little? Well, he could not talk. Uh, he was— well, the school system thought they wanted to test him for autism. I did not allow that. Because I was like, you don't know. There are, if you look at the, the book of diagnoses, the DSM-IV, let me tell you something. When you, when you advocate for your kids, you learn really quickly all the things that you didn't know because you just learn them. So no, I'm not a special needs person. I'm not an educator. I'm not a healthcare provider, but I have been asked, are you in education? Because if you're going to help my kids, I need to know how to talk to you. Are you in healthcare? No, but if you're going to do surgery on my son, I have anatomy books on my shelf because I will be as much of an expert as I can be as his mother, so I can speak to you intelligently. So in the DSM-IV, um, there are multiple diagnoses that result in a kid not being able to speak, but there's a funding issue. And so there's, there's funding for autism. And so there is readily available testing for autism, which results in many kids, not all the time, but many kids being falsely diagnosed with autism when that's not their problem. And there are ways that you can get services for your children that they need without them having to have a diagnosis. So in that case, there was Preschool for Children with Disabilities, PPCD. And basically that's a special needs classroom. Okay. And as he needed to be around kids who were regularly talking, that was his thing. He needed, he needed to, the way his therapist put it to me, and I went and found a therapist that specialized in slow-talking children so she could help me to figure out, was he autistic? Did he have Gestalt syndrome? Like, what, what was it? Turns out he has a mixed expressive receptive disorder. Um, he does, he looks pretty normal now. He still is challenged with writing and reading in the English language, but she said, if I dropped you in the middle of China, you wouldn't be able to speak the language either. And basically his language decoding skills need assistance. So how I teach, taught him was, I mean, we're a phonics family, but I, uh, she said, don't teach him phonics. He will not. He does not decode like that. He cannot encode like that. And so, um, teach him to read whole language. So we taught him to read whole language. I put, I took little 3x5 cards and stuck them everywhere. Sink, refrigerator, or milk, you know, because he would always want milk from the refrigerator. And I just took little pieces of paper like this and wrote on them. Computer, phone. We had them all over the house. And every time I went to something, I pointed to it and I said, "Phone, water, chair." And so I taught him to communicate when he didn't have the language. He even went to Awana, y'all. We put his scriptures, we put one word on each piece of paper. And then we recited the scripture together and I would be saying it out loud. And he would be doing his mumbo jumbo. He used to do this thing when he would get excited, he'd go— And he would do his hands like this. I would say no words, words. And he had no words but he would give the words he had. So with the scripture if it was God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, I would say God and he'd say waah? So love? No ma! It was just mimicking me without the language. And it may not have been that perfect even. So then he would go to Awana and take his cards and arrange the cards because he understood it. He just couldn't say it. Another thing— now this is for him. You have to do research for your child. Another thing is, you know, you don't want your kids to watch TV all the time. And, and, and the, the therapist that we were working with said, let him watch it, let him watch it, let him watch the same ones over and over again because he will learn the language that way. What you think is him repeating and not being able to say something, repeating, he's learning the words. So sometimes he would translate things from one movie into present-day communication. And it was so crazy. Like if we were ready to go somewhere, he would say, he'd say, uh, I say, "Let's go." And he go, "To infinity and beyond!" Because that means, "Let's go." So he wouldn't say, "All right, Mom, I'm ready. I'll see you in the car. My stuff is in the car." I would say, "Are you ready to go?" And he would say, "To infinity and beyond!" But the point was, is he was trying to communicate. And so I learned how to do that. So when you, when you ask me about, you know, special needs, I think here's the main thing. Your child is— here it is— your child. Now, that doesn't mean you don't need experts. That doesn't mean you don't need people who are trained. We drove all the way to Nashville because I got on the computer and I Googled support for non-talking children. I found a support group, and in that support group, they recommend me— recommended this therapist. I talked to her on the phone, and y'all, we got in the car and drove to Nashville. Best decision I ever made. She said, here's what you need to do. Put him in a PPCD program, make sure he's with talking children. She said they're going to do a lot of things for him that they would do for, uh, non-talking children. But as long as he's around talking children, it's fine. He's still going to learn. So he got on the short bus every day, y'all, and went to school, came home at 12. I still read to him. I still did all the things. And y'all, he is brilliant. Do you hear me? Brilliant. His biggest problem is he thinks, moves. He thinks too fast. His brain moves faster than his hand. So we have to work really hard on editing papers and really hard on reading comprehension, math, science. That's the kid who built the computer. Okay. So you need to know that the experts are there for you to sift through what works for your family and for your child. So read, educate, research, Google, ask questions. No question is a dumb question. So yeah, whole language is when they don't learn how to sound out a word, they learn how to recognize a word. So they learn, it's like Chinese, you know, is a symbol. The words become symbols. They recognize that hi, H-I says hello. They recognize that. They don't go, they don't know that it says hi. They don't do that. So phonics, she said, teach him whole language and then teach him phonics later. So I did. I taught him to read with whole language, and then I came back and taught him how to sound out the words. Um, that is a discussion. Yeah, it's a whole discussion in education. I'm a proponent of phonics, but whole language is a way to do it. It's a way to do it, and I think you have to know your kid. Okay, how old is he now? He is 15. He's 15. Taking community college classes. At what age did you know your son had problems? You know what, because he had other issues, he was born, he was a shoulder dystocia baby. He had nerve damage when he was born. To this day, his arm, he does not have full range of motion in your arm because if your nerves aren't working, they don't tell your arm to move. And if your arm doesn't move, you don't get a correctly formed shoulder joint. And so his shoulder joint did not form correctly. He still has limited mobility in that arm, stops him from doing nothing. He plays basketball, he's played football, he does everything. But because we were already receiving in-home early childhood therapy, a lady was coming to our home for that when he was 15 months old, you know, in that year and a half age. She said, you know, I would love to have him evaluated because I think he should be talking more than he is, or at least trying to talk and he's not. So we kind of rolled into that. From there, we rolled into the school system. He went to school first for speech, then he went for the PPCD program. Then after that, he just did speech again and he did speech. We took him twice a week to speech to our local public schools and he had speech twice a week until he was in the 3rd or 4th grade. Okay. All right. What age did you start with the whole language cards? Around 3. My son is 24. Lori said he got his PhD. He plays instruments but no sports. Yeah. And I have a son like that, is not interested in sports, but he does play the piano and he does like to draw. DSM, you don't have to worry about getting it. Um, if you just get some good— you need to be in a school system where you feel like they value your opinion. And in my case, I was like, I'm with my son all day long. I am his previous teacher. So you have to talk to me about what he does all day. So I appreciate it. So, but the first school district we were in, um, was receptive, but kind of, sort of condescending. The second school district we were in, they actually considered me a part of the team. They said, here, here, mom, here's what we're thinking. How do you feel about that? Do you think that it will be useful for him? How do you think this will— they invited me in. They had like these reading programs as a part of their school district. And they gave me access to that stuff at home while you're at home with him. Why don't you work on— mom, here's the homework. Like it was very, very collaborative, which was awesome. Okay. Yeah, my brother says to me all the time, I don't think Kanan would be as successful as he is if you hadn't advocated for him. Delisa said, the school would see me coming with my folder and be like, oh Lord. I was not playing with them. And I was that mom as well. I was that mom as well. Okay, we've talked about education. I'm scanning to see if there are any other questions related to— oh yes, I love this. Glorianne, you said, as a former special education teacher, there are, you know, that worked with autistic kids, advocate, advocate, advocate. There are so many genius kids caught up in the system. So true. So true. All right. I think y'all have asked me a lot of questions about education. We got, we got all off on that. Maybe I need to talk about teaching special needs kids. I don't know, but I do want to say what you are. Why did I say short bus? Is that like not— is short bus not politically correct? I'm so sorry. Sorry. Um, pragmatic communication testing. I'm gonna have to look into that. So yeah, I think you just need to realize that your kids, you can learn to be involved in your kids' education and in the development of your kids and what you don't know, you can find out, do your homework, do your research. Ask parents online, has anybody ever struggled with this? And see what other parents say. How did your older high school kids adjust to community college after homeschooling? Well, they're still homeschooling. Um, and they go to the college for class and come home. Um, so they, they did okay. I mean, my, my two older girls who have graduated from homeschool did just fine. So I've got two boys now who are doing it and I still make them schedule their days. I still make them create a plan for their days and they have to include their community college classes in that. I look at it as an opportunity for me to teach them how to school. Print out your syllabus. Let's walk through it. Map it out on your calendar every week. What's due? So I'm still giving them in-home accountability, but I also am— they're getting adjusted to what professors will create, you know, the systems that professors will create. So there's that. Okay. I'm gonna say that. Diane Honey McCarty says, I want to give you some encouragement. My son had emotional issues, learning issues, and now at 31 he's a scientist. Yeah, don't get discouraged by where your kids are right now. You know, so much, so much changes when they mature. My son has dyslexia. My son has Tourette's syndrome, Down syndrome. So, so many of you, so, so many of you have kids that struggle. And you need to know that so, so many great things can come out of the struggle, not just for your kids, but for you. Okay, Jennifer said, I have a question. Let me take this question. I'm nervous about my kids being home this summer. I have a teen boy and I'm trying to get him active and moving away from a screen. What kind of structure or activities do you have in place for your teens? You know, it's changing because my teens are getting older. Um, but here's what I always do. We always have a brainstorm. We come up with things they want to do as a family. I come up with things they want to do for themselves. That is not optional. They have to come up with a list of things. What is optional is what they do in those lists of things. What is also not optional is that we minimize screen time because I tell them I don't want screens on all the time in my house. So they get to choose their things that they're interested in to do with their time. And as long as I just tell them, you know, and we'll see with my oldest son, he's a senior, he's a junior, but I will, you know, I'll tell him, listen, 3 and then you're free. Pick 3 things to do. We agree on what those 3 things, what that means. Is it 30 minutes worth? Is it this? Is it that? And then once they do those 3 things, then they're free. Free to do what? I don't know. Go outside, take a nap, read a book. And boredom, I have to tell you, really is the mother of invention. It really is. So if you can just decide on what's important to you, let them give it, let them have a voice, let them determine it depending on how old they are. And then, um, then set the boundaries of screen time in your home. And then if they finish 3 things that y'all have agreed on and it's still not screen time, then they got to figure it out. Let them be bored. Let them be bored. And they may surprise you. They may surprise you. My youngest 2 boys right now have created a YouTube channel. And when I'm done with my lights, they come and get my lights. And they have figured out how to put some stuff on the YouTube channel. And I said, listen, I don't care if you're not, as long as you're not on a screen, what, playing video games. But if you're on a screen learning Adobe Premiere, go ahead, do it. So it's reframing that time. So I definitely think you should limit screens because without limitation for screens, screens will dominate. So if you want them to do other things, You can negotiate what those other things are. My oldest son has more negotiating power than my youngest son. My youngest son, we still work on math during the summer because that's what I've always done with younger kids. My oldest son, he may have an opportunity to take a class during the summer. You have to pick, you have to take one online class for community college during the summer, whatever you want to do, pick it. But that he had. So you have to decide what are my non-negotiables? Let your older children speak into that. Um, what are my non-negotiables? Let nobody speak into boundaries for screen time. And then, um, then you let them fill in the blanks. Some of us are helicoptering our kids. Let those kids play outside, drink from the water hose. I mean, just let them figure it out. Let them create memories and have fun and let them be bored. And then what's not negotiable? The reading is not negotiable. For my youngest kid, math is not negotiable. Um, watch movies together as a family is not negotiable. Okay. Take one more question, then I'll jump off. Okay. Yes. This is great. Norrell said, all the things you described for organizing your day just made you feel tired. Then don't. Get to the end of your day, get to the end of the day and say, what would I change tomorrow? As long as you are intentionally, intentionally living, work it out however you want to work it out. Okay. So define screen time. So I'll answer this question. I lost it. Define screen time. I saw it. And I was going to put it on the screen, but then I lost it. Oh, here it is. Here you go, Cynthia. Define screen time. Screen time for me is any work on a screen, any play on a screen that's not designed for productivity, meaning it's pleasurable. So screen time does not count if you're on a Zoom call for your science class. Screen time does not count if you're working on typing up your research paper. Screen time does, however, count if you're playing Fortnite or Roblox. Screen time does count if you're watching YouTube. Screen time does count if you're doing things that are not productive. Now, what gets a little bit in the middle is Adobe Premiere because it's half pleasure, half, um, half productive. So what I've defined is, um, for, for my house, they have rotation. So after schoolwork, they have rotations. Rotations are things that I'm happy if they do, but they get to choose. Rotations could be working on Spanish, you're working on typing, you're working on reading for pleasure. I don't care what book you read, but you have to be reading. Okay. And then there are their rotations when they've leveled up. So once you've done enough of the rotations that I approve of, then you get to have some other rotations that shouldn't come first. Adobe Premiere is one of those things. So when my kids say, I'm done with my schoolwork, I'm going to start my rotation. Can I do Adobe Premiere? No. You need to do your first level of rotations first, the ones that actually count. Once you've done them, then you can level up and do some things that are productive. So that would be YouTube to practice the piano. Cause you see, they'll still go to YouTube and they'll skip the Spanish and the typing and the reading, and they'll go straight to YouTube. Tell me I'm learning something. So that's, that comes second. So screen time is anything that you're getting on to do that is not productive. And then I include productive screen time in their afternoon rotations, basically their time of choice. But they have to do my things before they do their things. Does that make sense? And it just makes— when you communicate with your kids in this way, it just makes language easier. Have you finished with your schoolwork? What is schoolwork? It's on a list. Mom, I'm done with my schoolwork. Can I go ahead and start my rotation? Sure. Mom, I've done these many rotations. Can I level up? Sure. 'Can I have screen time?' No, because we're not gonna have screen time except for Wednesdays during the weekend, on the weekend. That's what I'm saying right now. And on Wednesdays, don't even ask me before 4 o'clock. Now, family time screen time doesn't count. Watching TV or a movie together doesn't count. Okay, so hopefully that helps. Okay, so I'm gonna get off. Save your questions for tomorrow's live, and, um, I will see you tomorrow. I gotta go make breakfast for the kids. Okay, bye.