Genealogy: Things you'd rather not know

One of the tricks with genealogy is how much you find. What if you discover something you'd rather not know? For example, in my family, I've found out that we have a slave trader in our background. Is that information I try to let "die"?

We have two suicides in the 20th cy.; how much do we dance around that versus just talking openly about it?

A great-uncle or great-great-uncle on one side (no, I'm not telling any more) had a mistress, a fact fairly public at the time. Still, I feel like I shouldn't know this! But now that I do, what do I do with the information?

My grandmother was wrong about the name of her grandmother--apparently, the family had succeeded in destroying the fact that the actual mother had died when the kids were quite young, and the husband had remarried. Do I respect the family's c. 1900 wishes and follow the remarriage, or do we go with the truth? (And we have at least one other case of mistaken parenthood in another line, by the way.)

We have a diary of a dead relative, and it turns out that she had trouble getting along with another family member. We have a letter from a G-grandmother to another relative in the 1940's which reveals that the writer was a racist.

My grandmother, in her family history (a six-page document she created in the 1970's), clearly tried to whitewash everything, never mentioning anything negative about anyone. She gave a lot of useful information, but she deliberately skipped a lot. Was she right to do so?

I once asked her daughter, my aunt, if she knew why her father (my grandfather) had committed suicide. She shook her head adamantly and said, "Uh-uh, no way. I know, and no one else knows, and when I die, that dies with me." Was she right?

I don't have any answers. I'm just looking, thinking, and asking.

Homeschooling: Teaching a 6-yo boy to read

We've always used a combination of Leap Frog products and Bob Books to teach our kids to read. This worked great for our first two kids. But when our 5-yo girl recently started reading books on her own while our 6-yo boy was still struggling with phonics readers, we suspected we had a problem. We're looking into whether it's got a name.

In the mean time, we've found two products that have helped him catch up somewhat. The first is a book called Reading Reflex that I'd used with teenagers some years back. It starts out with manipulative letters (lots of prep time needed) to build awareness of phonemes and letter order, then teaches a few extra sounds--ch, sh, etc. Then it moves into the advanced code, especially focusing on vowels (but losing the manipulatives, I'm afraid). We don't do all the supplemental activities, but it can get as involved as you want. To add motivation, we give him a cheeseball every few words. The activities in this book haven't made him a perfect reader, but they've de-mystified a lot of the code for him.

The other thing that's helped him is our purchase of the Faith and Freedom Readers from Seton (BTW, we aren't normally Seton-type people, but more eclectic or tidal). This series is just super; pure Catholicism! (Yes, no one is carrying cell phones, but it's otherwise excellent.) The 6 yo boy is through the first reader and well into the second, and he's *enjoying* reading them. The bonus is that our 8-yo girl and 10-yo boy glommed on to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade books and drank them up in a matter of days. Pure gold.

Changes

First post! Here's an introduction: I'm a 37-year old father of six. We homeschool and are part of a once-a-week Catholic co-op.

My eldest son just celebrated his 10th birthday last weekend. His big present from his grandparents? He's playing with it right now.

As a Lay Dominican, I enjoy going "into the deep" in terms of Church teaching and spirituality (well, I'm trying, anyway). We just sponsored a great pro-life lecture; I'll have to tell you about it later.

I just dropped weekly comics today--having been buying comic books since I had an allowance--and I am moving to "all trades."

I just talked with a long-lost cousin in Kansas yesterday and found out that we both have photos with relatives we can't identify. We're trading prisoners next week.

I teach 10th grade honors English, but it's summer break right now. Woo-hoo!! I just read a book that really makes me trhink about how I grade my students; I think I'll start that next year.

Last week, we had a board meeting for Democrats for Life of Maryland. (Anyone want to join?)

After this, I'll post on one thing at a time, but I wanted you to have a taste of my short-attention-span-theater life. God calls me to holiness one
distraction at a time.