I have some friends who have gone through this, but unfortunately, I do not have any personal experience or advice to give.  I will pray for you, though!  For guidance and wisdom and peace to guard your hearts and family as you navigate all that needs to be done.  Also, my only other thought is to check out nutrition resources when it comes to lead levels.  I feel like I read before that there are supplements/certain foods that help a childs body to better process it.  For whatever that is worth…hope that helps!

You may want to check her toys. A few years back a lot of plastic toys, especially ones from China, were suspect since they used lead paint.

Has the Health Dept. checked your yard too?  There is a huge clean-up effort in our city since the dirt in people’s yards in some areas of town is lead-contaminated, so if your house might not be the main problem, it could be dirt/dust tracked in.

Check your crockery. Some pottery is lead-glazed, though not so much anymore. But if you are using vintage items it is possible.

While you’re checking everything, check to see if you have old mini-blinds in the windows.  My SIL had a 1970’s house that you would think would be lead-free, but her sons levels shot through the roof.  It turned out the mini-blinds were the culprit!  I do remember hearing about a mini-blind recall about 15 years ago due to high lead levels in the plastic.  It’s also possible that those of us who haven’t had our kids checked are living unawares - I would never think of having this checked, but now you have me curious.

I remember when we had just moved from old base housing and had my daughter’s 12 month check up. We found out she showed levels of lead too. I was thinking it must be the paint etc. but it’s not like she went around licking the walls. I second the suggestion about checking the yard. Her brothers and herself loved digging in dirt, the garden near the house, and playing in the water from the outdoor hose. It made me think that the yard was lead-contaminated too. Another thought was that I was exposed some how when pregnant with her and it takes a while for the levels to go down.

*sigh*  I just want to say that I know what you’re going through.  We lived for two years in a very old home and I was paranoid when I discovered there could be possible lead paint.  I did all the lead testing, the cleaning, etc. etc. etc.  I have nothing comforting to say to you because we solved the stress by moving out (we were renting).  This said, since I imagine your daughter is not licking the walls or cracking paint off the window sills to eat, you may want to see if you have old ceramic cups, bowls, etc. that are painted.  If they are not made in the USA, I would get rid of painted ceramic.  Also etched glass (lead was often mixed into the glass to make it more etch-able).  Your daughter I’m sure is not drinking about of etched glasses, but do you have any antique wine decanters or the like?  Anyways, I’m sure you know all about this stuff… just wish I had more to share!

Go to the Pubmed website and search on terms like “lead poisoning” and “Childhood blood lead levels”. 
We were in a similar situation many years ago- we solved the problem by moving to a newer home.
Please pray for guidance as your child’s whole future could be affected.

hey, my little brother had lead poisoning and we mopped, took off our shoes, cleaned like crazy….and it turned out he was not just playing in lead-contaminated dirt outside, but EATING it.  So I second the advice to check the soil in the yard.  Good luck!  If it makes you feel any better, he had pretty darn high levels, but he has turned out just fine, very intelligent and no developmental problems.

The city I live in hells fund a “get the lead out program” I am sure you have, but you might want to check into something like that.

The only book I can recommend is A Year With God. It seems to have activities for a wide range of ages. It’s published by Little Way Press. I bought it through Catholic Heritage Curricula. Also, have you checked out CatholicMom.com started by Lisa Hendey? I know they have activities for a variety of ages. Hope this helps.

The only general topic book I know of off hand is the Year with God mentioned above. But you might like this one for Lent/Easter. http://store.pauline.org/English/Books/tabid/126/txtSearch/arbogast/List/0/ProductID/2601/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName,ProductName. I use it every couple of years for homeschool. It has several activities appropriate for the whole elementary age ragne tied into 1 topic and story for each week of the season.

I used to use a book called “100 Activities based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church” by Ellen Rossini.  It has activities for a wide range of ages so some might be what you’re looking for and some might not.  It doesn’t really go with a curriculum, but it is a good supplemental resource, so it sounds like it might fit with what you’re group is doing.  There are Catholic Quiz flip books too that I used to use for trivia games with my students; they are put together by grade level and there are three difficulty levels of questions so teams can earn varying points based on how hard their question is.  hth!

You might find some resources at catchat.ca   Also K4J is now owned by a different company, and they might have some resources for you.  K4j.org
Google Jr. High Youth Group Activities which may give you some ideas too.

Given the wide age range, I would recommend a read-aloud and simple discussion of a saint’s life.  You can vary what you do - reading a long story or a picture book, men, women, older, more modern - and all of them can enjoy it.  The saints lead us by example, and we can never get too many.  You can do everything from Vision Books (which would take a few sessions) to Tomie de Paolo.  I used to read my whole family his book on Our Lady of Guadalupe every December, and never had a complaint.  Good luck!

Our kids are now 2,5 and 6.  Every night before the first bedtime, we gather in that bedroom and say Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be and Angel of God.  Then we all say “Thank you prayers.”  These are just spontaneous prayers about our day, etc.  I wish we could be doing more some days, and we TRY to add a decade of the Rosary during Lent, but with such young children and a 7pm bedtime for the 2 and 5, we just don’t have a ton of time as a family.  As important as prayer is, I want us to be able to read and play together, too.

We do the same as Andrea but we do “thank you” and “pray for”.  When we first started we had each little one try to say a prayer buy themselves—for example the oldest said an Our Father, the next a Hail Mary etc and the youngest (we put the 1 year old to bed before prayers so our youngest at prayer is 2 as well) is only expected to sit through the prayers.  Once the kids sit through prayer they get to stay up and have “desert” with the older kids—often a sugar free popsicle or yoghurt or fruit.  It gives them a reason to try and behave.  Just for full disclosure we do the same for Sunday mass—when you are little there is always something riding on your behavior—donuts if it is morning mass or desert if it is evening mass.  Now we have 6 and the oldest is 8 so the older kids don’t usually do a prayer by themselves unless we are trying to learn a new prayer . . . but they love helping the younger ones learn their prayers.

I’d add that we do lots of songs for prayers - as part of bedtime prayer we sing the Our Father, Hail Mary and the Notre Dame alma mater (ok we’re crazy alums but it’s still a beautiful Marian hymn!). We also do a hymn with grace at each meal: something short enough for the toddler to learn quickly, but one that changes with the liturgical seasons so it gives us a chance to talk about what that means. For example, we sang a verse of O Come, O Come Emmanuel after our traditional grace at each meal for Advent; now we sing the Doxology (“Praise God from whom all blessings flow”) for ordinary time. My son LOVES this part of our prayer life and sings the hymns at other times, too - in the car, at the store (<—that one earns us funny looks sometimes, lol).

That is awesome, I’m going to start adding the ND alma mater to my evening repertoire too

I love the ND alma mater idea—if only my husband was an alum as well . . . seems he is not as crazy about it as I am!

I have 4 kids 10 to 16 mo and we have a Great Room that was added on to the house off of the kitchen on one end and an extra room (our playroom) on the other. I love the space and openness of it, especially homeschooling. But it does have it’s drawbacks too that you may want to consider when looking at homes. One is that it is a 2-story and we didn’t have a good way to gate the very large openings between rooms, mostly to keep new walkers and toddlers off the stairs and out of the bathroom. Our stairs don’t allow for a gate at the bottom until almost halfway up. Large gates can be very expensive and depending on your space won’t necessarily be the best fit. Not all gates are easy for a preschooler to maneuver on their own either. My husband designed and made us a custom gate for our space, kind of like short barn doors. I love our solution, but it did take some time figuring it out. I know when we start looking again (will need more bedrooms too eventually) that is something I will consider if there are still little guys, making sure I can safely secure at least a portion of the main living area for safety’s (and sometimes sanity’s) sake.

Great reminder re how to gate different areas, Rebecca! We had such trouble making baby gates work in our split level - this will definitely be something for us to consider while house hunting. Thanks.

I have four kids (and hope to have more!) and several years ago we moved into a bigger house—seven bedrooms, five bathrooms.  At the time, it seemed like a great idea, now I’m ready to sell and go for a smaller house.  My kids all like to be together and by choice are sharing bedrooms, so we’re living in three bedrooms and only using three of the five bathrooms.  However, the bathrooms still need to be cleaned whether you use them or not, same with the bedrooms.  That’s what I didn’t take into consideration when we “upgraded”—just the time increase that comes with maintaining a larger home.  If I were to do over again, instead of being won over by bathrooms and bedrooms, I’d concentrate on things like pantry size (I have a big pantry in my kitchen which is WONDERFUL when you have several kids), I also have a main floor laundry room that has a lot of storage and is of decent size (another must when you have a lot of people in the house).  If you’re thinking a lot of kids, I’d also be looking at having a lot of closets so you can easily organize storage for all the different sizes of clothing that you probably want to keep as you have more babies.  There’s my two cents!

I think the most important factor in looking for a new home with a growing family in mind is the age old real estate truism about location.  Find a house in a neighborhood that is in an excellent school district.  Even if you don’t plan on using the public schools, you want to surround yourself with people who take education very seriously.  Chances are, if you find a house in a good school district, there will be like minded families who live in your neighborhood.  This will be good for making friends for both you and your children.
I have four kids, we have 5 bedrooms, but for the first 11 years of living in our house, we only used 3 out of the 5 because the children wanted to be together.  Our oldest will be leaving for college in 2 years, so all in, we will have used 5 bedrooms for a very short period of time.  In my opinion, you’re better off having more bathrooms (esp full) than bedrooms.
A nice backyard is nice, but my kids always preferred to play in the front where all the action was.  A brand new large kitchen is great, but I’ve learned over the years that what matters more in a kitchen is a well thought out space, rather than fancy countertops and expensive appliances.  I would sacrifice a brand new kitchen for a home in a great neighborhood if those were my choices.

We have soon to be 7 kids in slightly over 2500 sf. One thing I love is having 2 living areas. My husband has a small office for when he wants or needs to work at home. There’s room to expand. Our kids do share rooms(there are 4), there aren’t a lot of 8 br houses out there. I wish we had a slightly bigger kitchen but this is what we could afford.

Our kids’ bedrooms are all on the bottom floor of the house. There is an exit to the outside there, and it’s fine. We do have stairs, but have a regular baby gate and that works for us. No huge entrances or step leveled rooms for us to deal with.

Even with all the space we have we are vigilant not to accumulate a bunch of “stuff” or it would become unmanageable.

We have 6 (soon-to-be 7!) kids ranging in age from 2 to 16 years. When we bought our home 11 years ago, we had 3 kids and knew/hoped we’d have more. It had plenty of space for us back then, and everyone pointed out the potential for being able to add on and expand (i.e. finish the basement, dormer the 2nd floor, etc). We thought, “Great! No worries!”. Um, no.

1) Children’s bodies grow. They grow quickly. A 13 yr old boy can almost be the size of a full-grown adult. So, when you’re thinking “large family”, remember this also means that their body size will not remain small. Right now, 5 of our current 8 family members are adult or near-adult size. That makes a HUGE difference in usable space.
2) Remodeling (even DIY and small projects!) cost money. Upfront costs, unseen-problem-costs, oops-costs. In 11 years, we’ve completely remodeled our kitchen (gutted old kitchen and knocked down a brick wall remodel), added a bathroom (we had only 1 when we moved in), painted/re-painted rooms, carpeted, refinished floors, replaced MANY appliances, etc. We’ve also nearly doubled the size of our family in that time. Even with my husband’s decent salary, we will never be able to afford to do all of the very necessary expanding we need to do. It would be cheaper for us to buy a bigger home.
3) Know what they always say? Location, location, location? Well, it’s true. 11 years ago our neighborhood was filled with families, friendly neighbors, people who cared for their homes and each other. Today, we are witnessing a rapid decline or complete disappearance of ALL of these things. I truly wish that we had sunk our money into a home that needed even more TLC (and ours needed a LOT!) but was located in an area that had proven itself to be a lot more stable historically. We thought, “We don’t care if the public schools here are awful; we’re never going to use them!”, BUT public schools are one of the best indicators of how a town takes care of itself and it’s residents.

I don’t say any of this to discourage you. Just the opposite! I really wish we had done what you’re doing and asked more families what their “lists” looked like and what lessons they had learned.
My best advice to you is to look, not only at the potential for your family’s additions, but how those children will grow in size and needs. I would look at the history of the town/neighborhood you are thinking of living in and see how it has stood the test of time. I would pay attention to things like the quality of the public schools, public works, and overall satisfaction of the current residents. I would think about whether or not you will MOST LIKELY have the time, patience, and money to do major remodels while still paying for the routine upkeep of the home. I would consider the lot size, as well.

House hunting can be a lot of stress, but it can also be a fun, eye-opening experience if you know what you really want!

Good luck and God bless!

So glad you liked it!  Sorry, I forgot about the language, I was watching it by myself….I have not read the book.

We had all of our children present for the births of their siblings, and it was beautiful.  The main thing I would suggest is that you make sure they are thoroughly prepared for what will happen - especially mommy making funny noises (I’m a loud pusher) and making faces that look like she’s in horrible pain, but really are just working hard to push the baby out.  Also, that there will be blood, but it’s okay, and that the baby won’t look like what they probably think of when it’s first born.  It’s great that your sister is coming too - in fact necessary, because you want your husband to be concentrating on you and the baby.  I would also tell them (and her) that it’s okay if they want to leave or take a break if it gets too intense, and come back later.  Oh, and of course something to do while waiting during labor.  I just loved that my kids were able to kiss on their new brother or sister’s still-wet head and hold him or her right away!  Praying for a good delivery for you!

I am over 37 weeks…we will not be having our kiddos attending if possible, but it’s good to make make a plan.
Do you want them there (home, birth center, hospital) during all the stages of labor? Who do you want around during early labor? Would you be able to focus on labor etc? It’s great to have your sister there. Would you want her to bring them in when you are actually pushing? Could this possibly slow down your labor? These are questions I would ask myself if I had my kids with me. Preparing them for sounds, visuals, and what baby looks like is a great idea as someone mentioned. God Bless!

My children were present for their siblings’ births ( 11 children ~ 4-28 ages now). The prep you described sounds fine. They all have great memories of being there and can tell them how ‘they were there when…’.
I got little ‘gifts’ from the baby to be given while I was in labor… new color books/crayons, books, puzzles, etc. (I had very long labors, 8+ hrs.), so things to play/occupy them helped. Daddy usually planted new flowers with them while I was in early labor… Keep talking them through it. If they are tired, let them nap. My mom was usually present and between her and my husband, things went pretty smoothly for the kids.
Some were late night/early a.m. births..those were smoother because I put the younger ones down for regular bedtime and continued to labor. Then, before the birth, we’d wake them up. We’d have a little celebration, a prayer and a few songs and then, back to bed! Praying for a happy birth experience for all of you. Just go with what is working for you and don’t worry about changing your mind on anything. It’s all about you

Hi Cathy -

I don’t know much, but from what I understand that is not abnormal behavior for children/siblings those ages (9 and 12). Perhaps you could recommend she speak with a trusted family therapist/counselor to get a better gauge as to whether that behavior is normal/abnormal, common/uncommon and then use that information to decide what to do next? Or the kids themselves may be more comfortable sharing the exact details with a trusted adult who is not their parent, as I assume the details are important. Blessings on them!

From the minimal detail here, it doesn’t sound like abuse perpetrated by one on the other, just mutual curiosity (and, from your description, it also doesn’t sound like it was ongoing for months or years which would make a difference too).  She could ask her daughter if that general perception is correct without insisting on all the details; that might help with the anger/blaming toward her son but without making her daughter feel too embarrassed.  She might also ask if there is info that her daughter wants about growing up/sexuality/boundaries/etc so her daughter (and son, though from his dad) can feel they can get answers non-judgmentally from a reliable source, rather than feeling they have to resort to each other with questions. 
Also, please ignore the trolls until their deletion…

You lack charity.  Abusing someone and their choices will not convince them that you are right.  It will turn them off. Per your comment about not having degrees, I do have a college degree, as does my husband.  And my degree is a BA in English Lit with a concentration in Women’s Studies from a large, secular university. My kids have been to school, an excellent school, both academically and spiritually.  We chose to bring them home to educate because we like them.  We enjoy spending time with them and teaching them.  We both teach them because we have different strengths.  We have a very happy marriage and a very happy family.  My kids have friends at church, in the neighborhood and at our co-op.  We are not isolated in the least.  We are not afraid of the world.  We engage it. There is nothing to be afraid of, God created this world and Christ has conquered death, why worry? We live near a large city and take full advantage of all the learning opportunities at our local art museum, science museum, zoo, etc.  wherein we interact with many types of people from all walks of life.
As for your other judgmental comments on this website, my husband and I are both in great shape, eat right, exercise, are not in debt, and spend lots of time together.
So maybe it would be better to not paint with such a broad brush.  I’m sorry if homeschoolers have been mean to you.  Or maybe, like others in the education field, you feel threatened by the success of homeschooling.  I’ll pray for you that God opens your heart to love all people, not just those with whom you agree.

Although you obviously don’t like the straightforward way that anonfl states her case, her voice should not be stifled here.  It would do many of you some good to listen to her points.  If you all continue to be defensive, you will realize years later that this viewpoint that you tried to stifle, was indeed correct in many instances.  I hope that no one will delete her post this time.  It deserves consideration and just might help some people.  To the moderators of this forum, please do not censor anonfl’s post this time, as it contains food for thought for those who will read it.

Courtney, are you saying that if you came here asking about advice for a potential sibling molestation situation, you’d actually expect some of the responses to be “...Since it was the mother who was no there,  where was she?  Why weren’t they studying the Catechism over and over and over again? ...Sooner or later the truth is gonna come out and people are already laughing.”?

Really? Are you sure about that?

I’m not sure how long you’ve been reading Jeanne’s rants, but trust me, it’s beyond old and beyond sad.  Her remarks are not “straightforward”; they are hurtful and demented.

Arwen Moser wrote in one of her blogs that she held her babies arms down for ten seconds and she (?) hated it and finally stopped doing it . . . I have a 19 month old as well—#6 (she is the first to do this for me) and I have tried this and find that my daughter hates it so I think this will work . . . eventually.  Based on past experience with this age group I expect this will take 3-4 months to completely stop . . .oh joy!

Monica, when this happens around here I a) keep their fingernails very short and b) whisk them directly to their crib with an, “Ouch! That HURTS! No-no!” 
The scratcher usually proceeds to wail and scream for a few minutes, but it gives them a consequence and more importantly, gives me some breathing room to cool off & say a quick prayer.

Oh, Lynnea, I am so sorry and will keep you both very much in prayer.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of this practice or not, but they (thru the Holy Spirit, no doubt) have been instrumental in the resuscitation of countless “dead” marriages:
http://www.maritalhealing.com/divorcepreventionwebinar.php
I encourage you to watch the webinar, look around the site, and even contact them.  They do offer Skype video conferencing as an option.  God bless you.  Stay close to the sacraments and as often in a state of grace as you can.  Cling to our Eternal Bridegroom.