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Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Your Child at Play: Birth to One Year by Marilyn Segal

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Your Child at Play gives the basics of what to expect from your child developmentally as well as a variety of activites you can do with your child for each month of the first year. It includes hundreds of photos of babies and parents engaging in the suggested activities. It’s simply packed with ideas.

Published in 1998, it’s also super-outdated. The author recommends not a few activities and toys that are no longer recommended because of safety concerns.

I thought it was great. I collected dozens of activities from among the hundreds included and have used them with Tirzah Mae.

That said, I’m not sure whether other moms would find this helpful. My observation has been that many moms feel insecure in their ability to wade through the waters of “developmental appropriateness” and “child safety” and choose one of two ways of dealing with that. Either they choose an expert that they trust implicitly and follow everything that expert says to the T (Babywise or Dr. Sears devotees, anyone?) or they are just simply terrified of everything and parent by taboos (I can’t let my child out of my sight, my child should never encounter a string or ribbon, I can’t let my baby roll onto her tummy in her sleep, etc.)

This book would not be helpful to either type of parents. The terrified-of-everything parents will become terrified quickly and have nightmares of all the terrible things that could happen to parents who try stuff from this book. And the expert-trusting parents will have to endure the censure of terrified parents – and may put their child at risk if they leave him unsupervised to play with the toys made on the books recommendation (or to engage in the activities the book suggests.) On the other hand, it’s highly unlikely that a child could be hurt while engaging in these activities under supervision.

So, should you read this book?

Judge for yourself. Are you looking for ideas for activities to do with your infant? Do you have the time and energy to be discerning about which activities to try? Do you have easy access to this book via a library or can you find it cheaply at a used store? Then go for it.

If not, may I recommend Retro Baby by Anne Zachry? It’s got a lot of similar activity ideas, but is more up-to-date as far as safety recommendations go.

Rating: 3 stars
Category: Infant Play activities
Synopsis: A month-by-month listing of activities you can do with your baby in his first year of life
Recommendation: Lots of nice suggestions, but safety recommendations have changed since this is written, so parents will have to be discerning.

Categories Recap

Recap (2015/07/19)

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There’s no rule that a recap post has to be on a weekend, right? This was written on Saturday, but I hadn’t “finished” it so I didn’t post it. I still haven’t finished it (there are a few more books and some articles that caught my eye this week that won’t get shared) – but I figured that what’s here is still worth posting.

In my spirit:

  • Working on confessing sin and “plowing my heart” rather than just “moving past” situations I’ve become (or am becoming) bitter about
  • Nearing the end of my time in 2 Thessalonians and still no closer to having figured out what the “man of lawlessness” refers to – thank God that His word accomplishes His purposes without me having to understand it all!

In the living room:

  • I did the leg workout as I described last week (20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for three sets, separated by 5 minutes marching in place) – and I both kept my balance and could still breathe when I was done. Score! Next week, I think I’ll try 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off
  • I watched a television show BY MYSELF this week – The first episode of “Call the Midwife”. It was fun, but I’m not certain I’ll be repeating it – if I’m going to be doing nothing, I’d rather read a book.

In the kitchen:

  • Daniel couldn’t stop raving about this Thai curry (I used wax potatoes instead of sweet potatoes, upped the amount of snow peas, and skipped the Bok Choy. It was mild enough that I felt no qualms serving it to Tirzah Mae.)
  • We don’t cook for man’s applause – but this Herbed Ricotta Gnocchi will get you it nonetheless. I tried something different this time – made a double batch and froze half. We’ll see how the frozen gnocchi turns out.
  • Made this chicken cacciatore and wasn’t tremendously impressed – it was pretty watery and I wasn’t too fond of the texture of the chicken (which was probably my fault, since I didn’t completely thaw AND DRAIN the chicken before searing it.) Daniel did say that the mushrooms weren’t bad (high praise from someone who’s been telling me since we got married that mushrooms taste like dirt to him. He gave me permission to use them though, and after this he said something to the effect that I’d “trained him well” – they’re still daunting in large pieces like this recipe includes, but he doesn’t really mind the flavor anymore.)
  • I made both cornbread and zucchini bread with my sourdough starter this week – and both recipes turned out well. Hurray!

In the nursery:

  • Days are great, nights are terrible. Tirzah Mae is developing in leaps and bounds, with fun new experiences every day – but she’s back to waking every 1.5-2 hours at night. Her night waking’s are particularly difficult because I either have to walk her to exhaustion (hers – I’m already there) or take her back to bed with me (where she’ll nurse until I decide that I need some sleep and get up to walk her to exhaustion so she’ll sleep another hour and a half in her crib.)
  • We’ve been feeding her 6-8 oz of expressed breastmilk (with her Vitamin D in it) each evening – and she’s now drinking milk from her 22nd day of life. I pretty much stopped pumping and freezing after she came home, so we have only another two weeks or so worth of milk – then I’ll have to start nursing her before bed! (Now that the freezer is emptying, it’s ready for the hog that went to butcher this week!)

In the craft room:

  • I cut out a pom-pom maker, intending to make some multicolored yarn pom-poms for Tirzah Mae to play with in an old egg carton, but I haven’t yet gotten around to actually making the pom-poms

In the library:
aka “Books added to TBR list”

In the garden:

  • I’m LOVING doing cucumbers on a trellis, it’s so much easier to pick (and takes up so much less room.) My tomatoes (the semi-determinate Celebrities)? I think I’ll be trying cages (maybe like these ones) for them next year.
  • Starting to think a lot about what I’ll do the same and what I’ll do differently next year – and wondering how much get-up-and-go I’ll actually have to garden next year when I’ll be settling from a move.

On the land:

  • We signed a contract with our builder – so now we’re in the process of getting our construction loan (where, among other things, they determine how much they think the home we plan to build will be worth on the market vs. how much we’ll be paying to build it.)
  • The removal of the trailer left behind some miscellaneous rubble – cinder blocks, broken cinder blocks, metal sheeting, and bits of lumber. We spent Saturday afternoon cleaning it up and figuring out what we’ll be doing with it (I’ve already called dibs on the cinder blocks for my next raised bed, and on the broken cinder blocks to prevent erosion in the wee ditch/stream that flows through the back corner of our lot.)
Categories Reading My Library

Arthur’s Mean [Fill-in-the-blank]

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“Oh, I love the Arthur books,” the new check-out girl at the library raved. “They’re such fun!”

I smiled politely and remained silent as she checked out my monthly half-dozen children’s picture books.

I am at that point in my read-every-book challenge where I’m yet again reading a massive children’s picture book series that I don’t particularly like.

This time, it’s Marc Brown’s Arthur.

Apart from the fact that it’s a massive series and that it’s repetitive and that the stories aren’t particularly interesting, what bugs me about Marc Brown’s Arthur series is how many meanies there are.

Almost every book includes some form of sibling rivalry, classroom taunting, or other mild bullying (although I fear to use that word, given the current anti-bullying craze.)

I understand the point. Teasing happens. Bullying happens. Brown wants to portray child life as it is, give children something to identify with. Furthermore, he probably wants kids to develop empathy with Arthur (frequently the recipient of the teasing) and hopefully to learn that it isn’t nice to bully and taunt. All understandable and noble goals.

But, while I can’t remember exactly where I read it (maybe Nurture Shock?), I remember reading that such attempts generally backfire. Rather than producing empathy and encouraging children to avoid taunting, hearing stories about children being teased only adds to a child’s arsenal of ways to pick on other children. Children don’t come up with “four-eyes” on their own – they hear it on a television show or read about it in Arthur’s Eyes. And when they hear about it, they don’t file it away as “something I wouldn’t like to be called” – they file it away as “something to throw at my glasses-wearing-classmate next time I feel like being superior.”

So what kind of stories would I prefer?

I’d prefer stories that focus on kids banding together to overcome obstacles and fight real bad guys – bad guys so scary they’d never want to be them. I prefer the fairy tale version of life, where children must be smart and slay dragons instead of each other.

What do you think of Arthur? Do you have any favorite children’s picture book series?

Categories Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday: Gardens

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I’ve been gardening for a few years now, with nominal success. I’ve started slow, trying to learn to be faithful in little – and, by God’s grace, the garden has gotten better and better each year. This year is the best yet. Today, I am so thankful for my garden and for others’ gardens, for the grace of God in worked soil and fruitful plants.

This week I’m thankful…

…for a chance to reflect
I’ve never been a super intentional gardener, but I took some time after weeding this week to make some notes on what worked and what hasn’t worked with the garden this year (to help me with planning future gardens). I’m glad to be slowly growing as a gardener.

…for broccoli still going strong
Did I mention that my broccoli is still going? My mom always got rid of her plants before now (even farther north.) I’m not sure if that’s because they wouldn’t produce or just because it was too much work to keep up with harvesting, but I’m delighting in fresh broccoli in July! We had some in our stir fry this last week.

…for zucchini and potatoes
A friend from church had received some produce from another churchgoer’s garden when the friend was hosting ministry partners in her home – when the ministry partners left, she had an excess of zucchini and new potatoes, so she passed them on to me. We enjoyed the potatoes in a curry a couple nights ago and had fresh zucchini last night! (I didn’t plant zucchini this year because my plants died off right after their first fruit the last couple of years – I figure my soil must have something icky in it or else I’ve got bugs. I’ll try again next year when we’ve moved.)

…for another try with the beans
When I took the dehumidifier water out to water the garden yesterday, I noted that the beans are flowering again – I’m hopeful that this time they’ll actually produce.

…for a new garden bed
Now that building is about to commence (and we’ll be moved before the next garden season), I’ve been thinking about my garden out on the land. I know I want to move my current raised bed out there (It’s very useful to me and I doubt anyone who buys our house will be particularly interested in a 4′ x 8′ concrete block raised bed!) But I also want to expand to two beds next year. The only problem is that it does cost some to assemble, and I really want to avoid excess spending while we’re in the building process. I was thrilled, when I went out to the land to assess what was left behind after the trailer was moved, to discover 49 cinder blocks that the trailer had been sitting on – 9 more than I need for a second raised bed!

…for a reminder to break up my fallow ground
Barbara reposted an a blog post she’d written about fallow hearts yesterday – and it was just what I needed. As I read, I realized that I’d been letting bitterness harden my heart – and had been focusing on “getting past it” instead of on confessing it and rooting it out. God used Barbara’s post to spur me to finally start to deal with my heart – so that God’s word can grow and bear fruit in my life.

Even as I improve as a gardener in earthly soil, may my heart’s soil become ever more receptive to the planting of the Lord.

Categories Parenting

The day I bottle-fed in public

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The plan was that she would drink her bottle on the way over to our missions pastor’s house, she’d fall asleep in her car seat, and then we’d set her car seat in some remote corner at their house while we visited with our mission’s care team.

Instead, she refused the bottle, stayed stubbornly awake for the drive, and spent the entire visit (all of which was after her normal bedtime) climbing around on the floor where we sat.

Well, except when she grew hungry and I pulled the bottle out of my purse to feed her with.

I know our missions pastor’s wife breastfed – her daughter got fussy while we were visiting during a new person welcome function when Daniel and I were new at the church, and she and I talked a bit about breastfeeding. Our missionary had been breastfeeding her sweet daughter as we all talked. She’d mentioned wanting to maybe learn more about maternal/child health so she could help the women she worked with – and mentioned breastfeeding specifically as part of that.

And I just pulled a bottle out of my purse.

I’m not usually self-conscious about my mothering – Daniel and I have been entrusted with the care of our daughter, and we’re caring for her as we know best. I don’t obsess over what anyone else thinks about that. I’m pretty confident that I’m doing the right thing – and I don’t need validation from others to give me that confidence.

Until I pulled a bottle out of my purse.

At that moment, I worried what these people would think. I’m a bottle-feeding mom. I don’t value breastfeeding. I don’t understand its importance. I’d just told one of the other women that I’d been a WIC dietitian before Tirzah Mae was born – would she think WIC wasn’t pro-breastfeeding?

I stuck the nipple in Tirzah Mae’s mouth and she sucked it down like the bottle-feeding pro she is.

No one mentioned it.

I wanted to defend myself, to interject that Tirzah Mae was getting expressed breastmilk. Could I somehow work the fact that I still have breastmilk from Tirzah Mae’s hospitalization in my freezer into the conversation? There was no opportunity. No need, really. But I wanted to defend myself from what I feared the other women were thinking.

Everyone’s eyes were closed to pray when Tirzah Mae grew fussy again. I stood and we walked to the side of the room to breastfeed. She calmed down and I returned my blouse to normal. Someone closed the prayer time and everyone’s eyes opened again.

It’s the first time I’ve ever bottle-fed in public.

Categories Theology

God’s Justice (2 Thessalonians 1:5-10)

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“This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.”

~2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 (ESV)

What does God consider just?

God considers it just to repay persecuters with affliction and to grant relief to the persecuted.

When will God repay the persecuters and grant relief to the persecuted?

God will repay the persecuters and grant relief to the persecuted when Christ Jesus returns.

How will God repay the persecuters?

The persecuters will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might.

How will God grant relief to the persecuted?

The persecuted will be relieved as Christ is glorified in His saints and as Christ is marveled at among all who have believed.

I look at injustices and cry out for immediate judgement.

Make the wrongdoer’s pay. Make the victims restitution. Justice must be served.

Now.

That’s what I say.

God considers it just to wait to judge until Christ has returned.

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servantsand their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”

~Revelation 6:9-11 (ESV)

It can’t be right, waiting to judge.

But all God does is right. He is just to wait to judge.

“But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

~2 Peter 3:7 (ESV)

God is not slow. He is patient.

He is not unjust. He is merciful.

When His judgment comes, it is final. When His relief comes, it is sublime.

He is willing to wait, chooses to wait so that relief may come to as many as are called.

Categories Recap

Recap (2015/07/11)

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In my spirit:

  • Contemplating God’s justice in 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10
  • Praying for us, “that our God may make [us] worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in [us], and [we] in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12)
  • Praying for our missionaries, “that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored” and “that [they] may be delivered from wicked and evil men” (2 Thessalonians 3:1-2)

In the living room:

  • I decided to try something new with my workouts this week – doing HIIT for different body parts instead of my previous 12 reps of various exercises divided by marching in place – and it is KILLING me.
  • More specifically, this leg workout almost killed me. It recommended 1 minute of each exercise, so I did so with a 30 second “rest” (marching) period after each minute of exercise – and got to the fifth exercise before I couldn’t breathe and my legs were too jelly to keep my balance. I’ll be trying 20 second “on” and 10 second “off” intervals next time – and will take my inhaler before I start. This one appears to be a workout you need to work yourself into!

In the kitchen:

  • We had leftover Spaghetti with Szechuan Chicken and Peanut Sauce earlier this week – I found the recipe in the Good Housekeeping Budget Dinners cookbook, and it’s a definite keeper. I found several decent recipes in that particular cookbook.
  • We’ve been eating and loving this lasagna soup – I used sausage instead of ground pork and farfalle (bow tie pasta) instead of broken lasagna noodles. I’ve done this before but hadn’t noticed how salty it is (probably because of the sausage – ALDIs sausage is quite salty); next time, I’ll skip the salt.
  • I was busy drafting an email yesterday afternoon and lost track of time – was just messaging Daniel to ask him if I should make dinner late or have him pick something up when the power went out, deciding it for us. The power wasn’t out terribly long (20 minutes, maybe?), but the pizza I didn’t make was delicious :-)

In the nursery:

  • Remember how I said Tirzah Mae can’t move forward? She seems determined to prove me wrong by army crawling almost everywhere.
  • I’ve been noticing how extroverted Tirzah Mae seems. She just lights up when we go out in public and when the world showers attention on her.

In the craft room:

  • I made Tirzah Mae a simple glitter bottle this morning after she spent a while rolling my Nalgene across the floor. So far, her favorite thing to do with it is to knock it off the ledge of the bathtub into my bathwater.

In the library:
aka “Books added to TBR list”

In the garden:

  • It looked like I was going to have beans, but while they flowered, they haven’t set on pods. Bummer.
  • On the other hand, my tomatoes are setting on nicely and I’m starting to see little cucumbers.
  • It’s been cool/rainy enough between hot spells that my broccoli is still putting on side shoots (although they do bolt rather quickly.) I might be able to carry these same plants all the way through fall.

On the land:

  • The trailer is off our land – so we’re ready to start digging as soon as permits are pulled!
  • We’ve just about got the septic permit and our builder is pulling the rest of the permits – which means we’ll probably be set to break ground first week in August (Ay-yi!)

On the web:

Categories Books

Puzzling over True Love

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A sibling bought me a Thomas Kincade puzzle for Christmas one year. It was a 1000 piece puzzle depicting scenes from “Gone with the Wind”.

Daniel and I started working on the puzzle earlier this year when I complained that we were defaulting to the television for our time together.

We worked on the puzzle a couple evenings, and it’s been on the living room table ever since – slowly being buried under mail, then uncovered, then buried again, then uncovered. I’ve worked on it intermittently, but it’s taken much longer than my usual cheapo 500 piece puzzles from the dollar store.

Well, I finally finished it this week.

And am I glad I did – because until it was finished and put away, I couldn’t keep my mind from puzzling over the little note from the artist on the back of the box.

Kincade wrote:

“My painting is populated with favorite film characters and rendered in small cinematic vignettes designed to capture all the drama and nostalgia of this Hollywood spectacular. I truly hope this painting delights all fans of GONE WITH THE WIND. Beyond this, I pray it reminds us all that true love does exist.”

That last part gets me. I don’t get it.

How does Gone with the Wind remind us that true love exists?

I think back over when I read it a few years back, puzzling over each dysfunctional relationship. Scarlett and Ashley. Melanie and Ashley. Scarlett and Charles. Scarlett and Frank. Scarlett and Rhett.

But surely Kincade doesn’t think Scarlett and Rhett embody true love?

The only potential example of true love I can see in Gone with the Wind is Scarlett’s love for herself.

Unless the movie is that different from the book.

Categories Education

Making Connections

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Unit studies were all the rage when I was reading about homeschooling in my mid-teens. Monthly themes governed every subject in the homeschooling curriculum.

A unit study on bugs would have children reading about bugs, catching bugs, counting bugs, exploring the bug ecosystem, learning about how bugs are used in different cultures or throughout history. Bug art would abound.

If mom didn’t have the time, energy, or creativity to come up with her own unit study, websites and books offered an abundance of options.

Learning like this is more natural, the unit study people declared.

I wished I could jump on the bandwagon, but it was unfortunately too difficult for me to figure out how to connect bugs to calculus.

It wouldn’t be long before a radical old approach became popular, thanks to Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind. This new approach was much more systematic than either the unit study approach or the traditional school approach (at least as far as social studies is concerned).

Wise and Wise Bauer’s brand of classical education focused on a four year cycle for both history and science – strictly (for history) and loosely (for science) following the progression of historical thought through the ages.

The Well-Trained Mind gave an example of how students make connections, even when their mothers don’t plan in such a way as to make the connections explicit. They used “Mars” as an example. A student might learn the mythology of Mars when studying the Roman Empire and later learn about the planet Mars (red with blood, like the warlike god). Likewise, he will learn about the martial arts and will trace the term “martial” back to the god of war. Each bit of knowledge becomes a hook upon which other pieces of knowledge (from disparate disciplines) are hung.

When I read this example, I nodded my head. Sure, I acknowledged that was probably true. It’s like when you get a new car and suddenly see that make and model all over the road. It’s not that those cars weren’t already there, it’s just that you became more aware of them.

But apart from my car example, I couldn’t really think of a time when I’d had “hooks” to hang new information on.

Then my husband and I checked out Tom Reiss’s The Black Count to listen to during our fourth of July travels. The Black Count tells the story of the novelist Alexandre Dumas’ father (also named Alexandre Dumas), a general during the French Revolution.

Now, until a year ago, what little I knew of the French Revolution came from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (not a bad read by any means, but certainly not a comprehensive introduction to the Revolution.) But last year, that changed when Daniel and I started listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions Podcast. We listened as Duncan gave a history of the English Revolution, and then the American Revolution, and then the French (he’s not done with the French Revolution yet – and I haven’t listened past the first dozen or so podcasts on the French Revolution.) As we listened, I’ll admit that my eyes sometimes glazed over and my mind started wandering. So much was so unfamiliar – the names, the events, the political bodies.

But as we listened to The Black Count, something strange happened. I started hearing the names, the political bodies, the events I’d heard before. And I listened more carefully this time around. It picqued my curiosity to read more, to relisten, to become more familiar with the French Revolution.

I thought of the differences between unit studies and a more systematic approach as I listened.

While Daniel and I were listening to one podcast after another after another of Duncan’s Revolutions, I got worn out with the topic. If I’d have been listening to The Black Count concurrently, I likely would have ignored the parts about the French Revolution, thinking I’d heard it before.

But, listening to it several months later, I was able to see the Revolution through fresh eyes, able to enjoy it, able to pass through again to impress the events more deeply upon my own memory.

I feel that there must be application to how I choose to homeschool someday, but I’m not sure exactly what it is.

I’m still rather enamored with the Bauer and Wise Bauer approach to history studies. I still rather enjoy immersing myself in a topic every once in a while. But I think this has reminded me that connections can be anywhere – and that it’s okay to let them arise naturally.

I don’t have to beat my children (or myself) over the head with learning. I have to make plenty of good books, good audiovisual learning opportunities (like Duncan’s podcasts!), good educational experiences available to my children.

They will make connections – even if it takes them until they’re 30 to start recognizing it.

Categories Everyday Life

Driving lessons: Six lane highways

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Complaining about other peoples’ driving, like complaining about the weather, seems to be ubiquitous to the human condition (at least in the modern age).

Everyone thinks that they understand the rules of driving and the conventions of traffic, and that they drive in the most common-sense way. If only everyone else drove like them, traffic would flow smoothly.

I am no exception.

Now, let me clarify. My husband and I are what you could call aggressive drivers (which is not the same thing as bad drivers, family-of-mine). I am aware that not all people have the, er, gonads to drive like we do. They are easily frightened by changing lanes or taking left turns.

Other people drive differently than we because they have different levels of experience. Many residents of our hometown, Lincoln Nebraska, have no reason to regularly drive a six lane highway. It makes sense that they would have a lower level of comfort as well as a lower level of understanding of how to properly drive on a six-lane highway.

But Wichitans, who drive on a six lane highway on a daily (or at least weekly) basis, should have a basic understanding of how to drive when they have three lanes all going the same direction.

Alas, they do not.

In case you were taught by a Wichitan, or were never taught, how to drive on a six-lane highway, allow me to educate you.

A six-lane highway has three lanes going in each direction. Each of those lanes has a different function.

It would behoove you to think of the outermost lane as the “merging” lane, the middle lane as the “driving” lane, and the innermost lane as the “passing” lane.

Functionally, this means that you should only be in the outermost lane if you are getting onto or off of the highway. You merge onto this lane when you enter the highway, after which you should be looking for the first opportunity to move into the middle “driving” lane. When you want to get off the highway, you merge back from the middle lane into the outermost lane and then to your off-ramp. Getting into the “merging” lane should happen no more than 2 exits from your off ramp. Ideally, you should never pass more than one exit at a time in the outer lane.

Why is this?

Lots of people are getting onto and off of the highway at any given exit. They HAVE to travel through the outermost lane to drive on the highway. If someone is just hanging out in this outermost lane, access onto and off of the highway is impeded, resulting in traffic snarls on and off the highway.

The innermost lane should be reserved for passing and should only be used if you are going faster than the traffic in the center lane. It amazes me that people don’t understand this particular convention.

If you are going at the same speed or more slowly than the driver to your right, that means that anyone who comes up behind you is forced to either slow down or to switch into the (already busy by necessity) outermost lane in order to pass. The more people that are popping in and out of that outermost lane, the more likely it will be for accidents to occur. So, to keep traffic moving and to avoid dangerous snarls, you should only drive in the innermost lane if you are going faster than the traffic in the middle “driving” lane (and if someone comes up behind you going faster than you? You should move into the middle “driving” lane to allow them to pass before moving back to the innermost “passing” lane to pass those who are going even slower in the “driving” lane.)

THAT, my friends, is how you should drive on a six-lane highway.