I’ve got to tell you… we’re having a hard time over here. I’m really struggling. What happened to my sweet, compliant Gamma? In his place is this moody teenager, trapped inside a five year old body. And what happened to the endless patience I used to possess? He’s sullen and rebellious, I’m bitchy and short-tempered and…. well, Alpha may or may not have called me a harpie tonight. And he may or may not have been kidding.
All my well-laid plans and schedules seem laughable at this point. I’ve actually seriously considered the local public schools once more. Are they really as bad an option as we thought? (yes) What about the local Catholic schools, which are purported to be stronger academically? Could we abide having our kids indoctrinated, and just do some un-indoctrinating at home? (no, obviously) Obviously, I was just being a wee bit melodramatic when I started talking public school — it’s not a good fit for our family and we’ve always known that.
But, somehow… somehow I always thought we’d just segue naturally into homeschooling. Gamma’s curious by nature; I love to research and learn new things. He and I are extremely close. I knew he wouldn’t be the sit-and-fill-in-workbooks kid that I was, but I thought I had accounted for that. Apparently I don’t understand his personality and learning styles nearly as well as I thought I did.
(And how the hell do you figure out the learning styles of a 5 year old, anyway? Why are all the tests to figure out your learning style geared for those who have already completed the crux of their learning??)
I like to think this is the norm — that all new homeschoolers experience this uncertainty, and have to re-evaluate as they go. The dreaded term “unschooling” has popped up a few times in the last few days, all met with an immediate negative shake of the head from Alpha. There is great value, he says, in formal knowledge and structured lessons. I agree, for what it’s worth. I just don’t know that they are of value to a five year old, or even a ten year old. To a fifteen year old, pursuing the path they desire in life, I think formal, structured lessons are well-advised. But to my kindergartner… I think close family relationships and pursuing your interest of the day are more beneficial.
If I choose to pursue unschooling (please, someone, give me a less-volatile title for this concept!), I may be soothing one relationship (mother and son) but irritating another (husband and wife). I’m uncertain in which direction to proceed. Do I keep going, and eventually bend my child’s will to my own? Or follow his? In which case, bending my own? And what lesson does that send?
Tomorrow… tomorrow we are making cookies, and dog food (home-roasted turkey, rice, and veg — nothing but the best for our Border Collie/mutt), and perhaps making a trip to the library to look for crochet books for me, and Wii games for loan, and whatever perks the interest of my boys. Tomorrow we are taking a break. A break from the fighting, and the nagging, and the 5 year old pretending he can’t spell “not” in his phonics program, but completely able to sound out “La Flûte Enchantée” and figure out that was French for “The Magic Flute” and beg to go to it because he loves the music.
JJ, please move to Belgium and be my best friend for a year and help me figure out how to do this!! Because the only homeschool support here is unabashedly christian (good for them; if you’re going to take a stand, take it unabashedly), and I find myself completely on my own.
13 comments ↓
Oh dear. (Wouldn’t I lOVE to move in as a consultant though!) I have much, much I’m thinking but no time this minute. First thing that might help (you at least, if no one else) is to go talk with Colleen? Tell her I sent you and it’s her turn to pay it forward
Colleens blog (go back to the earliest posts and read comments as you go, see if it helps you put some questions together in your mind to ask her about, maybe?)
I’ll be back soon, promise . . .
Messed up link, try this.
You wrote, “If I choose to pursue unschooling (please, someone, give me a less-volatile title for this concept!)…”
Here in Australia, the term “homeschooling” or “home education” is used and what would be “unschooling” in America is regarded simply as homeschooling or home education of a particular, more radical style. In the UK, it’s usually referred to as “autonomous education”.
I have a 14 year old son who has been “self-educated” since he quit school at the age of seven and has since been “learning immersively at the speed of thought” in a totally free unstructured environment. But not learning alone. It’s a shared adventure. And, as I’ve found, an absence of structure is not the same as an absence of intention. The intention that my son has “a good education” – whatever that turns out to be – has always been there to guide my thinking with regard to what I might suggest or recommend. Or not, as the case may be. I think the absence of intention I see in some people’s perception of “unschooling” is a concern.
You might find this article of interest:
I’m Radical, But Definitely NOT a Radical Unschooler; I’m Not Even an Unschooler
by Tammy Takahashi
http://www.justenoughblog.com/?p=1631
And more for Alpha, do you know Rolfe Schmidt’s blog? It’s not active right now because Rolfe is back in school finishing his math/computer science doctorate, but he had three precocious preschool-aged boys when he started blogging and he thought he would “homeschool” them in math and science.
He quickly figured out how much more deeply and happily they learned everything, if he treated them like valued and fascinating scholastic colleagues (ever see the tv show Numbers e.g.?) rather than little kid pupil pets, given homework hoops to jump through to please daddy and get some dessert.
Now he’s happier too, and math-science mean much more to him, which is why he’s ready to go back to grad school a different man:
Numbers are Nouns, Right?
Teaching a one-year-old
Or Alpha might like more science ideas for young boys: Not Your Mother’s Physics Book!
Again, maybe start back at Rolfe’s earliest posts to see his math-science unschooling evolve (Alpha could think of it as academic mentoring, if he ever had a favorite professor who treated him that way? I sure did) — but here’s a late one with links to several as a round-up:
Math for Young Kids
And he even started his own separate math blog
Rolfe wrote an essay for one of our Thinking Parent prompts, about what he’d be doing if he’d never had kids:
JJ — thanks for the links! I stumbled across Colleen’s blog yesterday on my own, and am now reading through her blog post by post.
Rolfe’s blog is a great find — I think you linked to that once before for Alpha and me. Another one to read through post by post.
Bob — thanks for stopping by. I love your description of your son’s education process. Thanks for the link and the advice.
Just dug this up too:
Raising children with a wild, inventive streak so they’ll be fit for college
Stop me anytime but here’s a comment I offered in an intense thread at Colleen’s:
I am older than the 51-year-old mom commenting above about how much she knows and how therefore she should lay down the and the limits for the young, because she knows so much. Made me laugh thinking that the real secret to being older and wiser is knowing better than THAT!
I study power of story. We in our unschooling are all about power of story.
For example, “free reign” struck me as an idea we could examine in this context. It might seem a small thing but embedd[ed] in its story are beliefs about the very Nature of Man.
First, the usual spelling is “free rein” which literally means — nothing like unschooling! — to take a systematically broken, trained, gussied, harnessed and bit-wearing beast of burden and just temporarily loose the master’s driving hand on the reins.
“Giving the horse his head” in this way is certainly not anything like actual freedom and sovereignty. The master is in complete control of the whole relationship and will withdraw the limited moment of so generously allowing the horse to have its own head.
It’s more like closely supervised recess at compulsory school, for about 20 minutes if the boy is lucky.
So a horse’s half hour of “free rein” doesn’t happen until the horse has been thoroughly schooled, is no real form of freedom or self-determination, and literally doesn’t even take place between members of the same species! — it is a subjugating relationship, much like forms of human employment used to be.
Certainly not natural, free, powerful, wild, autonomous, and certainly nothing like unschooling.
On top of which, I marvel at this contemporary alternate use “free reign” racheting up our culture’s unexamined assumptions about the imperative to control kids like animals, lest they “run roughshod” (another domesticated horsey metaphor) over parents and teachers and society.
A child with “free rein” used to be a worrisome enough implication, a cautionary tale against permissiveness — but now the fear is darker yet, a sovereign child! Ill-equipped yet with free REIGN! Ruling not just himself but his home and family, a child king, dictating by whim, a destructive reign for the whole kingdom and himself. It’s a world gone mad!
(Historically there actually was a Mad King, come to think of it, King Ludwig, wonder if that all gets mixed into the power of this child-control story somehow, too?)
Oh, just thought of another great blog. Academic mom, former high school teacher I think, one daughter, productively and joyfully unschooling — even through a year a year in Paris, I think. Mom’s name is Holly, daughter is Lucia.
Unschool Days
Shoot –
Unschool Days
I consider our homeschool an unschool, but we still have structure. We have daily routines with housework, reading, and earned privileges. Ours is a different sort of school though than many. I read a lot of blogs and they have daily postings of projects, lessons, field trips, and more. Along the way, I realized I have to work with the kids I have. Mine aren’t the type to get into those things, at least not my son. The girls are too young anyway. So while I wish I could do all the neat things I read about, the truth is what we do works for us and it looks nothing like ’school’. My husband is supportive, I don’t discuss it with my family
Sarah — thanks for the encouragement. I, too, look at all the projects other people are doing and wish he/I were more motivated/inspired/creative/school-y. Regardless of which direction we take with our homeschool, that’s something I’m going to have to work on. I like your statement — “I have to work with the kids I have.” And with the person I am, I have to add.
[...] a comment from my most recent cry for help, JJ quotes from one of her own past posts (a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote, I [...]
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