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Describe the last birthday party you attended (yours or someone else’s).
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Archive for September, 2013
Friday Freewrite: Birthday
For single parent homeschoolers and their friends
Image by Henry Scott
It’s hard enough to home educate when you have a partner who supports you, runs to the grocery store, and earns the primary income.
It’s a whole other level of commitment to home educate when you are on your own—through divorce, due to the untimely death of your partner, or because you never married to begin with.
Homeschoolers are typically found in two parent families because one is required to earn the money so the other can stay home. Eliminate the wage-earner, and most kids wind up in school while the single parent works. (It’s at those moments that single parents feel grateful for that state-funded option, too, and rightfully so.)
My goal in this little update is to give support to those parents (most often mothers) who want to sustain their homeschooling commitment, while working and parenting on their own. I have a little advice for the friends of those parents, too.
For single parent home educators:
You’re okay. You aren’t sub-standard nor are you “not quite as good” as your married friends. You are on your own (un-partnered) for good reason or a reason you couldn’t control. This is the right life for you, right now. You are just as able to raise healthy, emotionally grounded, well-educated kids as the next married person. In fact, in some cases, the fact of being alone has introduced peace and health, or closure to a long struggle. Your family now has a chance to relax, to be, to find their footing and a new way. Relish it. Home education is a wonderful space to grieve, and draw close to each other, too. Consider yourself fortunate that you can keep that going.
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to homeschool. The library, museums, co-ops, borrowing hand-me-down curriculum, used book sales, and your own ingenuity can go a long way in home education. Be careful not to envy “four color school texts.” You can do a lot with a little.
You can’t do everything alone, but neither can your married, partnered friends. You all need each other. Be in a support group or a co-op or some kind of online community where you can vent, ask questions, and share your needs. Pick a non-judgmental group. You need support, not scrutiny.
Your business is your business. You don’t owe explanations or details of how you came to be single to anyone, particularly the casually curious. Protect yourself from unneeded gossip.
Take care of you. You will need adult attention. Date, go out with girlfriends, take personal days for yourself. Hire a babysitter, or swap with a friend who would love you to watch her kids free-of-charge. You need to remember what it is to be an adult woman, not just a mother, homemaker, and educator. It will help you in the long run, and your kids want to see you thrive, not be a martyr.
You don’t have to homeschool “better than Jesus” to offset whatever awful thing happened in your family. You get to do your best job, like everyone else, and trust that that is enough. It is not up to you to lay on healing hands. Your job is to love your kids, and educate them. Same as everyone else.
My California-born advice is: get therapy for everyone. Do it in rotations, if you can’t afford it. Or join a twelve-step group, or divorce recovery, or a grief support group. This stuff really helps all of you (all of us!) to recover and grow.
If you work from home, hire a babysitter for some of those hours so there are times when you are working (clear to everyone) and your kids are still tended to. This matters. If you work outside the home, homeschool when you are home. Even if it’s at nighttime and on the weekends. It’s tough to expect kids to monitor themselves every day, all day, all the time. You are essential to your homeschool.
Make sure homeschooling is working for all of you. It’s okay to reevaluate, or to have some kids go to school and some stay home. Take it a year at a time, a child at a time.
For the friends of single parents:
Affirm the new life your friend is embracing. Remind her of all the wonderful opportunities that come with this (wanted or unwanted) freedom/change.
Help her out! If she needs someone to drive with her to the mechanic so she isn’t stuck there for three hours, that’s a big help! One adult in the home means that there isn’t that second person for things like two different kids at two different sports’ practices at the same time, or taking one kid to get stitches while someone watches the other four. Offer to be that middle of the night friend she can call any time.
Share your materials! Give her the stuff you aren’t using, share stuff (she can teach with you or you can swap lessons for one subject). If you’ve got money, buy something for her (a second of what you’re buying). It’s amazing how helpful/inspiring that can be.
Go out together to a movie or for dinner. Get her out of the house.
The best thing you can do for the single person is to see that person as whole, and his or her family as a family (not as a broken family). It’s awful to feel like a second-class citizen in the world of homeschooling. A well family isn’t necessarily a two-parent family. After all, there are plenty of dysfunctional married couples and families out there. A single-parent family deserves the same faith that it can be wonderful as a two-parent family.
A final word from me: Single parents are important to me. I love to help them, in particular. Feel free to contact me with the specifics of your situation, and I’ll help you in any way I can.
Cross-posted on facebook.
Plan space and time
In all your planning, plan space without plans; plan time without agenda.
Leave open time.
Allow empty space.
“Waste time” after you finish one activity before rushing into the next one.
A little mindful neglect is a good thing. Choose not to supervise so closely. Choose not to be responsible to stimulate everyone.
Do not worry about squandering the sunshine or the afternoon or the toddler’s nap.
If you unschool, back away from your auto-didact. Don’t hover to prove to yourself that learning is happening.
If you are met with pleas for something to do…
If your children get restless and frustrated with space and time, move to the outdoors. Let the big universe supervise and entertain. Go with them.
You might try the “do nothing” stance with them. Try this:
Get under the sky—where you can see it.
Everyone, stand with feet shoulders width apart.
Let your arms dangle next to your body until they feel as though they are light and floaty. Rotate your shoulders a couple of times to relax the upper body.
Imagine roots going out of your feet into the earth, like a tall tall tree. If you have a tree in your yard, stand beneath it.
Then inhale deeply. Close your eyes and slowly exhale. Once you feel rooted to the ground, look into the sky and imagine the big expanse of the universe surrounding you. Know that you are connected to it, belong in it, that you are moving through it.
Small kids (who will not want to stand still!) can wriggle their bodies, stretch their arms over their heads swaying back and forth like branches in the wind, can jump in place, can shout.
Let each person take that moment to ground themselves, and then allow for space—time. Everyone can go on with the day as they choose for a little while…until the recharge is complete (whatever that looks like).
If your kids are squirrelly and you are anxious, if you are all racing from one thing to the next, know that you might have forgotten to plan for down time, for nothing time, for no agenda whatsoever.
In that space, one child might play a video game. Another might listen to music. Another still might bake pumpkin whoopie pies! Let the space generate an unplanned enjoyable activity and validate to yourself that this, too, is all a part of your homeschool.
Deep breath. Slow exhale. Ahhhhh. Hmmm. That feels good. I’m going to sip my instant coffee with cream now and follow my own advice.
How the Mouse Got Its Squeak
We are so proud of the work our student’s do! The following imaginative tale was penned by Brave Writer, Keira, during a Just So Stories class and was inspired by the great Rudyard Kipling. Enjoy!
How the Mouse Got Its Squeak
by Keira Burnet (13)
Once upon a time (just like every good story should start) in a diner where the music was fresh and the dancing was hip; in a time when your grandfather’s moves were still groovy, there lived a dashing young mouse named Charming.
Now Charming was a magnificent mouse and he knew it. He used to boast about how he had the most fabulous fluffy fur, the biggest boldest eyes, the most terrific untarnished teeth but the thing he was most proud of, was his divine deep tone. He was very fond of his velvety voice. He used to talk just for the sake of it. Just to hear himself say words like “swank,” “swarve,” “trousers,” and “tabasco.”
If you were sitting in the diner in booth number five on a flat-out Friday evening (many years ago), you may have heard a faint, yet deep rich voice coming from behind your left checkered winkle picker.
“What I am asking you to understand is quite simply simple. Your poor pitiful pathetic voice is wavering, weak and pitchy. It offends my elegant ears.”
Which was then followed by silence, as the bewildered bug had no come back.
If you were sitting on a barstool on a mellow Monday morning, sipping a marvelously massive mouthwatering malty milkshake (many years ago), you may have heard a faint, yet deep rich voice coming from behind the cold drinks counter.
“I really must concur that your fur is hardly fabulous, it is more rough like a rug. It irritates my intensely incandescent eyes and renders them dreary and daft………… Actually, just like yours!”
Which was then followed by silence, as the rueful rat had no reply.
If you were jiving by the jukebox on a swinging Saturday night (many years ago), you may have heard a faint, yet deep rich voice coming from behind the curtains, sitting on the windowsill.
“I am amazed that a cat of such vanity would have terribly tarnished teeth. They are quite conspicuously crooked and coffee stained. Your fiercely fishy breath stupefies my sensitive sniffer.
Which was not followed by silence as the cunning cat had a curt comeback. “Cool it Clyde, chill your chat. The word from the bird is that you need to cut the gas or you might lose that deep tone that you are so fond of.”
(The cunning cat just so happened to know that mice have a limited number of words to use in their life before they run out.)
But that was followed by a smart, quick-witted comment by Charming. “You’re just jealous of my beautiful glow and deep rich tone.”
“Careful Clyde, you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’.”
Now Charming had got himself into some dangerous situations when telling animals like cockroaches to ‘take a shower’ and telling alley rats ‘I’m not afraid of you, you’re just an oversized mouse with bad breath and a temper like a Rhino’.
You would think that these incessantly insulting comments would lead to some serious consequences for Charming but with his silver tongue he smooth talked himself out of each situation.
Everyone was getting tired of Charming and his constant criticism. The lady who ran the diner owned the cool and cunning cat. He generally liked to keep to himself but with the constant complaining everyone had been doing about Charming, the cunning cat found it very hard to sleep. He thought he might fix the problem by himself; and it went a little like this:
One day Charming found himself nervously negotiating his way out of becoming the cunning cats dinner, having told the cunning cat he should brush his tarnished teeth yet again, (that is a very touchy subject for a cat). Now, this remarkably rude statement overly offended the cunning cat and he thought this was the perfect time to teach Charming a lesson.
(Do you remember that the cunning cat just so happened to know that mice have a limited number of words to use in their life before they run out?)
Charming was convincing the cunning cat that he was no good to eat. “All my fabulous fluffy fur would get lodged in your larynx. A cool and cunning cat like you is far too smart to eat a mouse of such fabulous fluffy fur.” Charming continued convincing the cunning cat.
And this cat was too smart. So the cunning cat pretended to agree with Charming. “I dig it Clyde. I’m a cool cat, I’d have to have smog in my noggin’ to eat a gas bagging fur ball like you.”
“And I must say that the best way to maintain fabulous fluffy fur is to eat copious amounts of cheese. Not the colorless cheap kind but the exquisitely expensive kind aged in ash.”
The cunning cat continued to concur and tell the mouse to tell him everything about everything.
(You must remember that the cunning cat just so happened to know that mice have a limited number of words to use in their life before they run out?)
“What’s your tale Nightingale? Lay it on me!”
Charming got very excited. He enthusiastically started speaking faster and faster and louder and louder and shriller and shriller.
“Nobody understands me, I’m just such a majestic mouse and I’m so terribly offended by utter ugliness. Take the bug in the booth for example, his poor pitiful pathetic voice is wavering, weak and pitchy, it offends my elegant ears. And the rat, oh that dreadfully dirty rat, his fur is hardly fabulous, it is more rough like a rug, it irritates my intensely incandescent eyes and renders them dreary and daft, and may I add that I am not afraid of rats, they’re just an oversized mouse with bad breath and a temper like a Rhino, and I really do think that cockroaches should bath themselves more thoroughly and SQUEAK!”
Suddenly, out of Charming came a scratchy “squeak.”
(Do you remember that the cunning cat just so happened to know that mice have a limited number of words to use in their life before they run out?)
Charming, very confused, cleared his throat.
“Har, hum.”
And tried again.
“Squeak.”
Yet again, another squeak.
“Squeak, squeak, squeak.”
And another and another until all Charming could do was squeak.
Charming was confounded; he tried to communicate with the cunning cat.
“Squeak, squeak, squeak!!!”
What in heaven’s name has happened to my velvety voice? wondered a worried Charming. And then he remembered the cunning cats comment; it was true, it had happened. Charming had run out of words.
“If I were you Clyde, I’d act like a banana and split,” chuckled the cool and cunning cat.
Charming swiftly scurried behind the counter. Without Charming’s velvety voice and silver tongue he could no longer talk himself out of sticky situations. He now had to rely on his speed and agility to get himself to that safe crevice before he got caught. Charming’s confident character was transformed to that of a quiet cautious creature.
The mouse is now a quiet timid and shy animal that always hides and they are no longer able to boast about their fabulous fluffy fur, big bold eyes, terrific untarnished teeth and divine deep tone.
The End.
Mouse Image © Dannyphoto80 | Dreamstime.com and Cat Image © Yael Weiss | Dreamstime.com
I wish you could grade college papers
like I do…
Grading college freshman papers shld be a req'd experience for homeschoolers. You'd instantly feel better abt yr work w yr kids. #homeschool
— Julie Bogart (@BraveWriter) September 24, 2013
