A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Image by David Amsler

You know how you get it right? By getting it wrong and making adjustments. By getting it right and repeating…until it doesn’t work and then you switch again. By toggling between what works and what doesn’t—staying responsive to the moment. Again and again.

You know how you get it wrong? By doing what doesn’t work. And then repeating it. And then defending it. And then reinforcing how right it is in spite of the evidence in front of your very eyes and blaming others for what doesn’t work.

If you are told that a certain practice will yield (fill in the blank) with your child and it doesn’t—if that child is miserable and angry, or listless and avoidant—that one doesn’t work. Stop.

Parenting and home education should not yield tension, ongoing anger, battle lines drawn, shaming, coercion, or repression.

We will all set boundaries that are too tight on the oldest child and boundaries that are fairly slack for the youngest. Welcome to parenting 101. Perfectly normal, ordinary, boring parenting. Well done.

What doesn’t work is rigidity that doesn’t see the child as a unique, choice-endowed, agent in his or her own life. This respectful view of the child must start early if we’re going to survive the teen years. Teenagers, even in families that were attachment parents and round-the-clock breastfeeding, non-spanking, shared sleepers, will foil your vision of who you thought they’d become. Why? They’re teenagers. Their job is to differentiate—to become “not” you. They want to prove to themselves that they will, in fact, be adults in their own right. They can’t know themselves if they are busy trying to be who you think they should be, or if they have to oppose what you think they should be. That just delays the self-awareness piece they deserve to explore.

I have said many times—just because your kids show you how different they really are than you doesn’t mean they are becoming worse people. In fact, in many cases, your teens will become much better people than you were at their ages. They just might care about different causes than you do.

All this to say: we make the mistake of barging in with our great ideas, our good advice, our systems and methods, our aspirations, our desire to protect our kids from what we suffered. Again: good parenting—those desires spring from invested loved.

Our job is to notice the effect of our advice, boundaries, rules, opinions, suggestions, interferences, and requirements. Then we can be the responsive people our kids need. Anything (short of molestation and violence) can be repaired with love and adjustment. Kids are tremendously forgiving people (no backlog of resentments yet). You can modify any decision, shorten any consequence, revise any plan, and rethink any viewpoint. They will respect you when you do.

It’s also good to ask forgiveness and to let them in on what your process is. “I heard that this is a good strategy to help you grow into a person who is responsible and kind. Does it sound like it would help you be that kind of person? Do you want to be that kind of person? What are your thoughts?”

Then be truly interested in the answer.

Our children are smart! They have minds and thoughts and ideas about who they are and who they want to become. You did too, at their ages. Remember how you felt minimized or managed by your parents. Let that guide you now in how you treat your children. They deserve just as much care and reverence as the good china.

It’s not what you do—we all do stuff we want to fix or change or repair.

It’s what you do next—how you adjust, modify, really listen, and show care.

Cross-posted on facebook.

Corollary to the post, If it’s not working, it’s not working.

Sometimes when I hear about children who “won’t do their work” or “who are lazy,” I hear the following comment from the mom: “I need them to work independently.” Then they supply the reason which is one of the following: “I’m too busy, tired, sick of homeschool, have a part time job, need to tend to the younger kids, just moved, am pregnant, had a new baby, they are older and should not need me…”

A homeschool that is unhappy or a big struggle is often one where there is “work to be done” by children and a parent who can’t figure out how to “get the child to do the work.”

In other words:

An unhappy homeschool is one where neither parent
nor child wants to do the work that is homeschool.

Let’s look at that for a moment.

Think back to your favorite educational experiences. They weren’t all easy, were they? They weren’t all independent, were they?

My favorite learning environments challenged me to work hard, but I usually worked hard because the instructor worked harder than I did! I could feel the preparation in the lesson, I saw the commitment to my growth and the success of the outcome, I could tell that that educator was passionate about his or her field.

I was the least engaged in classes where the teacher seemed bored, distracted, barely showing up, expecting me to do homework with little interest in my actually learning… Was it the same for you?

Home education should not be an independent experience, even for (and perhaps especially for) teens!

I want to repeat that: high school should not be done alone in a room. It is not the time for a student to read, write a paper, and read some more. Self-teaching calculus is really really really hard. And tedious.

Home education is successful (and experienced as happy) when both parent and child are engaged in the process, and the parent puts in more work than the child. This is even true with unschooling—meaning that if you choose not to use formal educational tools, the learning happens because of your engagement with the larger world, noticing and creating opportunities to explore it and understand it. It doesn’t happen if you are working part time on the computer and your child is left to “learn” on her own.

Ask yourself: Do you like to homeschool?

If you don’t, then it is imperative that you find a way to love it (not just like it). Its success truly is contingent on your enthusiasm and energy. Yes, you can “get your children educated” at home without your enthusiasm, but at what cost? Will your children look back fondly on their home educations? Will they thrive and excel? Will you feel proud and gratified at the other end of the journey?

Homeschooling should not be a paler version of traditional school. Why do it if it is?

It’s okay, by the way, if the answer is “No, I don’t like homeschooling.” Start there. The next step isn’t necessarily to put your kids on the big yellow bus. The next step may simply be to recapture a love of learning for yourself—putting away all the teaching tools that have sapped your happiness and quieted your curiosity.

Rekindle interest in some area of learning and do it right in front of your kids, pulling them along. Pay attention to what you already love (old Jack Lemmon films, growing ferns, 18th century novels, opera, world news on the BBC, foreign languages, crafting, postmodern philosophy, supreme court decisions, showing horses). Share it. Live into it. Indulge it.

Pay attention to how you delve into your interests and apply that insight to how you educate (lead the way in learning) your young. Find the learning in any activity for a bit so that if you do in fact return to book-structured learning, you know how to go beyond the text to the experience of transformation/insight/appropriation (the true goal of learning).

Homeschooling out of duty will often create children who are either dutiful or resistant to learning, but not necessarily energized and excited about their educations. It’s no wonder that by high school there is a lack luster attitude about doing school work. It is experienced, by then, as work.

You know whether or not what you are doing with your kids is working. It’s not a mystery. You know if they are learning or growing or becoming more skilled.

You also know if your homeschool is not living up to what you hoped it would be. You know if your children are essentially happy (not every day all day, but for the most part—they expend energy and perform with alacrity). You know if they are essentially not.

• If your homeschool feels dull, it probably is.
• If your home environment seems tense, it likely is.
• If you are bored or unhappy, distracted or anxious, so is your homeschool.
• If you are preoccupied, your children will be distracted.
• If you don’t like the material, they probably won’t either.

Your homeschool won’t change into a magical space of learning through worry or the force of your will. Truth be told: it will never be a magical space of learning all of the time.

The goal is to find a groove that is both livable and stimulating, that is consistent (reliable) and life-giving. There’s a difference between a child who “hates her life” and one who is simply “low energy for math” today. Don’t over-react to a tantrum or a day of the blahs. But equally, and also, don’t under-react to a child who is exhibiting chronic unhappiness.

I trust you to know the difference. If you can’t tell (or if child to child there are differences – what is working for one isn’t working for the other), get some outside input. Ask the oldest child who lives all day with you what he or she observes. Ask your spouse or partner what they see.

Consider all options.

Get help.

Take a break.

The most important thing you can do for your children and your homeschool is to tell the truth about it.

A very good place to start.

Image by Jerry Kirkhart