Pick three different characters (each from a book by a different author) then imagine what it would be like to have them all to dinner. Write it!
Image by Pierre Vignau (cc)
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Archive for October, 2014
Be kind, be gentle
I spent too much time today reading accounts of child abuse in homeschooling families. I couldn’t stop. It was like watching train wreck after train wreck in slow, horrible, inevitable motion. I didn’t want to keep reading; I couldn’t stop reading.
The dirty little secret in home education is how much control and anger get directed at our sweet young kids (and awkward fledgling teens) in the name of “helping” them to become self-disciplined models of character and academic achievement.
Be warned: A habit of hardness leaves lasting scars.
Certainly plenty of parents are the garden variety that offer big love and abundant support mixed with the occasional exasperated outburst and the daily hand-wringing (sometimes turned lecture) about how to ensure a successful education and smooth transition to adulthood—family jostling and bumping into each other as they make their way through the “we all live together” years.
But some of us bring that little bit extra—that zing, that pop, that over-zealous, over-functioning rigidity to our homeschools. We scream, we shame, we blame, we demean, we punish, we prophesy doom, we herald the end of the world… and sometimes, we even succumb to abuse—physical and verbal—in the name of love, in the name of homeschool, in the name of our ideology.
Tonight, I want to say: Shhhhhhhh.
Let it go.
Let your children be children. Let your teens struggle to emerge. Let yourself off the hook.
You don’t owe the world a model family. You don’t have to get it right. Neither do your kids.
Everyone gets better at growing up over time—including you, the parent.
Be the one who stands for kindness in your family. Be remembered for your gentleness. Wait an extra hour before acting and reacting.
Remember the kindness of your parents or significant adult caregiver—the stand-out memories that helped you through childhood. Be that person for your children.
And if you need it: get help. Today’s a great day to heal, to start over.
Your kids deserve peace, and so do you.
Movie Wednesday: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
We watched the 2005 (Adam Adamson directed) release of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with some friends as part of a birthday celebration. The kids who watched are 16, 14, 13, two 9 year olds and a 4 year old. It was a repeat for the older kids but the first time for the younger ones.
It was fun to listen to the discussions between the kids about the imagery and symbolism. Throughout the movie and after, the younger kids would ask questions like:
How is the wardrobe the entrance to Narnia?
How did the tree get on the door?
Who is the snow queen?
Why didn’t Aslan fight her, he’s a lion after all?
It was a running and continuous conversation! The older kids would respond, surprisingly patiently, with answers often referencing the books. They said more than once that the books are always better. That melted my heart!
Angela
Need help commenting meaningfully on plot, characterization, make-up and costumes, acting, setting and even film editing? Check out our eleven page guide, Brave Writer Goes to the Movies. Also, tell us about a film you and your kids watched together (along with a pic if you have one) and if we share it on the blog you’ll receive a free copy!
Poetry Teatime: Grandma was invited too!
We had our first poetry teatime today, and it was a huge hit!
Grandma had said how she hated poetry, so I made sure she received an invitation too. She and my son (8) devoured Where the Sidewalk Ends while Baby mostly devoured cookies. Everyone had a great time.
We are recent converts to BraveWriter. (I’ve read Jot it Down and am making my way through Writers Jungle.) I already see a huge difference in my boys enthusiasm for language arts! Just learning that I don’t need to make him do all the writing has made a huge difference. I can’t wait to read more strategies and suggestions.
Poetry Tea Tuesdays are a keeper for sure! Thank you for sharing the Brave Writer lifestyle!
Regards,
Tara
Image (cc)
Visit our Poetry Teatime website!
Keeping it real at home
I’m about to make a bold statement.
The source of unhappiness at home is pretense.
Pretending in homeschool looks like this:
- Defending your homeschool to others when you secretly doubt your effectiveness.
- Showing off the good parts, while hiding the parts that embarrass you.
- Continuing to use the textbook even though you know it causes pain, just because you paid for it.
- Endorsing a philosophy of education you don’t actually use (you say you believe in studying the classics, but never read them; you want to believe unschooling is the best way to educate, but you undermine your child’s self-directed learning when it doesn’t match what you thought it would look like).
- Ignoring a child’s struggles because you don’t want to have to pay for specialists or tutors.
- Telling yourself that the schools are really really bad so that you can justify your “very bad, no good” year, instead of facing it.
- Letting your relationship with your kids wither instead of putting in the effort to hear what’s going on for them and making adjustments.
- Slavish devotion to a method over caring about real learning.
- Acting as though you are okay with a practice when you really really are not.
- Ignoring abuse, conflict, disrespect, or volatility in the home, and assuming that those things don’t impact your homeschool.
- Refusing to consider all options (including the ones you say you don’t believe in) when what you are doing is clearly not working any more.
- Being more interested in the politics of homeschool (common core, legislation, rights) than in homeschooling.
- Tweaking your vocabulary to fit the homeschool community’s approved language rather than being true to your own way of thinking.
- Hiding your child’s behavior or educational failures from others (kids who are dangerous to themselves or others, kids who refuse to cooperate, kids who act out in embarrassing ways—drinking, theft, cyber bullying).
- Withdrawing from “society” to avoid accountability.
I have often quoted a saying by Iris Murdoch (The Severed Head) without even knowing the source. A Brave Writer mom (Gail) helped me track it down. Let me post it here:
“You can’t cheat the dark gods.”
The truth will out!
Whatever is going on with you is going on with you. No amount of cover-up or smooth-over will fix the problems you face. Moreover, who you are is an essential part of your homeschool. If you hate the classics (no matter how much you persuade yourself that they are essential to education), you will sabotage your homeschool to avoid reading them.
If you do distrust gaming as a way to learn, you will never be happy when your child is on the computer. You will look for ways to manipulate the system to stop your child from doing the very thing you secretly hate and distrust. Which leads to tension and stress in the relationship—inevitably, absolutely, take that to the bank.
If the context of your family is “walking on eggshells” to keep the volatile member from exploding, the energy for learning will be used up by an attempt to control the out of control member—and then you’ll wonder why homeschool is not peaceful or happy or working.
You are not responsible for the reputation of homeschool.
Let me repeat that.
You, sincere-trying-really-hard homeschooler, are not responsible for how other people see you or homeschooling.
You have one responsibility: to create and hold the space for a peaceful environment in which your family can grow and learn.
Create and hold space for a peaceful environment
in which your family can grow and learn.
That’s it.
There are scads of ways to get there and as many as there are families. It is right and good to tell your public school mom friend that sometimes you worry that the work you’re doing with your kids is not on par with the local schools. If that’s a real fear, it’s absolutely humanizing and truthful to say it out loud. It doesn’t mean you will change course or decide to put your kids on the big yellow bus. It means you are facing the depth of your own anxiety—just like the public school mom who wonders if the second grade teacher is any good this year.
It is right and good to admit that one child’s ADD or behavior problems is impacting the health of the whole family. Once you admit it, you can begin to seek help for everyone. You are not blaming anyone. You are protecting everyone’s well being.
It is right and good to ditch the program that makes YOU unhappy no matter how many people say it’s the best thing since frosted cake!
Ditch the program that makes YOU unhappy no matter how many say it’s the best thing since frosted cake!
It is right and good to admit that it’s easier to fight for the right to homeschool than to homeschool. Start there.
Be real. Everyone wants to support a person who tells the truth. Everyone hates the person who pretends her way into perfection (right?).
You have a universe of choices—keep them all on the table. Be attentive to the muscles in your body. If you feel yourself tighten, you know something is not right. Find out what it is, say it out loud, do something about it.
Keep it real.
Image by Elliot Bennett (cc cropped)
