Archive for the ‘Brave Writer Philosophy’ Category

When They Don’t Get It

Surviving the Holidays

The holiday season is uniquely challenging to homeschoolers.

All fall, you’ve blissfully gone along planning your days, teaching your children, enjoying the closeness of family learning unaware that anyone outside your four walls would suspect you of inflicting harm or undermining your children’s social skills or academic prowess.

Enter the holidays.

The “non-homeschooling” contingent will assemble and take over for the “state” on your behalf. While passing the glazed carrots to little Theo, Aunt Tilda will quiz: “What’s 2 times 6, darling?” Not to be outdone, your mother-in-law will probe 6th grader Emily: “Do you get out much, sweetheart? Have you any friends?” Your father will subtly remind you that you don’t have a degree in education and with the economy the way it is, wouldn’t it be wiser to get a part time job in your specific field to help support your husband rather than wasting your time all day in the house? Finally, your brother wonders how you can stand to be with your kids all day, every day.

If you come from a family that supports your homeschooling experience, rejoice and make them extra pumpkin pies! They are the wonderful few (I come from such a family and am deeply grateful).

Even if your family is supportive, though, you may find yourself at a holiday party where other adults pretend curiosity about your choice to homeschool while conveying thinly veiled skepticism about your qualifications.

I have a few tips for sticking up for this renegade homeschooling lifestyle you radical parents have chosen on behalf of your kids.

1. Don’t justify your choice by touting your credentials or qualifications.
Even if you have a teaching background, leave it out of the equation. The homeschooling movement benefits from a bold declaration that parents are adequate to teach children to read, write, and calculate times tables. Let skeptics know that you are as much educational coordinator as instructor, as your kids get older.

2. Focus on the enjoyment you get from being with your kids.
More important than discussing the failures of the school system is emphasizing how much you love being with your kids. No one can take that away from you. Most parents are startled to realize that being with your own children is a pleasure, not a dreaded task.

3. Talk about ‘family learning’ instead of school or education.
Many parents imagine assignments, grades, and lectures when they think of homeschool. They can’t picture imposing all that discipline and structure, while retaining a happy family atmosphere. Homeschool is different than institutional learning because the family is learning together. Discuss how everyone gets involved at their own level when working on a history topic or science experiment, when freewriting or listening to a novel read aloud. Tell them about tea time and poetry. Resist the temptation to explain how what you do matches what a school requires.

4. Validate their authority in selecting the educational choices they’ve made.
This is perhaps the most important thing you can do—talk about educational choice. All of us make choices in how we educate our children. Let them know that you support their enthusiasm for the school system and that you can see how that’s working out for their kids (find whatever good is occurring in their lives and support it). Then share the unique joys of homeschool.

5. Resist defending your kids’ social lives.
That one rarely goes anywhere good. We’ve all been programmed since toddlerhood to believe that socialization matters and that it happens at school. Trying to get adults to understand differently is an exercise in clacking your noggin against a cutting board! Just let them know your children do have social lives and that you aren’t worried one bit about your kids’ futures as successful people in the world.

6. Take responsibility for the outcome of homeschool.
I always like to remind inquiring people that I know I took a risk by keeping my kids home. I tell them that I didn’t know how it would all turn out, but I was willing to take a chance and make corrections as I went. I even say that my kids may make different decisions for their own children when they are older. I avoid committing to superior learning, better college admittance scores, brilliance in my offspring, or anything that puts pressure on my kids to be poster-children for homeschooling. They don’t need it or deserve the scrutiny. I take all the skepticism on to me, and I let the failure they may associate with my homeschool choice fall on my head. Protect your kids. Don’t tout their astounding brains because someone will immediately conjure a pop quiz.

7. Don’t talk to rude people.
Turn away insulting comments with a polite, “I’d rather not talk about homeschool on my holiday vacation. This is my time off.” Curmudgeons don’t deserve the full “why I homeschool” defense.  Use the remote control or dessert to distract the persistent. As we like to say…

Give Them Pie

Give them pie.

The bottom line is this: You homeschool because it feels like the best educational choice for your family. That’s a good enough reason for everyone. And you can stop right there, if you need to.

Beware the “Random Assessment”

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, Homeschool Advice | 5 Comments »

When kids are unhappy

What to do when kids are unhappy

Over the course of your 10-20 year homeschool odyssey, your kids are going to be unhappy at times. Some of the unhappiness will last months (maybe a year!). Sometimes you’re unhappy and it bleeds into the family culture. Let’s look at how to address some of the boredom and crankiness that visits the various ages and stages of children in your house.

Kids express unhappiness the way kids do:

  • boredom
  • anger
  • fidget-i-ness
  • being silly
  • procrastinating
  • pretending not to listen
  • picking on a sibling or the family dog
  • tears
  • staring blankly out a window
  • arguing
  • campaigning for what they think will make them happy
  • calling someone else a bad name
  • doing poorly executed work
  • not caring
  • not investing
  • giving up
  • pretending to be happy when they really aren’t
  • showing signs of stress and anxiety (sleeplessness, restlessness, not interested in eating)
  • comparing your home to someone else’s
  • rejecting your values
  • siding with the other parent who momentarily seems more fun

A 4-5 year old who is bored is much easier to rescue than a teenager who feels suffocated and has decided to challenge the values of the family. Yet the underlying feeling is similar—it’s unhappiness—and we can facilitate a huge turn around in how our kids experience our homes and “schools” if we help them become peaceful, cooperative, empowered-from-within, happy kids again.

Tuning into your child

Any child who is unhappy needs a parent to tune in and take notice! You’re the adult: you get to set aside your agenda to find out what your child needs.

The toddler needs physical touch and expression of energy (hugs, tickles, eye contact, being flipped upside down, wrestling, chasing, jumping up and down on a bed) to get the adrenaline flowing, to feel reconnected, to up-end a mood. Sometimes food, sometimes a nap, sometimes a cuddle on the couch is enough.

The young child benefits from focused attention on his or her specific interests. Too much time spent on your agenda will lead to tedium and crankiness. Bend low to make eye contact first. Then: a board game, running around the back yard, sitting in your lap for a picture book, helping you set the table for a snack, playing on the floor, singing to a CD…these help pull the young child out of the helpless, resentful mood of too many days in a row of someone else’s agenda.

The middler needs a dedicated time regularly (every day? every other day?) where there is no limit (reading as long as he or she likes without having to do anything else or without being required to sleep, playing a computer game without a timer ending the turn, watching TV and lying on the couch without having to get up, being allowed to finish the entire math book because he’s on a roll, digging a hole in the backyard as deep and wide as she likes, taking a scandalous amount of time to organize a bookshelf or rearrange the bedroom furniture, going to the zoo or the museum or the park or the nature preserve to indulge whatever interest is currently on fire, practicing a musical instrument for an entire day).

Middlers are curious. They benefit from indulgence in their curiosity and they especially appreciate it when you “get it.” If you notice that a particular child is obsessed with a hobby right now, take advantage of that white heat of passion and let them go! Buy a book, or rent a DVD, or take a field trip, or purchase new equipment, that adds meaning and energy to the passion. (And yes, I include the Wii, XBox 360, online gaming, and Play Station in this list of “passions” just like I include an absurdly long time of pining for American Girl Doll accessories while paging through a catalog. I’ve seen good stuff come from these sources in kids.)

The young teen is often the most moody and the hardest to cajole out of the mood. We’ve got hormones raging and they are old enough to feel the “been there, done that” of homeschool. They’re looking for adventure, yet they are not quite old enough to take charge and make it happen. Try a conversation about BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Ask them if there were no monetary limits and no time limits and no travel limits, what might they like to do? You might find out that your teen wants to take piano lessons for the first time, or wants to join a sports team, or a theater troupe, or learn Klingon, or go to Space Camp, or become expert at fashion. You may not cure the moodiness, but you can facilitate a brand new, grown-up adventure to buffer the sense of tedium that encroaches at ages 13-14. Talk to the teen! Find out what’s missing. Do the best you can to help it happen (you might need that teen to earn money or find someone to drive them or to start small and build—but put that goal somewhere visible and all of you work toward it).

The older teen is nearly at adulthood and feeling the tug between wanting a “mommy” and wanting to be respected as a “fledgling adult.” Risk and adventure. That’s what they need. Let them lead you into conversations about their interests, their viewpoints that aren’t yours, their anxieties. These conversations happen best one-on-one, with yummy food or drinks. Make time for the older teen and remember: they are gone A LOT! So if one comes home at midnight ready to talk, you get the toothpicks out to prop your eyelids open and you sit on the bed and talk. The older teen sometimes needs to challenge how he or she was raised and you need to go soft inside and let those words slide over you. They aren’t the final verdict. They are the words of a “near adult” trying to find his or her way this week. Be interested, be quiet, be curious, be gentle, be willing to take it.

Bottom Line:
You can’t keep everyone happy all the time and be happy yourself. Not possible! What you can do is pay attention, remind yourself that these years are fleeting (no matter how today feels), and that the needs of your children are reasonable and real. Just like yours. You may not fix any of it in a day, but you can do One Thing today to help alleviate some of the building pressure in the home. If you have Many Children (like so many homeschoolers), you’ll need help! Tag team with the co-parent or a friend. Get the community involved (youth workers, coaches, aunts and uncles, grandparents).

Take Care of You:
You need to be happy too: vitamins, exercise, therapy (it helps if you need it!), time alone, a passion or hobby, a good relationship with your significant other, and a source of joy each day (tea, flipping through a magazine, bubble bath, chocolate, gardening, your favorite rerun on TBS, your spiritual practice).

You can do it!

Image by Andrew Stawarz (cc)

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Homeschool Advice, On Being a Mother | 4 Comments »

Beating the Homeschooling Blues (Instead of Singing Them)

Beating the Homeschool Blues (Instead of Singing Them)

You’ve met her. It’s week eleven of the school year and she’s on week three. She can’t bear to let her kids skip a single Saxon problem. She is swimming in writing manuals from last year’s convention…and she hasn’t found time to start reading them yet. Art supplies cost too much. Soccer practice conflicts with dinner. Her toddler wrecks the read-aloud time. And the field trip notice on the refrigerator is past the sign up date. Worst of all, she has unsorted laundry on the bed. Woe is she!

And boy is she tired. Exhausted. Hasn’t slept in six years. Hasn’t eaten a full meal in four. Hasn’t had a hair cut in ten. And what’s a manicure, she asks?

Wait, is this you? I know it’s been me at various times along the way.

We all whine and complain from time to time. But when I begin to think, “I could be a much better homeschooling mother if my kids were just in school,” I know I’m in trouble.

What about you? Are you becoming a ‘Joan of Abekka’? ‘Mother Theresa of Calculadders’? Martyrs for the homeschool cause?

Don’t get me wrong. I know you are as committed to your kids as I am to mine. I want those exquisite beings to fulfill their callings, to discover their destinies, to…to…to pass the infernal year-end exams so I don’t feel like a total failure! (Sometimes that’s truer, isn’t it?)

What I need, what our mythic mom needs and what I bet you need, is a fresh perspective and a healthy dose of practical change. Let’s go!

Do Something Today

Do one thing right now.

Sort through the eternal mail pile. Clean out the fridge. Order the new math book. Jog. Read to your toddler. Look at an art print. Cut your hair. Plan one day of school in advance. Shop for the ingredients to the next science experiment. Just one.

Don’t plan to do it. Don’t call your best friend about it. Don’t read a book on the subject.

I wanted saffron yellow walls for my kitchen for months. But which yellow paint? How much should I buy? How would I know if I got the best price in town? And worst of all, how could I paint my walls yellow with five kids under foot?

Then one day, I had had it. I marched all of us into Home Depot, covered my eyes and picked the color card. I got the paint mixed, paid for it and went home. I painted the wall that afternoon while the toddler was awake! (Nuts, I know, but she wasn’t even the one to spill the bright yellow paint all over the apartment rug—ahem—we don’t really need to know who did that, do we?)

Every morning for the next year, I’d come bounding down the stairs and smile first thing. That wall brightened my dreary little apartment immeasurably and it reminded me of the power of follow-through.

Don’t Do Something Else

Don’t call your girlfriend because you’re bored. Don’t leave the house with lunch plates on the table. Don’t sleep in… again. Don’t get online before breakfast and stay there… until noon.

Pick an annoying or embarrassing habit and stop it today. You don’t have to promise for eternity. Just today. If you pick one to stop per week, you’ll be amazed at how many changes you can make.

I, for one, would pay lots of money for little hand restraints to ‘just say no’ to that mid-morning call to my best friend. When I stay off the phone in the morning, it’s amazing how much better homeschooling goes.

Give Up

That’s right—wave the white flag. You will never be like her. Don’t compare yourself to Miss Perfect.

Here’s the solution: Do what you can and enjoy what you do. Quit comparing and start enjoying your kids. They’re the reason we all chose to stay home, remember?

Pick Three

It’s a relief to get out of the homeschool Olympics, isn’t it? Don’t wreck these cautiously emerging good feelings by writing a mission statement either. That’s a sure-fire way to end up with a big pile of laundry on your bed next week.

Instead of thinking generally about what isn’t working, start noticing what is. Pick three reasons it is good to be alive and homeschooling. Then go tell someone.

Recite these every time the dishes are stacked too high in the sink.

  • Don’t have to schlep my five kids to school by 8:00 a.m.
  • Reading all those great books in our pajamas.
  • Seeing the firsts up close (first step, first letters, first word read, first expository essay)
  • Poetry Teatimes!
  • Giving my daughter time to write stories about her bunny.
  • Listening to my seven-year-old read words that I haven’t taught him.
  • Teacher conferences over candlelight with my husband.

Those are some of my favorites. I’m sure that you can think of more. Just pick three.

Break a Rule

Give yourself a break. Paper plates for lunch. Disposable diapers for a week (how about a month—want to be radical, a whole year!) Listen to old James Taylor tunes. Dance through the living room. Put on a little make-up.

In other words, splurge. By definition, a splurge only happens once in a while. But unlike gluttony or indulgence, there’s no guilt.

So go to an art museum alone (without the co-op). Read a bookyou want to read. Shut the teacher’s manual and take a nature hike. Nourish your mind, spirit, and body and your homeschool will benefit too.

In the end, we must be mothers who love what we do. When we don’t, we risk the vitality and joy of our children’s schooling experience. Their memories of school will be inextricably bound to us. Who do we want them to remember?

We started in on this weird and wonderful lifestyle for good reasons. Instead of complaining, let’s remind each other of the truly heroic job we are doing—spending twenty-four hours a day with our kids because we love them more than anyone else will.

And be proud of you. I am.

The Homeschool Alliance

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy | 21 Comments »

Unschooling, World War I, and Family Learning

Caitrin (14) and I watched “Letters from Iwo Jima” two nights ago. She’s become a mini expert on the two world wars (preferring World War I, however, because so few people understand it). As I listened to her cite facts and interpret data, I was in awe of how much information she retained from her history class this year in public school. She was a sponge, soaking in details, rearranging them to have meaning in her own mind.

I heard from Jacob (19) over the weekend. He wanted me to read his final paper for a class on globalization. He wrote about a documentary I had recommended he watch. His dad and I each took a look at the paper for edits, but mostly Jacob and I discussed the content. It was thrilling to see him engage ideas I had merely introduced to him. I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of three of his college papers this year: built on suggestions I made, then followed up with lengthy discussions of content where I became the student and he, the expert.

Johannah (21) emailed poems to me that she wrote in her poetry class so I could see where they came from (her rich experiences as a child). She had told me on the phone that she found herself using freewriting as her chief way to access the symbols and images behind her meanings. We had a good laugh about that.

It was one of those “pay day” weekends where I could see the fruit of deposits we’d made for years with our kids. I discussed some of this with the precocious Caitrin who summed it up so well:

“Mom, that’s what unschooling does to you. You spend your time being told that your life is your teacher. But you don’t know how to measure it. So you have to keep learning all the time to prove to yourself that you are learning. Unschooling is just your life, so learning is constant.”

I wonder if that feeling produces any level of neuorses. I think it might. I do have some thoughts about unschooling that are not all positive and rosy. Measurement matters to kids; knowing they have “completed” something is a good feeling. On the other hand, it is nice to discover that for my least “schooled” child, she’s also the one reading all the AP English novels now, a full year before she takes the class, just because “they look good.” All my kids see every subject as open to them. Nothing off limits. In that way, the less structured version of school seems to have created this thirst for learning that is paying off well now that they are in structured school systems (high school and college).

They honestly believe that being able to know things and express them to others means they are growing as people and are interesting to friends, family and new acquaintances. That’s how they measure who they are: by what they know and are learning.

What I’ve noticed is that we have a family habit of sharing what we learn with each other. There’s this flow between members—sharing books, vocabulary, math equations (yes, even math now!), poems, ideas, suggestions, insights, philosophies, websites, personal writing and more. Everyone expects everyone else to be learning and that they will be able to educate each other. They like being both resource and audience.

It’s wild! So nice to be on this end of things. It’s worth it. Keep going!

Well, just had to share that today. It got much longer than I meant it too. How’s it going out where you are? Summer is here in the northern hemisphere. Do you have plans?

Posted in Brave Writer Lifestyle, Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, Unschooling | 2 Comments »

The Non-Homeschooling Parent

Aka: How do I get my husband to accept my style of homeschooling?**

I went to a homeschool support group back in 2000 when I first moved to Ohio. Each of the parents introduced themselves. Most of the attendees were mothers, but occasionally a dad would be along for the meeting as well. To a parent, the mother would introduce herself as the homeschooler and the husband as the “principal” of their school. Then everyone would chuckle. They chuckled because they knew that in just about every case, the “principal” had a fulltime job and did very little in the way of home education! Yet here he was with the big title!

When they got to me, my husband was not present. I introduced myself as the home educator, curriculum developer and the  principal. Then I added, “My husband isn’t here, but he’s the janitor. His contribution to our homeschool is making sure everyone does their chores on Saturdays.”

Laughter. But it was true. I saw no reason to give him the supreme title just because he had facial hair.

You home educators take the lion’s share of the responsibility to homeschool your kids. You do it after hours of research and oodles of conversations, you do it because you’ve become convinced it’s the best thing for your family, and you do it the way you do it because of the philosophy of education you’ve evolved through all those hours of research and conversation.

Unless you have a spouse with similar dedication, the truth is: you’re the homeschooling expert in your family.

Being an expert doesn’t mean that you are without flaw or that you will get it right every time. Lord knows we all reinvent homeschool every single year. Still, even with the nuances changing year to year, you have a pretty good idea of what you mean by homeschooling and you want the freedom to do it according to your lights.

When a mom asks me how to “get her husband” to share her philosophy, what I think she’s really asking is: “What do I do about my husband’s worries that I’m not doing a good enough job?”

At one workshop, when asked that question, I answered: “This is a marriage issue, not a homeschooling one. I don’t know if your husband is crazy or a reasonable guy. I don’t know if he is hard on you in every area of your life or if he has legitimate concerns about your dedication to the homeschooling task. The question to ask yourself is: ‘Does my husband generally support me, trust me and help me? If I give him the information he wants, does he accept it?’”

The foundation of a happy homeschool has to be that both parents are equally supportive of this style of education. They don’t both have to be equally knowledgeable, they don’t both have to do the work of homeschool and I absolutely don’t see the need for a wife to “submit her lesson plans” to a husband each week for his approval.

What needs to happen is this. Raising the kids is a responsibility both parents share. When discussing home education, where the husband has little experience and spends almost no time researching, the conversation needs to shift from explaining home education to him and instead focus on two things:

  • Trust
  • Freedom

Just like you don’t constantly check to see if your husband is performing at his career in a way that makes you feel comfortable, your husband needs to trust you (that you are capable of home education, that he is confident in your skill set, that he knows you are reliable to do what you say you’ll do). Then he needs to allow you the freedom to live into that role, knowing that it will include set backs, mistakes, course changes and all the things that happen in any career.

Of course he’ll have questions and he should feel free to ask them. However, asking a sincere question is not the same as scrutinizing or judging or belittling or haranguing. You know if you have a husband who does the latter because those behaviors won’t be limited to homeschooling. If that is your husband, just know that you have a marriage issue (not a homeschooling one) and be sure to get help in addressing it. Any family that has the marital dynamic where the wife is repeatedly up against hostility and judgment is in crisis. Home education is the least of your concerns.

If you have the garden variety husband who simply shows some nerves about this unfamiliar style of education, start by talking to your husband about trust and freedom—that you value his trust and you need freedom to explore this version of education.

You can allay his fears in these three ways:

  1. First, suggest to him that he do some reading. Point him in the right directions (give him a book or send him some links to websites via email). Don’t nag him, don’t follow up. Just let him know that he can read what you’ve read and if he wants to discuss it, you’d be happy to! Don’t educate him. Let him educate himself. Don’t nag. If he chooses not to read, then you can gently let him know (after a month) that you’ll continue without his input (though you’d love his support!) since he doesn’t have the foundation to talk to you about home education.
  2. Second, introduce him to another homeschooling family. You might even plan a themed home education party where the dads are participants. A medieval feast or a picnic at a site where fossils can be found are possibilities. Get them involved in a weekend kind of way.
  3. Third, share what you do during the day with your husband in a free, enthusiastic way. Don’t report to him like he’s your boss. Simply make an effort to remember what happened that was exciting: Johnny identified a cardinal at the feeder today! Mary figured out how to dye cloth with a beet!

Once you have tried one or all three of these practices, see how your husband does. If he continues to express anxiety about home education, you have two options:

  1. Make it an issue in your marriage. If this is one of those hills you want to die on, then so be it. You may need a therapist to help you. Get to the bottom of his anxiety and your need to home educate so that you are honest about how important this issue is to you. Make sure you have a safe space to explore all the concerns you both have. If you ignore them or pretend them away, I promise they will come back in a big way down the line and your kids will know that their education is a source of tension in your marriage.

    That is not healthy!     Better to put the kids in school than that.

  2. Give up homeschooling. It is utterly critical that your family have a peaceful home to live in. That is more important than Charlotte Mason, tea parties, read alouds, field trips to art museums and Saxon math. If you and your husband can’t come to a place where you feel supported and trusted in your home education leadership, then homeschooling can’t work for your family.

I find it helpful if I think in terms of the bigger picture. To be happy at home means that all the members of the family feel they have an authentic say in their own happiness (how they discover what makes them happy, how they express that happiness, how they create it for themselves). That happiness is contingent on several core values:

  1. Trust
  2. Responsibility
  3. Freedom
  4. Participation

When any of these is missing in any of the relationships in the family (parent to child, child to parent, sibling to sibling, wife to husband, husband to wife), the entire family has a diminished sense of identity and contentment. Cultivating relationships that nurture an experience of happiness has to be a primary goal, even above education because there are lots of forms of education, but only one original family.

So when we talk about homeschooling, we have to be honest: it’s not possible to do it if both parents don’t support it. Wives can’t make husbands support homeschooling any more than a husband can require a wife to homeschool if she doesn’t want to invest the time and energy it takes to do it. Education of the children is a responsibility that both parents share, but how that responsibility is executed can be resolved in a variety of ways.

The bottom line is this: If your husband is not participating actively in the education of your children (and doesn’t invest the time to think about homeschooling or to develop his own philosophy of education), he should be willing to trust you to do that job and he ought to support you in doing it through encouragement, cooking dinner once in awhile, and bragging about how awesome you are for taking on this heroic of tasks.

If he is deeply uncomfortable with home education after doing his own research and is a genuinely decent guy in the other areas of your marriage, you may have to accept that for right now, home education is off the table. Ask to revisit it with him at a later date.

In all cases, get help if these issues between you and a spouse become significant enough that you are tense, stressed, and anxious. If you are fighting about homeschooling regularly, then you are creating a toxic home environment for your kids. That’s no way to live and kids spending 24/7 at home will pick it up (and it will be bad for them).

**I’m sorry to use the gender normative roles throughout. I realize there are homeschooling dads where the moms work outside the home and that there are domestic partnerships, not just husbands and wives. Thanks for letting me off the hook by focusing on the 99% that ask me these questions. Philosophically, these answers can be applied to any pairing raising kids!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Husbands (homeschooling partners) | 11 Comments »