Archive for the ‘Homeschool Advice’ Category

It All Counts

It All Counts

Today’s thought: It all counts

  • The dish washing,
  • the foot rubbing,
  • the tub bathing,
  • the skip counting in the car,
  • the singing at the tops of your lungs together off key,
  • the carefully copied passage,
  • the shopping for groceries,
  • the spontaneous walk in the neighborhood,
  • the sorting the laundry into the right colored piles,
  • the charging of the dead phone,
  • the pause to text your sick mother-in-law,
  • the five minutes you take to regroup,
  • the gentle way you overlooked your child’s Big Mess,
  • the fifth book read after lunch when you usually only read three,
  • the naps (oh yes, the naps count!),
  • the petting of the dog,
  • the recitation of a few historical facts,
  • the listening carefully when your child explains how to beat level five,
  • the cuddles,
  • the enthusiastic cheer for small successes and big ones,
  • the science experiment you finally got through with all the right ingredients,
  • the trampoline jumping,
  • the needed and taken break…

This stuff also counts:

  • The short word,
  • the worry,
  • the rushing,
  • the aimlessness that takes over when exhausted,
  • the bickering,
  • the harsh tone when a child is simply being a child,
  • the endless pages of material a child already knows,
  • the push, push, push to work harder on what a child isn’t ready for,
  • the conversations with a spouse overheard by the child,
  • the missed opportunities to play,
  • the loss of contact with a teen,
  • the blankness that sets in when sick of homeschooling,
  • the lost moment when a child was excited but you were distracted,
  • the anxiety that something’s wrong,
  • the blues,
  • the bad math book that you spent too much on,
  • the co-op where a bully mistreats your one child,
  • the much-needed, not-taken break…

You get to choose what will count in your homeschool.

Brave Writer Lifestyle

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Parenting | 1 Comment »

Two Ways to Grow Teens

Homeschooling teens

Teens present a challenge to parents who are used to the cozy snuggly younger years of wide-eyed curiosity about lady bugs. Teens can become bored by the wonder of the world around them as they navigate the far-more-interesting-to-them inner world of their thoughts, emotions, and yearnings.

That first teen—how I pity her or him! Parents don’t want to be awakened from the dreamland of their perfect, precious child. They want to prolong innocence and enchantment.

Teens want risk and adventure. They want to prove to themselves that one day, they will in fact be competent adults who live in the world outside the living room walls. They can’t know that they will be successful in that world until they get their hands on it—until they are out in it!

How do we—the anxious parents of these gawky, voice-changing, hair-growing, newly curvy bodies—give them what they need without panic and anxiety?

There are two critical pathways to the expansion of self:

1. Witness
2. Encounter

Witness

One way to grow is to increase your exposure to a world that is different from your familiar one. We adults do that every day by reading the news, or watching television, or listening to radio. We “witness” the events from around the globe via film or satellite, we read interesting discussions about those events, we listen to interviews with people who live in the midst of those events, and we receive stories through movies, memoirs, and novels of people who live very differently from us. This “witness” to the experiences of others expands our worldview and rearranges what we understand as normative or important. We discover our values differently when they are held up next to the values of others (whether those others live down the street or across an ocean).

For teens—they “witness” a larger world in much the same ways, if they are given the chance! They have the Internet—which offers them Twitter, Facebook, bulletin boards for affinity-related discussion, news organizations, blogs like Tumblr, and more. It’s easy to want to limit the use of the Internet, but it’s almost impossible to do so successfully (teens can work around just about any limit you set). It’s even better to create conversation around what they learn there and to be a willing conversation partner for the cognitive growth that is happening at breakneck speed in that space.

They also witness the larger world through novels and films. These two vehicles help teens to absorb the motivations and complexities of being human in unfamiliar (or very familiar!) contexts. They can read, take time off, read more, and process it all safely at home with you.

Witness provides teens with a chance to explore unfamiliar territory at arm’s length. The experience is under their control. They can shut down the computer, they can turn off the television, they can close the book. They are free to sample or deep dive, to agree or disagree without consequence to their life’s situation.

Homeschooling teens

Encounter

Encounter is the more challenging, more impacting way to grow. Encounter is not at arm’s length. Encounter means being overwhelmed (all five senses) with the experience so that you can’t escape it nor package and manage it. For instance, you might “witness” what life is like in Iran by reading a book like Reading Lolita in Tehran. But to encounter life in Tehran, one would have to go and stay there! Travel is one level of encounter (visiting a place for a short stay). An extended stay working in a foreign country is another level of encounter. Moving to live in a foreign country is the most intense form of encounter.

In terms of raising teens, encounter can look a few ways. It is meeting someone who embodies whatever life experience and values are his or hers (that differ from your own). It is befriending someone who comes from a different background. It is visiting the sites where other views take place (for instance, going to a temple for a visit when you are studying about that religion, especially when it is not your religion; another example—visiting a plantation in the South when you grew up in the North hating plantations as representations of slavery).

Encounter is eating the food, hearing/speaking the language, wearing the clothing, adopting the customs.

Encounter is deliberately putting yourself in the uncomfortable position of being with someone different from yourself and allowing that experience to impact you.

We help our teens grow when we give them both opportunities. They love risk and adventure! When you allow them to develop affinities, to explore their curiosities, and to meet/know people who are different from them, you help their brains! They will experience the kind of cognitive growth critical to being critical thinkers and healthy adults!

Cater to their natural inclination to take “thought-risks” and put them in contact with material and people who challenge their assumptions. Celebrate the results (whatever they may be!). Remember: no teen retains the values developed at 14 and 17. Are you today the same person you were at 15? I doubt it.

Everyone adopts positions to try on like shoes when they are teens. So let them adopt away! If you create space for a teen to imagine herself into a viewpoint, she will also have space to move through and out of it too, if she gets more and new information from witnessing or encountering!

It’s an exciting time to parent, if not a little nerve-wracking at times.

Try not to grip too tightly, and enjoy the ride.

Help for high school writers

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Tips for Teen Writers | 1 Comment »

Your Secret Homeschool Weapon

Your secret homeschool weapon

You thought I’d tell you what your secret weapon is in the first sentence? Oh heaven’s no. You will have to read a bit to find out.

Do you have kids who don’t want to “do school” or resist a new curriculum or say they hate assignments or projects? Maybe you keep telling them that at some point they will just “have to learn to write” or they “can’t write fiction forever” or they “can’t play all day”?

It’s one of those things where you kinda sorta freak out a bit when that resistance really gets going—in the form of fights, tears, refusal to even write one sentence, a willingness to outlast you.

Are we on the same page?

The tendency is to view yourself in those moments as a teacher who deserves respect and authority by virtue of being the home educator. You think you have the right to expectations because you are in charge. You can’t understand why that sweet little munchkin is becoming such a curmudgeon!

Here’s the thing, though. You’re at home. You’re the parent. Your kids know that there is negotiating space. That’s what home is. It’s the one place where “have to’s” have less power. Home is supposed to be a relief from the stress of the outside pressures of life. Enforcing “school” at home feels so contrary to the natural untidiness, lack of schedule-ness that home represents in life.

You need to embrace home as a home educator first—really allow yourself to notice and enjoy its properties (you know, like waking up when you want, wearing pj’s until lunch, or cuddling with a blanket on the couch for read aloud time).

For those formats and practices and programs you wish to see flourish in your home, then, you need to embrace them through that lens.

You ready? Here’s your secret weapon:

Stop talking. Start doing.

In other words, if you want a child to write in a new form, stop telling your child to write in that form!

Wake up, gather paper and pencil, and after breakfast, without a word (that’s the key here), start writing. Write the kind of thing you are expecting your child to write. You might be:

  • crafting a thank you note.
  • creating a short essay on paper dolls.
  • copying a quote from a book you love.
  • composing a non-fiction paragraph about Pocahontas.

Your kids may hover around you saying, “What are you doing? When do we start math? Mom, can I have more orange juice?”

You might respond: “I’m writing about Pocahontas. In fact, I can’t remember: does anyone remember the name of her tribe? Can someone get me the book we were reading?”

Keep going.

Someone asks, “Mom what am I supposed to do while you are writing?”

You reply, “I don’t know. What do you feel like starting with today? I’m going to work on this. You’re free to help me. Or you can get going with math. But I’m doing this.”

Then do it. Keep going.

Some will join you.

And because YOU are doing the assignment, you will discover just how difficult it is, too. You’ll have some raw direct experience of just what it is you are asking your child to do!

At some point in the next few weeks of doing a couple of these, you will see that your kids start to participate. You don’t simply flip over to telling them to take over, but you can say, “If you want to work on your own version of this, I’m happy to help you while I complete mine.”

Be open to collaboration, to multiple children doing one project, to everyone helping you with your project. This is HOME. Not school. Not about grade levels. This is about giving your kids a chance to watch a process before they have to engage in it or learn how to do it. This is your chance to model and lead by silence, rather than lecture and enforcement.

Try it!

Image © Sergey Khakimullin | Dreamstime.com

Stages of Growth in Writing

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Writing about Writing | 2 Comments »

Focus on the Subject More than the Child

NaaD 34 Ariana blogI want to let you in on the fruit of a lot of late night reading and middle of the night insomnia. The question pawing at me like a nocturnal kitten: What works in parenting? I’m plum worn out from the sad accounts of kids who are clearly bright, sharp adults who rendered the verdict on their childhoods: thumbs down.

I know that we parents come into the task completely green. Sure, we were parented, but we rarely feel qualified to be parents on that basis alone. We head off to websites and books, retreats and conferences looking for models that will ensure that OUR children will have good lives and grow up to be responsible, cheerful, good people. We want guarantees, because life is fraught with chaos and surprises (both welcome and unwelcome).

We trust experts and friends and religious leaders and therapists and anyone who seems authoritative and successful in their own right. We trust methods untested. We hope we are doing right by our kids.

What I am starting to see, though, is this odd trajectory.

The kids who claim to have had happy childhoods were not their parents’ projects.

Rather, the children who grow to be successful, happy adults are the ones whose projects were absorbing to their parents.

See what I did there?

In other words—if you focus more on the stuff that you and your kids care about (the big wide world of learning—books, birds, boats, Beowulf, beauty, bobcats, Broadway, battles, buoyancy, bodies, baked goods, Barbies, Bilbo—and those are just some of the subjects starting with the letter ‘B’!), you will create a much more bonded relationship with your children and they will learn how to be competent adults, than all the character training you impose, expect, exact, and create through whatever parenting method you choose.

It turns out that focusing on how to parent your child is less powerful than joining your child in the shared adventure of living.

In the end, what leaves the best impression on your kids is your hearty, enthusiastic participation in the stuff of life—and sharing those experiences with your kids as though they are welcome and a constitutive part of your own experience!

Some of that exploration will be parent led, some of it will be child led, but all of it will be experienced with wide-eyed wonder, a lack of judgment (no more—does Minecraft really count? are Barbies dangerous?), and an investment of real time—time you don’t have—time that could go to other stuff like chores, bedtimes, math pages, and baths.

Our homeschools thrive when learning is what we care about more than parenting. Ironically, being a good parent gets tossed into the bargain, when we do. Punishment, teaching responsibility, lectures about character, holding kids accountable to adult standards of behavior—these don’t seem to produce the results we think they will.

But jumping into the middle of an adventure—reading, playing a video game, building a bonfire, hiking, calculating to produce a quilt, joining a dance company, visiting the zoo every week, playing with words, baking cookies, acting out scenes from Shakespeare—these do more to “parent” your kids than you realize.

Go forth and be interested in life…bring your kids along. They’ll thank you for it when they get older.

Partnership Writing
Top image by Brave Writer mom, Ariana (cc).

Posted in Homeschool Advice | 1 Comment »

Keeping it real at home

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.

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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!

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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)

Posted in Homeschool Advice, Parenting | 3 Comments »