A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Home for the Holidays: Liam, Johannah, Jacob, Caitrin

I heard from a mom who may remind you of you. She is ping-ponging between structure and freedom, routine and wide open spaces of happy, invested “wasted” time. The back and forth swing feels unnerving—like she should have picked one or the other by now, and what should she do about two kids—one who feels comforted by the predictable pattern, and the other who collapses into tears of frustration in the face of assigned pages?

The way most parents handle this predicament is to try lots of ideas—looking for that one right fit that takes everyone into account. Me too! I’m just like you.

My journey included principles gleaned from the following streams of home education, mostly in this order. I started in 1991.

KONOS (kinesthetic unit-studies—wonderful!)

Roger and Dorothy Moore’s approach to learning math and reading in the early years (love them)

Ruth Beechik’s ideas about copy work and dictation (genius)

Sonlight (literature-based history and language arts; I was there the day SL was born!)

Other reading lists and literature-based programs I discovered at conventions, through friends, at the library

Enter The Internet (WATERSHED event of my life). Now I had LOTS of people to talk to about homeschooling and my choices expanded again

Charlotte Mason (both freedom and form, living books and getting out of doors, art, a lifestyle, tea; spent five years with a terrific CM group in Dayton which shaped a lot of my thinking about learning and loving)

Classical Education (for the categories—logic, grammar, rhetoric; for the book lists; for the style of inquiry, not so much for the program—too rigid for us)

Delight-directed learning (following a child’s passions and letting those expand to include what needs to be learned)

BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals; a business management term—catching sight of a person’s, in this case: child’s, BIG dreams and shaping the education to suit them, supporting the process to bring them to life)

Unschooling (hands off! let them go! put away textbooks!)

Teenage Liberation Handbook (meant much more to me than my kids since they had never been in school—it helped to deschool me, to give me courage to risk with Noah as a teen)

Radical unschooling (being attentive to my child and coordinating that with opportunities, deep deep appreciation for how learning happens from within and how to be a parent who is engaged enough to facilitate it and stand in awe of it)

Re-enter Textbooks (some subjects benefited from use: science, math—I had the courage to go there, and it took courage)

Tutors (math, SAT prep, art, piano, saxophone, sewing, handwriting therapy for dysgraphia, speech therapy)

Classes and camps (co-op, local high school, zoo, vintage dance, online courses, Shakespeare acting, space camp, marching band, color guard, theater, poetry club at the library)

Public School (some part-time, some full time high school)

College

The inputs from each of these streams created the education we called homeschool. I did not pick one philosophy and stick to it for all 17 years—who can? You don’t know what you are doing…you have to figure it out as you go. It’s hogwash to think that if you didn’t find the right stream early enough, you screwed up. Your kids are getting an education, but so are you! You are growing as an educator, as a learner, as an adult, as a parent. You didn’t come into this whole and ready to go. You are learning, doing, being as you are leading, loving, and evolving. That’s not easy.

Give yourself space and time to change your mind, to course correct, and to feel okay about your lack of certainty.

Not only that, I didn’t stop being a home educator just because some of my kids went to school. I’m still involved editing papers, discussing ideas brought up in class, reading textbooks to help with comprehension, setting up tutors, helping with the adjustment to school, and so on.

But even after school is over (graduations from high school and college), the home education continues!

When my adult kids come home, we still drink tea, read poetry, play word games and quiz up (tests trivia skills, especially love the one for geography), speak foreign languages to each other, read books together at coffee houses in each other’s company, recommend books, talk about feminism, genocide, North Korea, social work, politics, and favorite authors, play cards, watch both documentaries and popular movies, share music and discuss it, and still notice birds and art.

If you value learning together with your children, homeschool is not a task you complete one day and then you’re done. Rather, it is an ongoing source of relationship and self-education that your family will share throughout their lives.

All the choices you make shape who you become to each other.

It’s okay that you didn’t find the right system earlier. There is no right system!

There is you, your family, and what you stumble upon that helps you each year you move ahead in life.

Promise yourself one thing, and I think you’ll be okay:

Stay responsive.

Stay responsive to the moment (what’s working, what isn’t?)

Stay responsive to the child (what’s working for this child, what isn’t?)

Stay responsive to new input (don’t disqualify any educational idea or tool because you are afraid you will look bad to some group of homeschoolers)

STAY RESPONSIVE

Allow your homeschool to evolve, morph, grow, or shrink (if it needs to). Be strong and courageous to stick up for your choices in the face of pressure to feel badly about them. Do not adopt a system, or a set of values and beliefs that trump the individuals who live in your home.

There is no right system.

There is only your family. Love them, pay attention to them, try lots of ideas (try them, taste them like you were at the Taste of Cincinnati and were walking down the long hot walk way sampling Belgian waffles, beers, and bratwursts—a little of this and a little of that). Be satisfied with your unique blend of quality ideas that you sift and apply to your family, trusting that all together, you will have created a life that values learning.

If you ever feel belittled or shamed about the choices you are making for your family, leave that group. Once you feel pressure to conform, you can’t be responsive to your family—you will substitute the system for love.

Protect your family from judgment. Stand up for yourself. Learn. Enjoy.

Cross-posted on facebook.

Lots of homeschool literature talks about “delight-directed learning”—the practice of letting your child’s interests and passions guide learning. The philosophy runs like this: If you allow a child to pursue what piques her curiosity or arouses his enthusiasm, that child is more likely to suck the marrow of learning out of that field of interest than if you put information you think the child should learn in front of him or her.

If we follow our children into their delight-directed interests, we often can teach everything else we hope to teach. For instance, I remember that what finally put Caitrin over the hump for reading was the intersection between the Greek alphabet (a fascination of hers!) and a desire to read the article that told her what happened to Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson’s marriage! (Yes, we live in Cincinnati.)

As you get comfortable with this practice of following your children into their delights and passions, it becomes easier and easier to let your children show you the education they want to have. You, in turn, find ways to enhance that interest and expand it, adding the parts that reassure you that the three R’s are also being mastered.

But what about you, the homeschooling parent?

What if we talk about your delight-directed teaching?

Can you give yourself permission to live in a happy frame of mind on a regular basis, throughout the day?

Do you smile? Find reasons to laugh?

Do you exclaim, “Oh! I love the way the bread dough feels when I squish it between my fingers. And it’s sticky! Watch what I can do with sticky dough all over my fingers.”

Our heads run our homeschools so much of the time.

We are thinking about math during dictation. We’re worried about spelling while the child is reading aloud to us, beautifully. We plan lunch while another child recites times tables. We sweep the kitchen, wipe down the counters, and empty the trash when we can grab a few moments of quiet while children are happy at the table.

But are we happy?

I remember the suggestion to light candles when I did the evening dishes in my sink (in the days before I had a dishwasher). It changed everything. I looked forward to that time: deep warm water and suds, the gentle clinking of silverware, the satisfaction of muck sliding off my white plates, the yellow glow of candles instead of fluorescent lighting, the alone time. For a while, it became my time—my space to regroup. Such a little thing—candles. Yet it helped a chore become a delight for me.

When our family began our bird watching habit, I noticed that I became more tuned into the space beyond my windows. Prior to that, it was as if I lived in a cave! Even though my windows opened to a glorious backyard, I rarely paused to look through the windows. I was too busy in my head planning the next activity, averting the next spill, changing a diaper, and wondering if I’d ever get a full night’s sleep.

Once we added bird feeders, I noticed that I smiled more at the weather outside, too. These feathered friends showed up in large groups in the snow! Changed how I felt about winter.

It takes practice to be a delight-directed teacher. To my way of thinking, it is less about picking topics I love (though that is certainly part of it!) and more about noticing the not-time-bound details of daily living in front of and with my children.

• I can take a walk with them at a snail’s pace and notice the silver trail a snail makes.
• I can enjoy the sounds of squealing toddlers if I can let go of my need to have a complete thought in that moment.
• I can taste my lunch when I sit with my kids to eat.
• I can enjoy hot tea, if I don’t walk around the house with the mug, leaving it at the side of my half-made bed or in the laundry room on the dryer.

I want to be a delight-directed person—not just a teacher, not as a means to an end.

I want to pause and allow for the people I love to surprise me.

I want to stop assigning motives to their actions—a child could be in a hurry, which is why the milk spilled; or a child could be momentarily distracted by the baby’s giggle; or a child could be trying so hard not to spill, she spills! Any of those explanations may be true, but I don’t have to choose the one that makes me angry.

I can allow for ambiguity, I can open myself to the possibility that my children are eager to please me, just as I’m eager to make them happy.

From that frame of reference, we can create a delight-directed homeschool environment, together—with me leading the way.

Last night one of our friends (one of the former support group leaders, in fact) was in town. She fired off an email to a bunch of us with a date, time, and location to reunite.

Thirteen met. I haven’t seen some of them in a very long time. Not all of them were/are close friends, though some are. But we’ve been in co-ops and support groups, we’ve attended conferences and committee meetings together. Two helped me put together The Writer’s Jungle the first year I spoke at CHEO (Ohio’s state convention). Another was responsible for that invitation to speak!

We went around the table one at a time sharing “where our kids are now” – seeing pictures of grandbabies, hearing about weddings, and new adventures post-homeschooling (like refurbishing a camper and traveling). Each one shared about her post-homeschool search for career and/or meaning (so many volunteers, so many teaching in some capacity, several have gone back to school and earned new degrees, some are working at jobs they like or to help with finances at home). Some were enjoying freedom to be at home and not required to do anything.

As the evening wore down, conversation around homeschooling itself took over. A few thoughts repeated themselves and I thought of all of you.

Don’t rely on the promises of systems. All those books you buy—even mine—be sure you tailor everything you do to your kids and to your unique family. Conventions are especially prone to promising outcomes if you follow the rules of whatever system. A unanimous “not true” followed. Kids are their own persons and no system delivers the vision you create for them. They must choose for themselves. Take everyone else’s experience with two big grains of salt!

The stay-at-home parent is the homeschooling parent. Therefore, it winds up leading to a lot of marital dissatisfaction when the (usually) wife expects the full time employed husband to be in charge of the homeschool. Rather than enjoying her chosen career (educating the kids), she can wind up resentful that her husband doesn’t match the “role models” at conventions. Everyone doing what they care about doing and supporting each other is enough. This was a big discussion point last night.

There are things going on in your home you don’t know about and won’t find out about until your kids are grown ups. This leads to a great number of fabulous family stories to be shared over holiday meals between your kids who love each other. One mom said the stories usually start with, “When we were supposed to be doing our school…” Ha ha! Loved this one.

Homeschooled kids, no matter how they were home educated, do tend to be close to each other as grown up siblings. So great to hear that across the board.

Some kids still live at home into their twenties. Some got married at 18.

Many mothers are burnt out by the end of the homeschooling years.

Some adult kids swear they will never homeschool (and put their kids into schools they never went to!) while others have chosen to homeschool their children. Some of the homeschool mom alums are helping home educate their grandchildren!

Adult children are grown up small children. Some will struggle into adulthood. Some will thrive. Some will cause you profound worry. Some will move you to embarrassing pride. And often all of these in one family. Homeschooling doesn’t guarantee outcomes—it does promote family closeness in most of the cases I’ve seen.

I loved seeing everyone. The most incredible part of being with these women is seeing how much stronger they all seem on this side of the journey—confident, able to think for themselves, clear about who they are, vibrant women making contributions. That’s a wonderful benefit, I think.

Keep going!

Image (cc)

Cross-posted on facebook.