One Mother’s Transformation

One Mother's Transformation

I am so thrilled to share Monique’s journey with you today. Monique came to the Grand Rapids event a couple of weeks ago and sent me the most engaging description of how she applied what she learned in her family. I’ve waited for permission to post her thoughts here which came while I was away in California. I’ve included her follow up email as well since it extends her ideas even further.

So let me give you a bit of background first:

Monique’s children were homeschooled until this year. She put her daughter into school (a bit) to “teach her a lesson.” Monique, like so many of us, got frustrated with the way her daughter dragged her feet about learning, how she didn’t appreciate her mother’s investment of heart, time and energy, how she seemed to turn what was supposed to be a delightful, family bonding experience into a power struggle between mom and kid.

In the “Nurturing Brave Writers” workshop (UPDATE: Now available digitally and on DVD!), we spend a lot of time talking about how to create the context for peaceful, nurturing relationships as foundational to any education (whether your kids are in “school-in-a-building” or homeschooled).

Here’s how Monique applied these insights:

Thank you so much for a great event.  I truly mean to let it enhance the way I view my children.  I came home and emailed all my inspiration to my aunt, who now lives in Morocco and is one of the most interesting, intelligent people I know.  This was her response:

WOW ! What a message….what a good mother you are !  “If I raise my girls to be interesting people…”  To paraphrase : if I guide my girls to the maximum of exposure, their God-given individuality will surely be ‘interesting’.  As I look back, our mother CONTROLLED our exposure, and….when the world changed (faster than her Betty Crocker cookies could crumble), she became bitter, no longer enjoyed who her daughters were (forgetting HER sordid past!), and kept her world in chains—criticizing anything outside its boundaries.  College ?  Molly may just be an auto-didact artist by then and a diploma may cramp her style—not easy to let them go (‘Let the reign’ of daughters bud and flower in family soil, but where their seeds fly belongs to their generation). Difficult to even calculate the mathematics of change; but the more data (cause) available, the more the consequential effect compounds….and, for sure, the in-put your girls will receive is only for them to digest. You and Pat can sit back and enjoy the show, fixed in the garden of your generation.

When I came home Sunday, I had to do homework with Molly.  She had a book report due.  Instead of plopping her in front of her worksheets to fill it in, I decided to make it a collaborative, learning experience, as well as honoring my child’s amazing love of projects.  So we turned her boring book report into a splendid lapbook.  We spent 11 hours on it, only breaking for dinner for an hour.

My sweet girl just LOVED making a lap book.  She kept sighing and looking at me and saying, “Mommy, I just love you.”  She did so much copywork in one day that she now has every possible form of punctuation mastered.  We pored over quotes in the book that would encapsulate each character.  We discussed every aspect of the book imaginable.  Instead of doing a character sketch on just the main character, as her teacher asked, we did a character sketch on every single character.  Her choice.

When she summarized the book, I tried to mimic how you said your mother would compliment and then say, “How about . . .?”  I taught her about good openers instead of saying, “The first part of the book was about…”  We had to come up with the heart of the book as well.  We couldn’t figure it out.  So we sat on it for an hour then came back and it struck us.  She kept asking me if all this help would be considered cheating.  I told her all I care about is if she’s learning.  If she got an F on it for cheating, oh, well!  I knew her teacher would be thrilled, though.

When we turned it in, her teacher was astonished.  She ooohed and ahhhed and praised up my Molly.  She made a point to pass it around the class so everyone could see.  She told the class that she would never assign this, but if they want to take a homework assignment and make it into a lap book, by all means, please do.  My shy daughter was bursting with pride.

And I felt great all over that I honored who she is and basked in it for 11 hours.  What a gift to give my daughters, just to honor them.

Oh, and before I launched into this all day marathon project, I played Webkinz with my middle daughter.  I never told her YUCK once.  I kept telling myself I’m the adult here.  I’m the bigger person.  I’ve navigated a marriage, for crying out loud; I can play Webkinz with my daughter for a half an hour!

Thank you again for a great weekend.  I love opening my thoughts to positive, new ideas.

Monique

Monique’s follow up:

I’m really focusing on honoring just who each of my girls are.  It’s hard to not put them into what I think they ought to be.  Yet it’s freeing to honor their own individuality.

The other day I was frustrated with my older daughter’s clumsy ways.  She was just crashing into everything possible and making poor choices with her belongings.  So I thought to honor what she might need.  I grabbed a blanket and a big beach towel.  Despite the fact it was cold out (something she’s always been amazingly oblivious to), I told her to take off her shoes and socks and roll up her jeans.  Then I took her to a flooded, mucky park and told her to get out of the car and get it all out of her system.

Her eyes blazed like a mad woman.  She crashed out of the car and did an arm spiraling stumble into the first puddle she could find and totally delighted herself in a mud-slinging, stringy-hair, flying human tornado.  Her sister meanwhile tip toed through the least wet grassy areas, while holding her jeans up even farther than I had them rolled.  But the two had a great time.  My messy Molly actually did full swan dives into the deepest ice water indentations she could find.  When they got back into the car, the little tidy one was bitching up a storm.  But my Molly was open-armed sighing out “I love you Mommy’s” to me, in the backseat naked under the blanket I brought.  When we got home my husband saw our mud encrusted blue lipped daughter and was shocked I let her do that.  I just loved the kid I have.  She’s a lot of fun.  And I love my middle tidy one too!

Thanks from all of us.

There’s nothing more to say except:

“Go and do likewise.”

The Homeschool Alliance

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The Sea, the Self and Scones

I’ve had no time to write. Instead, I’ve been playing with my nephew and nieces, I’ve had tea with my mother, I’ve gone on walks with my sister and her dog and I’ve been to the beach all by myself where I sat and stared at that huge expanse of water, allowing the rhythm of the shhhhhh and roar to alternate and resonate inside me. The ocean has always been my spiritual home.

I grew up outside of Malibu. I remember hopping in my blue Mazda GLC in my teens, and swiveling my way through Topanga canyon listening to my eight-track tape player until the mountains dumped me out on Pacific Coast Highway. I’d park my car and walk to the unremarkable beach (which Malibu is) and sit on a rock watching the waves roll in and out. In college, when I attended UCLA and my world became cluttered with failed crushes on boys and parents going through a divorce and roommate conflicts, I’d hop in that same little car and zip up PCH back to Malibu. I’d park at the health food store across the highway, purchase a container of plain yogurt and some bulk granola. With a plastic spoon, I’d cross PCH to the same spot I visited in high school.

Stirring the yogurt became a ritual. I’d sit and stir to the rhythm of the waves. I’d allow the inner tension and turmoil to drain while I sucked the yogurt off the little spoon. I can’t remember what it tasted like. I only remember how slow-moving life felt on the rock on the beach. I could become transfixed by one glint of light on a wave, or by the way the surfers would stroke, stroke, stroke and then pop up and stand and glide and carve, until they plunged back into the water at the shore only to start again.

Yesterday, I borrowed my mom’s old stick shift. With the liberating power of a GPS, I punched in the address of the beach and drove there effortlessly to old 1970’s rock tunes. “Freebird” played and I laughed about that. I parked the car on the lot above the beach. We had cold, wet, grey weather yesterday which suited me fine. I worked my way down a slippery ramp to the beach itself. Sand piper babies and their vigilant mothers scattered across the sand in front of me. I walked until I found an old driftwood log.

I sat on it.

I watched the scene I remembered from high school, from college. Waves, surfers, gulls. This time, I sat on another part of the California coastline, this time with blooming iceplant behind me.

I rested.

It’s interesting what comes up when you sit still long enough. Old feelings, thoughts, wishes surfaced and I had time to paw through them. I took them out one at a time, shook the dust off, looked at them front and back. I sorted them according to type, size, feeling, urgency, sentiment. The ocean gave me a rhythm to follow and over the course of the next hour (between sitting and walking), I found myself less troubled by the set of ordinary issues that I “never can get to.” I felt renewed energy for some of the tasks ahead.

After an hour and a half of quiet bliss, it began to rain and I worked my way back to my car. I reset my GPS for my return trip, stopped at Starbucks to drink a vanilla latte and then returned to my mom’s home, ready to be with my family again. This afternoon, I’m conducting a teatime with my nieces and nephew. We’ll be making lemon scones.

I thought you might like the recipe (from Family Fun magazine) so I’m sharing it here.

Scones

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
1 cup heavy whipping cream, plus a little for brushing
1 egg yolk, beaten slightly
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Lemon Glaze

1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons heavy or whipping cream

1. Heat oven to 400. Grease large baking sheet (preferably not a dark one).

2. Sift flour, sugar, b.p., and salt into a mixing bowl. Add the lemon zest and toss mixture with your hands.

3. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until it resembles fine crumbs.

4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Pour in the cream, the yolk, and the vanilla extract. Use a fork to blend the liquids within the well. Then use a wooden spoon to combine all ingredients, just until they hold together. Don’t over stir.

5. Scrape dough onto a flour-dusted surface and using floured hands, knead gently three or four times to form a ball. Flatten the ball into a disk about 3/4 inch thick, then cut it as you would a pie into 8 wedges. Transfer to baking sheet leaving 1/4 inch between them. Brush tops lightly with whipping cream.

6. Bake the scones in center of oven until golden brown for 16-18 minutes. Cool on cookie sheet then transfer to wire rack.

7. While scones continue to cool, make the glaze. Combine all ingredients in small whisking bowl and whisk until mixture is smooth. You can thin with a tiny bit of water if needed, 1/2 teaspoon at a time. When scones are colled, drizzle glaze on each one.

Posted in Family Notes, General | 4 Comments »

Good morning from California!

I know it’s almost not morning where I come from and that means it is definitely not morning in Germany, Thailand or Australia! 🙂 Hello everyone.

I spent Friday night at UCLA at an event that featured two authors whose work I admire and enjoy: Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the juggernaut best-seller Eat, Pray, Love) and Anne Lamott (author of my favorite all-time writing book Bird by Bird and two books on her faith journey called Traveling Mercies and Plan B). They shared the stage and asked each other questions while the audience of thousands of well-dressed, beautifully coiffed, nails-painted women laughed till they cried. My main purpose in attending this event (besides the obvious – I get to go to UCLA for a weekend all by myself – thing) was to soak in the presence of two authors whose writing styles match my own and who’ve been sources of inspiration and modeling that mean a lot to me.

In fact, I’m in the process of writing a book about home education (shhh, don’t tell) which I’m writing in that same genre: creative non-fiction. Creative non-fiction is the type of writing that features autobiography, but puts it into a novel-like format (or a collection of personal essays connected by theme). These two women are masters. And they are funny!

I’d love to share more, but I have to get on the road to my mother’s today. I hope to get more writing done for you this week on the blog once I’m there. The whole environment oozes inspiration and quiet – the right stuff for writing.

Posted in Family Notes, General | 5 Comments »

Email: What if they don’t like tea, poetry and copywork?

What if they don't like tea, poetry or copywork

Mary, a Brave Writer Mom, expresses a question that deserves its own post:

Hi Julie! Thank you for all your energy, attention and passion you put into Brave Writer. I have been following you and your method for a couple of years. I love the copywork/dictation piece especially. I saw your one-thing workshop too. Every time I read about the benefits of copywork/dicatation I think, ‘Great!, but how?? through osmosis??” I have 3 boys (12,10,8) and they would rather be doing anything but schoolwork or anything that remotely looks like schoolwork. We have gotten into a nice routine and do C/D at least 3 times per week- they don’t like it but do it. Also, we’ve been sharing more poetry about 1x per week (no tea involved, sometimes popcorn or the local bookstore) and again, they ‘just don’t like poetry, sorry mom”.

I feel good about that consistency and just hope that it all pays off in the end. In my more positive moments I look at them blissfully and think what a wonderful life they have; but then in the next moment I am in a panic that I am ruining their chances of happiness and earning a sustainable, independent living.

I felt compelled to write to you and know you understand. Through your blogs you seem so much more confident in the process, I just wish I didn’t fall into the abyss so often.

Would welcome anymore words of wisdom…..

Thank you again!
Mary Grzywinski

Hi Mary.

These are real concerns and I admire your sincere and consistent attempts to make copywork, dictation and poetry meaningful to your boys. Sounds like they have been faithfully following your lead in spite of not loving it. I’d certainly tell them how much you appreciate that!

Since they’ve been at all three for awhile, it may be time to take a break. Perhaps you can “turn the tables” and do what they’d love to do three times a week for a bit. Would they prefer to play Quiddler (a wordy card game) or do reverse dictations for awhile? What about just playing board games for a bit: Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Zooreka? Would they like reading joke books instead of poetry? How about listening to a book on tape at teatime rather than poetry? Maybe they need to get outside, hiking in nature, jotting down birds or plants they see in a list (copywork) rather than holding a book open and copying the words on a page.

One of the things I’ve noticed with my own kids is that while routines comfort me, they become redundant and boring to kids. So I try to break things up. We might go a month or two without any copywork at all after a period of doing copywork nearly daily. I’ve taken a month to do drawing each day instead of any writing. Poetry has always been a favorite here so that hasn’t even been one to drop. However, my older kids had a much stronger passion for Shakespeare than my younger two. So each time I’ve tried to read Shakespeare stories with these two, they just haven’t been interested. So we’ve gone to see plays instead of reading them aloud.

Ask your kids what is missing from their days.

Do they want to flip school upside down? Start the day with videos or computer games and do their handwriting after lunch or in the evening (if that’s a realistic choice for you)? I remember when Noah was little, the babies and toddlers made it hard for him to focus in the mornings. So for a period of time, I did his math with him at night after the little ones were in bed.

Is there something they want to learn or do (whatever that is) that is crowded out by other schoolish activities? Find out what that may be. Sometimes it has its own value that relates to these other goals. Liam created a notebook that had an imaginary island chain in it. Each map had a key and a flag, as well as descriptions of topography, climate, produce and exports. He hated copywork at this time, but was willing to write down about half of these items each time we worked on his island project. I wrote about half the time. We worked on it several times a month for one school year.

The idea here is to keep experimenting with new venues, new options, trusting the overall thrust of your time with your children to be the good that they need.

Remember how critical your kids’ own input is to a successful home education.

There is no law that requires them to do copywork from a book every day. If they don’t love it, minimize it. Give it a good stretch and then a good break. Get involved in their interests – let them teach you how to play pokemon cards or a computer game or how to throw with a lacrosse stick. Learn to knit or build a fire in the fire place from scratch. Go back to jotting down their thoughts for a bit to remind them how valuable those words are to you. Let them keep a list of funny jokes or presents they want for their birthdays as a way to keep writing.

I hope other moms will share ways that they have created some space around practices that their kids don’t love. Each year your kids will present you with new challenges and new opportunities based on their interests and tastes. It takes a lot of love and energy to meet that demand. But I know you can do it. You’re the adult, after all!

Party School!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Email, General | 4 Comments »

Friday Freewrite: Flying on an airplane

Since I’m heading west tomorrow morning, I thought it would be fun to write about flying in a plane. Freewrite about either a real plane trip or an imagined one. You can indulge your enthusiasm fo fiction or non-fiction with this prompt. Be sure to include specific details.

Posted in Friday Freewrite, General | 2 Comments »