An Experiment

Last week, I tried an experiment on the kids. Everything I've been reading about homeschooling / unschooling has been making me think about motivation to learn. On this journey toward a true philosophy of education, I hope to instill that in my children, or rather, hope that I don't kill their natural curiosity and love of learning and finding out new things. I have noticed, however, that Bombie seems to do things less out of a desire to learn and more out of a need for approval. The minute doing something gets hard, she gives up. I know, I know, she's only four but this quality comes through loud and clear. She is driven by a fear of failure way more than I'd like her to be. So for one day last week, I decided to take away (mostly) all approval and / or disapproval. I did not suggest any activities or crafts, I did not stop her from doing what she wanted to pursue (as long as it wasn't potentially dangerous to herself or the others.) I wanted to see what she would do.

Answer? The results were mixed. Two things happened. One, she actually did pursue something I wouldn't have necessarily suggested in an area of potential difficulty for her (spatial reasoning) and was completely thrilled by it but, two, with the lack of response from me, the kids' behavior was quite bad. They were completely driven by just having fun. Once I had spent most of the day not expecting better behavior from them beyond just not hurting themselves or others, that set the tone for the rest of the day.

So, in the end, I think, the experiment was successful. It showed me what I needed to see. When Bombie was driven by her own motivation to put four magnets close to each other around a heart-shaped sticker without having them jump on top of each other (Talk about fine motor skills! These are strong magnets!) she worked so hard at it, continuing to try repeatedly after many failed attempts, far longer than I would have pushed her by encouraging or dissuading her. I timed her; she was working on those magnets for close to fifteen minutes straight, lips pursed, frowning determination; it was quite amazing to watch.

Conclusion: hmmm. I don't know yet. Do less with them, I think. Less is more. Pick my battles. Leave lots of time for free play but don't sidestep parenting completely. You know, the usual.

For Valentine's Day: An Excerpt

(From my still unfinished book.)

The day we bought Bombie a Pez dispenser, our lives changed a little.

My husband says they were out picking up something from the store when Bombie’s eyes landed on a Pez dispenser in the display and soon her pudgy fingers as well. He chuckled, thinking it would be fun to let her have one. Happy memories of loving his childhood Pez dispenser flooding his head, he told her to go ahead and pick one for herself. My husband loves impulse buys and the kids love him for it. It makes him way more fun than mom when shopping.

And so ran perhaps the first day my daughter made me proud: she picked a Pocahontas-shaped one for herself. Not because of the movie – she hadn’t even seen it. She picked Pocahontas for her darker skin and long dark hair; it reminded her of mommy. (Apparently, even active imaginations have their comfort zones!) For her younger brother, Hucksley, she picked out Buzz Lightyear, again, having never seen the movie Toy Story. Nope. She picked him for his white skin and larger stature.

“Daddy!” she said. “It’s daddy!” You can’t make these things up!

Thus began Bombie’s attachment to this inanimate thing that has the potential of changing the lives of children everywhere. Soon, the candy in it was gone, but her sticky fingers grasped the plastic dispenser with a two-year-old’s greedy enthusiasm. When she finally did see the promo of Pocahontas, her eyes grew wide. I may have watched a neuron or two fire in her brain, I thought, sounding like my husband for a minute. She searched desperately for her Pez dispenser, never more than a foot away from her, hidden in the folds of her pink blanket. Her eyes darted from the screen to her hand to me, thrilled at having mommy, I suppose, in three different places in front of her all at once.

She beamed. I tried, I really, really did, not to roll my eyes.

She even named it. “Mammy,” she called it. (What else?) I was “Mommy,” you see, and Pocahontas had to have a different name lest I find out that Bombie was secretly trying to replace me. However, one vowel wasn’t fooling anyone, and especially not when she was whining. She even woke us up a few times from bed, screaming, because it fell out of her crib and how could she possibly go to sleep without “Mammy” beside her? Did I mention she carries it around everywhere she goes? I have stumbled over to her crib many a time bleary-eyed to see her pointing to “Mammy” lying innocently on the floor, my daughter bawling her eyes out at not being able to reach it.

Psychologists, I hear, call this kind of thing which helps children get to the next step in their increasing independence a “transitional object.” But the list of transitional objects for my daughter grows every day. She has her blanket, which used to be a nice fluffy pink and is now torn in three places and somewhere between grey and brown. She also tends to get caught up in rituals, like wanting a book or stickers or worse, toys in her crib, at bedtime. I sometimes wonder at the cramped space she sleeps in, but I think it makes her feel safe. Currently, she shares her crib with about eight dolls. I’m convinced she has named them because if I sneak one out, she hunts for it. Something tells me she’s going to have a dozen kids. Watch out, Duggar family.

Still, I do not begrudge her the toys. Rather, it is her attachment to things and rituals that worries me the most. It is enough to drive me to tears. I dread getting her a new toy because I know that in some way it is adored, pedestalized and included into a routine before I even hear the slightest rip of the gift wrap.

Bedtime is perhaps when this behavior shows up the most, perhaps because I’m pleased to give her what she wants if she will just lie down and go to sleep. And that indulgence on my part turns her into quite the control-monster; it’s as if she becomes completely incapable of even a little change. Every bedtime has to follow the very same elaborate ritual or no one’s going to bed or getting any peace in the home. And so, lately, my biggest advice to new moms is this: be careful how many steps you add to the ritual of bedtime. No matter how perfect the baby soap commercials seem and how loving the family looks, all huddled together reading a book after baby’s bath time, remember that someday that baby will wear you down and you will become secondary to doing all those things so baby can get to sleep. My rule now? If I cannot count aloud the bedtime ritual to the children, it’s too long. Our current one goes something like this: Drink milk, brush your teeth, say your prayers and it’s off to bed. They even repeat it after me.

“Nuk, tee, pear, ta-taam.” Milk, teeth, prayer, bedtime.

Ritualistic routine-attached behavior is not new. I have seen it in more than one and I’m not just talking about my children. Here are the sins of the mother. Attachments come as naturally to me as breathing. Some virtually drop into my lap via the television when I think I’m relaxing.

Today, for instance, is Valentine’s Day, a day when I think I’m going to step out my door and hearts are going to come falling from the sky and cover the sidewalk. Every woman’s fantasy, right? Oh, to feel the squish of red velvet hearts under her three inch heels! What woman doesn’t sigh at the thought? I laugh at it but not without wincing a little because it reminds me of a time not too long ago, a time when I understood love only within the confines of romance.

It was our first Valentine’s Day since we were married. We decided to go out on a date. As it turned out, it was a disastrous evening to be out – we would have done way better had we stayed home and ordered pizza. We ended up waiting for over an hour and a half in an annoyingly loud restaurant for a table. Then, when we finally got one, it was even louder and even more uncomfortable to be in the dining area than in the waiting room. We decided to leave. In the car, in tears, I complained to my newly married husband.

“You’re not doing this Valentine’s Day thing right!” I whined.

He sighed. “Let’s go home.” He sounded resigned to hate this day for the rest of time.

“But I’m hungry!” I lied.

We ended up having dinner at a fast food place, where there was room to sit and, believe it or not, it was quiet! The French fries put me in a better mood. We may have even smiled and joked a little. Then we went home and opened a bottle of champagne. He gave me the candy he had bought for me as a gift. All in all, the day had had a rocky start but ended well. More importantly, my husband has continued to bring me flowers on every Valentine’s Day since without complaining and sighing, so I guess the damage I did that first day was not irreparable.

However, today I still look back at that day a little peeved. I will admit that the reality of it was far indeed from my expectations of how it would turn out and so I am peeved that I didn’t get the Valentine’s Day I wanted, but within that is a different irritation, deeper, more subtle, almost hidden. And that is really annoyance at myself, because it has taken me all of ten years with my husband to realize that, ultimately, my focus that day had been all wrong. I have come to realize that what we see on television and fill our heads and hearts with is all wrong. The television cannot convey the love that matures, the love that binds, the self-sacrificing love of marriage, the enduring love of God who has created marriage as an earthly representation of His eternal love, Christ’s love.

The television knows nothing of Christ’s love.

What I should have wanted that day was not the hearts, the romance, the candlelight. What I should have wanted was to celebrate my husband and – by extension – us. What I truly vowed to love at our marriage was not the singular night of chocolate and wine and hearts; it was him after all – him, having worked all day, still patiently waiting with me in a loud restaurant, him, trying to please his bride, him, at the McDonalds eating fries with me, him, opening a bottle of champagne. The rest of the things were contrivances to get to him, embellishments that had taken the place of the one thing that mattered – him, in love with me.

If the television knows nothing of Christ’s love, I’m beginning to realize, by the same token, I know very little of God’s love. How many times have I been, to Him, exactly like my daughter, grasping for things, finding comfort in them, things created than the Creator Himself? How many times have I cried to Him when something fell just outside my reach? How many times since that night have I continued to whine and cry that my husband hasn’t made my birthday, a vacation day, just perfectly the way I wanted it? How many times do I insist that I have an absolute right to my regrets?

As I grow older, my regrets grow with me. A house bought too soon, a friend lost, investments not made, then made, and ruined, homes sold, people hurt, a bankruptcy. Regrets that scream out life isn’t fair, regrets that cry, I must be recompensed for this, Lord. Even though I will only grudgingly accept whatever else it is you have for me and say, Fine, if that’s how it is, Your will be done. And in the process, I will trample over other people’s emotions and scream and yell and generally make a nuisance of myself. No, I am beginning to think I will probably never learn to take things in stride. I will never learn how to shake it off and walk on knowing that He is by my side. Never truly believe that all things happen for the good of those who are called by Him. The hands of faith I extend will never quite be completely empty of regrets – those idols of the heart.

My daughter’s Pez dispenser is not me and, while I am slightly flattered that she chose a very slender and high cheek boned beautiful Disney-ized Pocahontas as my replica, it is still clearly not me. That Bombie would then push her brother aside and throw a tantrum for it, rebelling against me and being as big a nuisance as she can so that she can then have her sweet moments with something that simply reminds her of me is frankly saddening. It brings me face to face with my own idolatry; it drives me to repentance.

Someday, God willing, my daughter will understand this. Someday in the future when she’s picking up another toy her child demands with a tantrum and she starts to pull her hair out and say, “But I’m right here beside you! Why do you need another thing? Another obsession?” Then hopefully she will look toward the sky and The Holy Spirit will whisper in her ears, “Listen O Israel, the Lord thy God is one. The only One. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy strength” and she will cling to Him and hope in some small way to instill in her child this truth. She will pray fervently for God to touch her child. And, maybe, in some small way, that is when she will understand why today even against my will I wake up and stumble half-asleep to the side of her crib at one a.m. to hand her the Pez dispenser that has fallen out of the side and sigh.

Lessons from Pigtails

As I work on refining my homeschool/unschool philosophy I realized today that whether Bombie explicitly counts with me or not she definitely CAN count. She wanted me to braid her hair this morning and so I told her to bring me some hair ties. She comes back with EXACTLY four and then she tells me two for the right side and two for the left. What was that? Division? Nice.

Nevertheless, at grocery shopping, I let them "help" me by taking turns at counting vegetables and fruit as they picked them out and bagged them. I loved that they were involved and I didn't need to tell them to stop fighting or work to keep them out of the way or strapped in the cart as I have in the past.

Against my better judgment I bought them some stuff that would be referred to as educational in a traditional sense. Okay, okay, I'll say it - I bought them flashcards. But in my defense, they picked them out and they weren't too expensive. One is a spin on the classic "Go Fish" game where the kids match upper case and lower case letters and the other has numbers and other math concepts. Bombie matched all the letters at the first go and got bored with the game immediately. Hucksley is a little too young to play with either of them so here they sit and wait. Sigh. Serves me right. I shouldn't be buying flashcards anyway. Way better to learn to count while tying pigtails!

An Ongoing List of Homeschooling Reading

With the huge amount of research I have done into homeschooling, unschooling, and education in general, I thought I should begin a list of books I either have read and found helpful to develop my own style of homeschool or books other homeschoolers have recommended that I plan on reading soon. Who knows how this list will come in handy! So (deep breath) here goes:
1. Weapons of Mass Instruction - John Taylor Gatto.
2. Dumbing Us Down - John Taylor Gatto
3. A Different Kind of Teacher - John Taylor Gatto
4. How Children Fail - John Holt
5. How Children Learn - John Holt
6. The Underground History of American Education - John Taylor Gatto
7. Homeschooling for Excellence - David and Micki Colfax
8. Deschooling Society - Ivan Illich
9. You Are Your Child's First Teacher - Rahima Baldwin
10. Homeschooling Rights and Responsibilities -  Christian Liberty Press
11. The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum - R J Rushdoony
12. Homeschooling - The Right Choice - Christopher Klicka
13. Homeschool Heroes - Christopher Klicka
14. The Homeschooling Father - Michael Farris
15. The Learning Gap - Steveson & Stigler
16. Play with a Purpose - Dorothy Einon
17. Why Johnny can't Read - Rudolph Flesch
18. Better Late than Early - Raymond and Dorothy Moore
19. The Christian Homeschool - Gregg Harris
20. The Homeschool  Jumpstart Navigator - Barbara Shelton
21. The Great Escape - Geoffrey Botkin
22. For the Children's Sake - Susan Schaffer Macauley
23. Develop a Lifestyle Routine - Marilyn Howshall
24. The Well Trained Mind - Susan Wise Bauer
25. The Unschooling Handbook - Mary Griffith
26. Late Talking Children - Thomas Sowell
27. How Lincoln Learned to Read - Daniel Wolff
28. The Montessori Method - Maria Montessori
29. Loving God with All Your Mind - Gene Edward Veith Jr.
30. Feel-Bad Education - Alfie Kohn
31. Homeschool: a Family's Journey - Gregory Millman
32. The Homework Myth - Alfie Kohn
33. In Their Own Way: Discovering and Encouraging your Child's Personal Learning Style - Thomas Armstrong
34. Seven Kinds of Smart - Thomas Armstrong
35. Why We Do What We Do - Edward Deci
36. Deschooling Our Lives - Matt Hern
37. Learning All the Time - John Holt
38. Teach your Own - John Holt
39. Punished by Rewards - Alfie Kohn
40. Do Hard Things - Alex and Brett Harris
41. Real Lives: Eleven Teenagers Who Don't Go To School - Grace Llewellyn
42. Growing Without Schooling (magazine)
43. The Old Schoolhouse (magazine)
44. Home Education Magazine (magazine)
45. The Home School Source Book - Donn Reed
46. Good Stuff: Learning Tools For All Ages - Rebecca Rupp
47. The Power of Play - David Elkind
48. The Hurried Child - David Elkind
49. Miseducation - David Elkind
50. So You're Thinking of Homeschooling - Lisa Whelchel
51. The Mismeasure of Man - Stephen Jay Gould
52. Hard Times in Paradise - David and Micki Colfax
53. Growing with Games - Sally Goldberg
54. Homeschool Your Child for Free - Gold and Zeilinski
55. Real Life Homeschooling - Rhonda Barnfield
56. The Homeschooling Book of Answers - Linda Dobson
57. The Big Book of Unschooling - Sandra Dodd

58. The Underachieving School - John Holt

59. What Do I Do Monday? - John Holt

60. Freedom and Beyond - John Holt

61. Escape from Childhood: the needs and Rights of Children - John Holt

62. Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better - John Holt

63. Home Education - Charlotte Mason

64. Parents and Children - Charlotte Mason
65. School Education - Charlotte Mason
66. Ourselves - Charlotte Mason
67. Formation of Character - Charlotte Mason
68. Towards a Philosophy of Education - Charlotte Mason

69. Smooth and Easy Days - Charlotte Mason

70. Doing it Their Way: Home Based Learning and Autonomous Education - Jan Fortune-Wood

71. The Unschooling Unmanual - essays by various

72. Free Range Education - Teri Dowty
73. One to One: A Practical Guide to Learning at Home Age 0-11 - Gareth Lewis

74. Unqualified Education: A Practical Guide to Learning at Home Age 11-18 - Gareth Lewis

75. Educating Your Children at Home - Alan Thomas

76. How Children Learn At Home - Alan Thomas
77. Help for the Harried Homeschooler: A Practical Guide to Balancing Your Child's Education with the Rest of Your Life - Christine Field

78. The Unschooled Mind - Howard Gardner 

79. Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire - Rafe Esquith


(More coming! Want to recommend a book to add to this list? Let me know!)

Amidst Baby Teething...

... Bombie learnt to put a flatter, weaker magnet on stronger ones and make a spinning wheel. This was her idea and not initiated by me in any way.
... The older kids made ice cream with basic guidance from me. Bombie's motivation to master my tasks is exhilarating. "I do it!" has become the phrase of the week it seems.
... Bombie has been making squiggles on lined paper which may not look like a lot but is fantastic pre-writing practice. I  absolutely do not intend to put worksheets in front of my children until they're good and ready. A lot of research suggests that at this point the single most important thing they have to learn is hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. If we rush through this, writing (when it's time) can be a big challenge.
... Hucksley learned about trucks today, which is what he was interested in the most. And in a wonderful moment of homeschooling, I showed them, using two sheets of paper how when a cloud passes the sun it dims the light. I loved it when they reenacted what I had told them to my husband when he came home.

Library Day

After a day of house arrest we headed out to the local library today where the older kids had a chance to play on the computers again but it was busier than usual so there were a few tears from both. We played a little, read a little and then headed home for lunch.

I also picked up Thomas Sowell's book Late Talking Children which so far seems to describe Bombie pretty well. I haven't finished reading it yet but am about a quarter of the way through and it mentions how certain children just talk late and have no other developmental issues. Einstein was a late talking child as a heartening example. Bombie is definitely not talking at the level of a four year old but she's not delayed on any other milestone. So far, the book is offering me tons of hope and reassuring me that reading and talking to her and keeping her out of an institutionalized assembly line education is the best way to handle the situation.

Unschooling day (yes, another one)

We stayed home today on a self imposed time out. It's truly amazing to me how much more gets done when we decide not to do anything. See for yourself!

Counting game

We made a counting game today, although everyone is still really tired. (By the way, one thing I'm learning is to limit the number of other adults in my children's lives, but more on that later maybe. I've noticed a perceivable difference in their behavior as it relates especially to obedience when they interact with too many other adults. Perhaps it has to do with styles of relating to them. I don't know. All I know is we're going to have to stay home tomorrow and if nothing else gets done, we're going to be working on getting their behavior back under control. There hasn't been any outright rebellion but there definitely have been little rumblings and mumblings.)

The counting game was fun. And they enjoyed most of it. I wrote a number on an index card which they had to identify and then they stuck colored dots on the back which matched the number I had just written. It was number recognition, counting and fine motor skills all in one. And I found out something in the process - they recognize numbers just fine but they have no concept of counting. They do go in order but they begin at a random number. When James came home,  he went over some numbers with Bombie again which was such a blessing because she relates to him in a completely different way. But I know now what the next immediate focus has to be - counting, counting, counting. Add that to reading, reading, reading! 

Busy weekend

What a busy weekend this has been! On Friday, we headed to Barnes and Nobles to pick up a gift for my friend's daughter who turned five. I had warned the kids that they could touch things at the store as long as they didn't tear or break anything and to my amazement they were incredibly well behaved. They even put away the stuffed toys lying around when I said it was time to clean up and go. Of course I could not go to a book store and not get something for the children and myself. So I bought them a board book of nursery rhymes, another book of the story of the three pigs and bought myself a few things as well. I love that being around them makes me rediscover my own love of stories. Good stories. The kind in which you can get lost - stories about heroes and good things happening, stories about people doing the right thing and overcoming obstacles. Stories that are, sadly, not a part of current literature which seems obsessed with despondency and despair.

On Saturday, it was birthday party and sleepover (for Bombie) day. She did incredibly well and came home the next day quite tuckered out from all the fun only little girls can think of! I wasn't convinced that she wouldn't wake up scared in the middle of the night and I would have to go get her but turns out that fear was unwarranted. Besides, I completely trusted the family she was with so on some level I knew she would be fine. But I barely slept. It's all right. I think given the choice between over protection and under, I'll chose the former. I guess I'm old fashioned that way. ;)

The kids made wonderful wrapping paper with celery and carrots for the gift books. I loved how we could incorporate what they were already doing into their friend's birthday!

Today has been kind of an unschooling day. The kids need some down time to play freely and drink the lees of the fun weekend. Bombie is still runningaround with the bag of party favors she received - bracelets, plastic rings and swirly straws and when I sent them outside to play with a Frisbee, they made a birthday cake out of it. Clearly,they're not over it yet. And I'm in no hurry for them to move on. Time moves way too fast already.

Grocery Shopping and other gifts

It wasn't that long ago that I used to go grocery shopping with one kid and then two. Something about going with three scared me though and so I would wait until my husband got home from work to head out by myself. Sure, it gave me a chance to dawdle a little and actually *gasp* read labels. However, it did mean that I would have to sacrifice an evening at home. Anyone who knows me knows that my evenings are incredibly important to me and since we already spend three out of five weekday evenings at the gym another one spent grocery shopping busy isn't worth it to me. So I started taking the kids again with me. And I figured, isn't this the essence of homeschooling anyway? What's the huge advantage of looking at a picture of an artichoke over actually seeing an artichoke and learning what it's called? Who decided textbooks were the essence of learning anyway? So off we went. They learned names of vegetables, they learned to count, but more than anything else, they learned obedience and also appropriate behavior. Yeah, that dreaded s word - socialization.

The funny thing is I feel like God Himself has literally reached down to my level and reminded me again that I must homeschool. Everything had literally fallen into my lap. A case in point:when we came home, the kids asked to play with plastic Easter eggs. I let them. And then soon a fight broke out. They couldn't share! So I suggested that we divide the eggs and write their names on them to identify them. (We're writing initials currently.) I brought out a marker and to my surprise, Bombie got very excited about writing her initial on her eggs. And then Hucksley wanted to write his. So here we were LEARNING TO WRITE! And this morning, I found Hucksley sitting and writing perfect Hs all on every piece of paper he could find! Who needs a workbook? When you're a preschooler, the world's your school!