AUTHOR'S NOTE: The writing below is satirical and doesn't reflect the good done by public education, it's dedicated teachers, or the families that benefit from it.
..........................................
This was an unbelievable conversation I could have overheard. ;)
Mother 1: Now your daughter is turning 5, are you excited to begin eating out?
Mother 2: Yes, have any kid-friendly establishments you'd recommend?
M1: We really like Public k12.
M2: That's a curious name for a restaurant.
M1: It's a big chain. They are all over the country.
M2: So it's popular. Great. Is it cheap? Fast service?
M1: Well, no. You usually can't get out of there faster than about 13 years, and the least pricey thing on the menu is $84,000. They raise prices every few years.
M2: So it's gourmet?
M1: I'm not so sure about "gourmet." It's actually pretty standard. People who want gourmet go to different places and pay a lot more.
M2: But generous portions?
M1: Not really. They have done research on the minimums needed to get by, though, and are really dedicated to meeting those minimums.
M2: Like home cooking then. No frills, but wholesome.
M1: Well, more like eating vitamins. Everything is quite refined - taken from it's natural context and put in synthetic mega doses that are really hard to absorb.
M2: Well, at least it's sterile.
M1: Oh yes, the content is very. I don't know about the environment though.
M2: Oh?
M1: Well you might have some horrible experience with other customers that leaves you scared and scarred for years. But usually that might only be once or twice in the 13 years.
M2: Great. What else do you like about Public k12?
M1: Well, the price increases are a great indicator that they are staying on top of meeting the minimums they've identified. And recently they've taken further measures to ensure the burgers and fries come to you at exactly the same temperature - even if burgers and fries aren't your big thing - no matter which Public k12 to go to. It will be the same all over the country! Isn't that great?
M2: Standardization in little details like temperature does sound important. Can't people DIE from food not served at certain temperatures?
M1: Totally. But you know, I think my favorite thing about Public k12 is that all my friends and neighbors are there too.
M2: So it's just "the place to be." So cool.
M1: Exactly.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Reason #58: The Infuriating Self-trusting Child
My previous blog post was about trusting oneself - about tuning out all the competing voices that surround us, tuning into ourselves, and believing that we can find and know whatever it is we need to find and know.
I must confess doing so has been known to annoy my husband a time or two. "Why can't you ever just take what I'm telling you at face value!?" he's been known to grumble. Well, I'm not the best at accepting without question a lot of "wisdom" out there because I'm doing a gut check. I'm noting the similarities and differences between what I've learned and what my experience has been. Going back to the Emerson quote, I'm receiving the provocation, but accepting nothing on a word unless I've found it true in me. How annoying is that!?!
Can you imagine a whole classroom full of kids gut checking everything the teacher says. Trying to prove or disprove for themselves that 2 + 2 = 4. MORE annoying would be them trying to disprove much of our spelling and "phonics rules" for English. Why on earth IS "no" ALSO spelled "know." (Then you take the "k" off and it's "NOW"!!!????!!!)
I, for one, CAN imagine how frustrating such a reaction from children might be, because I faced that sort of reaction from my daughter each time I taught. After blogging about trusting ourselves, I realized THAT was the part of her I didn't want the schools to break. (I'd written in another post "...if she went to school either she'd break them [meaning the school] or they'd break her. And that would really be the greatest tragedy of them all!")
Teaching my own self-trusting child has been a challenge. For years she didn't sing her ABC's the same twice. (Why couldn't SHE make up a version as nice as mine?) Even younger than that, when I'd try to move her away from standing too close to the tops of staircases, she'd scream at me in frustration. If she'd had the words then, I'm sure she would have yelled, "I've got this mom!" She'd fallen enough that I knew she was at risk. But it was a risk she insisted repeatedly on taking. And when she decided to tackle writing, my spelling suggestions seemed ludicrous. (Why would I have all the answers all the time, anyway? Couldn't she ever know something with as much "rightness" as the things I knew?!)
As maddening as this may sound to any sympathetic parent, it is a PERFECT reason to homeschool! To ALLOW the learning process to flourish, self-trust in tact! Infuriating as this personality can be to a teacher, the student is our own child, and who better to put up with this than the parent!? :)
Is this slower? Yes! Would my daughter be "behind" compared to her traditionally schooled peers? Well... that's an interesting question.
Lets imagine that, as any good teacher might, I squashed the singing of the ABC's "ABCD Q FG." "Look dear," I might have lovingly explained, "That's not how it goes." Why? she might ask. "It's just not." And when she wrote me a note spelling the word "are" simply with an R, I said kindly, "When we say 'are' we can't use just a letter." But we ARE just saying R, she might protest. "I know but it's just not spelled that way." And with every other venture into knowledge she made, I kindly showed her where she was wrong, though my explanations of WHY she was wrong usually boiled down to, "because I said so" and therefore implied, "You need to trust ME."
Well, she might have come to spelling "are" correctly a lot sooner. But the more important lesson mastered would be that someone else knew better than her how to do whatever she wanted to do. Perhaps she'd better wait for instructions. When in doubt - and it's best to be in doubt about even things that seem obvious - you are probably wrong. So wait. Someone will be along shortly to tell you what to do.
(She IS grasping correct spelling now. Reading other "authors" use of the A-R-E spelling helped. Noting her own "spelling" was sometimes met with confusion by the receivers of her notes helped too.)
I'm going to make an important distinction now. Knowing facts from a curriculum before your peers is not necessarily "being ahead." Discovering truth for yourself after your peers have completed a curriculum is not necessarily "being behind." I'm not suggesting we shouldn't teach our children spelling or math or anything beyond what they are figuring out for themselves.
I AM noting that many adults struggle to trust themselves. When we consider how we are taught - largely in our experiences in school - we may discover a diminished sense of self-trust is the natural by-product of such teaching . I AM suggesting that fostering self-trust will give our children an edge in life. And I am LOVING homeschooling, where learning and self-trust can progress hand in hand!
I must confess doing so has been known to annoy my husband a time or two. "Why can't you ever just take what I'm telling you at face value!?" he's been known to grumble. Well, I'm not the best at accepting without question a lot of "wisdom" out there because I'm doing a gut check. I'm noting the similarities and differences between what I've learned and what my experience has been. Going back to the Emerson quote, I'm receiving the provocation, but accepting nothing on a word unless I've found it true in me. How annoying is that!?!
Can you imagine a whole classroom full of kids gut checking everything the teacher says. Trying to prove or disprove for themselves that 2 + 2 = 4. MORE annoying would be them trying to disprove much of our spelling and "phonics rules" for English. Why on earth IS "no" ALSO spelled "know." (Then you take the "k" off and it's "NOW"!!!????!!!)
I, for one, CAN imagine how frustrating such a reaction from children might be, because I faced that sort of reaction from my daughter each time I taught. After blogging about trusting ourselves, I realized THAT was the part of her I didn't want the schools to break. (I'd written in another post "...if she went to school either she'd break them [meaning the school] or they'd break her. And that would really be the greatest tragedy of them all!")
Teaching my own self-trusting child has been a challenge. For years she didn't sing her ABC's the same twice. (Why couldn't SHE make up a version as nice as mine?) Even younger than that, when I'd try to move her away from standing too close to the tops of staircases, she'd scream at me in frustration. If she'd had the words then, I'm sure she would have yelled, "I've got this mom!" She'd fallen enough that I knew she was at risk. But it was a risk she insisted repeatedly on taking. And when she decided to tackle writing, my spelling suggestions seemed ludicrous. (Why would I have all the answers all the time, anyway? Couldn't she ever know something with as much "rightness" as the things I knew?!)
As maddening as this may sound to any sympathetic parent, it is a PERFECT reason to homeschool! To ALLOW the learning process to flourish, self-trust in tact! Infuriating as this personality can be to a teacher, the student is our own child, and who better to put up with this than the parent!? :)
Is this slower? Yes! Would my daughter be "behind" compared to her traditionally schooled peers? Well... that's an interesting question.
Lets imagine that, as any good teacher might, I squashed the singing of the ABC's "ABCD Q FG." "Look dear," I might have lovingly explained, "That's not how it goes." Why? she might ask. "It's just not." And when she wrote me a note spelling the word "are" simply with an R, I said kindly, "When we say 'are' we can't use just a letter." But we ARE just saying R, she might protest. "I know but it's just not spelled that way." And with every other venture into knowledge she made, I kindly showed her where she was wrong, though my explanations of WHY she was wrong usually boiled down to, "because I said so" and therefore implied, "You need to trust ME."
Well, she might have come to spelling "are" correctly a lot sooner. But the more important lesson mastered would be that someone else knew better than her how to do whatever she wanted to do. Perhaps she'd better wait for instructions. When in doubt - and it's best to be in doubt about even things that seem obvious - you are probably wrong. So wait. Someone will be along shortly to tell you what to do.
(She IS grasping correct spelling now. Reading other "authors" use of the A-R-E spelling helped. Noting her own "spelling" was sometimes met with confusion by the receivers of her notes helped too.)
I'm going to make an important distinction now. Knowing facts from a curriculum before your peers is not necessarily "being ahead." Discovering truth for yourself after your peers have completed a curriculum is not necessarily "being behind." I'm not suggesting we shouldn't teach our children spelling or math or anything beyond what they are figuring out for themselves.
I AM noting that many adults struggle to trust themselves. When we consider how we are taught - largely in our experiences in school - we may discover a diminished sense of self-trust is the natural by-product of such teaching . I AM suggesting that fostering self-trust will give our children an edge in life. And I am LOVING homeschooling, where learning and self-trust can progress hand in hand!
Friday, June 21, 2013
Trust Yourself - the message of my remedial meditation
I found myself at a public park the other day with nothing to do. My two oldest were in a class. My youngest was sleeping in his stroller, and my third child was off adventuring with new "friends" (whomever she is playing at the park at the moment with - don't you love that!).
I don't carry a cell phone. And I didn't have a book. So I reverted to what I sometimes do when there is nothing else to do: meditate. I am not the best meditator, and as I generally only get around to it when there is nothing else to do.... Well, I bet you can guess that I'm grossly under-practiced.
Still, as I sat in the sun, I tried to clear my mind and just be. I noticed how rich with sound the park was. Instead of listening and labeling - what hearing usually means, I let the sounds wash over me. And an interesting thing happened: I couldn't understand language anymore. When I gave each noise equal value and attention, which is to say I was trying to give all sounds no value and pay attention to them all, the words of all the speakers (adults near me and kids as they ran by) faded into a soft babble.
Cool!
Here is where my meditation really ended, because I began to think thoughts I thought about and considered pretty smart, and wanted to blog about. :) So here they are!
First, I began to assume that is how infants experience the world. Of course, we know they don't understand language at first. But it hadn't occurred to me that they begin life at a more basic level than that. They don't yet understand the concept of language. In other words, they don't yet have the experience of sorting through the sounds around them to pick out voices, label them as voices, focus in on the voices, and let the rest pass without notice. Their mental filter is off. An adult's filter is usually set to very high. How often have you been listening to one thing and not heard another? Or midst all the noise around you, heard your baby cry?
That is a great example of a filter set to very high, and why HAVING a filter is desirable.
Back to the meditation, or my thoughts about it. THEN I began to consider that even adults can have malfunctioning filters. A baby very quickly learns to identify his mother's voice. In fact, he's got that one nailed before coming out, and just needs to put the voice with the face. But in certain areas, even vital to survival, how often do we adults allow ourselves to be washed over with a clamor of voices and experience the resulting confusion.
How easy is it to do that about homeschooling? Homeschooling can be a daunting endeavor! I think we can be easily tempted to mentally and emotionally take in more voices than we can sort out or make sense of. What is SHE using for curriculum? How do THEY schedule their days? What are the schools teaching and when? My mother-in-law thinks the kids will be socially maladjusted. The teacher down the road says she's never met a homeschooler who was "caught up" in math. Etc., etc., etc.
That is why my blog is so ironic. (I wish it was also filled with ironic wit. Alas.) Here I am shouting at you. Adding my voice to all the other voices tossing about opinions for you to consider. (For this very reason, I avoided blogging for FOREVER. I don't want anyone thinking, "Oh that is what Steffanie does? Maybe we should try THAT." And it seems that one who never READS blogs shouldn't think she has any business WRITING one.)
But then there is this: "The instinct is sure which prompts one to tell his brother what one thinks." That's Emerson, in his "The American Scholar" address.
And what I really think and believe is this: "The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee." (Emerson again in his address "The Over-Soul.") Put another way in yet another address, "Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore, be at rest from seeking after it."
Okay, one last quote because I'm really getting carried away now with Emerson quotes. "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What [she] announces [in her blog], I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on [her] word, be [she] who [she] may, I can accept nothing."
Which is not to say you must stop reading MY blog. ;) Or finding answers by talking to people. After all, we are all sharing by sure instinct what we think. What WE (Emerson and I... ha!) are saying is, the truth of what you need to do, or how to solve a problem will find you. And it will ring as being true inside. Turn your filter on and TUNE IN to yourself. Hear your heart. And TRUST. Trust yourself to be right. Trust your instincts.
Finally, I know I said the last quote above was the last, but no one was here to intervene by grabbing my journal of favorite quotes, so I'll share this deep thought that has "rung true" for me. "I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't pretend to even know what the questions are. Hey, where am I?" ~Jack Handy.
'Nuff said.
I don't carry a cell phone. And I didn't have a book. So I reverted to what I sometimes do when there is nothing else to do: meditate. I am not the best meditator, and as I generally only get around to it when there is nothing else to do.... Well, I bet you can guess that I'm grossly under-practiced.
Still, as I sat in the sun, I tried to clear my mind and just be. I noticed how rich with sound the park was. Instead of listening and labeling - what hearing usually means, I let the sounds wash over me. And an interesting thing happened: I couldn't understand language anymore. When I gave each noise equal value and attention, which is to say I was trying to give all sounds no value and pay attention to them all, the words of all the speakers (adults near me and kids as they ran by) faded into a soft babble.
Cool!
Here is where my meditation really ended, because I began to think thoughts I thought about and considered pretty smart, and wanted to blog about. :) So here they are!
First, I began to assume that is how infants experience the world. Of course, we know they don't understand language at first. But it hadn't occurred to me that they begin life at a more basic level than that. They don't yet understand the concept of language. In other words, they don't yet have the experience of sorting through the sounds around them to pick out voices, label them as voices, focus in on the voices, and let the rest pass without notice. Their mental filter is off. An adult's filter is usually set to very high. How often have you been listening to one thing and not heard another? Or midst all the noise around you, heard your baby cry?
That is a great example of a filter set to very high, and why HAVING a filter is desirable.
Back to the meditation, or my thoughts about it. THEN I began to consider that even adults can have malfunctioning filters. A baby very quickly learns to identify his mother's voice. In fact, he's got that one nailed before coming out, and just needs to put the voice with the face. But in certain areas, even vital to survival, how often do we adults allow ourselves to be washed over with a clamor of voices and experience the resulting confusion.
How easy is it to do that about homeschooling? Homeschooling can be a daunting endeavor! I think we can be easily tempted to mentally and emotionally take in more voices than we can sort out or make sense of. What is SHE using for curriculum? How do THEY schedule their days? What are the schools teaching and when? My mother-in-law thinks the kids will be socially maladjusted. The teacher down the road says she's never met a homeschooler who was "caught up" in math. Etc., etc., etc.
That is why my blog is so ironic. (I wish it was also filled with ironic wit. Alas.) Here I am shouting at you. Adding my voice to all the other voices tossing about opinions for you to consider. (For this very reason, I avoided blogging for FOREVER. I don't want anyone thinking, "Oh that is what Steffanie does? Maybe we should try THAT." And it seems that one who never READS blogs shouldn't think she has any business WRITING one.)
But then there is this: "The instinct is sure which prompts one to tell his brother what one thinks." That's Emerson, in his "The American Scholar" address.
And what I really think and believe is this: "The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee." (Emerson again in his address "The Over-Soul.") Put another way in yet another address, "Thy lot or portion of life is seeking after thee; therefore, be at rest from seeking after it."
Okay, one last quote because I'm really getting carried away now with Emerson quotes. "Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What [she] announces [in her blog], I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on [her] word, be [she] who [she] may, I can accept nothing."
Which is not to say you must stop reading MY blog. ;) Or finding answers by talking to people. After all, we are all sharing by sure instinct what we think. What WE (Emerson and I... ha!) are saying is, the truth of what you need to do, or how to solve a problem will find you. And it will ring as being true inside. Turn your filter on and TUNE IN to yourself. Hear your heart. And TRUST. Trust yourself to be right. Trust your instincts.
Finally, I know I said the last quote above was the last, but no one was here to intervene by grabbing my journal of favorite quotes, so I'll share this deep thought that has "rung true" for me. "I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't pretend to even know what the questions are. Hey, where am I?" ~Jack Handy.
'Nuff said.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
House Cleaning, a House of Order, and Homeschooling
I love homeschooling because it allows us to strip away the unessential in learning and life and focus and fall in love with what IS essential.
It's a common complaint among homeschooling families that it's difficult to have a clean house and homeschool. There isn't a break for the house when the mess makers are finally out the door and the parent can begin to repair the chaos left in the wake of the rush to meet school deadlines.
But like recognizing that most of school deadlines aren't about what essential but what is merely convenient, or what is done, cleaning a home has those layers too - arbitrary expectations just waiting to be peeled away.
I begin with the concept "a house of order," and our cultural equivocating of cleanliness with holiness. For starters, I'm not convinced "order" relates mainly to being clean. I don't want to argue that living in a sty is MORE holy. But I think if we want "holy" order, we do things as God does them. So how DOES that work, anyway? Well, God is a creator, and I can't think of one creative process that isn't a little messy. So forbidding our children to create in the name of "order" won't bring us any closer to God, in my opinion.
From the creation of the world, we learn that it took time. It was a process. God did a little each day. He wasn't tossing about rocks and animal parts - tearing every creative element off the shelf at once, so to speak. Rocks had their time. Animals were a different day. And so we CAN teach our kids to assemble what they need and complete their work. So they can be ready to create something new tomorrow. THAT is order: first we create, then we clean up after ourselves. And we even rest. Praise be to God for not leaving THAT out of His role modeling. :)
I try to be very careful to not apologize for the state of my house at any time. I can't imagine God apologizing, had you visited the earth in the first few days of creation, "I'm so sorry. I've just got rock and some water and light right now. I promise, in a few days, it will look great!" So if you happen to stop by when we are creating, be that creation a meal, a blanket fort, or a science experiment, you will see a "mess." I am confident that I am not the mess, nor is the mess me or my children. If our guests have a moment of confusion, labeling our family as "messy people," that is simply unfortunate for them.
I feel confident that we are not a mess because I take the time to teach my children how to clean. THAT is order as well: mom is in charge of our home, she delegates and instructs the children on how to care for it. Cleaning day is Monday. I used to clean every day because I like things clean. But I realized that I was wasting my life on tasks that were undone in less than 5 minutes of fun. I could clean away my kids' childhoods. I could stress that their childhoods interfere with my clean home. But I've fallen in love with another essential: that my kids have the skill to clean, NOT that they have a clean home.
Because I want them to know what clean feels like, we moved all the cleaning to one day, and after the few hours it takes of team effort, I have us all take a moment to walk through the house taking it in. (Please stop by my home Monday afternoons if you want to think of me as a "clean" person. I generally try to have any guests I'm worried about come Mondays or Tuesdays for just this reason.) The kids like our home to be clean. I see the satisfaction in their eyes after their work on cleaning day. But part of our "order" is knowing that children are children. Just like we don't expect creation to be clean, we don't expect children to honor cleanliness above all else.
Speaking of arbitrary expectations, I wonder that culturally, we have an expectation that Sunday is the best day to HAVE a clean home. Saturday is "the day we get ready for Sunday," we sing at our church. And then the song goes on to cheerfully describe all the work of Saturday. I hear adults quoting this song as the reason their families clean on Saturdays. Apparently it's "what is done." I assert that there is nothing holy about Saturday as a cleaning day. If that works best for your family, great. As for me and my house, Saturday means yard work (more training on physical labor and gardening for my kids) but it also means fun with Dad, and getting out in the community to enjoy it's offerings. We don't have the stamina to do it all, and if we really rest on Sunday, the house is a complete disaster by Monday mornings after all that work. We DO really rest on Sunday, so I've moved cleaning to Monday and Saturdays have become much less stressful for everyone, and a lot more fun.
Is it less peaceful on Sunday to relax in a house that has been largely neglected for two days? Yes. But it's also less peaceful to rest in a house you have just cleaned and don't want anyone to use again for a bit so it can stay clean FOR FIVE SECONDS! I've just traded one relaxation for another, and experienced more peace for the trade.
It IS a challenge to homeschool and maintain a perfectly clean home. But we've peeled away that non-essential expectation and strive instead for a house of order. I strive to teach my kids there is a time and season for everything, even a time to make messes. And then a time to clean them up. I lead, even in cleaning, by example, because part of our order is who is in charge and how she teaches. And we live by the order of knowing our limits - what there is time in a day to do, and what there is NOT time to do. We try not to run faster than we have strength. We try not to set "faster" expectations for our children.
I love the peace doing so brings!
It's a common complaint among homeschooling families that it's difficult to have a clean house and homeschool. There isn't a break for the house when the mess makers are finally out the door and the parent can begin to repair the chaos left in the wake of the rush to meet school deadlines.
But like recognizing that most of school deadlines aren't about what essential but what is merely convenient, or what is done, cleaning a home has those layers too - arbitrary expectations just waiting to be peeled away.
I begin with the concept "a house of order," and our cultural equivocating of cleanliness with holiness. For starters, I'm not convinced "order" relates mainly to being clean. I don't want to argue that living in a sty is MORE holy. But I think if we want "holy" order, we do things as God does them. So how DOES that work, anyway? Well, God is a creator, and I can't think of one creative process that isn't a little messy. So forbidding our children to create in the name of "order" won't bring us any closer to God, in my opinion.
From the creation of the world, we learn that it took time. It was a process. God did a little each day. He wasn't tossing about rocks and animal parts - tearing every creative element off the shelf at once, so to speak. Rocks had their time. Animals were a different day. And so we CAN teach our kids to assemble what they need and complete their work. So they can be ready to create something new tomorrow. THAT is order: first we create, then we clean up after ourselves. And we even rest. Praise be to God for not leaving THAT out of His role modeling. :)
I try to be very careful to not apologize for the state of my house at any time. I can't imagine God apologizing, had you visited the earth in the first few days of creation, "I'm so sorry. I've just got rock and some water and light right now. I promise, in a few days, it will look great!" So if you happen to stop by when we are creating, be that creation a meal, a blanket fort, or a science experiment, you will see a "mess." I am confident that I am not the mess, nor is the mess me or my children. If our guests have a moment of confusion, labeling our family as "messy people," that is simply unfortunate for them.
I feel confident that we are not a mess because I take the time to teach my children how to clean. THAT is order as well: mom is in charge of our home, she delegates and instructs the children on how to care for it. Cleaning day is Monday. I used to clean every day because I like things clean. But I realized that I was wasting my life on tasks that were undone in less than 5 minutes of fun. I could clean away my kids' childhoods. I could stress that their childhoods interfere with my clean home. But I've fallen in love with another essential: that my kids have the skill to clean, NOT that they have a clean home.
Because I want them to know what clean feels like, we moved all the cleaning to one day, and after the few hours it takes of team effort, I have us all take a moment to walk through the house taking it in. (Please stop by my home Monday afternoons if you want to think of me as a "clean" person. I generally try to have any guests I'm worried about come Mondays or Tuesdays for just this reason.) The kids like our home to be clean. I see the satisfaction in their eyes after their work on cleaning day. But part of our "order" is knowing that children are children. Just like we don't expect creation to be clean, we don't expect children to honor cleanliness above all else.
Speaking of arbitrary expectations, I wonder that culturally, we have an expectation that Sunday is the best day to HAVE a clean home. Saturday is "the day we get ready for Sunday," we sing at our church. And then the song goes on to cheerfully describe all the work of Saturday. I hear adults quoting this song as the reason their families clean on Saturdays. Apparently it's "what is done." I assert that there is nothing holy about Saturday as a cleaning day. If that works best for your family, great. As for me and my house, Saturday means yard work (more training on physical labor and gardening for my kids) but it also means fun with Dad, and getting out in the community to enjoy it's offerings. We don't have the stamina to do it all, and if we really rest on Sunday, the house is a complete disaster by Monday mornings after all that work. We DO really rest on Sunday, so I've moved cleaning to Monday and Saturdays have become much less stressful for everyone, and a lot more fun.
Is it less peaceful on Sunday to relax in a house that has been largely neglected for two days? Yes. But it's also less peaceful to rest in a house you have just cleaned and don't want anyone to use again for a bit so it can stay clean FOR FIVE SECONDS! I've just traded one relaxation for another, and experienced more peace for the trade.
It IS a challenge to homeschool and maintain a perfectly clean home. But we've peeled away that non-essential expectation and strive instead for a house of order. I strive to teach my kids there is a time and season for everything, even a time to make messes. And then a time to clean them up. I lead, even in cleaning, by example, because part of our order is who is in charge and how she teaches. And we live by the order of knowing our limits - what there is time in a day to do, and what there is NOT time to do. We try not to run faster than we have strength. We try not to set "faster" expectations for our children.
I love the peace doing so brings!
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Of Gardens and Children
I wrote this last summer. Me and the kids are back in the yard working this year, so I thought I'd share it here.
I find when meditating, it's best to start where you are at.
This morning, I was feeling all the anxiousness of getting out into my yard to make something of it. It's a process I've enjoyed for years now. We began with rocks and weeds, literally. And it was difficult at times to say which we had more of. For the whole first year - well, at least before the rocks were buried by weeds - we just walked back and forth across the land, finding rocks in the dirt, digging them out, putting them in the wagon, and hauling them to one of our many rock piles. It was back-breaking and exhausting. And after a year, it seemed like we had little but the piles of rocks to show - still an expanse of weeds and dirt too rocky to till. I remember feeling like we'd never even be able to plant grass!
Four years later we do have grass... and trees, and flowers, and herbs, and a garden. And still a lot of rocks and dirt and weeds. But what we've done is beautiful and it entices me to do more. So I spent some time this morning feeling that desire. And then some time feeling gratitude for the beauty that is there. And then I thought I might spend a moment feeling gratitude for all the rocks. All those rocks which we pulled by hand out of the very hard earth now line our flower beds and walkways and ditch bank. The rocks have taught me more than the flowers. For one, I've learned it's best not to attempt some things myself. In our second year we hired a guy to come run a pre-seeder, which pressed the remaining rocks into the ground and made eveything look flat and weed-free. In a few minutes it accomplished what we had not been able to do in more than a summer of labor.
But there was one other significant benefit, aside from unearthing an endless supply of rock, that I gained from that first year of digging. I spent, in that year, a lot of time outside in my yard. I noted how the land rolled, where the shadows of the trees fell, which areas got the most sun, what was seen best by the windows of the house. And as I worked I imagined what the yard would someday be. That year fleshed out a vision of the yard we hope to have in 20 years. There is a fire pit, a root cellar, a tree house, a sledding hill, an orchard, a bowery, 3 different gardens, grapes, chickens, bees, and a green house.
It quite literally will take 20 years to make the yard equal to the vision and this morning I marveled that I seemed to be up for that kind of work and commitment. But I come back to what I tell my kids as we work together: "This is our piece of land. On all the planet, this is ours. There is nothing between us and heaven. So no matter how insignificant our .35 acre is, it is the speck that adds to the beauty of earth you can see from space."
I don't actually believe the land can ever really be ours. How can you own something that has been here for hundreds of millions of years, and has millions more to go? I guess I figure this .35 acre is my charge now, my stewardship, and I feel moved to make the most of it for all of the time it's in my care.
That's where the meditation began. I went next in my thoughts to my family. (Yes, the yard came first, but as misplaced as it might seem, I really do like to start where I'm at. Maybe after getting all those thoughts out, I could move on to what was really important.) So I thought of my kids. I began with the oldest and felt gratitude for his strengths. And then, because I'd spent time feeling gratitude for the rocks, I paused to feel gratitude for my son's rocks too. He isn't perfect. He has weaknesses, and in all honesty, sometimes the weaknesses drive me more than a little crazy. And when you add those to the weaknesses of my other children, I can find myself somewhere between deep frustration and outrage depending on the day and moment.
Well, it's time to be a gardener of my children. Of course, I don't own them. How can I own the souls that have existed before the world was and will go on existing after the earth is gone? But I feel to make the most of all the time they are in my care. It's a 20 year project, give or take. I began with each at the most basic phase - meeting their minimal needs. I have one with basic needs now. And I'm exhausting my body holding, feeding, changing all day. But as I do, I will unearth who he is. I will find his sunny spots and nice views. And I'll find some rocks too.
As I took the time to feel gratitude for the rocks of the older 3, I unearthed 3 blessings of rocks - in yards and in kids. There is the blessing of the labor itself, what it does for the one laboring over the extraction. My kids grow as they work on their weaknesses. I grow as I give them the time and patience they need to do so. There is also the blessing of what the rock can make when placed with direction and purpose. In my own self I've found there is a place, a small place for my own rocks. When they've been flung about in abundance they are an obstacle. When I use with care those traits that might normally be regarded as weakness, they can do great things, be just what I need to create something beautiful. It's been hard to see that in myself. It's much easier to see how the things that my kids do that drive me nuts can very easily become the traits that take them the furthest in life if they learn to use them and not to fling them. Lastly there is the blessing of time, specifically the time spent on the labor and the rocks. All this time will enhance the vision of who my children really are and who and what they can become. My vision AND their own visions.
In these 20 year projects, there will be times when I'm relieved to outsource! Mostly, that we're growing together in "do-it-yourself" fashion is more satisfying to my soul than getting it done fast. I close my eyes and imagine a time 20 years from now when I'm sitting in my beautiful yard with my grown children. We'll know the rocks, we've placed them ourselves. They are a part of the end purpose which we've enjoyed from the beginning. And I bask now in gratitude for 20 years of memories.
Friday, June 14, 2013
The Upside of a Failing Schedule
One of the comforting sentiments when I began the homeschooling journey was that I would not have to spend as much time teaching as children go to school. We could "cover more ground in less time."
Good, I thought, because that would be exhausting. And I had other things to do with my time. So I set about planning a reduced teaching schedule. Each day would begin with the pledge of allegiance, a song and a prayer. Then we would sing the ABC's while I pointed to the letters. (My oldest was 3 or 4). I don't remember what was supposed to come after that, though I know we did something. But usually by the singing of the ABC's, I was frustrated that he didn't seem to be connecting in his mind the song and what I was pointing to, so we'd start over. Or the phone would ring. Or his little sister would wake up. (She was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad napper.)
At some point I realized that my frustration with our inability to follow even the simplest schedule was getting in the way of our relationship and my son's enthusiasm for learning anything with mom. This may sound very wise, but it was just a bumping up against the harsh reality that I could not homeschool (or parent, really) according to MY capacity to focus, stick to it, persevere, be engaged, or instruct. Why? Because it wasn't about me. The end goal was not that I had tried my best, or stuck to a schedule, or covered certain material, or had taught well. The end goal was LEARNING, and that was the job of my son.
So I backed off and began to notice how it was that he was already learning. When your children are as young as 3 or 4 you can SEE them learning - they are making new discoveries, asking TONS of questions, exploring everything around them. Watching the learning process happen, I discovered 2 things: it was always fun and it was rarely related to "instruction."
I decided that I wanted in on the fun. I scrapped the idea that we had to cover what the other preschoolers and kindergarten kids were learning. (Yes, this process of letting go took all that time, filled with more scheduling attempts and failures.) We began to study what I wanted to learn about - the cultures of the world - and we began to make learning the basics more fun. We went on treasure hunts to find objects that began with a certain letter. Inspired by my son's love of super heroes, I had him put on a cape, fly in, and wipe out the bad guys, whatever the offending letters were, on a whiteboard filled with the letters of the alphabet.
Did we do this every day? No. Our treasure hunt walks came when his little sister needed to sleep and being outside in the stroller would help her. Our games came when he wanted to play and had run out of his own ideas.
We had a blast, learned a lot, and the best part was, this little guy, whom I wanted to keep with me instead of send off to a stranger to be taught, was my best buddy.
He is now 10. He reads. He writes. He still pretends to be a Super Hero. We still study the cultures of the world together because we love it. He and I are still close. I have another daughter who is as old as he was when we began, and a baby the age of the little sister who didn't nap. (And THIS baby is not the best napper either.)
I'm so glad I let go of schedules long ago, because I would be spending so much energy now trying to keep 4 children on one. Now we follow rhythms. I watch when my kids, individually and as a group, naturally play together, naturally need a break or a snack or an outing. I encourage my oldest, when he is fresh in the morning, to hop on the computer and do the stuff he needs to do. (Yes, we have arrived at some drills and practicing. Is it surprising that he handles them much better as an older kid than he did as a 4 year old?) When it's hot outside in the afternoon, I read to them in the basement, or we paint castles made from shoe boxes. When they are stir crazy in the morning, I'll announce, "Let's learn about the BLACK DEATH!" and so we study and imagine. And when one day seems filled with my suggestions, even happily taken, the next I'll pull back and let them sort things out and find what they want to do.
I'm so glad my attempts to schedule our lives failed. Why? Because learning is fun, it is not about me, and it happens regardless of what we think should be going on, if we are wise enough to let it.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Glimpses
How could I forget!? I'v added the book Glimpses Into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley to my most influential book list.
Marjorie Hinckley was wife to Gordon B. Hickley, President of the LDS church from 1995 to 2008. His biography was okay. But "Glimpses" changed my life and mothering.
I wanted to share a story and a quote from the chapter about mothering that I still reference and try to emulate with my own kids.
In the first, Marjorie's oldest son went missing. She thought all day about the speech she was going to give him when he showed up at mealtime after a day of shirking all the work there was to do. He had been "down in the hollow." When his mother asked him what he was doing there, he answered, "Nothing."
Well she didn't give him the speech, and shared why she was glad of it. Years later he was home and under a lot of pressure - university, tests, struggles with his girlfriend. He was feeling the pressures of adult life, but he reflected to his mother how his childhood had been wonderful. "Those long summer days, when you could lie on your back in the hollow and listen to the birds sing and watch the ants build their castles."
Marjorie taught, "The memory of the peace of a summer day - 'God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world' - sustained him when the pressures of adult life began to crowd in."
I wonder what will sustain our children if we don't allow them time to find peace and contentment in childhood? I love homeschooling because, as Emerson put it, we can give our children "leave to be what [they] inly [are]."
Finally, the quote. Said Marjorie Hickley, "My mother taught me some basic philosophies of rearing children. One is that you have to trust children. I tried hard never to say 'no' if I could possible say 'yes.' I think that worked well because it gave my children the feeling that I trusted them and they were responsible to do the best they could."
I love this, first because in my home growing up, we were given a knee-jerk 'no' to almost everything. It's a practice I've tried to reverse with my own children. But trusting children is a powerful idea. In our homeschooling journey I am learning I can! They are amazing learners and part of my role is to not interfere with that process which they were born knowing so well. I confess, I am still practicing this.... It's good to have a place to share the good that I'm discovering comes with trusting children.
Marjorie Hinckley was wife to Gordon B. Hickley, President of the LDS church from 1995 to 2008. His biography was okay. But "Glimpses" changed my life and mothering.
I wanted to share a story and a quote from the chapter about mothering that I still reference and try to emulate with my own kids.
In the first, Marjorie's oldest son went missing. She thought all day about the speech she was going to give him when he showed up at mealtime after a day of shirking all the work there was to do. He had been "down in the hollow." When his mother asked him what he was doing there, he answered, "Nothing."
Well she didn't give him the speech, and shared why she was glad of it. Years later he was home and under a lot of pressure - university, tests, struggles with his girlfriend. He was feeling the pressures of adult life, but he reflected to his mother how his childhood had been wonderful. "Those long summer days, when you could lie on your back in the hollow and listen to the birds sing and watch the ants build their castles."
Marjorie taught, "The memory of the peace of a summer day - 'God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world' - sustained him when the pressures of adult life began to crowd in."
I wonder what will sustain our children if we don't allow them time to find peace and contentment in childhood? I love homeschooling because, as Emerson put it, we can give our children "leave to be what [they] inly [are]."
Finally, the quote. Said Marjorie Hickley, "My mother taught me some basic philosophies of rearing children. One is that you have to trust children. I tried hard never to say 'no' if I could possible say 'yes.' I think that worked well because it gave my children the feeling that I trusted them and they were responsible to do the best they could."
I love this, first because in my home growing up, we were given a knee-jerk 'no' to almost everything. It's a practice I've tried to reverse with my own children. But trusting children is a powerful idea. In our homeschooling journey I am learning I can! They are amazing learners and part of my role is to not interfere with that process which they were born knowing so well. I confess, I am still practicing this.... It's good to have a place to share the good that I'm discovering comes with trusting children.
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