limudei kodesh 4th grade & Hippocratic Parenting

My 4th grader really wants a phone. It's my policy that my kids earn their electronics.  This is against radical unschooling policy, which promotes abundance mentality.  I'm reminded of advice that my mom gave me about 17 years ago, when I had no idea what to do with my infant: "Jessie, it doesn't really matter much either way.  Just make a decision and go with it."

There are a lot of bad decisions I can make as a parent.  Sometimes it takes all of my energy to be what I call a Hippocratic Parent*: a parent that First, Does No Harm.  To simply be kind, to not be aggressive or furious or tense or impose my emotional issues on them.
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*which is different than a hypocritical parent, which is what I always associate to :-P

But a while back I read an interesting study that moderate parents who incline more towards permissiveness or more towards strictness don't actually make a difference in long term outcomes.  So the choice of raising children with an abundance mentality which inclines them to generosity, vs. the choice of raising children to earn what they get, which inclines them towards appreciation and responsibility, is really just a matter of preference. (Radical unschoolers disagree, and I respect that.)

I'm not an unschooler purist because I do want my children to learn Torah and appreciate Torah. 

And although I can appreciate that radical unschooling has a different attitude towards money and gifts and earning privileges than I do, and it makes a lot of sense, there are things that I like about having kids earning their tablets and phones and laptops.

So Jack wants a phone.  Both girls earned their phones when they finished Chamisha Chumshei Torah.  I have told Jack for years that when he finishes Chumash, he can have a phone. 

The issue is, he doesn't read Hebrew very well.  We haven't done L'shon HaTorah workbooks.  So having him read and translate isn't really an option.

But last week, late at night, he asked me to start learning with him.  So yesterday we did.  I read the first page of the Stone Chumash in Hebrew and translated (mostly Biblical Hebrew to Modern Hebrew, with a few English words thrown in like "hover" for "merachefes").  We asked a lot of questions, like What is Tohu Va'vohu?  How does one divide between light and dark?  What does it mean that the spirit of Elokim was hovering over the deep?  What deep?

I told him that these questions are like riddles and as he gets older, learning Torah is looking for answers to these riddles.  Right now we are doing a first reading.

I forgot how much fun it is to introduce someone to the joy of learning. 

I don't know if he'll keep up with this or not.  I think it probably makes more sense to not push and to let him do it when he wants.  I go back to all throughout High School, I tried doing Bio with Chen.  And we did have quite a few enjoyable Bio learning sessions, even though we never quite learned it as thoroughly as I wished.  But now she wants to take Neuroscience and Bio is the prereq, and I found her an online college level Bio course and she's learning it herself. 

So I don't know how this will play out.  Unschooling continually surprises me and never looks like I thought it would.