here's how not unschooling goes

I told E I'd like to learn his parsha with him.  He said, "No, no, no" and curled up into a ball on the couch under a blanket.

I said to him yesterday, "Do you truly not want to learn your Parsha?" (This is me reading the pesukim out loud in Hebrew to him and then translating them.)

He said, "I know I have to, but I don't want to." 

Today was only 4 pesukim because he couldn't sit through what I had planned yesterday.  (I was trying to do one aliyah per sitting; he has a double parsha so that's 14 aliyos total.)  So he was dreading it but it wasn't so bad.

Then I spoke with him about wanting to improve his reading.  He was kind of dismayed at all the brachos he has to learn for the haftora.  I said reading fluently would help.  He said, "Noooooooo" it's difficult and he doesn't like it. I explained that if he would be able to read at the pace of talking, it wouldn't be hard to learn the brachos if he could read like that.  He said that he has trouble with the letters with the dagesh and without, being able to tell them apart. 

I asked him if he wanted to just work on knowing those first.  He said no.

He said he'd rather learn to read later.  I said I'd like to do it now.

I had him read a line from one of the haftora brachos.  I said only one line a day. 

He read it.  He started off very slowly with mistakes.  Got into a groove as he went.  It was a line with no tricky stuff.  He translated as he went.  (Score for speaking in Hebrew!)  The line finished and I said, "That's it."  And he said, "That wasn't so bad."

I'm glad it ended up not so bad.  I'm glad it's not torture.  I'm having some flashbacks to why I started this blog in the first place. 

I don't think I'm "ruining" him.  I often say in parenting (or homeschooling) there isn't "right" and "wrong" (aside from things that are harmful)(אין המקרא אומר אלא דרשני) as much as there are actions and consequences.  This action will lead to him having better reading.  It will also lead to unpleasant associations with Torah and learning.  Only time will tell if is worth it.  Plus there are so many factors we probably won't be able to tell which details contributed to a love/hate/indifference/passion for Torah and which factors opposed it.  Plus what works for one child does and does not work for others.  It's complicated.

I do my best and I daven.