How Things Roll

Last week, Ari brought in groceries and it's the kids' job to put the basement fridge ones in the basement.  We had a new gallon of milk.  I called the kids to put the milk away but 3 of them were playing a game. 



I don't like the milk being left out, and I was getting agitated.  It wasn't such a big deal for me to put it away, but I think it's important that I get help, or else I become a resentful, nasty person.

I asked where E was and he was outside playing.  I kept asking them to do it and they kept being in the middle of the game, and finally I got all huffy, snapped at the room at large, and stomped down with the milk.

When I got up, E had just walked in.  And I said, "NOW you walk in?"  He was utterly bewildered.

I was thinking this morning how glad I am that I'm not normally like this.  It's really unpleasant to live with a mom who is resentful, can't get her needs met, yells, stomps around, and gets angry like that.  I remembered a few major times over the course of my parenting when I did that, and different techniques I've used to change my habits.  (Including but not limited to: practicing controlling my temper, decluttering, changing my parenting style, reframing expectations, practicing straightforward and direct communication, simplifying my life so that I'm not overwhelmed, streamlining processes, thinking about long term affects of my behavior...)

This morning, Chen (teen) sat me down somberly and told me that she saw that E reacted with some shame when I yelled at him, and she felt that was unfair, since he did nothing wrong.  She told me she thinks that in general when I get intense he's particularly susceptible to feeling ashamed, and therefore she thinks I should make an extra effort around him to avoid speaking in those ways.  (Even though obviously it would be good if I could avoid doing it to everyone else, too.)

This is part of the trying to stop blaming thing that I've been working on since Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur this year.  I particularly noticed that it's been affecting Elazar. 

I thanked Chen (I'm blessed that she has a real gift for speaking to me about things in a way where I don't get defensive.  I think part of it is she watched me and Sarah during Sarah's teen years work so hard to de-escalate, and part of it is her natural ability and personality).  And she's going to point it out to me when she sees me do it in the future, and I'll try to cut down more.

I was thinking afterwards about how the unschoolers would approach this.  (Assuming they would agree that kids "should" help with the groceries, which they do not.)  The radical unschoolers have a way of looking at things very creatively.  So I realized if I absolutely wanted them to take the milk down later, and I absolutely could not let the milk stay out the 3 minutes until their game was done (which I could have, but I'm anal about milk in the fridge, which is my issue, and not the kids' problem), I actually could have stuck the milk upstairs and then when they were available, they would have been happy to run it down.  That would have been a decent solution.  Instead, I got resentful and mean. 

I'm glad I've been exposed to the radical unschooler way of thinking, even if I only could think of it after the fact.  I've had a lot of success running through scenarios in my head that went not well and figuring out what I could have done that would have worked better for me.  (Stick that on the list of techniques I use to change my habits..)

Yom Kippur with Non-Davening Teen

We are at a stage in chinuch where my teen does not daven.  I wonder if this is something in my parenting because my first teen also stopped davening from age 14-21. (likely not, though.) 

The question is what to do about shul.  What to do about shul on the Yamim Noraim.  On Rosh Hashana she came to shul for shofar on the first day.  I told her to bring the book (by a neurologist who had experienced a stroke) and she sat next to me in shul, and I leaned over and pointed out interesting quotes as they struck me.

Both days were rainy and as we had not set up her sunlamp on a timer and as it is extremely painful for her to get out of bed so early, especially with no sunlamp, we agreed that she had gotten enough out of shul the first day and she slept through shul the second day.  (We hold, by the way, a fairly unusual psak that women are not chayav in shofar because of מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא.  I learned in high school that yes, women are officially patur, but have taken it upon ourselves, and we are chayav. But my Rav holds differently.  Not that this would have necessarily made a difference in my decision to not push a teen.  More on this as the blog goes on over the years, G-d willing, and I have a bunch of teens to raise and not push.)

I asked her what her Yom Kippur would look like if she wasn't taking me and my wants into consideration at all.  She finds the lack of technology for so many days in a row very difficult.  She doesn't like fasting.  Doesn't find meaning in shul. 

She said she'd like to stay home and read all day. 

With a bit of coaxing, she agreed to come to shul at night.  Ordinarily, I wouldn't go for the night.  But she has always been a night owl and functions better at night.  Shul will be less crowded and she will be more alert and in a better mood. 

I also found someone who needs a bit of company on Yom Kippur day.  So when she wakes up, she will visit with them, and do a bit of chessed and keep herself occupied in a pleasant manner.

Yamim Noraim Davening

I thought this was going to be an exciting landmark year for me where I get to be in shul the whole time.  The littles are finally old enough to run around and play and take care of themselves!

But I overlooked the need to give my teen a meaningful yom tov.  What to do with a teen who is inclined against davening?

I'm thinking about Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur separately.  Rosh Hashana she agreed to come hear shofar.  (I just paused to message her the Rambam on shofar, which I'm sure I've taught her in the past.)  I'd like her to read and think about some of the musaf, but odds are unless it comes up as a discussion, she will not be inclined to read the machzor.  This is one of those times that the more my mind is engaged in the themes of Rosh Hashana, the more likely that there will conversations with my children about it.

For Yom Kippur, I asked her what she'd like her Yom Kipput to look like.  She mostly evaded the question but did mention a song that she likes to hear in shul.  So we will try to figure out around what time that will occur.  We still have to think about a way to make the day pass in some sort of not painful and possibly meaningful manner.  This may mean me just going to shul for shacharis and spending a great deal of the day in conversation with her.

unschooling summer 2017

It's been a while since I posted.  I guess unschooling is doing its deep work.  (That's code word for I can't think of anything we've been doing that resembles classic schoolwork.)  Chana introduced Elazar (and therefore Jack) to Animal Crossing, which is an amazing game with a small town.  You build a house, you make money, you speak to the villagers.  Their talk sounds like mumbling and you have to read everything, and you write letters and respond to them, so they are using literacy.  I am still asked to help with spelling numerous times a day and Chana asks me lots of history questions and philosophy and literature and vocabulary and science.  (Oh, yeah.  I'm supposed to look up the causes of and the end of the great depression.  I already sent her an article explaining how scientists discovered that electrons behave differently when they are being observed vs. not being observed.)

Aharon (age 6) is in camp and enjoying parsha and davening.  He wants me to daven with him, but then I don't do it exactly like he does in camp and he screams.  He came home from camp with kriah sheets that are Hebrew letters saying English sentences, which is a cute idea.  I'm torn about it.  On one hand, it helps the children with reading comprehension and is fun to figure out.  On the other hand, I'm a purist and feel like it's better to read Hebrew words in Hebrew and get a sense of the language that way.  (I'm such a homeschooler--I have an opinion on the minutiae of education even when I don't even use either of those approaches with my own children.)  I put the sheets on the fridge with a magnet in case any of the boys wants to play with them.

Chana and I have made no progress in the expensive chemistry set I bought her.  I did go so far as to send her a list of experiments, of which she chose one, and then I read the lab on it.  Since we haven't opened the box, I don't know what the items or, what they look like, how to use them, etc.  If you know me, you know I hate science experiments and I finally had to embrace that part of my homeschooling personality and admit science experiments are not my bag.  And having an expensive chemistry set is like upping my game at admitting I hate doing science experiments.

We are reading Pride & Prejudice together.  She reads it out loud to me in a British accent and her Mr. Collins has me convulsing with laughter.  It's everything I dreamed about High School Literature: actually reading the book, discussing it as we go: character, plot, themes, turns of phrase, foreshadowing, symbolism.  And enjoying the book.

And we take long walks on the beach together.  I'm really focusing on not having any agenda for our time together.  The teenage years are extraordinarily tricky.  I feel like in a lot of ways I spent ages 12-15 putting out fires and worrying excessively about "issues" and wanting her to "understand" things and desperately hoping to impart my wisdom to her.  I'm carefully refraining from that now.  I just want us to enjoy spending time together.  I read Parent/Teen Breakthrough: the Relationship Approach last year and it said that things are really extremely simple: In each interaction, ask myself if my behavior/reaction will improve my relationship with my teenager or deteriorate my relationship with my teenager.

And in all the things I worry about her being able to handle and manage?  If it affects me, bring it up (in a way that will not deteriorate our relationship, of course).  And if it doesn't affect me, it's none of my business.  The entire rest of the book was to explain how to do this, because honestly, some of it sounded like a foreign language to me.  Sof kol sof, it is the most useful and wisest book on raising teenagers I've read so far.

I've mostly given up trying to convince Chana to learn Bio with me.  It's like every unschooling move I've made over the years.  Why do I keep going more and more towards unschooling?  Because Chana told me, over and over, in all sorts of different ways, that she doesn't like to learn that way.  She told me that she doesn't like to sit down and read from a textbook.  She does LOVE when something catches her attention and then she hunts down information about it and videos that show and explain it.  And then talking about it and explaining to to people, and then researching their questions and finding answers, and talking to more people about it.  That is a dynamic and organic and interactive and social way of learning.  And it feels completely different and more exciting and more relevant than learning from a text.

In the same way, she learned to read by wrestling with texts she was interested in reading.  Or learned bits of math because they caught her attention (probably her most favorite homeschooling lesson ever was when her father taught her binary one Friday night ad hoc during family snuggle.  And one of the oddest math things she ever did was teach herself how to divide polynomials at 3am to help some stranger online with math homework).  And how she delves deeply into philosophy and Social Studies because of conversations she has with people. I now have to trust that when different things in Science catch her attention, she will pursue them.

All that was supposed to be a short introduction to what I came here to write today!  I got distracted talking about unschooling high school.

Chinuch in the Teen Years

My boys still refuse to wear tzitzis.  They aren't comfortable; they scorn even the soft cotton ones.  I've been thinking a lot, having been through the teen years with my oldest and now going through them with my second.  And it's really changing how I'm thinking about parenting the boys in their teen years.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine who parented 5 wonderful boys and her sixth is a girl.  As I was talking to her about girl teenagedom and mother-daughter relationships, she said to me that it's too bad she'll have gained all this knowledge from parenting her daughter through her teen years and then she won't have another girl to parent with the benefit of this knowledge.

I half joked: "Take it from me--it doesn't help."  But that's not strictly true.  Some of the lessons I learned with Sarah: how to de-escalate during conflict, how to take a step back, take a deep breath, how to shift my tone and my body language out of "bristling" and into "listening" mode; how to assume that if they say I'm yelling at them or if my tone is aggressive, then to dial it down, whether I think I've been aggressive or not; how to cool down from an encounter and then later, when we are more calm, ask her to please explain her position and really, really try to listen without explaining where I'm coming from-- all of these things have only been helpful as I stumble through these years with the next teenager.  However, with each child being so different, and the challenges being so very, very different, I am often just as much in the dark now as I was the first time.

I simultaneously grapple with major issues (as people always used to say, which I never really understood, "little people, little problems; big people, big problems"), while I am also very immersed in little people and the drudgery of caretaking.  I have the experience of parenting littles while having an awareness that within the decade, the boundless desire for them to be in my personal space and have me share their lives is going to shift into the desire to separate from me, to individuate, to reject me, my values, and everything I stand for in clarification of where they stand on things.

This has gotten me thinking about a lot of things that I never realized would be an issue with boys.  Growing up a girl and feeling the burden of halachic modest dress and later covering hair, I never realized that boys grapple with minyan, waking up for shema, wearing tzitzis and covering their heads all the time.

When I was a young and naive parent, I assumed that at bar and bat mitzva, my child would joyfully pick up the "עול מלכות שמים" the yoke of mitzvos.  My daughters would dress with skirts to knees and shirts to elbows, and would daven every day and make brachos before and after meals, and their newly bursting intellects would enjoy the wondrous Torah that we would learn together.

Well.  Suffice it to say, reality is different.  Even with Chana's (not so) recent transfer into full nocturnal, along with recent studies that say that teenagers should start school not before 10am made me realize that in a few years I'll be heading into a monumental battle, especially with my middle son, who has naturally preferred a 10pm-10am sleep schedule since he was two years old.

I've observed teens AND adults fully grown, those who attend minyan regularly and those who don't.  Of the minyan go-ers, some tell me their parents instilled it in them, and some tell me they came to it themselves.  Of the non-minyan go-ers, a huge percentage tell me that their parents pushed and annoyed them.

Personally, I feel that telling my teenager what to do is generally an exercise in futility, frustration, and conflict. (To a large degree I feel that telling any of my children what to do tends to devolve into that, which perhaps is why I gravitated towards unschooling, which has a different approach to that whole issue.)  However, I also feel strongly that the internet exerts a very strong pull on the concept of identity and values, and although my teens are smart and skilled at analysis and tend to make good decisions, I want our family values and our Torah and Judaism to be one of the voices in the conversation.  As I may have mentioned before, when I consulted with my Rabbi, he suggested that I take opportunities to share my thoughts and values in conversation, and stay away from nagging and being annoying.

More recently, I've been thinking about my own upbringing.  I was brought up "Modern Orthodox," and when I stopped wearing shorts and began covering my hair when I got married, I crossed over into the land of "crazy""strict" according to my parents, even though I had studied the halachos in school and considered them to be as binding as the laws of Shabbos and kosher that I had grown up keeping.

Modesty was something my mother cared about in terms of the spirit of it, not in terms of halacha.  We wore shorts to midthigh and went swimming in bathing suits; very tight shirts and dresses were our battlegrounds and it had nothing to do with halacha.  My mother rarely told me to daven; davening was between me and God.  Brachos were between me and God.  Everything was between me and God.  I decided what I wanted to keep and how much and what I really thought.  My parents didn't have much opinion except being extremely supportive of my education and my Torah study.

My approach until now, which was to be mechanech my children to keep the Torah so that they will be keeping Torah halachically when bar or bat mitzva, did not take into account the complexity of teens wanting to figure out for themselves who they are and where they stand.  It didn't account for the fact that they often use their parents as a safe space to push against as they discover themselves, as the book Untangled describes with a pool metaphor--we are the walls of the pool and we need to be stable and be there as they push against us to swim, and come back to us to take a rest and breathe, and push against to go swim again.

And inserting myself into the ruminations doesn't seem to be useful.  If a person is grappling about halacha and God and values and restrictions and meaning, isn't the grappling simply about that person thinking about those issues?  What possible good can it have to throw into the mix their complex and conflicted relationship with their superego/parent?  Waking up for minyan and going to shul should be about the question of tefila and being part of the tzibbur; is it a value to have the person also grappling about whether this act is going to please or annoy the parent?

(One might say that there is a value in doing things to please the parent, as per Yosef Hatzadik seeing the image of his father and refraining from adultery with the wife of Potifar.  I don't disagree with that.  But it does seem to me that me pushing for certain halacha observance during the teen years does muddy and cloud their thinking and grappling unnecessarily.  They get distracted thinking about halacha observance vis-a-vis parental opinion instead of it just being about their values.)

They need to get used to...

Elazar and I are now in a groove where I read him a chapter every night.  After me being concerned about TV always being a thing before bed, unschooling won out and he asks for the book.  Note to self: relax.

We are reading Danny, Champion of the World (which interestingly, references the BFG).  I LOVED it when I was a kid and frankly I'm finding it a bit dull now.  Elazar is content enough with it (doesn't love it like Pippi).  I think the Great Brain came in to the library so maybe when I pick it up we'll give it a whirl.

Chana is having trouble adjusting to her current schedule.  As you know, we haven't gotten back into Bio.  I think her schedule is pretty decent: Monday is a chill day (which she needs, after the social Shabbos), then Tues/Wed she has morning class AND my class.  Wednesday she chose to have lunch and club at school and the strain is telling on her.  Waking up for morning class 2 days in a row and having a day from 9:30-3:00 is pretty excruciating for her.  Thursday is half a chill day, since she just has my class and it's pretty late in the day.  But most weeks, by Wednesday, she's ready to crack.

I think this happened to her last year, too.

People who send their kids to school are usually horrified at this point that I'm even considering her difficulties.  Life is hard, they have to get used to it, most kids (especially in Yeshiva and her age) are out of the house almost 12 hours a day, how is she going to cope with real life, she needs to learn she needs to learn she needs to learn...

I've said numerous times that they don't actually "need to learn" or "get used to" these things.  A homeschooler who has emotional maturity is capable of doing what needs to be done.  And Chana has shown herself capable of going to class even if she doesn't want to.

The question is, is there a point?

Chana has always been a night owl.  In first grade she preferred to do her work after 8pm.  Jack, too, at age 2, preferred a 10pm-10am schedule (I'm trying not to future-think, but I am concerned about zman kriyas shema.  Though perhaps my worry energy would be better off directed towards trying to raise a child who desires to say shema...).

I have recently read a couple of articles saying that science is seeing how acutely painful it is for night people to be made to function in the morning.  I personally am a morning person and my productivity is shot after 8pm most nights.  (Just when Chana is getting started...)  Is it true that Chana needs to "prepare herself" for a 9-5 job when statistically, unschoolers prefer to live more frugal lives so that they can do more meaningful work suited to their taste that pays less money?

Sometimes I feel like I hear two competing views echoing around me (I know, only two?  I'm lucky).  One opinion is that teens don't know what's best for them; they are impulsive creatures who make poor decisions, they need structure and they need their parents to firmly put their feet down.  Another opinion is that teenagers are mature and wise, they are capable of amazing things, give them their space and their freedom and always keep an open dialogue and listen carefully to their opinions and thoughts.

I've experienced both.  I've been completely confused by the paradoxes of teenage-hood.  I struggle with my role as mentor and guide to what is basically an adult.

Sometimes it feels like the problem is if I go in the direction of firmness when what is actually needed is bending, I make the problem much, much worse.  And the converse is also true: If I go in the direction of bending when what is actually needed is firmness, I also make the problem worse.  When I spoke to my Rabbi about it last year, he suggested I "walk the tightrope."  Nudge, but don't nag.  If I'm being annoying, then drop it.  Have frank conversations where I share my views and seek to understand hers.

Anyway, this reminds me of why Chana and I embarked on unschooling in the first place.  When her learning is arranged around her emotional and physical nature, Chana is amenable and a pleasure.  Our homeschooling has been an utter joy filled with incredible learning.  When things are off, though, she becomes grouchy, reluctant, angry, quick to fight authority, and her mind isn't as receptive to knowledge.

We will see how this plays out.

On disengaging and Un-enmeshing

About a month ago I was beginning to get annoyed with how work was going with Chana.  In theory, Chana is unschooled, which means she learns what she wants when she wants.  In reality, I was feeling like I wanted to be available to Chana for a chunk of time every day, so that I can sit down with her and work on whatever subjects she wants to be taught by me.  But between my own activities and the boys, I was beginning to get stressed about having time to give her.  For example, if I didn't ask her when to do work, then the day would drift by, and then be over, and Chana would be willing to do work at 9:30pm but I was completely zonked from a full day plus bedtime.  Then I would get annoyed at Chana.

On the other hand, when I wanted to figure out when we could do work together so that I could plan my free time, Chana was feeling that I only spoke to her in order to schedule work time, or that I pounced on her as soon as I saw her or as soon as I picked her up from her class, and that she was trying to relax and I was annoying her.  (We joked that I was like the seagulls from Finding Nemo but instead of saying "Mine?" I would say "Work?")  Our personal preferences of how to schedule time to work together were diametrically opposed to each other, and if we did one person's way, it severely annoyed the other person.

Plus I was sick and tired of feeling naggy.  I like to get things done quickly and know when they are done.  And I felt like it is on my daily "to do list" to give her about 1.5 hours.  This is not a small block of time (even though I imagine it's a small amount of time to spend in frontal teaching for a high schooler).

Chana and I tried various approaches to work out our opposing preferences.  And although I really enjoy teaching Chana and learning with her, I was finding myself feeling pretty unhappy about figuring out when to learn with her and I felt like I was taking too much responsibility for it.  I felt like I was overfunctioning.  I was fantasizing about not bringing it up and seeing how many days went by without me teaching her.

To me, that was a little bit of a red flag to myself.  It felt like a petty mindset where I wouldn't communicate with her, I would ostensibly be butting out, but really, in my own mind, I'd be simmering with resentment that she wasn't being on top of her learning.

So I wasn't so happy with that approach, either.

This month I tried to give Chana some more space to be in charge of approaching me when she wants to learn.  I let her know that 8-8:30pm and 9-9:30pm I wasn't available because I was doing bedtime.  I tried not to sweat it on days when I was feeling like I had a lot on my plate.  It's not my problem if she doesn't get to learn with me today.  (I didn't really feel like that.  But I also felt like I was creating a dynamic I didn't like even more than I didn't like her missing some days of formal learning.)

I found that on days when Chana is out of the house (yeah, yeah, that introvert series I have yet to write) she holes up in her room and often doesn't want to do work until late at night.  But otherwise she generally started coming to me at some point in the day and asking me when was a good time to do work.

And if I was sitting around with not much to do, I would chat Chana and let her know I was available and until what time.  This has been working well.  Instead of keeping track with whether or not Chana is on top of her work, I've been thinking more about my own wants and needs.  And if it works out for me, I let her know.  The result has been that I've been a lot more relaxed.  And I don't think we've been working together less frequently, except on those days when we go to a concert or something.  I, being a type A perfectionist, would prefer to do formal schoolwork on those days, too.  But Chana wouldn't.  And if I recall from Sarah's homeschool days, trying to cram work into days when we had trips often just made me tense and the kids miserable.

So now I don't think much about it.  Chana recruits me probably about as frequently as I recruit her.  And I'm not responsible for her time management.  Which is a happier way for both of us.