What would you have done differently?

I came across this post today.  Seasoned unschoolers were asked what they would have done differently. 

The whole thing is worth a read.

http://sandradodd.com/hindsight/

• I would have responded more kindly and with less blame to my kids
  
• tell myself to relax, that the influence that matters most in those early years is mine and Doug's generous and open support of Ethan's wonder at the world around him,
  
• I'd tell myself to calm down and worry less, not pander to anyone else's ideals and I'd trust my kid a lot more.
  
• I'd have worried less when the kids were younger (like 3-5) about "introducing" things like music or art or going to museums
  
• relax and accept the moment more. I'd use my calm voice more, rather than my frustrated-and-fed-up voice, especially when *I* was the tensest one in the room
  
• While I did let my son learn to read in his own time, I stressed for years about whether I was doing the right thing...So I'm glad I forged through, but the stress was a waste...
  
• I wish I could have enjoyed the moment...I would have made my choices based on love not worry or guilt.

Math & Middos

Jack has no money left in his "bank account," the spreadsheet I use to keep track of their money. 

On Friday, we were driving.  He was angry and shaking my seat.  I said if he doesn't stop shaking it, he'll have to move to the back back of the van.  He didn't stop.  I told him to move.  He started screaming about moving.  I said that I'm counting to 5 and then I'm taking a dollar away from him.  He started moving.  I stopped counting.  He stopped moving and started screaming again about how he hadn't heard me warn him he'd have to move.  I finished counting and said he has to give me a dollar.  He started screaming that he didn't know I was counting.  I said I'm starting to count again, and then it's another dollar.

He moved.  He spent the next half hour screaming about how it isn't fair, he hadn't heard the first warning, he hadn't heard the counting.

He said that he was never going to give me any more money to put into his account, because right now it has negative one.  And if he puts money in, then I'll get a dollar from him.  But if he never puts money in again, it will always stay negative one and never get his dollar taken away.

I thought that demonstrated a pretty decent handle on how negative numbers work and I'll put that on the quarterly report.

On a side note, I may have mentioned (I looked for some posts but couldn't find--wait, I vaguely remembered something and searched "succos lollipops" and found this post) that Jack has a particular middah that I personally find challenging and end up getting into conflict with him about. 

My most recent attempt to deal with this was for us to talk in whispers when we begin to argue.  It's been pretty helpful because no matter how heated, it's difficult to escalate too much while whispering.

He gets into a mentality sometimes where everything is bad, or unfair.  He wallows, has a hard time getting out of being unhappy (he's always had trouble self-soothing from the time he was a baby and small toddler), and eventually he turns to grandiose solutions that are impractical or absurd, and gets even more furious when we won't implement them.  Or he focuses a lot of mental energy on the aspects of unfairness and how he is logically correct.

Because it triggers things in me, it's been difficult to parent this well.  I've tried valiantly and failed spectacularly on numerous occasions, often ending with me becoming verbally abusive.  My sister and I have gotten into more than one fight when she asked my why I was allowing him to carry on so aggressively and publicly.  (Note: she was right.  I got very defensive and we had more than one argument, but ultimately she stuck to her guns and I tried to open myself to what she was saying and she helped me process some of my conflicts and helped me focus on what types of boundaries were important to hold with him as he tantrummed and it was extremely helpful.  Having someone close to you watch you parent and give input, while painful, can be very helpful.)  Staylistening has been useful but has not addressed the basic middah.  I figured it's the kind of thing that hopefully if I don't make it worse, he'll eventually get the time and maturity to work through it. 

I've noticed an irony in parenting.  Lots of times as parents, we see a trait in our children that we think is negative.  So we try to "parent" it out of them.  But it's possible that if we just give them space and don't make it worse, then they'll end up being mature enough and emotionally healthy enough to manage it and navigate it as they grow.  (This I probably learned from radical unschooling.)  Shyness, for example.  Or "selfishness," I've seen, can be something that might need to be addressed, but it's also possible that selfishness is developed through a scarcity mentality and that being in a home with kindness and generosity will eventually lead to being kind and generous.  Or anger, which I used to think with my oldest that I needed to train her in self control, but it turns out that parenting with firm but kind boundaries and giving them space to have and feel the fullness of their feelings sort of ends up with them being able to manage their anger (well, the jury's still out on this one as my youngest seems to have an extra dose of my FOO's temper, and he's still young, so we'll see in ten years or so).

So I realized with Jack that it's important for me to be there as a loving presence while he goes through this complex wave of emotions.  And it's important for me not to "fix" it, and it's important for me to maintain the "no" while still being kind.  (That's where I often fail/ed.)  And it's important for him to have the experience of being so upset and grieving all the things that come up for him each time (life is unfair, his brother gets things and experiences he doesn't, he has no friends, his life is miserable, etc.) and to really have it be okay for him to be sad about all these things in a profound way, and for him to have the experience of it ebbing and him climbing his way out. 

I don't think it's useful for me to cajole him out of it, or coax him, or distract him, or try to fix it.  Those are all futile things we do in life with our own pain.  The best thing I can do for him is to be there for him as a loving presence that has confidence that these feelings will not destroy him and that he can and will feel them without the world ending.  And let him see that it does ebb and it is okay.

I had a recent epiphany.  I realized I was buying in to Jack's narrative.  I identify with him.  I agreed with him that it is a tragedy that his brother has more friends, has more fun, goes on more playdates, and gets more invites, more presents, more shalach manos.

It occurred to me that maybe it's not a tragedy.  Maybe it's just his chelek, his situation, and that learning to navigate his feelings and be able to tolerate the pain and pick himself up afterwards is actually a good thing.  Maybe even a better thing than having more playdates and more shalach manos.   

The Eternal Competition of Two Ideals

Wherein I lament, yet again, about Wanting Kids to Be Kids and have room for their art projects and infinite legos, and Wanting To Walk A Path to the Fridge.  Two competing ideals.  I cannot have both.

I want to be Charming and Loving Earth Mother.  I end up being Cranky Monster Mama.

I asked them to clean up the basement because I couldn't walk down the stairs anymore without climbing over boxes.  I couldn't open the door to the fridge.  They did.  I then spent another 20 minutes throwing out all the little pieces of garbage they missed.  (And they had vacuumed, too.)

I threw out a kite.  Every 5-10 years, some Well Meaning friend or relative buys us a kite.  I don't know how to fly a kite.  This large, delicate monstrosity sits around and mocks me until it mercifully is broken.  I threw out this kite incarnation and it isn't broken yet.  I lost track of how long it's been living with us.  I feel better.

unschooling spelling

3rd and 5th grader figuring out together "transparent" and "template."

Unschooling Math

Jack, 3rd grade, was making chocolate milk.  I was standing next to him making cappuccino.  He noted that the suggested serving is 2 spoonfuls, and there are 38 servings in the container.  But said that he uses more than that, so the amount of servings it says is not the amount for how he makes chocolate milk.  I asked him how many servings it would be for him.  I thought it wouldn't be too tough for him to divide 38 by 2.  But he didn't want to. 

I did the math and told him it was 19.  This is something that I learned about unschooling.  As a homeschooler/educator, I was always trying to get the kids to be independent and figure things out.  But in unschooling, they always read to the kids and do the math (showing them how they do it if the kid wants to know).  And how will they learn if you always do it for them?

But the way it works is that the child sees that you know how to do it.  And they can't do it themselves, but they see you can do it.  And eventually they want to do it and are motivated to learn it.  But in the meantime, until they want to, you read things to them and do their math for them.  It's a bit of an attitude adjustment.

Back to our 38/19 servings, it turned out that I was assuming he was using double, and Jack said the math was harder because he uses about 5 spoonfuls.  So he was explaining to me about how using more gives you fewer servings.  This is one of the things I remember being SO confused about in math class.  The fractions are always going in the opposite directions.  Cutting things in half makes more; using double ends up giving you half the amount of portions, on and on until it used to make my head spin.  But here Jack and I were just chilling, and he was explaining to me how he was thinking about it.

He wasn't interested in "learning" or "doing" math.  It just came up and we were just talking about it.  Back when I was homeschooling, I would have taken the opportunity to do some actual math problems with him.  I would have tried to get him to do them or tried to get him to understand some of the concepts.  But in unschooling we were just chatting. 

It was something that came up organically and naturally, and these types of mathematical situations come up frequently.  (Something that I found hard to believe before I unschooled math; math was the very last secular subject I let go of.)   The kids actually enjoy pondering these things, thinking about these issues, playing around with them mentally.  It seems like they kind of carry these math "problems" (i.e. real world situations) around with them as they go about their day, and they think about them a bit, then do whatever, play, think about it some more, etc. 

It's a lovely relationship to math.

Our continuous quest for enjoyable classic literature

I'm bored to tears with Lord of the Flies.  K says she likes it, though.  (Even though she never asks to read it and it is taking us soooo long.  I think when we get to the climax it will be interesting, but it's a lot to get through until then. 

I read her the first paragraph of Catcher in the Rye and she was unimpressed.  I guess an anti-hero that curses is not a novelty in this generation.

I ordered Pickwick Papers by Dickens.  I don't have a lot of hopes for it, but we'll try it.  It was free for kindle. 

deschooling al regel achas

I had this exchange today on facebook and I'm sharing it here:

Q: I knew that you homeschool but I didn't know you unschool. Do you have experience with the "de-tox" phenomenon I've heard about in which children who have been in a regular school who switch to unschooling spend a couple of weeks doing nothing while they adjust to the idea? I was just discussing this with someone, but it's not something I've personally witnessed.

Me: Yes, rule of thumb is one month per year the child was in school.
Me: We call it "deschooling."

[Note that the questioner heard that it's "a couple of weeks" which is actually not close to the amount of time]

Q: This is your rule of thumb or this is, like, a basic statistic that every unschooler takes for granted?

Q: How would you characterize exactly what is happening in their minds during that time?

Me: Not my rule of thumb. It's an unschooler thing.

[Actually, it's a homeschooler thing, though not as well known amongst all homeschoolers as it in in the unschooler olam.
https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/deschooling-vs-unschooling-whats-difference/]

Me: Basically, the kids are not succeeding in school so the parents pull them out. and the parent is choosing unschooling, which means that there is going to be a radically new approach to learning, where they are never again going to be forced to sit and learn something that they don't want to.
So instead of plunging right into that (because how can they even have any concept of what that would look like), they just relax. Like vacation. Do things they always wanted to do. Sleep late, watch lots of videos, read books, do whatever it is that they love to do for fun but never had time to do because they were busy stressfully unsucceeding in school. So the first thing you do is remove all that stress, all that worry, all that tension. and life becomes less pain and just the things they like.
Gradually, as they do the things they like and aren't pushed to do things that are painful and stressful and associated with failure, their minds open up. They become curious. joyful. Enjoy the world around them. that's the prerequisite for unschooling.

Fellow homeschooler: I don't think there is a thing called "every unschooler."

Me: Nor "every homeschooler." We are so into individual freedom. But not all of us