The Eternal Sunshine of the Non Spotless Basement

That's right, folks. 

This is the AFTER picture.  Just imagine that stuff all over the floor so you can't walk (except for my path, to the right of the duct tape, which has been kept largely clear).  This was cleaned only because we have Shabbos guests coming. 

They tell me they love scavenging for pieces of cardboard and wood and cloth to make all sorts of creations. 

college

I'm a member of an unschooling group, and they were discussing what makes someone an experienced unschooler.  Among disqualifications:

• your kids are young
• you unschool "except" a subject
• valuing one type of learning over another

And then the line that hit me between the eyes: If you are not worried about what your 18 year old will do with their life, you are experienced.

Ha! That's right where I am right now.  (Except I am worried, and I'm not experienced.)

So I've been "deschooling," which means working to get out of the schooly mindset.

Among the schooly mindset:

• college is vital to get a good job in life
• college must be done at age 18 (or after the year in israel/gap year)
• college must be done full time

Chen has a confluence of personality quirks and learning disabilities (or neurodivergences, as makes more sense to me) which led us to unschooling.  

She's been saying that she wants to take a gap year before college.  Why?  Because she doesn't learn well via lecture, or reading, or auditory listening.  She learns best as an autodidact plus someone to ask one on one questions to.  That is not college.  And she'd like a year off to...drumroll, please... learn what she wants to learn.

Yes, ladies and gentleman.  An unschooled child would like to take a year off to learn.  

She's spent the summer learning.  Math, science, art, business, who knows what else.  We went to the doctor to get a refill of her ADHD meds, and he said to come back when she knows her fall schedule so they can work out the dosage.  We said but wait, she's almost out of pills and what about the next two weeks of summer.  She's been studying for two to three hours a few times a week.  

He couldn't even comprehend that someone would be studying for no reason.  Not for college, not for high school requirements, just to learn.  (This is the same doctor who for years quizzed my children on things they did not know--math, history, etc.).

I always used to say that homeschoolers (kal v'chomer unschoolers) tend to play more when they are young and get more serious about studies when they are older.

Now I would say that playing is a form of learning.  And it often isn't until 11th and 12th grade (or even beyond) when they start learning the way society recognizes learning.  But they are always learning.

So I've been trying to settle down and mentally give Chen the space to take the next four years to continue her studies as she wishes.  Don't go to college?  Okay.  Take only one class?  Okay.  

I've been sitting with this for about four months and I'm a lot calmer now (though surely there is more to deschool) and it almost becomes difficult to understand why I was pressuring her.  Why, when she has always been very on point about recognizing her abilities and what was too much for her, would I not trust her now?  Why, when she has researched and found options and taught herself and requested testing and requested medication and found resources and asked for her needs, would I doubt her abilities and assessments at this point?

So I backed off and supported her.  If she wants to defer, let her defer.  I began to view college as an opportunity for her to explore interesting things.  They have a new program this year--QCin4: to help students stay on track so they graduate in four years.  

I applaud this program for neurotypical students and I'm glad the school is helping college students stay on track to graduate.  But that route is not for Chen.  Maybe in the future, if she wants it.  But right now, college has many wonderful classes and opportunities.  It's a chance to explore a range of subjects.  There are athletics, art and drawing (there is a class on writing and drawing manga!), writing, business, math, science.  History, anthropology.  Once I relaxed, I began to see how many interesting things there are in the framework of unschooling, as opposed to trying to get a degree.

I was curious to see what Chen would decide to do.  Once I got out of my own way and stopped worrying about her choices, I became much more relaxed.  Would she defer?  Maybe.  Would she take Bio?  Chem?  Calculus?  How would it be in college?  Would it work for her?  I am looking forward to seeing.

Yesterday was registration and although Chen was adamant about either deferring or taking only one class, the advisor was great and she is taking two classes and looking forward to them.  Pre-calc so she can stop seeking an online curriculum that will fill in her gaps and microeconomics so she can learn more about entrepreneurship.  They are 2 days a week, giving her recovery days.

She also made an appointment with student services to get extra testing time, and hopefully a copy of notes and breaks during tests.  They offer counseling to help students stay on top of studying and work organization.  Hopefully her accommodations will be in place after next week, which will be helpful in whatever she ends up doing in college.

Homeschooling neurodivergent kids is great because you can really give them the focused attention they need and tailor their education to their learning differences.  But it's a worry about whether or not they'll be able to get accommodations in college, if they haven't gone through the system and have alternate documentation.  I'll feel better once that's in place.

But the cool thing about unschooling is that it's not fraught.  If it doesn't work out, no big deal.  There's always another approach.  It's tremendous freedom.

bar mitzva prep thoughts

I've been pondering the bar mitzva again.  E is 11.5 now. It's creeping closer.  For the girls, I spent the year before bat mitzva preparing them to daven, running through mitzvos they weren't keeping yet and going through their chiyuv/obligations, making sure they were fluent at reading the brachos they'd need to say and the davening they'd be halachically obligated in.  E still has tremendous difficulty sitting, even for 5 minutes.  He is absolutely not interested in working on his Hebrew reading more than the once a week he does it now.  (Compare to A, 2nd grade, who spent 2-3 months dragging me the aleph-beis reader every single evening until he achieved the degree of fluency he wanted.) I know for a fact if we wait until he is interested, it will go faster, he will remember it better, and he will be excited about it.

I've also been thinking about radical unschooling.  One of the most beautiful things about unschooling is that you meet the child where the child is, not where you want him to be.  You have trust and confidence that what the child is working on now is useful and good.  And you focus on enjoying the relationship with that child and on partnering with the child to achieve the things that the child is interested in doing.  (Reminder to me: make plan to drop E off in semi-supervised wilderness so he can test his "survival" skills.)

Contrast that with the idea of the bar mitzva.  Many of my friends (this is my first boy, so I don't know how to raise boys) mentioned that they couldn't believe how their sons stepped up to the expectations of being a bar mitzva and navigated their responsibilities now that they went through the transitional rite of passage.  Would I be doing my son a disservice by "letting him off the hook" and not pushing him to lein?

On the other hand, the actual basic bar mitzva situation (he gets up, makes a couple of brachos, the end) is really quite manageable for him.  If we just do that, we would all be happy.  And he would probably even be happy to work on a speech and deliver it.

A friend of mine (who homeschooled 5 boys who are grown up now) said to me that I should just do his aliyah and make a big deal about celebrating the fact that he is now chayav in mitzvos.  This is a beautiful thing and a milestone and worthy of celebration on its own.

Another unschooling friend of mine has 3 boys, all high school and over bar mitzva age, and told me about how as per their wishes, their bar mitzvas were extremely low key, just the aliyah, and how their interest in learning and davening blossomed later--ages 15, 16...

An unschooled young man who now has children of his own told me last year that his youngest brother, still unschooled at home, really only began to "get more serious" after age 16, so he thinks bar mitzva may be young and there is no need to be nervous at that age.  This coincides with my own unschooling experience with my current 12th grader.

It's hard to let go of the leining.  All three of my brothers leined, did haftorah, and davened mussaf for the amud.  And Ari and all of his brothers leined (though not the whole parsha).  To me, a big part of being bar mitzva is being qualified to be part of the minyan, being able to lein and being able to daven for the tzibbur.

I remembered a post I wrote a while back.  It has excellent advice, and I have taken my own advice many times since I wrote it.  It has three pieces of advice: 1) Whatever it is you want your kid to learn but they won't, do it yourself instead.  This way, any "living through them" you may be unconsciously experiencing, you take care of by making it happen in yourself.  And by you being involved in it, it more likely comes up in conversation and is part of the natural home environment, so your child has exposure to it without being annoyed by being forced into it. 2) Daven. This will help you clarify your goals and bring emotional relief.  3) Make your relationship with your child your priority.  Stop focusing on what you want from him and focus on how your relationship with him is, and make sure the interactions are enjoyable and positive.

So I am about to embark on learning Elazar's leining of the first aliyah.  It took me 2 years (almost a decade ago) to teach myself how to lein.  My husband assures me that my skill level is that of a 12 year old boy.  My brother sent me the trope, and I shall begin learning.  I'm curious how long it will take me--and I am an adult with a marvelous ability to focus.  Let's see what I'm asking of him.

Further, if I get fluent and sing it around him a lot, he will likely learn it pretty easily.

My, How Things Have Changed

Things are different now than they were fifteen years ago.  I signed my kids up to go to an Archaeological Dig.  Both the girls attended this program back in the day and thought it was fabulous and so much fun.  It's a great concept: A guy who has actual artifacts from real archaeological sites comes and digs up a backyard, buries his artifacts, and the kids dig them up and learn about that time period.  It's an incredibly hands-on way to learn history.  It was one of the homeschool highlights that my girls enjoyed when they were in the elementary grades, and when I saw it listed I immediately signed up the boys who were the right age for it.

Well, a kid who can't sit through five minutes of talking and another kid who is uncomfortable in new places without his mom are not exactly the best candidates for a week-long drop off program.  I remembered it being pretty hands-on.  But apparently any bit of talking doesn't work for some kids. 

11yo came home furious after the first day that it was boring.  And also, why was it all about avoda zara?  (They were studying Ancient Greece.)

I had to pack them lunch every day.  Ari was kind enough to drive them (and ended up being pretty unhappy about it), and after the first day, they started complaining that they didn't want to do it.  E was pretty much crying today that he didn't want to go.  (Just like real school!)  That it uses up all the time in his day, and it's boring.

Every day they spoke a lot about different things they learned.  Elazar unearthed an entire horse jaw.  He said it was really big.  He asked me about Plato.  I think they learned a ton and will be thinking about a lot of things. 

Overall, though, I'd say יצא שכרו בהפסדו, that the loss cancels the gain.  Elazar was pretty miserable.  And even Jack wasn't overly enthused.

It's kind of shocking that with an unschooling mindset, classes that used to seem amazingly educational and fun in the beginning of my homeschool years, when I was in a more "schoolish" mindset, are really not very enjoyable to my hardcore unschoolers, who are used to not having any sort of learning shoved down their throat whatsoever, and drop any bit of "education" when it is boring or not appealing to them.  Our standards have shifted.

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. 

Mishna During the Week

Chen is so depleted from reading her psychology textbook that she never wants to read Lord of the Flies.  Or do any other reading at all.

Elazar asked Ari to learn mishna with him more regularly instead of only on Friday nights.  Elazar has also been following through with that, asking many nights to learn a mishna.

I really was skeptical that the children would ask to learn if we unschooled them.

Roblox is a great game. & internet safety

Aharon, first grade, is playing Roblox and is manager of a pizza store.  He plays this for hours a day.  Apparently, he just wrote this sign for all his employees (who are other real people; it's a multiplayer game):

We need more cashiers and cooks
less suppliers

So in addition to spelling and written communication, he also is practicing employee management and economics.

He tells me that after he wrote this, people stopped being suppliers and staffed the jobs he needed.

I was going to end there, but after a conversation I had recently, it's a good place to discuss my approach to filters and internet rules.

We have no filters on our computers or tablets.  I (at this point in time) really appreciate access to information and value their ability to search online for all sorts of things.  I think that access to information is important.  And I hope to discuss moderation and self regulation with them as the antidote to multimedia issues.

All desktops are in the main area of the house, for easier adult awareness of what's going on.  At this age, no tablets or laptops are permitted in their rooms.  My daughters began having their devices in their rooms at around 14, which is also when they began choosing to watch content that I thought was a little too adult for them and they disagreed with me.  I don't know what will be with the boys at that age because of the pornography issue, and we will have to give some thought to an approach.

We allow unlimited screen time and if they watch something where I feel uncomfortable, we talk about it or I ask them to please turn it off (if the content has a lot of cursing or sexual talk).

Regarding Roblox or games where they can chat with other players who are not known to them in real life.  (And now we just got an xbox live account so they can game with their uncle.)  Basic internet safety:

• don't tell your real name
• don't tell your age
• don't tell your location
• don't tell your time zone (this can give them hints about your location)
• assume that the person you are talking to might be a 35 year old man, even if they say they are a little girl or a little boy
• if someone says something, does something, or shows you something that makes you feel uncomfortable, walk away and tell me immediately
• don't put people on your xbox friends list (or facebook, back in the day) if you haven't met them personally (as kids get older, they do "friends of friends," but we talk about the risks that may be involved in that)

My goal is not to prevent them from being accosted or shown uncomfortable or sexual things.  My assumption is that they will come across that on the internet, and they should be comfortable and confident about what to do when it happens.

kol hatchalot enthusiasticot

I handed chana a piece of paper with 3 things written (in hebrew)

1. write hebrew story (est 20 min)

2. chumash (20 min)

3. shemona esrei (est 15 min)

I asked her to please fill out times when she planned to do those activities.  she made a 12 next to the first one, a 1 next to the 2nd, and a "after my plans" next to the 3rd.  she drew a neutral face next to the story, an unhappy face next to chumash, and a rejoicing face next to "plans."

At ten minutes to 12, she got a notebook and writing utensil.  I told her to take her ipad to look up words she didn't know.  She had to re-download the translator app, which she apparently deleted due to lack of use.  She told me to say, "Class, you may begin," at precisely 12.  I don't know what she did for those last few minutes.  Thought of ideas?  Tried out the app?  At 12, she reminded me to say it, so I did.

After 12 minutes, she asked if she could stop.  She had written almost 3/4 of a page in small letters.  So I said yes.  I said tomorrow I would check it with her, and we would correct the first draft together.

Now, even though it is 12:30 and not 1, she is doing Chumash.  12:40, and we finished.  Chazara of half of sheni, chazara of the 2 (complicated) pesukim we did yesterday, and 3 new pesukim.

I predict that since the 3rd time was vague and not specific, she will not initiate it.  But we shall see.

We shall also see if I have the oomph to keep up with this and follow through.  Tomorrow the story draft, and today shemona esrei translation.

on choice in unschooling

As far as video game execs creating games to suck in my kid as long as possible, I once read an education article saying that video games are the perfect paradigm of education.  They are challenging in difficulty, getting incrementally more challenging in an exciting way that builds up and up as you improve.  They give emotional satisfaction from solving problems.  Those are the factors that make video games great :-)  I try to model my lessons after them.

Again, I will be keeping a close eye on elazar and the other boys when they get old enough, but right now the part that he loves is the figuring out, the mastering, and the achievement.  Leonard Sax's point is well taken that boys need these same satisfactions in the real world, or they risk being sucked in to enjoy it via media and not deal with the frustrations of the real world.  But I hope homeschooling will give my boys many happy hours of enjoyable real world challenges.  It may very well be that given a choice of the stifling way that we make boys behave vs media, that they will choose media.
Elazar woke up at 5:45, chose to snuggle for 1/2 hr, then watched Shrek III 2.5 times (I assume that's about 5 hrs.  I heard him repeating some of the lines and mimicking their tone).  Then he desperately wanted friend interaction and activity.  Based on the Are You Hungry paradigm, I firmly believe that kids will choose activities the same way that they choose food, and IF all things are offered, and IF there are no underlying emotional issues that are being expressed, children will choose moderation and balance, and a mix of everything.

As I say over and over, I am open to the possibility that this is not true, and I will keep an eye to see what is happening.  But so far all indications point to lots of choosing.

*Are You Hungry?: A Completely New Approach to Raising Children Free of Food and Weight Problems [Hardcover]

Jane R. Hirschmann (Author), Lela Zaphiropoulos (Author)