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.

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