Time To Make ADHD Official

 I haven't been writing so much because as the boys get older, I'm becoming more aware of their privacy. I asked E his opinion about writing about this next step and he gave permission. 

Now that he's bar mitzva, he's been struggling to learn the davening (the entire year leading up to his bar mitzva was nowhere near enough time). The good news is that he doesn't feel like he's struggling. He just dislikes it and we don't do it much and it goes slowly. We do it 4x a week for under 5 minutes at a time. As I mentioned, this teeny amount of sitting results in that he doesn't have the bandwidth for mishna anymore.

I've really been unsure how to proceed. Is it the time to unschool and let him decide when to do it? I've always thought that eventually a child would be motivated and then it would come quickly. It seems to me there is a learning disability here, it's blocking motivation, and even if he is motivated, there will be no learning quickly.

At the same time, he does love to think and to learn, and the more I push and impose, the less energy, inclination and motivation he has for true and real-to-him learning.

On the other hand, this may be the kind of thing that when he grows up, he'll say to me, "Ma, I wish you would have pushed me a little more. Then I would know how to daven." <--That's something that usually unschoolers fret about and experienced unschoolers say is not a worry. Because a feature of unschooling is the confidence and experience that when you want to learn something, then you figure out how to learn it or you get help.

And yet, something is telling me that he's ready. He's ready for some nudging. And if this is not hard core unschooling, well, he's my oldest son and sometimes I'm just not deschooled enough and don't trust enough and maybe Torah is too important and maybe I'll relax after him and look back and say "I was too pushy and I could have had the trust and confidence to let it go."

I was walking with him on the beach and asking him what he likes to do and he said he'd like to learn coding but he thinks he's lazy.

That was kind of a shock because I don't believe that laziness actually exists. If a person wants to do something, they figure it out. If they don't do it, there are reasons. Conflicts. Difficulties. 

I asked him if he knows what neurodiversity means. He didn't. I explained that some people's brains work differently than most of the population. I said I'm not sure, but his might. That may be why he doesn't like to do certain types of work. Because it hurts his brain. That may not be the case, and if so we'll have to figure out how he can do learning that he wants but also doesn't want to do, if he chooses. But it's worth checking out if his brain is neurodiverse. He agreed.

I then looked into testing. The place we used for his older sibling is closed for covid now. And I also read that for special ed services in college (which Chen is making great use of and having a FANTASTIC college experience so far bh) he'll need to have been tested within 3 years of 18. So I'll hold off a few more years. In the meantime, though, I do think it's time to pursue the ADHD diagnosis to see if him having access to medication affects his ability to concentrate and do the type of learning he's interested in doing. Then we can test in a few years to see if he has any other learning disabilities.

A negative effect

A negative side effect of Elazar reluctantly practicing reading is that he no longer likes to do Mishna.  He feels "overloaded" from the 5-10 minutes.  (I've actually skipped learning the meaning of his parsha with him this week [which I'd been doing 2x a week, reading out loud to him and translating 3 or so pesukim] since he's been so unhappy and complaining about learning.)

This is a feature that his older sister had, too.  I wonder if it's an aspect of ADHD that they run out of steam so quickly learning things that are difficult for their brains and need the rest of the day or actual days or weeks to recover.  Her motivation and determination improved with age (and medication) but the mental exhaustion remains about the same.

Update

It went terribly.  E hates reading the same thing over and over and refuses to self rate.  He is bored out of his mind and won't even read it to fluency.  He's been reading one line, with complaining, 5-6 times.  He does not achieve fluency level (reading as quickly as speaking).  I figure he would need 10-15 tries to do that and he doesn't want to.

I tried to coax him into giving it a week.  I said it's a method I read about; can't we try it out?  He finds it excruciating.  I don't know if I should stick it out or if I should just try to have him read more.  That, too, isn't going very successfully. 

It may come to him actually not being able at bar mitzva age to read fluently, because he's so vehemently opposed to it.

hebrew reading fluency

The goal: To be able to read as quickly as speaking

E is pretty accurate at this point.  (Kaf and chaf, pey and fey, he still confuses.  And he doesn't ever use a shva nach yet.)  But I want him to be able to read more fluently.  Reading more doesn't seem to be picking up his pace (I've been trying that for the last month) and he doesn't like to read so much at once.

My friend told me about R' Jonathan Rietti's method to increase speed and accuracy:

Read a sentence.
Self assess how fast it was (assuming accuracy and fluency are already in place) on a 1-5 scale. Then decide if you want to read it again aiming for faster speed.
And we’ve done that repeating the sentence 5-6 times and speed does pick and AND it picks up globally not just for that sentence, if you keep up with it and practice.

I'll let you know how it goes!

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.

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.

Aharon's First Torah

A couple of days ago, Aharon told me he doesn't like it when I speak in Hebrew. 

"Well," I said, "I speak in Hebrew so that when you want to read the Torah, you'll understand it.  Because the Torah is in Hebrew."

And he said, "But I can't read the Torah."

"Actually, I think you can," I said.  He hasn't been practicing his Hebrew reading very much (except once a week at Avos U'Banim), but like unschoolers usually do, he had practiced every day while he was interested in mastering it, then hit a level of proficiency and stopped working on it.  Last time I saw him read, I felt he was pretty fluent.  I had been thinking I should offer to work on davening with him, but as always, I vacillate between wondering if I should try to work with them and figuring it will be way more efficient and quick if they do it when they are motivated.

Aharon and Elazar began talking about how they actually knew a fair amount of what the words meant in the Hebrew reader.

[When I started unschooling, I had a fear that one day my kids would grow up, realize they have massive gaps in their education, and blame me for not forcing them to learn it.  But I then realized that a lot of unschooling is cheerfully talking about how when they want it and are interested in it, they'll learn it.  So they don't learn Torah inside right now, but when it comes up, we talk about how when they are interested and want to, they'll learn it.  It turns out that unschoolers happily and cheerfully learn new things and master new skills as they become relevant or interesting.]

Tonight, Aharon was wandering around, and I said, "Hey, want to try to read the Torah?"

He said okay.  I asked him which part of Torah is his favorite.  He said the part where Hashem turned the water into blood. 

No problem.  I pulled out Shmos and opened up the pasuk.  Aharon read המים and I repeated it after him and he said, "the water!"  Then he read אשר and didn't know what it was.  I said "that" and he said "אשר קדשנו במצותיו" and I said Yup. Then he read ביאור and I told him that was the Hebrew word for the Nile River.  Then he was getting antsy and I told him just one more word.  And I pointed to the last word in the pasuk and he read לדם.  And I repeated it and he didn't know.  And I said just "dam" and he said, "Blood!"  And he grinned.

****

An example of how halacha comes up naturally: Aharon wanted to eat his pizza bagel and I told him to make a bracha but he was waiting for the bagel to call off a bit.  Then he came over to me a minute later with a tiny bit of the cheese from the top and asked me if this was the same bracha as the bagel.  I said no, that's shehakol, and he should make that bracha and then a bracha on the bagel later when it cools down.

Zos Chanuka

Aharon's burning desire to read has settled down.  He stopped dragging the reader in every night 4 minutes before the cutoff time (10:30pm).  Either he achieved a level of mastery that he is content with, or the urge that had been driving him just eased a bit.

I forgot about the rhythms of learning.  Back when I used to homeschool (not unschool), some weeks/months the kids would be raring to go, like their brains were extra nimble and they were super motivated.  Then other times they'd be like molasses, difficult to motivate and sluggish to work.  I learned many years ago to look out for the highs and grab them and get as much done as possible.  Because during the lows and dips they didn't want to work.

It was something I didn't know about from "regular" school.  Kids have to go by what the class is doing, and don't get to ride the waves of their own personal brain functioning and motivation and zip when they are uber efficient, and take it easier when they are more stagnant.  But I saw it a lot in homeschool when I taught other people's kids.  And I see it here again.

More Unschooling Magic

Aharon continues to drag the reader into my room every night at 10:24 or so, with just enough time before 10:30 to read.  Last night he read two pages.  His reading is not as fluent as a 2nd grader in "regular" school, but he's much faster than his older brothers.  The other day, while I was davening out loud, he came to look over my shoulder.  I slowed down and let him read the very last syllable, which he did.  He seems interested in getting his reading level to the point of being able to daven.

(Jack has stopped asking for Chumash, and Elazar and I are doing trup very spottily.)

Jack comes up for snuggle most nights in the early 10s, to get a snuggle before my 10:30 cutoff time.  Last night, I was hanging out in bed, talking to Chen, when he came in.  He asked what division was.

I explained it like I had explained it to Elazar about cookies and the amount of people who want cookies and to make it fair.  So we started with 15 and I said there are 3 people.  I gave him one of my hands so he'd have 15 fingers and could visualize it.

He spent a long time thinking.  A really long time thinking.  One might even say a ridiculously long time thinking. 

And he wasn't using my hand, and dividing into the obvious 3 equal parts.

What was he doing?

Eventually, he said "5."  That was right, and he was thrilled, and he asked for another.

Chen was extremely curious about how he had done it.  So we asked Jack to do the next one out loud, if he could.  To talk as he was doing it and to say what he was thinking. 

He was guessing what it might be, then counting by that number, to see if he ended up with the right answer.  So 24 divided by 6.  He guessed 4.  Then he counted.  4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24.  That was 6 jumps of 4, ending with the right number.  Had he started with 3 it would have been: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18.  Wrong.  We did a few more problems until Aharon came in to read.

A few things really struck me about this. 

• He LOVED it.  He got so much enjoyment from thinking about this and figuring it out.  It was something he was wondering, he came to me and asked me about it, and was rewarded with the pure joy of figuring it out, discovering it, thinking about it. 
  
• He took a really long time to think about it at every step.  He thought about what it means to divide.  He thought about how it might work.  He wrestled with how it works, and tried different things, and figured out a method of calculating it.
  In school, you don't have time to do that.  Firstly, you don't have time to wonder.  You are told what you are learning and that's that.  Secondly, you are told how to do it.  You aren't given the space and time to sit and really think things through.  You simply don't have the time to sit around thinking about how division might work.  You don't have time to play with it.
  
• Division is going to be really meaningful to him.  He will understand it on a deep, gut level.  It will be part of him.

Oh, and last night Aharon forgot the ך and I told him to practice the sofises, since he stumbles over them.  I know he works on them in his mind at random times during the day, because last week he came to me, eyes shining, and told me that he mastered nun sofis (ן).

I had stuck an aleph beis printout onto the fridge haphazardly a couple of years ago, because I felt that having it in sight might incline them to look at it, and definitely showed the kids that Hebrew reading is a value of ours.  Although the kids use the multiplication chart I have on the fridge frequently, I don't see the aleph beis chart getting a lot of use.

But apparently Aharon has been using it.  This morning he came over to me, and with his eyes glued to the chart, told me that he's working on the ך and the ף.

Full Steam Ahead

Aharon, age 7, has been asking to read the aleph bina every night. He's making good progress. I think his motives are to catch up to or be ahead of his older brothers, who only read at avos u'banim. Elazar still dislikes reading at age 11. Moral of the story: unschooling seems to work if you are a little brother in competition. Can't speak about the rest at this time.

Unschooling Ivrit

Something that is one of the zanier things I've done is chosen to speak to my kids in Hebrew despite it not being my native language.  I don't know some words, my grammar (though improved) is nowhere near perfect, my accent is atrocious, I don't use idiomatic expressions, I speak very slowly, and have trouble conveying sophisticated concepts to them.  They have difficulty understanding Israelis.

On the plus side, they are all comfortable with basic Hebrew.  They will probably easily be able to speak in Israel.  My older two are comfortable in Israel and understand it (though my oldest hesitates to speak).  When they start Chumash, they are familiar with a great deal of the words.  They have a fairly decent basic Hebrew vocabulary that they learned with no pain.

My three little ones can barely read Hebrew yet, so they haven't started skills work inside.  We will see how that emerges.  They are 6th, 4th, and 2nd grade.  My 4th grader has expressed an interest so I hope to try to get started with him.

My second child is something of a polyglot.  She asked for Japanese lessons, which I acquired for her via skype for 3 years, then she asked me to buy her a Japanese textbook, which I did, and then she traveled to Japan twice.  She took a college course in Russian (got an A, her first college course), and she is teaching herself Dutch.

My oldest (married already) started teaching herself Korean using dualingo and seems to be getting fairly fluent.

I've always kind of wondered how Hebrew language unschooling could work.  Bear in mind that it might work "better" in the case I'm describing because this child has a natural aptitude for and enjoyment of languages.

We put Hebrew font on all of her devices and I text and chat in Hebrew as much as possible. 

I bought her Harry Potter in Hebrew at her request and I bought her R' Winder workbooks for older kids at her request.  To my knowledge she has not used them whatsoever.

I did read about some book which was supposed to be AMAZING about acquiring language by an opera singer who needed to learn German and Italian for operas or something like that.  I bought her the book and she did read a lot of it and said it was incredibly helpful.

She went to a Zionist camp with actual Israelis and she joined their whatsapp group and they were thrilled that she can communicate in Hebrew. 

She started translating songs they shared with her.  Many times a day she asks me what phrases mean.

She joined something called discord which has sections for all sorts of interests and went into the languages section and into the Hebrew section and is chatting with people there.

What is interesting from the standpoint of unschooling is that language acquisition looks NOTHING like it does in an academic setting.  You can be "behind" for years and then quickly spend hours and months on it and acquire tremendous skills.  The acquisition is fun and exciting.  There is a risk it will not be acquired to the level the parent would wish for.  But in unschooling, we have trust that knowledge is fun and useful and able to be acquired at any time, at any age, as needed or wanted.

Feeling like a failure

I'm an experienced homeschooler.  I cannot emphasize just how experienced I am.  One of my kids finished college, another is almost done with high school.  (Actually, I'm not super experienced at boy homeschooling, considering my oldest boy isn't bar mitzva yet.)  I have been homeschooling for almost twenty years. 

Homeschoolers often find themselves against going against "common wisdom."  Kids need to know things or do things by a certain age.  Kids need to suffer certain things or they'll never be able to do it as an adult.  Kids need to [learn to sit for hours, tolerate boring learning for hours, be able to do hours of tasks that they hate, etc] so that they'll be able to function as adults.

It takes courage to keep walking a different path when people around you tell you that what you're doing is harmful.  Even if your own mind (and experience!) tell you that your path is a good path, it can be difficult.

I'm always amazed by how fragile my confidence is.  Years of positivity can be undermined.

Last week, one of my kids was at a birthday party and got into fights with the kids there.  I'm still feeling badly about that.  Worrying about his social abilities.  On one hand, I know that this is an issue (he's gotten into conflicts like this before) and I appreciate that homeschooling a) minimizes these situations and b) gives me the chance to walk him through these incidents while I'm on hand.
On the other hand, it is always disquieting to see your child be so miserable socially (tears, misunderstanding his contribution to the dynamic). 

Riding the coat tails of that, the boys started camp this week. 

I looked to see if I ended up discussing what happened with A last summer.  I can't find it at the moment.  I think it needs its own blog post.

But first let's discuss J, going into 4th grade.  His Rebbe called to discuss him after the first day.  Let's remember that J was homesick two years ago and didn't make it through the first week of camp.  He's been psyching himself up for two years now, and is trying it out for a week. 

I had told the boys that the way that we homeschool, the other kids are going to know things that they know, and that they will do that sort of thing closer to their bar mitzvas.

The Rebbe was perplexed that J couldn't do basic things like find the perek and the pasuk.  That during davening, he didn't turn the pages of the siddur.

I explained that homeschooling is a different educational approach and that most of their Torah at this age is Torah She-baal peh.  The Rebbe walked me through all the types of learning and davening and we came to agreements about what that would mean for J.  i.e. he would not call on J, would not ask him to write on the board, would visually keep an eye out in case J wants to participate but would not expect him to do the work.  It was a lovely conversation.

I explained to J that the Rebbe wouldn't call on him and he can turn pages in the siddur when he sees the other boys doing it and stand up and sit down when they do.

But J came home on the 2nd day of camp and said he just wants to go after davening and learning.  I said ok. 

I thought J would be ok for that part of camp, but it's ok if he doesn't want to.

This actually sparked a conversation between me and Ari.  Ari said, "Of course he doesn't want to sit there and learn.  It's boring." And we wondered whether the boys actually would ever be interested in learning Torah if we unschool it. 

I know that the unschoolers I've spoken to say yes.  And in my own heart, I believe that as teenagers, they can learn quickly and efficiently if they want to.  But it's definitely hard to feel comfortable when your almost 4th grader can barely read Hebrew and can't hack summer camp learning.

One thing I am realizing.  Everyone keeps saying that "camp is not school."  In the sense that camp is more relaxed than school.  Which is definitely true.  But when you unschool, camp is definitely longer and more structured than homeschool.  And when you have kids who are not used to doing activities that bore them, they don't have a high tolerance for it.

Another point I'm pondering is that maybe this camp is not best for my family.  They've been wonderful.  They are unbelievably flexible.  They are kind, considerate and thoughtful.  They are close--their playground is the playground across the street from my house, which helps my little ones feel they are in familiar territory.

But maybe a different camp with less learning would be better for them.

On the other hand, maybe being anywhere from 9:30-3:30 would make them unhappy, and I'd be paying more to have the same conflicts and arguments.

Onward to A's camp experience.

Interesting Development

K and I are still not sure about what we will read next.  We finished The Most Dangerous Game, which she didn't love.  She wants to reread The Importance of Being Earnest, and I'm thinking maybe we should try some of his other plays.  I also thought maybe Little Women.  Is it witty?  I don't know.  We want a strong character to identify with.  And humor, if possible. 

Most interesting is that last week, K said that she was disappointed that I no longer speak Hebrew with her.  But that my vocabulary isn't so good, so what would be the point.  I said, actually, my vocabulary is not bad.  I know vastly more words than I end up using. 

I had stopped speaking Hebrew to her about a year or so ago, because the topics we were talking about were complex and our relationship had the fragility that teen-mom relationships go through, and I felt that it was a priority to communicate as optimally as possible, which meant using English.

But now, as she is very interested in languages, it turns out that she is motivated to put in the time to try to understand me as I speak in Hebrew.  She wants me to use words she doesn't know, to increase her vocabulary.  I don't have to try to work out my Hebrew so that she'll understand what I'm saying, or worry that if she gets too frustrated that she'll give up.  I can speak how I want to, and she desires to make the effort to understand. 

So now I'm back to Hebrew.  With the goal of speaking as quickly and sophisticatedly as I can (and with the accent).  So we are all upping our Hebrew game.

chazak chazak

Elazar's first siyum.  He finished reading Shema.  He has earned the privilege of playing with his tablet (that he paid for with his own money) without needing to read a line to earn an hour.

• Elazar's reading in 3rd grade is ridiculously more fluent and came faster than then "normal" teaching I have done numerous times with new Hebrew readers in kindergarten and first grade.
• Instead if it taking months and months of patient and slow incremental building, it came in bursts.  A week of working on letters.  Months go by with nothing.  A day of working on letters.  Nothing.  One hour on a Shabbos morning where he decided to learn the nekudos.  Then six months later another look.  Then six months later another.  A few minutes every week at Avos U'Banim.  

He wanted to finish up Shema this morning.  He decided to just blast through til the end.  He only had 4 lines left.  It took him just a couple of minutes to read.  He started reading Shema on December 21st and he finished on January 6th.  He could barely remember the letters when he started.  Now he isn't quite a completely fluent reader, but he is much more skilled and capable than I would have dreamed after practicing only 45 lines of reading.

Part of me wants to run with this and start him on tefila.  But I suspect that would be disastrous.  No, the thing to do is to have confidence that he will easily be able to master tefila fluency with plenty of time before his bar mitzva.  

On one hand, it would be nice if he would be "grade level" and read fluently like other 3rd graders and daven like them and learn like them.  On the other hand, school would probably be dreadful for him and he's having a grand ol' time every day, wakes up with a smile, excited and delighted to enjoy his day.  And everything indicates that he will be able to focus later on in order to accomplish his chiyuvim with ease. 

So, maybe, upon further contemplation, this way is nice.

Update on Shema

It's been 9 days since Elazar got his tablet.  He has read about 30 lines of Shema and has about 15 to go.  Which means he's been averaging about 3.3 hours a day of tablet.  He has unlimited access to it during the day.  I mentioned already that I was feeling mildly uncomfortable with pushing him like this when he clearly has enough skills to be able to pick it up quickly when he will actually want to become a halacha-abiding Jew, which will hopefully be as his bar mitzva approaches.

So I've been straddling 2 ideals here.  On one hand,  I am drawn to the ideal of him learning to read when he is the one motivated, and I don't love the idea of external motivation (ie "bribery" or "incentive") because it implies that tablet is the "good," and not reading.
On the other hand, he doesn't mind it; he's been reading happily enough.  And I think it's important that desired things (like a tablet) are not achieved without effort and without a sense of working for them, so as to minimize spoiling and a sense of entitlement.  And I like to try to associate them with chagim or a siyum.

So since I made reading Shema a prerequisite to his official ownership of his tablet, and since he is not finding it painful, I am sticking to it.

But one of the things I noticed the more I unschool, is that what other people talk about, "feeling good about his accomplishment" or the benefit of him "feeling proud of himself that he did it" almost feels foreign to me and not like something I want to strive for.  I don't feel great when Elazar reacts with pride when I compliment him for his reading.  Or when he feels accomplished that he is reading when he isn't the one who wanted to get better at reading.  It feels different to me than the utter joy and natural delight that emerges when he does it because he wants to do it in pursuit of his inner calling.  I think the learning that results from him wanting to know or wanting to do has a different quality; not only is it acquired more efficiently and with a different type of joy, but I think it resides differently in his heart and mind.

I know, what about responsibility and perseverance?  I've discussed it.

joy intertwined with torah sort of

Elazar realized he wants the full version of Geometry Dash.  He asked his friend to count up his cash and he has $1.12.  The app is $2.  He asked if he can buy it.  He said from his saved up money.  He had 78 - 35 and now minus another 2 so he has 41 dollars and he will have to buy head phones for his tablet.  I wanted him to think about the purchase for 2 weeks, but he said it was only $2.  So I said okay, just finish up the first paragraph of Shema.  I like try to intertwine as much as possible the excitement of getting something they are yearning for with either a chag or with a learning milestone.  He only had 2 lines left of the first paragraph of Shema, since he's been reading to earn play time on the tablet.

His reading is improving ridiculously quickly.  He read the two lines pretty quickly and crowed that he's also earning 2 hours of play at the same time.  I feel pretty comfortable about his reading.  Even if he doesn't read any more Hebrew between now and age 12, I'm certain that with a year of practice he will be absolutely fluent and capable of all davening/brachos etc. required of him after his bar mitzva, the "shagur b'fiv" goal.  I complimented him on his reading and he grinned.  Then he bounced away so I could figure out payment for his game.

As I was trying to figure out the parental controls on the tablet so that he can't buy anything without me putting in a password, Chana told me she heard him say to himself: "This is one of the happiest moments of my life."

the tablet, rewarding for reading, and unschooling Hebrew reading

So Elazar just came over to me and asked me to do another line of Shema so that he can earn another hour of tablet.  He's only played on it for a few hours and he mentioned that it's already getting a bit boring because all the great games he was anticipating playing only have a few levels for free and it turns out he'll need to spend more money.  He also was quite upset about having to earn it for a Siyum when he is paying for it with his own money.  He brought up "Ploni Almoni" whose mother bought him a tablet AND gave it to him for nothing.  I valiantly tried to hold off but eventually the words "every family has different rules" and "when you are grown up you will make the rules for your household" came out of my mouth.

So as he is reading through his line in Shema, I started thinking about unschooling reading again.  It was an excruciating 5 minutes.  He is improving, he is remembering the letters and nekudos better, he's blending beautifully, etc.

As I look back at my blog posts about reading Hebrew, I hilariously discover that I have this same question every year at about this time.  Two years ago, Elazar learned the nekudos ridiculously quickly and efficiently.  I am just about positive (scary scary scary unschooling!) that he will learn to read Hebrew fluently in about a week when he wants to.  So why am I hocking him?  Why am I nudging a reluctant organism to do things his brain doesn't really want to do, when if I leave it alone, he will do it with joy and alacrity and it will take him a fraction of the time?

hebrew reader

I tried to find a link online but was unable to.  So here is a picture.  I got it about 14 years ago when I went to the local Judaica store and asked them for a reader.  I personally think any reader will do.  It just has to run through the letters, the nekudos, combine them, and then combine letters with other letters into words and poof! your child can read.  A siddur would work, too, except that kids generally it broken down like this.  If your child was older (say 11) and learning because s/he wants to, I would think a siddur would be fine right after mastery of letter sounds and nekuda sounds.

unschooling Hebrew reading

Elazar went through a burst of Hebrew reading for the past couple of weeks.  He's been working towards a siyum.  He got up to page 42 out of about 200 pages in the Hebrew reader.  He totally gets the idea of blending, is pretty quick at it (but not yet fluent), and we are going through it letter by letter with various nekudos.  He's up to gimmel.  His interest has kind of petered out and he has stopped asking me to do it.

So now here is the question of unschooling vs. not.  I don't really think there is a wrong answer here.  I can continue to nudge him along, and he would probably do it.  It won't be painful for him and he would learn to read Hebrew.  Once he knows Hebrew, we can practice tefila and maybe start Chumash text (he's done some, but it's extremely desultory).  He's in 2nd grade.

Or I can just drop it.  I can leave it alone until he decides to pick it up again.  One disadvantage is that it's a little nervewracking, but I'm pretty confident he'll choose to pick it up again.  Another disadvantage is that he won't be on the same level as his peers, but the benefits of him going at his own pace outweigh that.  Another disadvantage is that he is possibly missing opportunities to learn all the skills that scaffold on top of reading Ivrit.  Is it true that learning skills at a young age is easier?  Is he missing valuable years of learning?  Am I teaching him that play is more important than Torah?  Is play more important for a 7yo with ADHD?  But doing 5-10 minutes a day of reading is not going to cause him agitation.

A benefit of dropping it is that I know, from experience, that a motivated child will do more than quadruple the work in less than half the time.  Even when I wasn't unschooling, I used to notice waves of learning, lulls and peaks, two weeks of rapid assimilation of skills and information vs weeks where they would need more play time and the work seemed harder and more complicated for them.  In unschooling it is even more extreme.  It seems like 6 months go by and then a few days of intense interest and study or a couple of weeks and they master things or parts of a skill and then they taper off.  It seems to me that if I leave it alone, it will be much more efficiently mastered.

Despite that, I feel the urge to ask Elazar to read every day.

I think I will continue to ask him in the evening if he'd like to learn, and let him choose what he wants to learn.

al pi darko if you're ADHD

Elazar was determined to keep learning to read Ivrit.  He brought me the aleph bina and spent between 45 minutes to an hour finishing all the nekudos with the aleph beis (the next section is each letter of the aleph beis with different nekudos).  I personally was getting bored already but he didn't want to stop.

He got restless but he insisted on continuing.  He ended up reading while climbing on top of me.

Note that he's blurry because he's moving.

This happened between 5:15 and 6:15pm, known in many households as an unpleasant time of day.  The boys had already made themselves pita pizzas at about 4:30, according to their hunger, and Elazar asked to work.  Jack was so jealous that he first kept sitting on my lap and blocking Elazar.  I tried to give him lots of hugs while still allowing Elazar access to read what he was trying to read.  Eventually he ran off (after shutting the light so Elazar and I couldn't see, and then turning it back on when I told him to) and grabbed a workbook (one of the ones I was thinking about passing along because no one ever touches it) and one of the neighbor kids, who is 6, was helping him write and coaching him how to do it.  So both boys were diligently working.