In the Ongoing Complicated Relationship I have

One of the things I like about Radical Unschooling is word choice, which helps frame things in a kinder, more effective way. Children are not "being difficult," they are "communicating needs." Children don't "misbehave" they are hungry, tired, drained, still lacking mature communication skills.

I've learned a lot of things that help me understand why I struggle when certain relationship dynamics come up with some of my children. I've discussed a lot of them in this post where I also linked to a few earlier examples of me trying to navigate these murky dynamics with one of my children where I frequently end up demoralized, overwhelmed, and unhappy with how it went.

An aspect that my friend recently pointed out to me is his attachment style. I was complaining that it seemed like he has radar for when I'm depleted. And then he asks me for something. And NO. I'm depleted. I'm wiped out. Why can't he ask when I have energy?

And then I get into a whole thing. I can have boundaries. I can say no. And I can say no nicely. (Except I can't, because I'm depleted) and so I say it not so nicely and then he gets upset and then he pushes harder and then I feel both worse AND angrier. I feel worse because I guess he really needs it AND I feel angrier because I'm so depleted and why is he doing this.
We go round and round and eventually I say a grudging and angry yes (and feel bad because if I was going to say yes I would have preferred to say a generous and immediate yes instead of creating a situation where he feels like his mother is begrudging and annoyed). Or I say an angry No and feel awful that he's not getting his needs met.
Sometimes, if I am fortunate and notice this as it's building, I can change my No to be a kinder No OR I can skip a number of the me saying I'm tired and him pushing more and more intensely and I can just get it for him. But I still felt overall like none of these were great choices. I am glad I can be kinder and clearer in my No and yeah I still wish I could catch the dance a little earlier and make it a Yes if I'm going to anyway. But what is with him and me? Why are we doing this? Why does he need me when I'm wiped out and why do we keep having this fight over and over?

My friend suggested that it was actually EXACTLY when I am depleted that his anxious attachment gets triggered. He has to test to see if I really do love him. Right at that moment.

And of course, I often fail. And don't give him his needs. And that "proves" to him that he's right to be anxious. Because he can't get his needs met. It's a pernicious, unhappy cycle.

He has a feel for when I'm extra depleted and then asks for attention specifically in a way that is extra irritating. So then he is "right" that I "don't love" him.

Yes, to some degree it's staying on top of his love language (gifts) so he's not depleted which definitely makes things worse between us.

But also he davka has a nose for waiting for my depleted moments and that's when he "needs" me. And of course I was failing and he was "right."

So now, armed with that insight, when I see him do it I don't tell myself "He needs me and wtf I'm too wiped out now."
I tell myself "He needs me BECAUSE I'm wiped out now."

He's nervous and so he checks.

And it was perpetuating him being right he can't depend on me.

So now that I know that, I have been finding it easier to find it in myself to give davka when he asks davka when I'm most depleted.

Because that's the love he seeks: do you even love me now when you have no mental space/energy for me.

Now that I know that's what he's seeking, I expect it more and it's not as shocking and surprising.

It's in my awareness. Like on my Pesach mental list is: 'go through chometz, kasher kitchen, make menus, find time and energy for J at the exact moment when I'm about to crack emotionally' etc.

Loving What Is: Upon Thinking Fish Should Be Taught to Fly

It's a blessing that somehow, I consider Chen's rebellious nature to be a blessing.  We've had so many talks about why there needs to be rebels in society, how it's useful evolutionarily for groups to have rebels, how rebels help change things that need to be changed.

It's a blessing that I came across Susan Cain's book Quiet and learned that Jack's cautiousness and hesitation and need to be very comfortable and secure before he can relax is not something that needs to be "fixed."


This past year Chen tested all the kids to find their love language and it turns out Jack's is gifts. This has radically altered my attitude.  Practically, I am trying to make sure to give him small gifts every day--little drawings, shells I've picked up on the beach.  And I noticed he either makes special food for himself with friends--sushi, bakes, french fries--or he asks to be taken out to buy a slurpee if he doesn't get a gift that day.  I also noticed that he is extremely focused on tracking when his packages are coming. 

The important thing to note about the gift love language is that it's often mistaken for an inappropriate or unhealthy focus on materialism.  I've found it helpful to think of it as a small gift is important every single day just as a kid whose love language is touch needs a hug every single day (or even numerous times a day).  If he doesn't get a small gift, he doesn't feel loved.  This affects his mood, his sense of things being right with the world, his equilibrium. 

You can see me wrestling with this and not realizing what is happening here and here. I'm not saying that I handled those situations badly per se, but look at them through the lens of gifts being his love language.  There is a whole layer of understanding missing that part of what is paining Jack so badly is that his cup was not filled, and he was "itchy" (so to speak) from the feeling of needing love (via gift).  Once you see that, you can see his mood and his reactions in a different context. 

And that's a context I'm totally missing at that point.

What does it lead to?  Less compassion, less understanding, less creative problem solving, less giving him the small physical gift he needs to feel loved.

I also was mistakenly looking at it through the lens of middos improvement, as if his desire for material things is a character flaw.  It's a nature and it's a way he feels loved.  This is something I'd like to help him be aware of and help him learn to satisfy in a way that is not overly expensive.  It's not something to fix.

I'm in the middle of a similar revolution of understanding regarding Aharon.  I'll make that its own post.

Hormones

Tonight was one of those nights that people are talking about when they say, "I could never homeschool my kids!"

My daughter is preteen.  It's been building up for a few days, the bad mood, the surliness, the crying at the drop of a hat, the fury at anything and everything, most especially her mother.  Tonight, some of the things she said had me mentally filing them to share with my sister and another friend with a preteen daughter, for example: "Don't say 'Good'!  I can't stand it when you say that!!" and "Don't tell me to reread it!  I was going to reread it" after she deliberately mumbled a phrase and she hadn't reread the last phrase she deliberately mumbled last time without prodding.  etc etc.

The line from the Princess Bride kept going through my mind:  Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!  Hahahahahahaha.. until he keels over.
But I substituted: Never do Chumash with a preteen daughter when she is hormonal! Hahahahahahaha.. and then I keel over.

Last week I felt we were speaking too sharply to each other.  This mostly comes up during Chumash because we (thankfully) aren't in much conflict at other times during the day.  I told her on Shabbos that I felt like I wanted to try to react better.  Most of our conflicts last week ended up like this:
Me: Stop screaming.
Her: I should stop screaming?! You're the one screaming!
Me: I'm only screaming because you screamed at me first!
Her: I didn't scream first! You're the one who screamed first!

I figured that since we always end up arguing over who started screaming first, maybe I should just try to control my powerful negative reaction when I *perceive* that I'm being screamed at, and maybe if I'm nicer, we won't explode.  I shared that with her on Shabbos, and she appreciated it.

This evening, every time her tone got obnoxious, I reminded myself inside my head that I was going to be pleasant when she was obnoxious.  I think I did this 6 or 7 times.  (At one point, I said to her, "You are screaming at me."  And she said, "I'm not screaming.  I think you think screaming is louder than I think it is."  And I was thinking at the exact moment she then said: "Actually, you think my screaming is louder than I think it is, and I think your screaming is louder than you think it is.  So we actually both think screaming is exactly equal, but reversed."  Yes!!! A moment of rare accord.)

Also, I decided to do a rashi tonight.  She asked why she has to do rashi.  I asked her to tell me.  Seeing as we have this conversation every time I ask her to do rashi.  She shrieked said, "I don't know! That's why I asked the question! Why would I ask a question unless I want you to answer it!"  Then I said I want her to learn to read and understand rashi.  And she shrieked said she already knows how to read rashi.  And I said she needs to learn how to understand rashi.  (Never mind that she didn't know the samech from the mem sofis and when I mentioned that, she shrieked said, "I forgot! I'm allowed to forget!" Yes, you are allowed to forget, but not if you insist that you don't need practice because you are already great at it.)  Then she pitched a fit objected that I was asking her to translate too much.

I think she did a pretty decent job translating.  I'm still a little disturbed that we are using rashi with nekudos and I don't know how she would be at rashi without nekudos, which is really what I'd like her to be able to read.  But hopefully with more familiarity will come fluency.

I was pretty irritated by the end and, while I did manage to hold onto my Zen (mostly), I think this whole thing was a valuable experience for us.

While it's not delightful to interact with each other when she is in a bad mood, this gives us a lot of practice working on our self control and conflict resolution.  It's an opportunity for me to model kindness in the face of provocation.  It's an opportunity for her to restrain herself to snarling instead of a full-blown freak out.  We are trying to be respectful of each other while we are both extremely irritated.  It is during the crucible of these moments that I find my better self (after sometimes also finding my most hideous self) and refine my patience and my character.  It is these moments that will be some of my daughter's most valuable lessons.

It is not pleasant to homeschool through these times.  But when you ask me, how do I homeschool and teach and discipline when my children are obnoxious and difficult and horrid?  The answer is, I'm glad I do.

Luckily, I also get a lot of "do-overs" when I don't handle things as well as I'd like to.  Tomorrow will be another night.

Oh, wait.  We still have math.

what if we only did chumash when it was an optimal time?

in case anyone was wondering, chana is up to shlishi in bo and so far we have done 12 rashis.  elazar mostly forgets to wear his kippah and i mostly forget to remind him.  he's very busy playing outside.  our conversations have been including more halacha and parsha and hashkafa, but he hasn't asked to learn inside.

i was discussing with my friend channie about the conflict of doing chumash when it isn't really a good time, and then being less than patient and relaxed because it's not a good time (like before we have to go out, or when the little ones are awake).  the other option is to only do it when it's a good time, but that sort of ends up being... well, close to never.  for example, we've done 2 navi stories this summer.  if that gives you a feel (which is what i always worry unschooling will turn out to be--basically no skills). 

(though i must interject that the theory is that at a certain point, they become motivated, and then BOOM they work hard at it.)

anyway, we were wondering is there any happy medium?  we don't feel like we can wait until it's convenient, because it rarely is a good time.  but if we do it when it's a terrible time, that is a recipe for conflict and anger and negativity.  and even if we skip it when it's a terrible time, well, we might be skipping it 4x a week..

i've learned by now that certain things should be avoided at all costs with chana.  do not do chumash while she is hungry.  do not do chumash when we have to leave the house soon.  do not get all blame-y that we haven't finished yet when someone wakes up from a nap in the middle of chumash (i obnoxiously still have trouble with that one, but luckily, chana calls me on it, so i'm improving).  chana is pretty good about doing it the night before or the night after or double the next day if we aren't going to make it.  it's just that I find it exhausting to do it at night like that.

channie suggested doing it when it's not a good time, but being super nice with lots of love and hugs and play.  naturally, although i wholeheartedly agree, i've found that in practice, it is difficult to dredge up love and hugs and playfulness when you are feeling on edge because you are being torn in different directions.

but i feel it really negatively impacts giving over a love for learning when i am teaching with gritted teeth and impatience and radiating stress and wanting to be done and, horror of horrors, exuding disappointment that she didn't remember something or couldn't translate something. 

so, in looking for a happy medium, i'm thinking about the following solution.  during times when things are really busy, i don't want to skip chumash because i want to convey that it is a priority-והגית בו יומם ולילה--that we immerse ourselves in it daily.  but precisely during those times when i'm feeling a time crunch, i'm going to try to set aside only 15 minutes for chumash.  and during that 15 minutes, i'm going to have only 2 goals. 1. to do a "mashehu" of chumash.  a smallest amount.  2. to have it be an enjoyable learning experience.

will i be able to do this?  we shall see.  if it doesn't work, then i'll do what i always do: look at what happened, look at what i did, look at the result, reevaluate, form a new approach, and try again.

what kind of person is chinuch trying to produce?

This article came to my attention, discussing certain problems with the current day school yeshiva education and calling for overhaul. 

If you are homeschooling or thinking about homeschooling, it's likely you already have taken the matter into your own hands to some degree.  I cite this article because I really like how R' Dov Lipman expresses the goals and ideals of a Jewish education. 

He writes (my bold):

My friend related how just that morning during Shacharit he was thinking about how “off target” we are as he watched rabbis barking at children to stand during “vayevareich Dovid” and the “vihu rachum,” part of Tachanun at a youth minyan. He was not suggesting we shouldn’t find ways to encourage our children to stand when our custom dictates standing during prayers. But the degree to which the kids were being scolded for not standing struck a chord that led him to reflect upon what we teach as important and what is not important.

I have seen in both myself and in others a way of criticizing students that reflects an unconscious set of values that we might not want to be teaching our children.  Frequently it is by facial expression, tone, or the degree of negativity for a minor issue.  This gives me a lot to think about.

He also writes (and I realized that I hope that, if I take my child's education into my own hands, that maybe I can work more towards some of these answers being "Yes"):

Let’s take a step back and see where the average yeshiva high school boy stands upon graduation from high school. Is he fluent in Hebrew? No. Can he prepare a Gemara on his own? No. Does he enjoy studying Gemara? No. Does he know Tanach? No. Does he enjoy davening? No. Does he understand basic Jewish philosophy about God, the purpose of creation, and why we do the things we do? No. Does he stand head and shoulders above the rest of society in terms of his dedication to acts of loving-kindness and basic human decency? No.

I may or may not have these goals for my own children.  But it gives me a good place to start, a good checklist to think about.  You are educating your child for roughly a decade; what do you want to do with that time?

He also writes (and again, I'm turning it around to look at the positive embodiments of these qualities):

our average students are not steeped in Torah knowledge, not skilled in reading classic texts and prayers, not excited about Judaism, and not prepared to be morally and ethically superior to the low common denominator of surrounding society 

 He expresses his ideal graduates:

ultimately producing young men who are comfortable reading our texts and prayers, inspired to want to study and pray, enthused regarding their Judaism, prepared to enter the world as the most moral, ethical, respectful, and upstanding members of society

Having a sense of what my priorities and goals are as a homeschooler helps me with the larger decisions of curriculum development, where I put my educational energy, what I choose to emphasize, and what we learn.  But it also helps in the millions of small reactions and decisions I make every day.  When my child doesn't remember a word.  When my child wants to tell me her dream before we start Chumash.

When I'm crabby and irritated and have more things happening than I have attention for, how I react to my children teaches them more about Torah and about my true values than anything else.  Maybe the more clarity I have about my goals, the easier these split-second and largely unconscious reactions/decisions will become.

navi

so chana's been in camp for 2 days now (comments from all her fellow campers, practically universally: "wow, you're homeschooled?  that's so awesome! (pause)  do you have friends?").  i've actually missed doing chumash with her.  which got me started on thinking about the parts i dread vs the parts i miss.  why do i (sometimes) dread it and what do i miss about it?

i miss spending an hour+ with her, giving her my concentrated attention.  i miss hearing about all the little things she's thinking about.  i miss her perspective on a rashi that i think is pshat and she asks a penetrating question that makes me realize although rashi may superficially seem like pshat, it isn't quite.  i miss watching her zip through translation and see how far she's come in her skills.  i miss learning torah with my daughter.

i don't miss her frustration and her anger when she is having trouble translating it and i feel like she can do it and she yells at me that she CANT find the shoresh and then, oh, it's amad.
on the other hand, navigating these conflicts makes me a more patient person (i have seen tremendous progress in myself how i handle this with chana from all the practice i got with sarah ;) and it's great practice for both of us to engage in the art of de-escalating conflict.  looking back, in addition to the usual pre-teen conflicts, i can point to chumash as a solid block of time that went on for months where we both got frustrated and had to learn to back off and regroup and re-attempt to communicate and both have things to work on and compromise and change behaviors and still have frustration and do it all over again.

(which does make me think about unschooling and the tantalizing promise that there won't be so much conflict around learning torah, and isn't torah supposed to be pleasant?  or maybe skills are drudgery and this is the way it goes? **cue jessie whining about how she's not sure about unschooling benefits vs skilldrilling benefits**)

anyway, i'm going to try to do chumash in the car with chana on the way up to my parents today.

but about my navi project.  as is frequent in homeschooling, i had an idea and it took on a fantasy life of its own about how we'd do navi every night and she'd love it.  ok, stop laughing.  true unschooling would be where she'd be interested and i would facilitate her learning.  but there is also an element of unschooling where "v'dibarta bam b'shivtecha b'veisecha," torah is constantly on my mind and we talk about it.  i then go back to the pesach seder and i hear many of my rebbeim echoing in my head: a pesach seder doesn't just happen without the parent thinking a great deal about where the child is at and what type of learning they'd find interesting.  from the kids' perspective, interesting things are happening and then they ask questions and then learning naturally emerges.  but from the parents' end, you need to think about what sort of things will trigger the questions and what approach you want to take to answer those questions.

so back to Summer of Navi.  i'd like it to be that when chana remembers doing navi, it was Really Interesting.  (hehe, jane austen capitalization for emphasis.)

tip #1
ask a child if s/he wants to learn when it's past his or her bedtime.

chana babysat for us last night when we went out to dinner (yay summer date nights! i look forward to that all year).  part of the charm of babysitting is that she can stay awake until we get home.  so around 10:30, just when i was thinking of telling her to go to bed, i asked her if she wanted to do navi.  i figured it was late and she wouldn't want to.  but she said yes.

we chilled on the couch and did the story of ehud.  i gave her the background of shoftim (the cycle of sinning, enemy, calling out to hashem, shofet) and she immediately said that many of us are not keeping torah now but we don't have an enemy.  i said we are in galus and she countered by saying we have israel.  (i did not bring up the midrash "revach tasimu ben eder l'eder" as she's only 11.)
anyway, she enjoyed it and next up is yericho.

i think in unschooling, one of the things that is nervewracking is that the classical way of doing things is very regular.  you do it every day or every week or a few times a week.  you drill and drill.  you plug away, day in and day out, year after year.
and in unschooling, things happen more in bursts.  or there is a lot of fallow time and productive waves.  there is a sudden burst of interest and it's very exciting.  then nothing for days or weeks.  and then it's exciting again.  everything you pursue is fueled by your interest.  your motivation carries you into it and through it.

so perhaps i should not be surprised that navi is not happening regularly, and focus on it's enjoyability factor plus that there is genuine learning going on.

today part I

at least i hope it's part one and i'll have the oomph to finish up later. today was one of those days where i woke up with a to do list that was too long to keep inside my head. it was also one of those days where we had absolutely nothing scheduled. which chana really loves, so she can spend the day pursuing her projects (currently making littlest pet shop films and uploading them to youtube) and playing in the playground. ah, childhood.

i probably had a to-do list because i'm thinking of it as a catch up day. this is a bad day to go into homeschooling all together, because as many homeschoolers know, one of the rules of homeschooling is that if you're trying to do something else other than "being" w/ the kids with full mental and emotional presence, you're going to end up snappish.

naturally, jack, who is teething, was grabbing at me. elazar was doing not too terribly with a spray bottle and the hose and his trains. he is thankfully in a phase where he has a lot of activities that he likes to do around the house. jack, otoh, gets bored easily. so i decided a trip to the playground was in order, even though i really didn't want to go. so we did that. then i wanted to do chumash but chana said later. then i ended up making dr appts to go to the dr that day. we had about 1/2 an hour and i asked chana to do some chumash. she said she wanted to do it when i got back. i said, chana, you know how i always want to do it earlier and you always want to do it later, and then oftentimes later is not a good time and i get frustrated. indeed, she knew. she still wanted it later. i said next time it will be my turn to do it earlier.

sure enough, later came, and chana asked for 10 more minutes to finish her tv show. then it was only about 10 minutes until the time she likes to meet some friends in the playground. talk about crunching in chumash.

i told her to do shishi and to do it to herself, even though i am not sure she has a good enough grasp on these pesukim to follow the flow in her head w/o doing it out loud. it was going ok (insofar as she was asking me for the words she didn't remember; i am not sure she actually knew what she was reading but that's ok, at worst it was a chazara of words and she'll do it out loud tomorrow and i'll get a sense of where she is). she was asking questions about if hashem would have given eisav a bracha of wealth if it actually was eisav instead of yaakov. so she's still processing the issue and thinking about it, which is great.

as the clock crept towards the time she wanted to go out, she began to get angrier and angrier and her tone towards me got louder and more belligerent. i began to feel angry being spoken to that way. among the things i said to her were: "would you like me to yell at you like you are yelling at me?" (i think i said that more than once in different ways) and "i don't think it's fair that you pushed off doing chumash and now you are frustrated and you are yelling at me."

anyway, we took a break for her to play outside. and we have 5 new pesukim and one small new rashi to do today.

a question that emerged from chazara

we were very time crunched today. which always makes me antsy. i should have given myself more of a psyching up talk to stay calm and how quality is more important than quantity. but it wasn't terrible. i thank my years of working on patience with sarah in chumash that a lot of my anxieties and impatiences have been curbed and i'm used to wiping them off my face.

we did 2 new pesukim. only one new word. then we did the long rashi we never got to yesterday. chana asked a great question. why does hashem need to make a bris? isn't he trustworthy to keep his promise?

i reminded her that avraham asked how will i know that i will inherit? which led chana right to the question--why didn't avraham trust hashem to keep his promise, or as chana put it, "tell the future?" good question.

i like how review opens up new questions.

screaming

chana was happy enough to do rashi this morning. i realize we still need to hammer down and drill the pronunciation of some of the words. it feels like no matter how many times i tell her, she just reads it how she thinks of it in her head and doesn't even process that i'm telling her the correct pronunciation.

then we were going to do a new pasuk. i realized, though, that ever since we started the new story (tower of babel), i've been going over all the pesukim from the beginning of the perek. i think we are up to pasuk 5 today. so i warned her that she was going to be furious, and said we are doing all these pesukim, and she shrieked as i walked out of the room to tell ari to catch the spider on the ceiling that was freaking her out. so ari caught the spider, and she was sort of used to the idea.

i am in the middle of reading her a book, and i told her i would read after each pasuk. she did the first one, and i read a page. then another, and i read another. then she started flopping. and screaming etc.

and as she was tantrumming, i was thinking about how for years, when people find out i homeschool, they say, "you must have so much patience." and i always replied, "not really." if you take all the hours of the day from 8am to 8pm, or even later, then you really have lots and lots of relaxed time to hang out and to get work done. it never seemed to me to take nearly as much patience as, say, getting kids off to school in a morning rush and fighting over homework in a very short amount of time while also trying to make dinner, feed everyone, and put everyone to bed.

and yet, as i sat here today, i thought, "yes, i am patient. i am very, very, very patient." and i've noticed that i've been thinking that a lot lately. i guess patience is described as wanting to lose your temper but not. because if you're not upset, then that's not patience, is it? if i know that i go to disney world and the line will be 45 min, and i'm not upset, that's not patience.

so as chana is screaming (and oh, how i want to video this so she can see it when she's older) and i'm thinking about how patient i am and patting myself on the back and calling myself a saint (which as you know, i don't have all good days like that and particularly a week or so ago i was decidedly impatient). and i was thinking about how important it is for me to do this.

i value torah. as a jew, i want chana to have the skills to read the torah in its original language. this takes work, and effort. chana is having particular difficulty putting in the work and effort. she gets frustrated.

my voice is the voice that she will hear in her head throughout life, as she has challenges. when she confronts something difficult, that she wants to give up on, i want her to hear my voice, patient, loving, and firm. you can do this. you will do this. i see how hard this is for you. i see you struggling. you will do it. you will succeed.

not encouraging, like a life coach. but implacable, sure, sympathetic, and firm. to carry her through the frustration, through the screaming. the voice of her mom, who doesn't let her back down in the face of her own frustration, who supports her through it, who guides her through it.