Bribes/Earnings/Negotiations

I never did write about our Seder this year. Last year I was so demoralized (to be fair, it was the middle of a pandemic) at how much nobody seemed to be able to read Hebrew. It felt like I had failed in homeschool. ("In homeschool, the kids don't fail; only the teachers [moms] do!")(I just made that up.) 

 This year it turns out that everyone's Hebrew reading improved and they were pretty engaged and it was a lovely learning experience. I made a grab bag with some discussion points/scenarios/questions to answer and they really enjoyed that.

Jack and I have started learning for half an hour once (or twice a week). He's often running out of money so he earns $5 a session. He practices Hebrew reading and R' Winder. It's a joy to teach someone with the ability to sit. After two ADHD kids, it's a nice change of pace. He's doing great with R' Winder and I'm optimistic about his future ability to translate Tanach. 

Elazar has been working on the ability to tolerate minyan. He still is reading with me for 4 minutes at a sitting a few times a week. He's still not through Shemona Esrei.
He woke up on Shabbos morning before shul was over so I asked him to go to shul. He was very reluctant. After a bunch of back and forth negotiations, we agreed that if he can go to shul with his father when his father goes (if he gets a 10 minute warning), and if he goes to shul for musaf time if he's awake Shabbos morning, and if his over bar mitzva friends go to shul on Shabbos for mincha if he is with them then he'll go to shul for that. If he commits to that for a year, he can get a Nintendo Switch plus 4 games. 

This got him pretty excited but he's not sure he can commit to that. He's thinking about it.

In the meantime, he's still crossing off his Xs on his minyan chart (when he hits 30 he earns a game). He seems to be under the impression that he will simultaneously earn more Xs for new games if he commits to the Switch. That's not my inclination (when a new rewards system comes into effect, doesn't it knock out the old one?) but on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to mess with his enthusiasm. 

I think of it like this: Would I pay x dollars to see my child be excited for minyan? Would I pay double that? Yes. Yes, I would. 

seder 2018: When the seder isn't the ultimate chinuch experience

You may have noticed I was rather quiet about seder prep this year.  That's because for the last few years, we haven't made our own seder.  We've been with family friends. 

A tradeoff in going away for Pesach is that I am not in charge of the kitchen.  To be free from the servitude of an infinity of meal prep, serving, and cleaning is true cherus (freedom).  But that means we don't get to have an intimate seder that is built around our children's needs and specifically tailored to their emotional and educational situations. 

The last time we did our own seder (coincidentally, the first seder with our new son-in-law), was disastrous.  (Okay, I just read it and it doesn't seem to be as disastrous as I remember it.  I associate it with feelings of frustration and not being what I wanted.)  The boys were young and Chen was in the morose teen stage, and I felt the impossible desire to be able to learn in a relaxed and luxurious manner while I was responsible for small children.

This year it happened to be the perfect dream.  Every single one of the kids was eager and interested.  The boys are old enough, Chen is intellectually curious, Sarah loves to learn.  It would have been a great year.  (I admit that a part of me was glad that we didn't do our own seder and I didn't have to think deeply about and strategize about each child's needs and how to achieve that during the seder.) (Yes, that's basically a description of homeschooling but for every day, not just the seder.)  At the seder we were at, we were requested to be decorous and not have side conversations.  Ari did a great job of keeping the boys engaged and telling them the story.  But the girls were pretty frustrated.

One good thing is that the illustrated hagada that my friend suggested we get Chen last year did hold her attention this year.  And Sarah and my sister learned with me the next morning and we had some great conversations.

I think sometimes there is a lot of pressure to make the seder a successful evening.  It's a very special time of the year, and a big deal for the Jewish people.  But just like in homeschool sometimes we have to let go of expectations in order to make room for a genuine, loving, and more pleasant experience (which ultimately leads to better chinuch long term), it also works to apply that to the seder. 

The seder is, after all, a microcosm of chinuch: get the children to ask questions, excite their curiosity, do as much in question and answer format as possible, tell it dramatically (begin with degradation and end with praise), use props (pesach/matza/maror), the goal should be personal internalization (everyone should see themselves as if they left), and take into account the specific emotional and intellectual ability of the student.
And my personal homeschooling guidelines: Don't be afraid to drop all expectations if it's not working out and try again next year.  Above all, keep it pleasant and focus on the relationships.

To go see a whale or Not to go

A fellow homeschooler posted that there was a beached humpback whale on B' 118th street yesterday.  She posted a cool picture and I was trying to decide if I should go today or not.

It immediately presented itself as a basic conflict I have about homeschool.  On one hand, it could be a once in a lifetime experience.  On the other hand, they are perfectly happy watching Jeffy videos.  How much do I try to create a childhood with amazing experiences and how much do I trust that if I can refrain from abusing them, their childhood will be plenty magical because there just happen to be many wonderful experiences that come our way?

(PS I have this same conflict about homeschool materials.)

There is no substitute for seeing something in real life.  I waffled a bit but brought up my conflict to a friend who quickly urged me to go (as she herself, across the world, was at that exact moment going on a quirky graffiti tour in Tel Aviv).

I made myself a cappuccino, calculated how much time I had until it was time for me to go to work (3 hours), googled the drive (20 minutes), and asked all the boys if they wanted to go.  They all did.  I even woke up Chana to ask her (she told me to take pictures).  We hopped into the car.  After all, that's what homeschooling is all about, right?  The ability to spontaneously hop into the car and go check out a dead humpback whale beached on your home beach 20 minutes away.

When we got there, it was a bit disappointing.  The police were there and had set up blockades so we really could not see very well.  Jack took a picture (I wouldn't have bothered but here it is):

See the whale? Barely? Us, too.

I contemplated the frustration of not being allowed near the whale by bureaucracy, marine biology as a field, and moved on to thinking about and how frustrated I would be if I were a marine biologist and the public was standing only 3 feet away from me commenting on my work.

I also felt frustrated that this is the type of situation where the human drive for knowledge is so obvious, so blatant, and so thwarted.  People are fascinated.  They want to see.  They want firsthand experience.  But they are stuck behind barriers.  (Not saying there aren't good reasons for this, just saying it's frustrating.)

The kids pet some dogs, played in the sand, and got a rousing game of ball going with some other kids there (#howDoHomeschoolersSocialize)

On the way home, Jack asked me to sing Ma Nishtana.  He happened to see the Maccabeats new video on facebook and had me play it for him yesterday.  Then last night he wanted me to sing it.  And then today.  The kids all caught the words "kulana mesubin" and started laughing.  I asked them if they know what it means, and they didn't.  And I told them leaning.  Jack noted that Elazar does eat leaning sometimes.  I said that the song says on all other nights we eat both ways, leaning and not leaning.  But on Pesach we all lean.  Elazar said: Hey, like kings!  I said yes.  He was thrilled that he realized the intent of the leaning.  We talked a bit about other things we do that are king-like at the Seder.

So did this end up being the once in a lifetime experience I was so nervous about not availing to my kids?  Nope.  Was it a pleasant interlude?  Yep.

Seder 2016

How were the sedarim this year?  I don't have that much to tell.  It was neither a great year nor an awful year.

We were not home for the sedarim.  We were with family at family friends.  That meant that the seder did not go according to our schedule.

While we were waiting for the seder to start, I took a bag of marshmallows and one of the boys asked why I took out marshmallows.  That served as our "karpas," an activity which doesn't belong in the normal way of things that triggers a question.  And Ari began telling the story to all the children, and I tossed out marshmallows for questions and answers.  So the first night Ari got to tell the story even before the seder began.  Once the seder started, Elazar (8) played chess with his friend.  I think Aharon fell asleep peacefully on the couch (which was the best thing I could hope for, that he would go without a massive tantrum or crying beforehand or during).  Jack (6) sat next to me and focused and paid attention the entire seder.  He didn't know exactly what was going on but he was happy to keep the place in the hagada with me.  He fell asleep in his chair during Hallel.  I handed Elazar matza when he got hungry, had him wash and read the bracha of hamotzi and al achilas matza.  He at maror with the rest of us and ate a sandwich.

Probably the funniest part was when we did "matza zu she'anu ochlim al shum ma?" "This matza that we eat--why?" And I said, "Elazar, you know why we eat matza!"  Because the boys have all been asking why do we eat matza, why can't we eat chometz.  And Elazar said, "Because when the Jews left Mitzrayim, their dough was left in the bread machine overnight and it didn't rise..."

It was nice in the sense that the boys were all thinking about the seder the days after it.  They came in to snuggle in the morning and they all had questions about Pesach and the halachos and the story.  So it ended up being fodder for discussion, which is part of the goal of the experience, I think.

Now Chana (14).  I think she fell through the cracks a bit.  Ari thought that I was handling it and for some reason he never quite sat down with her to tell her the story either night.  Obviously, she knows the story already.  In fact, before she stopped going to Chumash class, she was studying that section so she probably would have had some interesting things to contribute.  I don't know if he felt that she already graduated into the people who already know the story.

We had discussed before the seder about the Sforno's approach about Pharoah actually gaining his free will by having his heart hardened enough to refuse to listen without fear of the consequences (as opposed to the classic Rambam approach that Hashem took away Pharoah's free will and didn't allow him to set the Jews free).  And the purchase of R' Baruch Chait's Hagaddah was a great choice for her because she was very intrigued by the drawings.  (That reminds me, I would like to get an explanation for the midrash that the jew and mitzri both drank from the same place and one drank water and one drank blood.)

She also had drawn a picture before the seder when I asked her to envision how the story would look in anime.  ("Where Moshe is the awkward hero that turns bada$$ with the help of Gd," she told me.  And Aharon is the sidekick.)

(Note that Pharoah's posture gives a pretty clear explanation of leaning at the seder!)

But other than that, she sat at the seder, pretty uninterested, mostly waiting for it to be over.  Every time I tried to engage her by asking her a question or making an observation, she looked at me like she didn't comprehend what I was saying.  She said her brain couldn't process what I was saying.  She had no energy to think about the story, to engage emotionally or mentally with the seder.  It was discouraging.

I vaguely remember 14 not being a great seder year for Sarah.  At 13 or 14, we talked about the story for as long as she could tolerate (maybe 10 minutes?) and then zipped through the entire hagaddah because she wanted it to be over.  So this was similar, minus the ten minutes of discussion.  Which was sad, because that would have been nice, but on the other hand, she had been engaged in the free will aspect and relating to it artistically leading up to that night.  And she did very much like the art in the hagaddah.

So I look forward to hopefully one day engaging with Chana mentally about the story, because I think there are so many aspects which could be interesting to her psychologically and theologically.  L'shana haba b'Yerushalayim!

Seder Prep 2016

You may have been wondering how we are doing regarding Pesach chinuch this year.

Blessedly, Ari feels that all chinuch should be done b'sha'ah sheyesh matzos umaror munachim lefanecha (at the time when the matza and maror is placed before you) i.e. that night.  This is excellent because all chinuch for the seder is at the seder.

Last year (I went searching for the blog post about last year's seder because it felt like a horrible disaster to me but I apparently didn't blog about it) the combination of the boys' ages and the lateness of seder meant that most of the seder was overtired children running around and fighting, knocking over chairs, screaming, losing their shi equanimity.  It was, delightfully, our very first seder with our new son-in-law, who is the 2nd to youngest of 8 children and used to a seder that focuses on lots of detailed torah study, not out of control chaos and tantrums a seder with tired young children who might have been better off having been put to sleep instead of trying to hold a seder.

P.S.  My husband thought it was not bad.  Probably because his job was one-on-one chinuch with each child while I was fielding the conflicts.  Add that to really needing to focus on the needs of the smaller children while fretting about the needs of my grown children (a conflict I have felt over the years as a homeschooler of children with a wide age range, magnified for this special night) and I didn't feel able to have interesting and emotionally stimulating conversations with the older people at the seder.  I was glad we chose to do the sedarim with no company.  And I can't even remember the second seder!

Anyway, we haven't seriously moved out of that phase this year.  Elazar can easily stay awake until 11, hopefully without destroying things.  Jack does okay until about 10:30.  Aharon usually starts disintegrating soon after 8.  It's not our year for Sarah and Moshe.  So if I put Aharon to bed (he's almost 5, he's the youngest, I remember how excited we were for the seder when our oldest was 3 and could "understand" but now we're tired and "there's always next year," which is my newish homeschooling mantra) hopefully things will be more manageable.

Now the question is Chana.  She's she'aino yodea lish'ol par excellence.  She knows the story and has no questions.  She finds the seder boring.  She learned Shmos this year (the Chumash class she dropped) and I thought the Ramban about Pharoah and free will would be interesting, but she learned it already.  I asked her to tell me the story if they were anime, and she described it to me.  I don't know if she'd be interested in sketching a few scenes for us for the seder.  I'm going to buy a hagadda with illustrations that she will hopefully find interesting.  And I have to think about some larger philosophical questions to entice her.  Though I vaguely remember from experience that I haven't had much success in these endeavors.  I have recently begun to wonder if I am trying too hard with my teenager and that wanting so deeply for her to find Torah meaningful is something that an evolving young adult will find very offputting as s/he is trying to find his or her own identity.  I remember learning so many ideas that I was so enamored of and found so wondrous.  I wondered why I hadn't been taught them when I was younger.  But maybe trying to teach them robs my teenager of the joy of her own discovery and causes her to put them into the "reject" folder in her mind.

Huh.  I did blog about last year.  All I had to do was search "seder"
Seder 2015

unschooling before pesach

The kids have learned a lot about Pesach because there is lot of experiential learning leading up to Pesach.  Kashering, looking for chometz, kitniyos vs chometz, halacha and minhag.

Two days ago, Elazar decided he wanted to go for a walk.  He patiently waited until I was done with a batch of cake and we went for a stroll together.  He just wanted to walk around the neighborhood.  This child has unlimited computer and TV all the time and he dragged me out for a walk.  It was nice to get out of the kitchen and enjoy the first nice spring day.

They also spent a lot of time playing with the cardboard boxes that were put out for recycling.  I told them that the men don't take the boxes if they are not stacked neatly, so to be sure to put them back that way.  I kept hearing ::WHACK:: ::WHACK:: ::WHACK:: through the open window.  But the recycling was all taken, so they must have stacked it back neatly enough.  They did take one box and make a succah with duct tape.  I was informed it is not a kosher succah.

Jack (age 5) reads Hebrew and English before bedtime.  We were reading the English, and last week he brought the Hebrew reader to put on my night table, and we've been doing both.  This morning, he asked for morning snuggle (I was already downstairs) so I went back up to my bed to snuggle him for a bit, and he asked to read.  He read for about half an hour.  It's funny how when I was homeschooling but not unschooling, I would not have been doing school before Pesach, because it takes energy to carve out the time to teach.  But with unschooling, I teach when asked.  The kids ask me for their educational wants and needs, so it ended up getting done even on erev Pesach.

I mentioned that we should dig out their tuxedos for the seder tonight.  Jack went to find his suit and belt.  Elazar asked why.  I said this is the most special, fancy night.  He asked why.  I asked him if he remembered.  He said, because it's the seder!  I said, but why is it the seder?  And he said, for matza! And I said, but why do we eat matza? And he said, because it's Pesach.  I said, but why do we have Pesach?  He said, because Jews!  I said, but why do the Jews have Pesach?  What are we celebrating?  And he said the escape from Mitzrayim.

Interesting.  I wonder what his concept of "escape" is.  Maybe we'll discuss it more tonight.

As for Chana, she agreed to learn with me, but when I asked her what she wanted to learn, she told me to choose.  And when I asked her to come sit with me and talk, which she did, she said she didn't want to talk about Torah.  She wanted to just have conversation.  So I left it alone.  We'll see what she makes of the seder tonight.

Chag Sameach!

Seder Challenge 2014: What actually happened

I got the boys to nap in the afternoon.  I was of two minds about this.  On one hand, maybe just put them to bed at 8pm and they'll have seder when they are old enough.  On the other hand, they are old enough to remember it is special and exciting, and with a nap, they'll be able to manage.  It was a challenge to get them to sleep, but it did pay off.  They were alert, not cranky, and not wild.  We were guests for both sedarim this year.  When we are home, we do one seder with just the family and no guests so that we can tailor it completely to the children's needs.  This year, Sarah was old enough to participate with the general seder, but Ari did the boys the first night as soon as he captured their attention (I wore a hat that kids get from the matza factory and was asked why I was wearing it a few times, which segued into conversation about how telling the story of the night is best done via questions and answers), pretty soon after Karpas.  Chana sat next to me the first night, and as you know, I had been wracking my brain the previous week trying to figure out what would be the most interesting thing for her during the seder.

Sometimes you just get lucky.  As I sat next to her, I asked her questions as I thought of them.  I tried to think of questions that she might find interesting.  At one point, I asked her why she thought blood was the first plague.  Like what was Hashem trying to accomplish with the plagues, and how was blood a good first choice.  Chana gave a solid explanation about how the Nile was the source of all their sustenance, how it was a deity, and how blood would have a powerful emotional effect.  I asked her why she thought frogs would be next.  This question really captivated her and for the next hour, she hypothesized about each plague and why it was chosen and why that order.  She was more satisfied with some of her answers than others, and she made a few points that I had never thought of.  It was a fantastic discussion, completely driven by her and her interest, and she kept coming up with theories and was eager to discuss it.  It was everything I hoped and wished for in terms of her being excited, involved, and stimulated.

The second night I put the boys to bed before the seder.  Ari sat next to Chana and I sat next to Sarah.  It was a really profound experience for me to sit next to Sarah.  We sort of had our own little chevrusa during the seder.  It's remarkable to be at the end of the chinuch road, and to see Sarah so interested in learning, so capable of analytic thought, and so thoughtful in the answers she gives to questions.
At one point, she said that the essence of the hagada is to tell the story, but we always tell the story for the little kids, and we never do "sippur" (telling the story) on an advanced level for adults.  So I told her to tell it to me, and she did, and it was fascinating to hear her perspective and which details she chose to include.  At one point she admitted that it was probably advisable to take out a chumash and actually look more closely at the pesukim!  I hope that as the children grow, we will be able to take her up on that.

the Seder Challenge 2014 III

I like the general approach of thinking of questions that might appeal to Chana and then asking her thoughts.

- Were the Makkos fair?  Is that how punishments should work?  What is the goal of a punishment?

- What is the point of doing Makkos if Hashem promised from the beginning that Pharoah would refuse?  Is Hashem playing games with Pharoah?


This reminds me of the list of questions I made in 2008, when Sarah was... 12, actually!  I wrote each question on a strip of paper, and put one on every plate, and we went around the room and everyone answered his or her question.  I tried to choose questions that could be answered on all levels.  I would LOVE some new questions.

Which mitzvah do you find the hardest?  How does it help you become a better person?

What do you think was the worst part of being slaves in Mitzrayim?

What part of yetziyas mitzrayim do you wish you could see?

What do you think was the hardest part for Moshe?

Which makka do you think you would have been able to wait out?

Which makka would you beg Moshe to ask Hashem to stop?

Which is more impressive, Yam Suf or the Makkos?

Do the mitzvos make us slaves or set us free?

Tell the story of Yetzias Mitzrayim  in your own words

How does having matza and no chometz for a week make you feel about food?

the Seder Challenge 2014 II

So I started off having a conversation.  With teens, it's always best to hear what they are thinking and get their input.

There were tears and screaming.  Not mine, this time, I'm happy to report.  Here are the highlights:

-It won't be fun, it can't be fun, it will never be fun.
-She already knows the story.  If I want it to be fun, go back in time 6 years when she didn't know the story and was excited to learn it.  Now she knows it.
-She does not want to read the story again.
-She doesn't want to learn it inside; it's Daddy's responsibility to tell it to her.
-(And she already knows it)

So I conclude that having her read it inside and seeing what new insights emerge is NOT going to work this year.

I'm going to need a different approach where somehow it is interesting.

the Seder Challenge

One of the interesting things I learned about the Seder is that the essence of Hagada is not written in the Hagada.  The mitzva of Sipur Yetzias Mitzrayim, to tell your child the story of the Exodus, is done in many forms (using question answer, using props ["pesach, matza, maror"], using "drasha").  But the mishna (Pesachim 10:4) says:
ולפי דעתו של בן אביו מלמדו
The father should teach his child according to the child's ability.  That means, by definition, it can't be a formulaic telling of the story.  It has to be tailored to the particular child.  (We homeschoolers are familiar with this approach.)

I once heard a shiur by R' Pinny Rosenthal (and it might even be somewhere on the internet) where he suggested taking time to prepare before the Seder.  To think about each child that will be at the Seder and where they are at, mentally and emotionally, and to think about what aspect of the story will appeal to them, and what methodology would be most effective to use to tell it to them.  Yes, this takes preparation.  In addition to preparing the house and preparing food, preparing for the Seder by thinking about how you are going to do the mitzva of "sippur" [telling the story] to your children is perhaps the most fundamental preparation.

I was thinking about this for Chana this year.  She is probably the most challenging.  The boys still don't know the story that well or what exactly will be happening during the Seder, and the activities of the night themselves will be fascinating (if they stay awake).  Sarah is older and will be able to participate on a sophisticated level.  The 12 year old, Chana, however, already knows the story and doesn't enjoy learning very much.

I remember when Sarah was that age, one year we chose a particular makka (plague) to study more intensely during the seder.  She chose which one she found most intriguing, and we read it carefully and talked about it.  Another year we made a huge chart with all sorts of factors and during the seder we looked at which makos had which factors (like who did the plague, was there a warning, did Pharoah negotiate, etc).

What I would really love to do with Chana this year is somehow help her find some joy in the process of limud Torah.  I feel like all our learning together has been so focused on skillwork, it has made her reluctant to play with Torah and to enjoy thinking about it.  She does ask questions because the human mind naturally comes up with questions, but she doesn't enjoy thinking about them or wondering or pondering.

Chana has done the story of Shmos and it will be interesting to see how much of the text she can easily translate, and how much she doesn't remember.  Perhaps for the next week (before Pesach), I should have her read it in Hebrew and ask me for translation of any word of phrase she doesn't remember, with the goal of thinking about the story as a whole and thinking deeply about it and pondering and asking questions.

Will reading it in Hebrew be too difficult for her to ALSO think about it?  Or are her skills up to the task?  Will she become too fatigued from translating to think about it in a deeper way?

Is there a better way to have her engage intellectually and emotionally with the story?  What is it?

hagada and seder

Here is the Hagada I printed out this year.  There's not much to it.  I made it so they can color in the Hebrew letters.  I made some spaces for them to practice writing (script or print) and left room to color or to cut things out and paste them.  We use construction paper to cut matzas and karpas and maror etc.  I'm doing this because I've been hired to teach it.  For my own kids, I do nothing to prepare for Seder.  (Nothing with them [unless they request].  I do think about each child on his or her level and how to engage them best at the Seder.)

As a rule, Ari prefers that our preschool children walk into the Seder knowing nothing or as little as possible.  He prefers to do as much teaching as possible that night, and if they don't know the story yet, he wants it to be for the first time at the Seder.  He doesn't want them to know the order of what is coming.  He wants the strange order and strange things to be a surprise.  He wants those things to get the children to ask, to engage them, to get them interested and questioning.

He does not want the Seder to be about children telling what they learned.  He wants to do "והגדת לבנך ביום ההוא," to tell his children on that day the story of what happened.  

the seder

chumash is on break because of the holiday. not that it would necessarily be on break. chana as a rule doesn't take "vacation" on vacation; she happily does 'school' through the summer and on weekends. but she did make a point of saying that she did not want to do chumash over pesach. (this is a testament to how i started chumash too intensely and she has negative associations with it...)

but the seder is part of chinuch (or shall we say more than "part") so i thought i'd post. ari and i, in past years, switched off kids to focus on (a 'benefit' of galus and 2 sedarim--each girl gets a turn each night with each parent). this year was going to be trickier because i was juggling the boys, so i didn't know if i'd be able to do anything. so the first night ari had sarah and i had chana. chana kind of knows the story, and is at the age where suspecting that she is being told a story she didn't request and also remembers feels kind of patronizing. i gave her the children's artscroll hagada, and we opened to the makos and started talking a bit about that. she was interested in the pictures and was imagining if she were there and what it would have felt like. i think that discussion was about 5 minutes, and she did ask what all the plagues were and noticed that the later ones were much more severe and life-threatening than the earlier ones. then she flipped to the 4 sons and asked about that, and i was trying to explain to her that there are different types of people and i have to tell the story depending on what kind of person there is. she was intrigued that there is a type of person who doesn't know how to ask questions. and she found it interesting that we teach the rasha. that was about 2 minutes. then she ran off and didn't want any more to do with the seder.

although this is about chana's chumash experience, i just have to say that the second night, where i learned with sarah, i had one of the most enjoyable sedarim i ever had. in a sense, it was a culmination of homeschooling. sarah and i have had years of learning torah together from when she was homeschooled. she had definite and specific ideas about what she wanted from the seder, which parts she wanted to focus on, how much and what she wanted to learn, how quickly she wanted to go, what she wanted to delve into and what she wanted to get through. and because of all our years of communicating together about her learning, we fell right into our rhythm of learning together, and it was beautiful.