How is Unschooling Going? Age 11

I'm on a group and someone new asked: Does anyone have any ideas on how to motivate a 2e kid who isn’t?! 10 yo boy...

I wrote an answer and I figured I'd share here.

My 11yo is severe ADHD.  I've pretty much given up trying to teach him anything (he starts getting tics or destroying things if he sits for five minutes).

I give him unlimited video games--he learns a ton from there.  Access to youtube--he looks up lots of things he wants to know and watches a lot of science and social studies [and a lot of other 'nonsense' but he ends up being well "read" with a fantastic vocabulary].

I'm always hanging about if he wants to tell me things and discuss what he's watching, doing or thinking about.  A ton of his learning comes from me just sitting around doing my own thing and pausing when he comes over and being a person to bounce things off of or for him to share something he just watched that he's very enthusiastic about.

I daven out loud sitting next to him every morning while he plays video games.  Some mornings he sings along with me.  Very rarely.  Sometimes he hums the tunes to himself as I walk away.  Some mornings he decides he absolutely must go visit the neighbor right when I start davening.

I also have a ton of art supplies for him to tinker around with.  Glue gun.  Duct tape.  Paper, scissors, stapler, lots and lots of cardboard (he collects that himself on recycle day).  That's pretty much his day every day (we also do parkour outside the house 2x a week).

He's a happy kid and is thriving.

Also we eventually discovered that a mishna is great because it's very, very short.  He learns one mishna most nights but that's after years and years of really not doing anything official--and he chooses to do it.  If he's resistant, we don't do it.  He gets tics.

My husband takes him to avos ubanim motzei shabbos and he reads a page of reading and hears parsha.  He can still barely read hebrew.  His English he somehow learned (from minecraft) but he doesn't love to read.  Just enough to navigate the internet.

I have him read about 2 lines of bentching after bread if he doesn't scamper off too quickly.

Little bits, here and there, very relaxed.  Me always around for conversation.  We take walks where he asks deep philosophical Torah questions.  He asks halacha questions very very frequently.


All in all, seeing how much anguish parents go through when their kids have trouble in school.  And seeing how much the kids suffer--aside from the actual pain of sitting still, many of them suffer from anxiety and crushed self esteem.  I mostly feel a shaky sense of relief and delight that Elazar is a happy, thriving, confident kid who loves learning and loves his life.

Burning Chanuka Question

7yo came in this morning (he would have woken me up to ask this; happily I'm getting plenty of sleep these days and I wake up early most days) to ask:

Do we light the Chanuka candles on Shabbos?

I said no, we light before and we light after.

He said: Then how can it count for the day?

Excellent.  He's thinking halachically.  If we light before Shabbos, how can it count for that night?  Doesn't it need to be after nightfall? 

I reassured him that it's ok, we do light beforehand and it still counts.

But now I'm thinking about it.  How does that work halachically?

I do find about homeschooling, especially unschooling, that kids aren't mentally worn out from sitting so many hours and their curiosity is not dulled from studying things they are not interested in.  People who are in school have a hard time comprehending the urge to think about things when you don't "have" to.  I myself, a product of the school system, continue to be shocked by it.  But very often, my kids wake me up with "school" questions.

V'dibarta Bam

Aharon asked me this morning if Hashem speaks to people using words because He knows that humans invented speech and so is that why He communicates that way?

I wasn't exactly sure what he was getting at.  I realized that a few weeks ago he asked me about who invented language, how language got started.  I gave him a rather paltry summary of linguistics (meaning I told him there is a field of study where people explore these questions), and explained that speech is something that humans can do naturally, but also learn to do.  And how we think speech evolved.

Last week, he asked me how Hashem speaks with no mouth--does He make a mouth?  And clarified (to the extent a 7yo can grasp) non-physicality.  And distinguished between non-physicality vs. non-existence.

At the time, when I was answering those questions, I really had no idea where he was going with this.  It turns out that he's been pondering a lot of philosophical issues. 

When he turned to me this morning, he hit pause on his video game or youtube video to ask me that question. 

One of the things my kids have always said they love about homeschooling is the time to think about things.  A kid his age may appear to be spending a lot of time playing video games or watching youtube videos, but he's also daydreaming and pondering Divine Incorporeality and what exactly prophecy means and how it works.  How can Hashem, who has no body, "touch" or come in contact with the physical world?

I said Hashem doesn't just have to use words; He can also use dreams and images.

These conversations range over the course of weeks and months.  I had no idea when my second grader was asking about language, that he was thinking about Hashem.

v'hagita bo (yomam v') layla

Why does everyone want to learn after my brain turns off for the evening?  By 8pm I am winding down.  By 10pm I am downright cranky.  I frequently go upstairs by 9pm.  Last night I left it til 10 and I was practically growling when I got upstairs. 

Jack still wants to learn a page of Chumash every day so that he can earn a phone.  But he asked me to please not stop so much and ask him comprehension questions.  He said just read it and translate it and don't talk to him.  I was a little sad, because part of what I love best is the interactive part of learning with my children.  But also I think this makes it easier for him to focus on the parts he understands and to skirt over the parts he doesn't.  One thing that Chen taught me with her neurodivergent method of reading comprehension is that there is a benefit to going over the same thing many times, and each time you get another piece, and eventually it contributes to a bigger picture.  Maybe that's how reading the Parsha every week goes.  Over the years, you see it again and again, each time differently. 
I already know that just as Elazar is a kinesthetic learner who learns by immersion and touch, Jack prefers to stay back and observe and perceive.  So it makes sense that he doesn't want interaction.  He actually prefers the passivity of sitting back and listening. 

Something that I've learned in homeschool is to pay close attention when my children give me advice about how they want to learn.  They know.

While I was learning with Jack, Aharon came over and asked if he was going to have to take a turn.  Puzzled, I said not yet.  He cheered.

Then, when I went upstairs after 10, I realized that Aharon often remembers he wants to read Hebrew at 10:30, which is after our deadline and we've been trying very hard to make a clear boundary that after 10:30 we (Ari and I) are in bed and our time is our own.  So I called down to Aharon and asked if he wanted to read.  He did.  His ability with the nekudos and blending is very smooth, but he still has trouble remembering the letters.

And Ari learns mishna with Elazar most nights. 

Last night at 8pm, Elazar dragged me over to the computer to work on editing his story.  We are slowly working through it for grammar, punctuation, and to make sure it all flows and makes sense.  I had a bit of a hard time following it when he first wrote it, so this time I ask questions when I'm missing something and he fills in the information.  I have high hopes of following the plot better this time around.  Also, as he grew, he got more sophisticated.  It's fun to see how he wrote a few years ago compared to now. 

Also, I am finally having some leisure time and have been davening out loud many mornings.  I'm not sure if they pay any attention at all.  Though sometimes I hear Elazar humming the tune.

Letting go

Jack doesn't seem all that enthused about learning Chumash.  I have to ask him every day.  And I am really not sure how much he's understanding conceptually.  It makes sense to me to stop for now unless he asks me to do it.  So I've decided to not ask him to learn anymore.  Of course I will learn with him if he asks to do it with me.

Chen finished up her bio course and is arranging a proctored test so she can get credit.  She just signed up for neurology from Coursera starting in a couple of days.

She is applying to college soon (not sure if she wants to go or not) and getting all the ducks in a row for college application is tricky.  I'm not sure everything will be ready in time.  I wanted her to apply next year instead, but she spent a lot of time on her essays this summer and doesn't want that to go to waste.  So I'm getting good practice in trying to stay calm and just do the parts that are up to me and not making myself crazy in the process.  I don't like to do things last minute, but Chen is more sanguine about that sort of thing than I am.  I'm doing my best to remain cheerful, positive, helpful, and follow up on all the paperwork that needs collecting.  If it gets done, great.  If not, not. 

The good news is that Chen is happily doing college level work now.  She has so many backup possibilities.  If we don't get her application in on time for the scholarship, she can still apply later not for scholarship.  She can apply next year for scholarship.  She can continue doing college work as she's doing now for a while.  She can apply to other types of training.  She is so young and there are so many opportunities and options.  I am curious to see how this all turns out.

limudei kodesh 4th grade & Hippocratic Parenting

My 4th grader really wants a phone. It's my policy that my kids earn their electronics.  This is against radical unschooling policy, which promotes abundance mentality.  I'm reminded of advice that my mom gave me about 17 years ago, when I had no idea what to do with my infant: "Jessie, it doesn't really matter much either way.  Just make a decision and go with it."

There are a lot of bad decisions I can make as a parent.  Sometimes it takes all of my energy to be what I call a Hippocratic Parent*: a parent that First, Does No Harm.  To simply be kind, to not be aggressive or furious or tense or impose my emotional issues on them.
______
*which is different than a hypocritical parent, which is what I always associate to :-P

But a while back I read an interesting study that moderate parents who incline more towards permissiveness or more towards strictness don't actually make a difference in long term outcomes.  So the choice of raising children with an abundance mentality which inclines them to generosity, vs. the choice of raising children to earn what they get, which inclines them towards appreciation and responsibility, is really just a matter of preference. (Radical unschoolers disagree, and I respect that.)

I'm not an unschooler purist because I do want my children to learn Torah and appreciate Torah. 

And although I can appreciate that radical unschooling has a different attitude towards money and gifts and earning privileges than I do, and it makes a lot of sense, there are things that I like about having kids earning their tablets and phones and laptops.

So Jack wants a phone.  Both girls earned their phones when they finished Chamisha Chumshei Torah.  I have told Jack for years that when he finishes Chumash, he can have a phone. 

The issue is, he doesn't read Hebrew very well.  We haven't done L'shon HaTorah workbooks.  So having him read and translate isn't really an option.

But last week, late at night, he asked me to start learning with him.  So yesterday we did.  I read the first page of the Stone Chumash in Hebrew and translated (mostly Biblical Hebrew to Modern Hebrew, with a few English words thrown in like "hover" for "merachefes").  We asked a lot of questions, like What is Tohu Va'vohu?  How does one divide between light and dark?  What does it mean that the spirit of Elokim was hovering over the deep?  What deep?

I told him that these questions are like riddles and as he gets older, learning Torah is looking for answers to these riddles.  Right now we are doing a first reading.

I forgot how much fun it is to introduce someone to the joy of learning. 

I don't know if he'll keep up with this or not.  I think it probably makes more sense to not push and to let him do it when he wants.  I go back to all throughout High School, I tried doing Bio with Chen.  And we did have quite a few enjoyable Bio learning sessions, even though we never quite learned it as thoroughly as I wished.  But now she wants to take Neuroscience and Bio is the prereq, and I found her an online college level Bio course and she's learning it herself. 

So I don't know how this will play out.  Unschooling continually surprises me and never looks like I thought it would. 

Mishna During the Week

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

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

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

chinuch suggestions for boys from an educator

I read this with interest.  Since I'm unschooling the boys, I imagine we will be doing all of this a lot later than his suggestions, but for people who are doing traditional homeschool chinuch (hahahahaha whatever that means) and have only the education you received as a child, or if perhaps you didn't have a day school education and you aren't really sure where to start, or if you have some ideas and you'd like to read some more ideas, Rabbi Pesach Sommer wrote some very specific suggestions in his blog post The Chinuch Our Boys Deserve- Creating a better Torah curriculum for boy's yeshivas