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.  

overall attitude vs skills

Chana frequently complains about Chumash and not liking Chumash and Rashi.  At the moment, she's acquired enough skills where it's not so difficult and she doesn't complain too much.

She is in 7th grade.
Every day she:
- reviews one aliyah of the parsha she is in the middle of
- does 4-10 new pesukim (depending on how complex they are)
- reviews all the rashis we've done in the parsha
- does zero to 4 new rashis (depending on which rashis I've chosen on the new material, if any)

So now we are in a good phase.  But we had many hours of fighting and whining and complaining, as you will see in the early years of this blog.

Overall, I don't know how much she enjoys learning Chumash.  She's often said she dislikes it.

On the other hand, we've done Navi only very sporadically over the years.

Chana has a wonderful attitude about Navi and great associations with learning it.   She frequently speaks about it with enjoyment and happiness.  But she hasn't spent much time learning it.

In terms of unschooling, I think the theory is that eventually she would get to a point where she would be interested in it herself, and then she would pursue it (or I would help her learn it), and she would learn it quickly and efficiently and with great motivation.

However, I have "discharged" my obligation to teach her skills with Chumash.  If I did Chumash the way we did Navi, she wouldn't have these skills at this age.  Is this age necessary?  She's only 12.  The unschoolers I've spoken to said that they didn't really pursue serious Torah education until leading up to and after their bar/bas mitzvas.  So it's a bit of a scary risk having your children reach almost "grown up" and not having "taught" them.  

Also, I'm not sure that "enjoyment" and "positive attitude" trump "perseverance" and "putting in consistent effort."  (Though perhaps I can argue that I didn't teach perseverance and consistent effort, I just forced it and she will resist and and stop doing it when she is permitted.  As opposed to inherent motivation, which will keep a person learning.)  (And I can respond to that that if a child is forced to persevere and put in effort, and then they gain skills, they feel good about their accomplishments and learn that's what works.)

I do think perseverance and effort are valuable things.  I know a lot of unschoolers are concerned that their children will not gain these skills (which I addressed here and here and here, for example).

I choose to unschool not because I think that enjoyment is more important than learning to put in effort.  Unschooling as an educational approach resonates with me.

Chana's attitude towards Navi as compared to her attitude towards Chumash gives me something to think about.  Chana's Chumash skills compared to how much time she has put into learning Navi is also something to think about.  At 12, though, the unschooling journey is really just at the beginning.  Chana herself is preparing to go to high school.  The boys are right now completely 100% unschooled.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

a game

A bedtime game I like to play with Jack (4) and Elazar (6) is that they pick a topic and I try to think of Torah to teach them about it.

Tonight Jack said "belly" and I told him a little about Sotah.  Then he said "wall" and I told him a little about tzara'as.

It's fun and challenging to see what we can think of to come up with when they think of topics.  I think this might be a fun Shabbos table game.

Emotional Phases

I've had this on my mind for a while.  Kids go through phases.  Some of the phases are really pleasant.  I try to notice them and enjoy them.  The child is happy, friendly, in a good mood, gets along with you the parent and siblings, asks for what s/he needs or wants, is understanding and tolerant.  I try to take note when a child is going through a phase like that.  Human nature is to assume that is how things are supposed to be, and to only notice when things are not smooth.  When I was a teenager, I went through a phase being fascinated with Murphy's Law ("Anything that can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible moment"), until I realized that the times things go right are actually more frequent than the times things go wrong, except that we are not programmed to notice them.  So I try to notice them.

Obviously, the times when things are not smooth are naturally more noticeable.  The child is grouchy, moody, prone to anger and fury and fighting and unhappiness.  It's not me, but I do things that exacerbate it.  I often spend a lot of time during a difficult phase looking at my parenting and trying to troubleshoot.  Although this might improve my parenting (it probably does) and it might or might not help the child cope better with the phase (it probably makes no difference, but at least does not make it worse), I've come to the conclusion that it's not me, it's them.  I tend to perhaps overthink my parenting, and this was brought home to me very clearly when Sarah was a teenager and I was rethinking all of my parental decisions and considering sending her to therapy, when she got her period and morphed out of a banshee and back to a normal human being.  Since then, I try to keep myself as even-keeled as possible (difficult when they are shrieking at you) and to try to just accept that some phases are fraught with emotion and anger and anxiety, and the best I can do is be loving and stable and look forward to the phase ending.

During a difficult phase, I try to look on the bright side and remember how many great months the last phase was.  And I notice all the children who aren't having a difficult phase at the moment, and experience gratitude that they aren't tag-teaming.  At the moment.  One day I was getting out of the house and my six-year-old, my four-year-old, and my two-year-old were all hollering, sobbing, and shrieking.  And my twelve-year-old, who was often the moodiest of all, was walking along pleasantly, smiling, in a sunny mood.  And I was grateful.  I still remember that walk with fondness.  It ended up being kind of funny, and I'm glad I got to notice my preteen in such a good mood.

All this is an introduction to my six-year-old, Elazar.  He is in a fantastic phase now.  He was a difficult infant, an extremely difficult toddler, and his twos and threes were extremely challenging.  He started calming down at ages 3 through 4 (as my mother-in-law promised me), and by six, he's just in a really good phase.  Independent, amiable, mostly stable moods, infrequent temper tantrums, mostly feeds himself, gets along with others, doesn't run away when we are out.  A dream come true.  One of my easiest kids at the moment.

I just keep thinking about how if he were in school, I'd be getting calls from the teachers and the administration.  He isn't sitting in class.  He can't focus.  He can't pay attention.  He talks.  He wiggles.  He won't do his work.  He is disruptive.  Then he'd come home and he'd chew his shirt.  He would have eczema that he scratches from stress.  We'd argue about his homework.  I would yell.  I would speak harshly.  He would feel bad about himself.  He would act out.  I would worry about him.  I would spend a great deal of my day trying to figure out how to deal with him, how to get him to behave, how to handle him.

But because we've chosen to unschool him, he is a delight.

Unschooling does not make every phase a delight.  I don't think it's possible to avoid the growing pains of growing up, not from the child's end and not from the parents' end.  But this particular phase would look very different if he was in a different situation.  And this is not something that his bechira (free will) has control over.  I see that a lot.  The child is "good" or "bad" but it's not actually the child--it's the situation.