Unschooling – Page 10 – a hippie with a minivan

the good and the hard…

Through ups and downs of craziness in this household a few things have started to change. Whether it is the diet changes that we have made or just growing up there are some really cool things happening with Xavier.

In the last few weeks he has started being able to play with play-dough for longer than a few minutes, he has started to sing and not only sing but sing songs in their entirety, knowing every word and he sings so well. There are times when the boys are playing alone in the playroom and they are not fighting but singing together… Maybe it is hearing his brother sing, maybe he is just gaining more confidence but whatever it is, it makes our hearts flutter.

Today, I sat down at the kitchen table with both boys and we did a few pages in some workbooks that I picked out at the dollar store a few years ago… Xavier picked out animals that didn’t belong, coloured and did a number activity in which he names the numbers and then coloured as many objects next to that number (like if the number was 7 and there where 10 objects he coloured 7 of them)… he got up to the number 8 and then his attention went else where… but the fact that he did it was completely out of the ordinary for him… and the fact that he sat so long was a great deal also… No forcing, no “teaching”… just learning and having fun…

(Colin loved the pages that he did too.. )

Of course there are still things that we would like to see evolve, whether it is age stuff or personality it is hard to deal with him lashing out at times. But we are working on it, showing him alternative ways of dealing with his emotions, teaching him and showing him.

Sometimes we doubt that we are getting somewhere with him,

Sometimes we feel that everything is working out perfectly.

Sometimes we have the feelings within a few minutes of each other.

Though a day like today was rough in some aspects, in others we saw change.

Tonight, before bed he was excited. He said to us that tomorrow is Music day. He got out an old cassette radio that we have and a few old cassettes (Star Wars and Close encounters of the third kind) and he wants to listen to them…

I also made a calendar for the month of March a few days ago, highlighting a few special days (Simon’s birthday, first day of Spring, Earth Day etc) and few weird days (Pig day, Toast Day) , so tomorrow is also Pig day and he looks forward to celebrating that also…

I think I now need to find a song about a pig 😉

A journey…

My mom keeps on asking when I am going to start homeschooling, she doesn’t get that the boys are already learning and that we won’t be doing much different, that I won’t be setting a curriculum, doing school at home, teaching the boys the same things that their peers are learning at the exact same time, in the same manner but in a different location.

I, of course, was brought up in one public school after the next. I went through 9 schools by the time I hit CEGEP, then 3 after that… One of the schools that I went to was a Waldorf school… at the time it was just starting out and was still a tiny school with not many students and I wasn’t there for long but it was the school that taught me the most about learning. In the short time I was there I learned to love learning and then school started to be tortuous.

When I got to the next school I was behind by their standards and needed a tutor for math as it was not yet part of the Waldorf curriculum for my age group. The problem though was not that I was behind because I didn’t undertand it, but it was because I had different ways of getting to the answer. Sure I didn’t know my “times tables” by heart like all of the other students, but I am not good at memorizing… I did know however how to figure it out and I got the right answer but just not the same way that others did….

Of course it wasn’t good enough and because I didn’t have the same way of figuring out the problem I often failed and over the years of having the same “problem” I lost interest and patience.

I vowed that I would never put my children in that position when I was to have children.

So, I have always known that I was going to homeschool my kids. On the first date that I had with Simon we went to the old port in Montreal and literally talked the day away. I remember telling him on that day of wanting to be a mom, stay at home, and homeschool… I remember him asking questions about it… the answers that I gave him were all in the line of unschooling, yet I did not have a label for that yet.

After Xavier was born I dove into the world of the internet and alternative parenting and realized that my visions of homeschooling, learning through life, with no set curriculum, no grades, no deadlines, learning what interests you in the way that you understand it, learning life skills though life etc… were not just weird thoughts that I was having… it was not just part of my black sheepism, but what many other families were doing and it was all part of a whole movement of people learning at home. Unschoolers.

Though I know my goals for guiding my children through learning I have felt the need to go through an unschooling process myself. Society has brainwashed me and others to believe that learning is something that is done only through teaching, whether it is a teacher in a school or a mom at home. However, learning through life is different. It is the child that learns and guides themselves with help from others when they need and want it. I have felt the need to remind myself that there is no fix age to learn how to read, how to write… when they are ready they will make it clear and will not only catch on quicker but will catch up to where they need to be.

It is still hard at times to get out of the mindset of learning at home is not just school at home as it is for many. It is more. It is learning through living life.

a walk in the park…

At points I realize how different my children’s childhoods will be different then my own…

On the Mothering boards recently there was a post that made me think about the liberties we had as children that many children may no longer experience. The original post was a mom that was outraged by a child playing alone at the park without any adult supervision. At one point the boy’s mom checks in with the boy and he comes back saying he has another 20 min… the boy was about 7 years old.

Some other parents were also outraged on the thread… however, some it was for the fact that the boy was left alone saying that the mom saying that she is irresponsible and “depending on other parents” to watch over her son, “what if something happened?” etc , others was for the fact that we are so much in a fear based society that we see it as “criminal” for a 7 year old to be playing in the park by himself.

I was lucky living in the mountains, able to run, walk and hide in the forest, leave for hours at a time checking in with mom for lunch and then for supper. Even when we lived in the city I was able to leave home and have adventures as long as I didn’t cross any major street, at 5 I was taking the city bus to school alone. With one place we lived, with a slight detour under the bridge that housed the highway that went through town, I could go to the park, the beach, the mall and basically cross the whole town by crossing only one small street… My mom had no problem that I did such.

I was a child in the early 80’s. At that time there was not less crime or less dangers then there are today… there was however, less fear.

When I was a child, it was normal for a 7 year old to go to the park by themselves. It was normal to ride your bike to your friends house even blocks away. It was normal to go to the store to pick up milk and other things for your mom, or go buy candies and treats even though it was a good walk to the store. Now however, it seems what is normal has changed. Parents seem to be scared to let their children explore since they have been fed horror stories and fear based news. The “what if’s” seem to overrule the trust in the child. I do understand that there are some kids that at 7 and not as mature as other, however, I really think that the problem is based in the fear that parents have.

Now it is the norm to have scheduled play dates and activities. Have a full schedule with a parent bringing them everywhere or staying at home and doing nothing but play video games or ride their bikes in the driveway. Children are taught to fear the world and are not taught to take care of them selves. They are not given the independence they need and crave in order to grow. It seems so contradictory especially since most of these parents believe that children must be forced into independence as babies.

I really think that if you teach a child that they are always safe at home and give them strong and trusting foundation, that in turn you teach a child how to take care of themselves and they know when to come back home in a situation that may not feel right. I think that we must talk to them about our fears (not in a way to scare them but to make them aware and make sure that they will know what to do in situations), show them that we trust them to make the right decisions because they will then want to keep that trust and will do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. I refuse to teach my children to not talk to strangers (how will they learn to make friends?) however I will teach them limits.

I refuse to shelter my children from the world and I will not hide things from them. However, I will not teach then with fear and instead show them how to deal with situations that may arise.

Though my children’s childhoods will be different from my own, I do not want it to be as different as others are making it. I think the major difference will be in the way that others perceive the independence instead of the independence itself.