Life Without School

Star Stuff

by Celeste

First, a confession:  Our family has lately become addicted to American Idol. Not just to the show itself, but also to the many blogs and websites devoted to the show and its contestants.

I’m not going to tell you what our family thinks of the various contestants, song choices, judges, and controversies (although we do have some strong opinions on the subject).  What fascinates me ultimately about American Idol is its underlying question:  What separates the “singers” from the “stars”?  And how can we tell the difference?

All the contestants on Idol can sing, no question about that.  If they couldn’t sing well, they wouldn’t have made it this far into the competition.   Several of the competitors this season are so exceptionally vocally talented that they could turn a simple ditty like “Happy Birthday” or “Jingle Bells” into an enjoyable feast for the ears.

However, it takes more than good singing alone to become a pop star or the next “American Idol”.  Singing qualities like tune, pitch, or range can be measured objectively, but to become the next big recording artist, you need subjective qualities like stage presence, emotion, depth, creativity, charisma, and originality.   These qualities are much harder to measure and quantify, but you know them when you see them.

Just a few weeks into American Idol, we’ve seen some surprising twists and turns in the competition.  Initially, we were sure that the exceptional vocalists would win the contest hands down.  However, many of the more talented singers have delivered beautiful but unmemorable performances.  Objectively, they’re very, very good, but subjectively, they somehow leave the audience cold. 

Meanwhile, several contestants with relatively limited vocal abilities have risen to the forefront, giving new life to faded old songs with their original, fresh, heartfelt interpretations.   These particular contestants sometimes fall short on objectively measured vocal ability, but subjectively speaking, their performances are remarkable—and the judges and the voters are taking notice.   

The same objective/subjective issue applies when you try to compare homeschooled kids to their conventionally schooled peers.  We often try to answer this question using “objective measures” such as standardized test scores, transcripts, college admissions results, or adherence to a particular curriculum standard.   Sometimes homeschoolers come out very well by such measures, and other times they come out lacking, so the controversy rages on.

Yet the qualities which make homeschooled kids stand out from the crowd often are highly subjective.  For instance, homeschooled students are frequently described by college admissions officers and employers as more mature, self-motivated, self-directed, focused, and innovative than their schooled peers.  You can’t quantify these traits---try saying “Johnny was 12.5% more self-directed and 7.33% more innovative than Peter” with a straight face.   But again, we easily recognize these qualities when we see them. 

Objectively, our homeschooled kids may not always be able to recite all the American Presidents, state capitals, or the table of elements.  They don’t always learn the same information at the same time or pace as their conventionally schooled peers.  Their high school transcripts may at times be spotty or downright unconventional.   But our kids often bring unusual maturity, depth, commitment, focus, and creativity to college, career, and community, for the rest of their adult lives. In the end, these subjective, hard-to-measure qualities may be far more important than whether they covered all the material in a particular textbook. 

Maybe homeschooled kids can’t always sing the same songs in the same way as their peers.  And they may never be American Idols.  But they’ve definitely got star stuff.

Celeste  has been unschooling her kids for well over a decade. She does homeschooling advocacy work for her state homeschooling organization and spends way too much time on the computer. In her spare time, she does tae kwon do, plays the piano, and plays a glamorous, powerful, purple lady bunny in an online virtual reality game.

The Good Stuff Off the Spoon

by Shay

I love the markdown section at the back of the grocery store. I never know what I might find, and, often, when there is something good, it is very inexpensive—as in cheap enough that I will buy it, even if my kids and I don’t really need it. This is how I recently came home with a $1.00 squeeze bottle of crème de coco. We didn’t need it, but I was pretty sure my children—now 18 and 14 years-old—had never tasted it, and, for the price, I thought it worth introducing.

It was a beautiful day, and I was in good spirits, chatting and joking with the cashier, appreciating the puffy clouds in the sky as I headed into the parking lot with my grocery-laden cart, and enjoying a quick, bumpy ride on the shopping cart as it rolled toward my car, which was strategically parked next to the "cart corral," so I could have a longer coast, and easily stash the gravity-powered vehicle at ride’s end.

Whenever the opportunity presents itself I hop onto the back of a grocery shopping cart and ride it in the parking lot, unmindful of enviously gawking kids and adults. I seek and appreciate the little thrill that makes me smile. Whether in the mark-down section, at the register, or in the parking lot, I look for the lagniappe in every day, and find it in everyday opportunities and actions.

When I arrived home, my younger daughter, Laurel, came into the kitchen to help put away the groceries. As expected, she was curious about my bargain purchase. "Get a spoon," I instructed as I opened the seal on the bottle. I squirted a pile of Crème de Coco onto her spoon, and onto another for myself. Doubtful eyebrow raised, Laurel lifted the spoon to her mouth, tasted, and smiled. It felt sinfully indulgent to be eating this sweet, creamy, high-fat treat before lunch, standing there at the kitchen counter, licking our utensils, with Laurel noting that, "Sometimes, you just have to eat the good stuff off the spoon."

There are a lot of sad and angry people upon this earth. Many have survived terrible childhoods, and physical or psychic wounds. In our individual ways, we are all walking wounded, and how we choose to respond to that determines our level of happiness. I have often said that people need to know that happiness is mostly attitude and intention, that it takes the same amount of energy to be happy as it does to be miserable. I am no stranger to abuse, loss, injury, or challenge, and those who know me best say that I have experienced more than my fair share of these. However, by a path of many turns, I have come to a place where I have largely forgiven those who have hurt me, and recognized the self-empowerment that comes with choosing to use those experiences to make myself better and not allowing them to make me bitter. I recognize that a person always fashions his or her own life, unconsciously or consciously--and I choose the latter. I keep my mind and heart open to possibilities, thoughts, and experiences. I look life square in the eye, embrace the whole of it, am responsive to whatever it brings while avoiding the trap of victim and martyr roles, push beyond fear, and strive to hold onto trust in even the darkest hours. I embrace and savor the boundless goodness of life, consider it an adventure, and have a tendency to find and make fun and magic wherever I go.

As we stood in the kitchen with spoons poised, Laurel’s comment told me that over the years, my daughter had absorbed the lesson conveyed through my example of keeping oneself open to the possibilities, embracing joy and finding pleasure. Laurel understood the crème de coco moment and the concept at hand, the significance the value of spending a dollar on something needed only for its surprise luxury, and the importance of sharing a decadent moment eating the good stuff off the spoon.

Shay Seaborne is past President of The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers, founder of the VaEclectic  homeschool discussion list and Skipper of Sea Scout Ship 7916. She lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, where she writes, homeschools two teenagers, rides her bicycle and sails whenever she has the chance.

Children Have a Right to an Education

by Marsha

Children have the right to an education that fits their unique individual needs, that is full of joy and exploration and free from coercion and stress.  Adults have learned that we all have different learning styles and varied strengths and weaknesses.  It is not unusual to hear someone rattle off several alphabet letters which describe their personality type.  Children are little people who also have different learning styles and a variety of strengths and weaknesses.  I firmly believe that every child is intrinsically wise in some area.  I enjoy poring over Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.  We are learning more all the time about how the brain works, how people learn, and realizing that if people work in a career which fits their personality type and learning style, they succeed and are happier in ways they have not been before.  Our children need to explore these areas and learn about themselves so they can fit their secondary education and career choices to themselves.  Education has become so expensive, it’s quite foolish to just go to college, change your major several times, and get out of school in debt for the rest of your life. 

Recently, as a returning student, I took a college class designed for non-traditional students, the “older student” version of Freshman Orientation, if you will.  One aspect of that class was going to some websites with tests to figure out your strengths and your interests http://www.typelogic.com/  and http://www.livecareer.com/ from which you could go to a page that would give you ideas for careers.  I was amazed to find that some of the things I have most enjoyed doing and jobs I have loved were what popped up for me.  There were also some ideas that I would never have thought of.  But what a great tool this would be for kids to use! 

Having grown up with a father who worked at a job for the government which he hated and always wished he could run a donut shop, I always said that I wanted my kids to follow their passion and do what they love.  Therefore, during homeschool years, I was all for dropping everything when they discovered something they were excited about, and spending quality and quantity time exploring that new passion.  I would help them by creating what I called a “Relaxed Unit Study” - - pulling together ideas of places to visit, books to read, videos and experiments, whatever I could find to pique their interest and then they could choose whatever they wanted.  Of course, they often had their own ideas, but the whole purpose was just to make available as many ideas as possible and turn them loose to explore.  Sometimes the passion died out quickly, a little information was enough, it wasn’t as exciting as they initially thought or whatever.  Other times, as in the case of my daughter’s love of anything to do with the ocean, we based much of her learning in every subject area around something to do with the ocean.  It is really not that difficult to create a resource list of activities and ideas, books and materials around a topic or area of interest.  Oceanography meant using seashells for math manipulatives, painting her bedroom to look like an aquarium, learning the oceans and all about the animals that lived in them, studying coral and learning to identify the shells her grandmothers had given her, reading stories about going to sea and sailing, and even writing her own book with an ocean theme.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I could ramble on endlessly, but will leave it here and hope to spark an interest in helping your child explore and learn in their own way.

A freelance writer, Marsha serves as a homeschool resource for her local library and has written articles for Home Education Magazine and a column for Home Educator's Family Times. She has served on the planning committee for her local homeschool cooperative, taught creative writing, edited the newsletter, and been a member of the HUB (Homeschoolers United Building) advisory committee. Her book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homeschooling, was published in February 2001, and she has spoken at homeschool conferences and curriculum fairs in Texas, California, and Michigan. She is presently working with HEM Books to update and republish her now out-of-print homeschooling book.  She also holds down two part-time office management jobs, one outside the home and one for the family business.

Other People's Homework

by Becky

Flat Isabella arrived in the mail last Wednesday.  She fits in a manila envelope and doesn't take up much space, but truth be told, she's becoming a bit of a thorn in my side. 

Jeff Brown wrote a book called Flat Stanley over 40 years ago.  In the book, Stanley Lambchop is a boy who is flattened one night by a bulletin board which hangs over his bed.  Not to worry, however.  Stanley and his family are optimists and quickly find that being flat has it's advantages.  Foiling thieves, recovering lost items from the sewer, and visiting far away friends via the US Mail, are just a few of the perks Stanley discovers in his newly flattened state. 

Second grade teachers all across the nation have discovered that this book is a fun way to fit some geography into the curriculum.  Kids make flat versions of themselves and mail them to friends and relatives all over the world.  Willing recipients then cart Flat Fred or Flat Wilma around town for a few days, snapping photos and gathering information about their hometowns.  The photos and interesting tid-bits are then mailed back to the student in the form of a scrapbook.  Ta-Da!  Instant geography lesson.

Ten or twelve years ago, when I taught 2nd grade, I would have done a project like this.  I would have been all over it.  Geography, literature, art, social studies, math, all in one.  It's a teacher's dream.  It's fun, it's creative, it has potential relevance to the student's life.  Today on the other hand, living our life without school, I'm finding that this project is an unschooler's nightmare.

It's not that it's not fun.  It was fun the first day.  Now it's beginning to feel more and more like homework.  We've been asked to draw maps and take photos of points of interest and write paragraphs about noteworthy people from our town.  Yeeeuuuck.  The kids enjoy propping Flat Isabella up and posing for pictures.  That's about it.  They've read the story.  It's funny.  They get it, and they're ready to move on.  My experience is that unschooled kids aren't dazzled by unit studies and creative geography lessons the way schooled kids sometimes are.  This makes it a bit tricky when it comes to follow through. 

I'd love to impress my childhood friend (father of the real, live Isabella) and mail Flat Isabella back in a manila envelope filled with beautiful drawings, flowery paragraphs and intricate maps, photos and memorabilia from our town.  But if I did that, it would clearly be from me, not my kids.  My kids have never done homework.  They have no desire to do homework (who does?).  If I asked required them to complete this project, they would look at me like I had two heads.

The whole idea was for a 2nd grader from California to learn something about the lives of three kids in a small town in Oregon, from them, not their mother.  I'm not sure we can deliver that particular portion of the lesson.  I know I could.  The teacher in me gets all fired up.  I can picture the captions on the photos and the fun facts I would insert throughout.  But I've been unschooling too long now to tackle a project like this with the expectation that my kids will participate with energy and enthusiasm.  There are too many opportunities for learning in our regular, everyday lives for me to fabricate the teachable moments.   I know that, and my kids do, too.

Oh, I'm sure I will mail it back.  I won't bail completely, but I've also let go of the idea that this geography lesson for Isabella is some sort of lesson for my children as well.  We don't do it that way.  When it's time to assemble the scrapbook and mail her back, I'll sit down at the table with my glue stick, markers, and scissors.  Chances are, one or more of my three children will join me at some point. If they want to help, great.  If not, that's fine, too.  We'll have some fun.  We may even learn something.

Becky is the unschooling mother of three (Janey, 11, Macy, 9 and Charley, 7) attempting to raise her children with compassion and respect.  She taught elementary school for 9 years before discovering unschooling when it was time for her oldest to go to Kindergarten.  She credits Sandra Dodd, Mary Griffith, Jan Hunt, and just about every other person she interacted with at her first HSC Home=Education conference 6 years ago, as her inspiration to find a more natural way of living and learning with children.  She is a Homeschooling Consultant, offering support and guidance to families looking to clarify their vision as a family of learners.  You can read more of what Becky has to say at http://lifewithoutschool.blogspot.com   She can be reached at homeschoolconsultant@gmailcom.

In The Middle Of It All

by Missy

"You're lucky," said the woman to my daughter.

We were in the public bathroom, drying our hands, and a large group of women had come in, chattering excitedly and, in the middle of their conversation, they had paused and looked at my 12-year-old.

"You are lucky," the woman repeated, "you are a part of history today, little girl!"

We were at a political rally, and it was the third time that day that someone had pointed out to Adria that she was in the midst of history, and so this time, even though they had called her "little girl", she grinned back and nodded, "I know!"

It was a school day and there weren't many children present, but we had been sitting in front of a middle school history teacher and we overheard her saying, "If you are ever going to take a child out of school, today is the day."

It's not often that you can be in the center of an event and know, beyond a doubt, that you are watching history unfold. And yet, there we were. Immersed.

Most mamas are there to record the first smile, the first word, the first step. Personal history. Even if we don't write it down, we celebrate the moment.

Adria was our first child, and her firsts were celebrated and recorded and analyzed and revisited.

I wrote down, not just the first words, but the first 150 words and phrases.  We have pictures; they poured out onto our walls, across every horizontal surface, into photo albums, boxes and baskets. Even when I went back to work, it was only part-time and I still caught and celebrated the first of everything.

Including the first day of kindergarten. The first day of kindergarten coincided with the first day I didn't head back to the classroom with all the other teachers. I wanted to be at home with her that first year of school, so I could share it.

So I have the pictures:  the tiny happy little girl, in the blue dress, her hair in braids, posing in front of our garden with her new backpack. And, a little later, posing in front of the school. And, even later, on a swing on the school's playground. Only I didn't take that last picture. The kindergarten teacher did, because it was after I dropped her off in the line forming outside of her classroom, after I showered her with kisses, after I walked out of the school feeling sad and a little empty.

Suddenly I wasn't around for the firsts. Most of them took place inside that building, with a wonderful teacher who loved her students, but who, after 30 years of teaching, had seen those firsts so many times, it was no longer new or exciting.

Day after day, she went into that brick building and accomplished a thousand little firsts and emerged a little changed and I'd see the change but not the process that created it. I'd hear from her teacher that she seemed happy, but that she didn't always play with the other kids and maybe I should worry and so I'd ask her about it and, well, she didn't want to play what the other kids were playing and they didn't want to play what she was playing and so she played her own thing by herself and, no, it didn't bother her, why do I keep asking? and so I'd explain again to the teacher that she was really okay playing by herself sometimes and, yes, her father and I were okay with it, too.

In first grade I'd hear about what a nice average child she was, but that she did seem to be easily distracted and spent a lot of time daydreaming or gazing out the window. And in second grade, the teacher--according to one of the kids and not refuted by the teacher, who heard it--didn't like black kids. We learned that, in everywhere, in the classroom, in computer, in art, in lunch, she partnered Adria with one of the unruly boys she couldn't control herself because she thought the nice quiet black girl could influence the out-of-control, boisterous black boy, who was probably out-of-control and boisterous and unruly because the teacher was rude and disrespectful and barely attempted to hide her racism.

There were more firsts that year and they weren't good. I saw more change and it wasn't good. We realized that not being there, in the middle of it all, wasn't working for any of us.

Now, five years later, I sometimes have to remind myself that it's good in the middle. It's good to be surrounded by it all, through the noise and the confusion and the energy.

I've been able to watch my daughter create when she's inspired. She wrote an amazing poem last week, after several years of insisting that she isn't poetic because her ideas didn't mesh with what she was taught in school. I've watch my 8-year-old leap from single syllable words to Harry Potter, with little in between beyond street signs and board games. Reading, if it's not immediately meaningful to him, is painful. So I just waited. And I got to listen to him whisper words to himself whenever we drove somewhere, and slowly, the words got harder and his reading became smoother.

I've watched my baby, too weak to sit by himself at 12 months, let alone crawl or walk, learn in chunks. Nothing to him is done piece by piece, it seems. It's all or nothing. If he couldn't keep up with his brother on a bike, he wouldn't ride it. If he couldn't draw something, he just wouldn't try. I don't have any baby scribbles from him because he just got frustrated and refused to color. I now have pictures, with faces and fingers and strange little pig noses. Until he was three years old, he knew only one color. Orange. Then, one day, he woke up and knew them all. (Orange, however, is still his favorite.) He knew one number. 3. Because he was 3. The next year, he knew 4. Because he was 4. Then, suddenly, he woke up and knew them all.

He didn't try to write letters until they were small and neat, with perfect lines and angles. He wouldn't try mazes until he could do them perfectly and then he completed every maze book in the house in two days. I bought wooden tangrams, magnetic tangrams, travel trangrams. They were ignored until last week, and now he works with them for hours.

I'm right here, in the middle, and I see how he learns, how he stores information away in the back of his mind, until it's all there, until it makes sense to him. And I wonder how much of that I would miss if I wasn't sitting here, surrounded by it all the time. I wonder how someone else, someone who doesn't have this attachment, this awareness, this time, would interpret his developmental "gaps". I wonder how he would have been viewed in a classroom, what box they would have placed him in.

Because I haven't always been here, because, for a few years, I wasn't in the middle, and I watched from the outside while others labeled my daughter through their own narrow lens and defined her talents and her abilities based on a pre-determined spectrum, I now appreciate the chaos and the mess (most of the time). I know what it means to be able to be here, immersed, catching moments that I wouldn't see otherwise.

I love that my children can see the history they are living right now, and I love that I can see them living it.

Missy's homeschooling journey began when she realized that the walls surrounding her daughter's classroom were too narrow; there was no room for exploration, no space for stretching. Now, she and her three children stretch and explore the world together. My blog: caffeinatedjive.

Homeschooling In North Carolina

by Bettina Colonna Essert

North Carolina is a relatively simple state for homeschooling. The Department of Non-Public Education (DNPE) is the official government department for administrating homeschool regulations in NC. The DNPE website is a bit difficult to navigate and the way the homeschooling info on-site reads can make it difficult to separate law from what we'd like you to do. There is also the noxious posting of every registered homeschool in NC on an online list. The DNPE does not honor requests to keep your information private.

In order to legally homeschool children between the ages of 7 and 16 in NC, you must register your homeschool with the DNPE. In return you will receive a little orange card that means you are an official Non-Public School in the state of NC.

The legal requirements are these:    
1. Send to the Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE) a Notice of Intent to Operate a School.  The notice must include the name and address of the school along with the name of the school's owner and chief administrator;
>>note on this after item #2.

2. Hold at least a high school diploma or its equivalent;     
>>Sending the NOI is easy. Just send a letter stating that you will be homeschooling, that you (or your spouse or whoever you choose) will be the chief administrator and owner (this can be the same person or two different people) and the name of your school.
The owner/administrator must have a high school diploma *or it’s equivalent*.
The mailing address of the DNPE is: 1309 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC, 27699-1309

3. Elect to operate under either Part 1 or Part 2 of Article 39 of the North Carolina General Statutes as a religious or as a non-religious school;    
>>Part 1 and Part 2 of the Code sound frightening but all this means is that you are either religious or not religious.

4. Operate the school "on a regular schedule, excluding reasonable holidays and vacations, during at least nine calendar months of the year'';

5. Maintain at the school disease immunization and annual attendance records for each student;    
>>The fact that you must keep immunization records for your children does not mean that you have to immunize. It just means that you have to be able to access some sort of written information indicating what vaccinations your children have received, if any. The attendance records seem a bit goofy to me but it's in the law, so keep them.

6.Have a nationally standardized achievement test administered annually to each student.  The test must involve the subject areas of English grammar, reading, spelling, and mathematics.  Records of the test results must be retained at the school for at least one year and made available to DNPE when requested.  Also, see testing FAQS;
>>Testing can be done with the CAT which many homeschoolers use because you can do it at home, rather than having to find a testing center. So long as you’re careful to administer a *nationally* standardized test and not a state or locally standardized test (the EOGs will not do), you will be fine. (The EOGs are the NC End of Grade exams that all public schools administer at the end of the year. Our local school administrators generously offered to test my children for me, but because the NC DNPE does not recognize these as adequate indicators for their measuring purposes, we do not use the EOGs.) Also note that while you must test, you child does not have to attain any particular stanine or percentile on the test. You also are not required to administer any particular grade level test. Potentially you could offer your kindergardener an SAT...or your high school senior a 3rd grade CAT!

7. Notify DNPE when the school is no longer in operation.
(The numbered, italicized list is from the DNPE website, the >> bulleted notes are mine.)

These are the requirements. There is a long list of things the DNPE would like for you to do, but they are legally unnecessary, time consuming and if enough folks participate in the voluntary information sharing, the laws are likely to change to reflect this and make more paperwork for us to do and give the state more access to our personal lives.

There are a few statewide homeschool groups:
North Carolinians for Home Education
Homeschool Alliance of North Carolina
Families Learning Together NC

By and large, NC is a state where religious homeschool groups outnumber secular groups. If you are looking for a particular type of group in your area and can't find it, start one! You might be surprised to find like-minded people all around you. If you search here, you may find just what you're looking for. If you start your own group, you  might post it there so that others can find you.

Yahoo has several NC-homeschool groups. You can simply do a group search using NC and home school as your key words and you should come up with some satisfying results.

There will be a a homeschool conference and book fair in Winston-Salem on May 22-24, 2008. The group hosting is a Christian homeschool group and though I've never attended the conference, rumor has it that it is big and wonderful.

Overall, North Carolina is very homeschool-friendly and there is a pretty good infrastructure in place for those who are new to homeschooling or to North Carolina. We are also blessed to be in a state with rich history, great public universities, and tremendous natural resources from the coast to the mountains. 

Bettina Colonna Essert is a native of the Virginia/North Carolina borderland. She currently lives on a 'farmette' in rural NE NC with her husband, 2 home schooled children and a menagerie of farm animals. Bettina is an Equine Sports Massage Therapist and also handcrafts a line of fine, organic bath products, Alchemy Redefined.

Do Homeschoolers Have it Right?

by Bettina Colonna Essert

Too often I am confronted with people who act as if my choice to homeschool somehow belittles their choice to send their children to school outside the home. I must confess that it is comforting to me to be able to tell them that I'm not married to the idea of homeschooling and that I don't press my children into homeschooling--at a certain age, the choice is up to them and they haven't all chosen it. My eldest child graduated from prep school, the next one from homeschool, the next one in line--my step-daughter--is not in the least interested in being homeschooled, the two youngest will both probably be homeschool graduates. I'm all for freedom of choice and finding the educational model that fits each child best.

Maybe that's the  very thing that seems threatening? Somewhere in the back of our collective family brain is the voice of Mel Gibson/William Wallace screaming, "Freeeeedoooommmm!" but that doesn't seem to be the case in the families of the people who are so ready to attack me in their own defense. Perhaps they know there is something wrong with the 'one approach for all learning styles' way of educating. Could be they've realized that the set-up of a typical school does some damage to their children (mostly in the form of meanness from peers). Maybe my demeanor just sets people off. Who knows? One thing for sure: I'm not the only homeschool parent who has felt this sort of reverse judgment and found it mystifying. A friend once noted that homeschooling is kind of like having tattoos: Folks who have tattoos don't generally look at people with uninked skin and think, "Now why don't they have any tattoos?"

I believe that the freedom to educate our children in the way we see fit is at the core of nearly every decision to homeschool. There are so many 'kinds' of homeschoolers and though our decision making processes vary, I feel confident that most have that one idea in the mix somewhere. I have often laughingly tried to categorize homeschoolers into several neat little boxes labeled with names like: Unschoolers --the ones wearing tie-dye and acting like they've never been in public before; Prep-School-At-Home --look for the chinos and polos; hippies --kind of like unschoolers but with a paranoid look about them, the tie-dyes are in much darker colors and they are munching sprouts; Fundamentalist Christians--the boys all look like they just stepped out of GQ and the girls have unshorn hair and stained denim jumpers; My Kid Got Beat Up At Schoolers--the mom's are all very nervous and overprotective and the kids are either whiny or completely obnoxious. Please don't be offended if you see yourself in there. I will admit that we are a mix of several of those categories (khakis with dark tie-dyes and the overprotective mommy syndrome. Sprouts on the side, please.) Do you know what I hear their collective family brains screaming? "Freeeeeedoooommmm!" Each family decided to school their children in the way they believe is best.

Do those people who send their children off on the Big Yellow Bus feel like they need to protect the status quo of the majority (who do, indeed, send their kids to PS) by acting as if by our simple act of homeschooling we were declaring of war on society? Do they feel like we love our kids more because we can spend all day with them without braining them? I'm really never certain what to say when someone finds out that we homeschool and then sets off on a defensive rant about their choice to public/private school their children. These are choices that every parent has to face. Is there something in the PBJ stained faces of homeschooled kids at noon in a grocery line that touches a nerve? Maybe it does. Maybe it's envy. Maybe it's a desire to wipe the jelly off. I remember when all of my kids were in school, I was single and working full-time and I saw those PBJ-faced kids...I thought, "I wish that was us." I suspected that homeschoolers had it right and I wanted to be one of them.

Do homeschoolers have it right? For my family, the answer is yes, we do have it right but for a lot of people the answer is that public or private school is the right choice for their families. There is room for all of us and our personal choices and I'm glad to live in a place where that is so.    

Bettina lives in NE NC with her husband and the 3 children who are still at home, several horses and a menagerie of farm animals.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Digital Natives 3 -- What a Five Year Old Knows

by Laureen

Previously, I've posted about Digital Natives, (here and here) mostly in terms of  how unschooling is pretty much the most ideal way to approach the sticky problem of trying to be an authority to someone who can look up your sources faster than you can.

It did not occur to me, until I was sitting in a room with about 40 other corporate web content delivery professionals (a set of Kiss-of-Death adjectives if ever there were), at a recent gathering for sharing of information about using multimedia on websites, how thoroughly our assumptions are informed by the schooling we got. The point was to familiarize people with the technologies available, and give them some ideas for how to use them.

So how come, I'm sitting there wondering, less than 1/4 of the presentations  actually used multimedia? See, corporate folks? Their attention is on keeping their jobs, and looking good for their management. Sort of like how kids in school want to impress the teacher. More and more, I'm convinced that they don't actually participate in the web beyond what's required in their daily work, the same way that schooled kids tend to do what's required for the grade, and not much more, and certainly not much different.

For example, one presentation stressed strongly how important it is to have good solid metadata in things like videos, because there's no text for a search engine to provide more context and/or relevancy through, so the tagging you give is pretty much all you get. People all over the room are nodding and smiling, like this is news.

Um, hello? Old news, folks. My son Rowan, who is five, understands metatagging. He knows how to start the laptop, launch a browser window, get to YouTube, and search for Tom & Jerry cartoons... in English. He also gets really upset when his searches return videos in other languages (although sometimes he thinks the Japanese ones are pretty funny...). He gets that lack of appropriate tagging is a usability problem, because that's what it is for him. Of course, he doesn't have the language to fully express all that the same way we do. But the fact is that as a consumer of multimedia content, his behavior and his reactions are utterly predictable, and at age five, he is already forming opinions about the technological acuity of the people who post such content.

You can remind people to tag their content, but if they are not consumers of such content, they won't really understand, as Rowan does, how insanely frustrating it is when it all goes pearshaped.

So then, later in the day, people are talking about using new media (whatever that is) to attract "the new developer"... you know, the youth who are driving things now. And I'm nodding, cause I totally agree. And then they start talking, heaven help me, about the Universities and speaking to college students! And in my head, I can see Rowan, already cruising the web, already conversant with how to click past annoying Flash intro pages, already becoming a savvy consumer of online technology. Considering the ugly brushes we've already had with minor forms of academia, (here and here), the very idea of my child going to college is ridiculous, and waiting to graduate from the Ivory Towers Of Ossified Thinking to become successful is laughable in the economy of today.

Rowan knows who Duke is, he knows what Flash animation is, and he knows to look for the blessed "skip this intro" buttons. He knows what HTML is, and I'm teaching him coding, a little bit at a time. I think about him encountering his first "Hello, World" and I cringe just a little bit. Just like it's absurd for a roomful of adults who don't even use multimedia to stand around talking about presenting it to people who are native users of it, it's absurd to think that someday some professor will be more competent to teach my child about the Cloud than he, who's been breathing it for years, is.

I'd like to really recommend that my colleagues and compatriots leave work early, go home... and watch their kids interact with the digital environment. They will learn far more from that exercise about the context of the Digital Native, and about the reality of content propagation for that audience, than they will by listening to a roomful of Digital Immigrants blather on about a sky they've never even really seen.

Laureen is a writer, a professional editor, a scuba instructor, a beginning  sailor, a traveler, and an obsessive researcher who's chiefly focused  on, and delighted with, her husband Jason and her sons Rowan and  Kestrel. She's a lifelong Californian, which lends a very distinctive  spin to both her ideas and her politics, and she's discovered, in her  peregrinations, that the world is far smaller yet far more fascinating  than anyone gives it credit for being. She holds forth her opinions on  that in her blog, The ElementalMom.

For the the Sake of the Child: Education

The Five Freedoms

The freedom to see and hear what is here, instead of what should be, was, or will be.

The freedom to say what you feel and think, instead of what you should.

The freedom to feel what you feel, instead of what you ought.

The freedom to ask for what you want, instead of always waiting for permission.

The freedom to take risks in your own behalf, instead of choosing to be only "secure" and not rocking the boat.

- Virginia Satir (reknown family therapist)

This page is about childhood, the education of children, and what children need from us as parents, teachers, and educators.

A few questions we hope to address:

• What do children need from us as parents, teachers, and educators?
• What educational rights should children have, if any, and why?
• What defines a healthy childhood environment?
• What crucial elements create happy, healthy, adjusted, adaptable, competent human beings?
• What crucial elements define your decision to homeschool?

These stories, commentary & vignettes offer a view into how and why we live life without school.

Vignettes

Crucial Elements:

• learning by following my heart and by doing
• feeling accepted and welcomed
• engaged in meaningful work
• peaceful surroundings
• having my private space
• a strong sense of self
• feeling loved
• participating in enjoyable physical activities
• enjoying a healthful lifestyle
• feeling in love with life
• feeling safe
• knowing I make a difference

- Shay

Stories and Commentary

Crucial Elements, by Shay

I was lucky to have an unconventional youth, during which short periods of my life were defined largely by who I was and what interested me. These were my halcyon days, upon which I still look with pleasure.  Some time ago, I made a brief list of the elements that were crucial to these idyllic periods....

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What are your crucial elements (for the sake of the child)?

Help create our For the Sake of the Child: Education page.

This page is about childhood, the education of children, and what children need from us as parents, teachers, and educators.

• What do children need from us as parents, teachers, and educators?
• What educational rights should children have, if any, and why?
• What defines a healthy childhood environment?
• What crucial elements create happy, healthy, adjusted, adaptable, competent human beings?
• What crucial elements define your decision to homeschool your child?

We are interested in stories that celebrate finding your own way with your family and your child that are personally real and non-judgmental. Thoughtful, respectful personal commentary is also welcomed.

Vignettes are also welcomed and do not need to be of length; in fact, a paragraph will work best.

A vignette is an answer to a question or questions, or a snapshot of your life experience and is less than 500 words.

A story is a biography or story of your life experience. A commentary discusses your thoughts and feelings on a topic.

A collection of personal stories, commentary and vignettes will be used to create this page called For the Sake of the Child: Education.

You can submit your writing (story, personal commentary, vignette) to the editor at editor-lwos@comcast.net

When addressing the editor, specify "The Rights of the Child: Education" and give your name as you would like it published.

If you find that you have a story of length to share, follow the instructions for Guest Author in the Writer Guidelines.

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Back to REAL STORIES: REAL LIVES

Monongahela

by Steph W.

"In the beginning, I became a teacher without realizing it," wrote author and educator John Taylor Gatto in an essay titled "The Green Monongahela." He grew up near the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania. In a sense, his "classroom" was the fertile riverbanks, which teemed with life, the trains that passed through, and the riverboats. Trains  stopped on their way to deliver water or coal to distant locations, and a brakeman or engineer often talked to the children who gathered around. They told the kids stories and let them explore the boxcars. Children were allowed to roam around the riverboats that sometimes stopped to discharge a crew. Kids also learned from everyone in the community, from parents to police officers. "The rules didn't need to be written down; if men had time, they showed boys how to grow up."

Gatto reflected on how this had shaped him. "...in my own heart, I never left Monongahela," he wrote, "where I learned to teach from being taught by everyone in town, where I learned to teach work from being asked to shoulder my share of the responsibility, even as a boy, and where I learned to find adventures I made myself from everyday stuff around me -- the river and the people who lived alongside it."

In a very real way, this seems to have laid the foundation for part of Gatto's educational philosophy. As an outspoken critic of compulsory public education, he argued persuasively that most effective learning takes place within the family and community. While schools are part of  the community, of course, but they tend to remove children from the heart of family and community life for long stretches of time. Gatto also explored the roots of his passion for teaching and learning. He thought about a young teacher he'd once inspired, and he wondered "was I your Monongahela?"

I started wondering whether, as a former counselor/educator and a home schooling mom, I -- too -- had a "Monongahela." Was there a time and place when I gained the confidence and desire to teach? Maybe that's the wrong question. I suspect that being a home schooling parent is less about being a teacher and is more about being an learner - an autodidactic learner who can serve as a trail guide for younger explorers. Maybe it's a balance of both. In any case, I think they're really seamless parts of the same question. At some point I gained knowledge and confidence about how to learn -- with or without school -- as part of a family and community. In time this expanded to a hope -- and belief -- that I could create an educational life without school for my kids.

My parents got me excited about the world of books and ideas. They also taught me, from a very early age, that much -- if not most -- real learning happens naturally through conversation. I grew up asking questions, and having long rambling conversations about how society works, what the future might look like, and life and death. I suppose I was a fledgling student of philosophy, sociology and civics long before I could articulate such things. One might say this was an occupational hazard -- having parents who were college professors. :-) But I think this happens naturally in virtually all families. Stories shared among family members, conversations about bits of news or popular T.V. shows, and answers to the various odd questions that arise throughout the day become a rich source of learning.

Some of my public school teachers also fostered the confidence I needed to become an autodidact. My eighth grade English teacher stopped by my desk, not to check my homework but to see what I was reading. There was always a novel slipped between my purse and my grammar notebook; she noticed and talked to me about the authors I read. A high school civics teacher insisted that her main role was not to pour information into us but to help us learn to question everything we're told. "Whatever you read or hear -- you need to be able to poke holes in it. Think for yourself." I hope there are plenty of public school teachers like that today.

Most of all, of course, my kids were my Monongahela. They learned from playing, books, studying ants and spiders crawling through the grass, gazing at the clouds, and through everyday conversations in a way that made worksheets superfluous. They've reveled in the world of their own ideas. They have discovered passions, gorged themselves on them, and moved on to new things. They are teaching me -- slowly -- what real learning is.

Did you have a Monogahela -- either as a teacher or as an autodidactic parent living without school? What was it?

Quotations are from "The Green Monongahela" in Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers, 1992.

Stephanie W. lives with her family in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She has been learning at home full time with her three wonderfully creative, feisty and quirky children -- Sarah (13), James (9) & Patricia Elizabeth (4) since 2003. Her other interests include literature, writing, editing, and the internet.

Healthy Mentorship

by Cindy

Hema Asks:

Many thanks to all the writers, readers and others who manage this site. I'm learning so much as i transition my family into unschooling. My son is almsot 5 years and my daughter is almsot 2. My husband is not available during the week but tries to spend time with us on the w'ends. The issue i'm facing is how are the logistics in unschooled homes? i.e. i want to read about how people with children in this age group have managed their homes, the desires of their children, their own needs, basics like managing food, bathing etc... alongside being ture to the children's lead. For e.g. my son recently had 2 molars extracted due to extensive cavities. This shocked us and him into brushing longer and more often and if unable to brush then atleast swill water in the mouth and swallow. Well since the memory of the operation has faded he has begun asserting his need to brush by himself and do as much as he wants vs. what we know is necessary. how do i help him understand the importance of our involvement in his oral hygiene till he is a little older? there are a miliion things that dh and i have done wrong (with good intentions) for e.g. never allowed him to regulate his own sleep etc... so over all this phase of asserting himself all the time is a deschool phase for him. but i'm struggling thru it. i'm obviously not experienced and am still deschooling myself. also in the midst of this managing my younger daughter's needs while helping an early reader... is hard. i think i'm rambling. sorry. hope you can direct me to some essays as i'm sure stuff like this is covered already. best, hema

Human babies are born into families where they are helpless . . . needing to be cared for until they are ready to venture out on their own.  We are not like snakes where they are born to fend for themselves immediately; some even being risked eaten by their own mother.  I compare it more like the kangaroo; where the joey is nurtured, protected, and strengthened close to their mother (inside a pouch even) until it begins to foray a little at a time further and further away.

In some unschooling circles, it is said that we need to "trust the children; that they know what they need when they need it."  I don't believe that in the literal sense it is often conveyed, though I do believe it in the figurative sense.  I believe most children have the desire and drive to be independent and become self-sufficient, but they need attentive mentors to model, guide, and/or facilitate along their path.  The way I have found to be that healthy mentor is to learn to trust myself.  This means mindfully extracting conditioned responses or pendulum reactions and using my authentic life experiences and perspectives to empower my children along a self aware life path.

For instance, take brushing one's teeth.  As the adults, we have accumulated experiences and possibly gleaned wisdom from that to understand to a greater measure the long-term impact on short-term decisions.  My hubby and I came from similar hard-working, middle class, blue collar backgrounds.  Interestingly, both sets of parents did not encourage or demand personal oral hygiene.  My hubby ended up self conscious about his very crooked teeth, though he ended up with few cavities when he pursued dentistry services as an adult.  I ended up dental phobic when I had a mouthful of cavities after pursuing dental services as a teen and had a painful experience.  When I was able to pursue and choose my own dental provider as an adult and advocate for my rights to a painfree dental experience, my dental phobia slowly eased.  These experiences shaped our insights in this arena and we had to decide how it would impact our sharing that with our children.

This is where things shift from conventional reactive or pendulum swinging responses to the empowering path we chose.  I wanted to use this information from our experiences to draw mindful conclusions and thus, I hoped, healthy choices and mentoring for my children.  So, the sifting and sorting began.  I noticed that genetics must play into having cavities at least as much as oral hygiene since my hubby took the same lack of care throughout childhood as myself, yet, he had maybe one cavity in the end compared to my mouthful.  Then, each of our individual experiences shaped what would personally be important to us.  One was that my hubby had wished his parents had taken more concern or care about the effects of crooked teeth on self esteem in the social and professional realms.  I had wished my parents had advocated both good oral hygiene and appropriate and pain-free dental care.

Then, it was time to find the middle, healthy ground for how our experiences shaped us and how we wanted to use that good information to empower our children in a positive and ongoing relationship with oral care.  We didn't want to be alarmists or reactionists and pendulum to one extreme in how we interrelated, nor did we want to ignore the good information that emerged from our own experiences that might benefit our children while they had limited perspective.  Therefore, we established good oral hygiene with our children right from the start, would provide good information at an age appropriate level throughout their upbringing, and would find solutions through collaborative efforts when difficulties arose.

Some of the solutions that have occurred throughout the years and from various children are:  to encourage our children to choose their own toothbrushes and toothpaste.  No one likes to brush with a taste or texture that is uncomfortable or revolting, and that value was extended to each child.  When the child was too young to successfully brush their own teeth well, it just made sense to institute some form of predictable timeframe while it was our season to do the brushing for them to lessen the potential powerlessness that might be felt by the child.  I used various songs as that predictor such as the alphabet song (many of my children learned this song because of tooth brushing) or Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  When my children wanted to do for themselves, a sand timer might be utilized or an electric toothbrush could be considered.  We have found "toothbrushing songs" (or made them up) that depict where to brush, we have stood side by side with them and brushed our teeth together in a follow-the-leader type of scenario, as well as even creating a video of good toothbrushing techniques for my older special needs son.  In other words, where there's a need, there's a way, if one keeps brainstorming together to find the right solution for everyone.

There were also information sharing as well as behind-the-scenes facilitation based on we parents' wisdom and experiences.  As soon as my children were old enough to understand, I would share my own childhood experiences and how and why I felt the way I did about oral hygiene.  I shared in a way that conveyed my wisdom gleaned without trying to use it as a weapon or a scare tactic or any other ulterior motive to get them to do as I wanted.  It was truly offered from mentor to learner.  Further, I made sure that I was allowed back in the dental procedure area to ensure that my child was respected, listened to, and given information before anything was done.  I made a stop/go sign that my children could use in the chair if they had any questions or something wasn't working for them.  I went to great lengths to not bring in my phobias, but to empower them with their rights.  Finally, when a few of the children had some issues with their teeth that braces would fix, and the child was indifferent, my hubby would share his past experience and wisdom to help them make an informed decision together.

What I found in raising my children is that in the early years, there is so much of their decisions that would be based on their limited understanding.  It is our privilege to share our wisdom and experience in a way that empowers each child to understand the impact of any decision in their life.  This would be true of oral hygiene as well as such areas as food choices, sleep choices, screen time, etc.  Like the kangaroo mother, in the beginning, I keep them close, protect them, nurture them, and empower them to slowly venture out on their own as they are capable until they are independent and making their own choices stemming from their own upbringing and experiences based on good information and healthy mentorship.

Cindy has a passion for learning about and celebrating the diverse learning styles within her home, and moderates two yahoo group lists to support other families with similar children. You can find her at aut-home-fam, which supports families homeschooling their children with autism, or at homeschoolingcreatively, which supports families homeschooling children with a right-brained, visual-spatial, creative learning style. To peek in on her day to day lifestyle, you can check out her blog, Apple Stars.

Moving On

by Celeste

“I don’t want to go to swim practice anymore,” the boy told his mother.

The mom rolled her eyes, knowing what was coming next.  She’d heard it all before, as the mother of a lifelong competitive swimmer.  Her son just didn’t want to get out of bed that morning, and he was making excuses which would quickly be forgotten as soon as he got into the water with his friends.

But what the son said next surprised his mother greatly.  “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, Mom.  I’ve been swimming competitively since I was 5, and it’s been fun, and I’ve learned a lot, but now I’m in high school, and I want to do something else with my life.  Realistically, I’m never going to be in the Olympics, and I’m never going to be a really great swimmer.  I need to use this time for my schoolwork, and maybe try another sport for a change, and find out who I am besides being a swimmer.” 

The mom didn’t know what to say.  She was used to her son being childish about swimming, schoolwork, and life in general.  But this was not a child whining and complaining.  This was a young adult, thinking like an adult and deserving to be taken seriously.

“It was tough, because I had to let go of my own Olympian dreams for my son,” the mom told me later.  “I’d always imagined him swimming through high school and college, and it was hard to say goodbye to all that.  But, his school grades have really improved since he quit swimming, it’s a lot easier for him to wake up in the morning, and I have to say I think he made the right decision.”

I heard this story about 20 years ago, long before I became a parent.  But the memory of that wise young man and his mom haunts me to this day, especially now as my own children enter young adulthood and begin to think like adults themselves. 

In the past year, my kids have also made some unexpected decisions about their activities.   After six years of being a passionate Little Leaguer, my son abruptly decided he wanted to quit baseball---right in the middle of a winning season, and the day after he’d pitched his team to a big win and scored the winning run.  My daughter, after working all fall in a prestigious and sought-after part-time internship position, was asked to continue in the spring—and turned them down.

These decisions seemed irrational at first, but came to make a lot of sense.  It turned out that winning that special game made my son realize that baseball, which once had been fun all the time, was now only fun once in awhile, and no longer enjoyable as a team sport.  We did make him stick out the season for the sake of the team (who appreciated him greatly), but he is not signing up for baseball this year, and he is happy with his choice.

My daughter is happy with her choice as well.  While there was much she enjoyed about her internship and the people with whom she worked, the nasty commute was sapping her strength and her energy, taking time away from her studies and her sanity. 

As homeschooling parents, we do tend to identify strongly with our children’s activities and interests.  And rightly so---these activities and interests often become an integral part of our children’s academic and social education.  Whether we are participants, boosters, leaders, chauffeurs, or simply fans, we take our children’s activities very seriously and make them a significant part of our lives.

Like my co-worker with the swimmer son, we get used to helping our kids through the humps and hurdles of activities.  We get used to herding them out the door, dealing with the inevitable whining and complaining, making sure they have their clothes and their lunches and whatever else they need.  We get used to sitting in the bleachers, socializing in the sidelines with the other activity parents.  Some of us even get used to taking extra responsibilities, becoming teachers, coaches, scout leaders, or fundraisers for our child’s special activity.  We get so caught up in the go-go-go of extracurriculars, that we often have trouble dealing with the situation when the child tells us that it is now time to stop-stop-stop.

To everything, there is a season, even for homeschool extracurriculars.  There is a season of novelty, where we enjoy the excitement of a new activity. In the season of growth and industry, we learn to push ourselves through the monotony of the routine towards the season of harvest, where we reap the benefits of skills gained and achievements earned.  We often forget about the inevitable final season, where after days, weeks, months, years, or even decades of participation, we must say goodbye and move on to other pursuits. 

May we all have the wisdom to recognize and appreciate these special seasons, and move on gracefully when the time arrives.

Celeste  has been unschooling her kids for well over a decade. She does homeschooling advocacy work for her state homeschooling organization and spends way too much time on the computer. In her spare time, she does tae kwon do, plays the piano, and plays a glamorous, powerful, purple lady bunny in an online virtual reality game.

 

Taking Off the Training Wheels

by Becky

When my son Charley was a little over 3 1/2, he woke up one day and told his dad it was time for the training wheels to come off.  Minutes later, Charley was riding his 2 wheeler down the street.  All by himself.  No one taught him.  No one told him it was time.  He decided he was ready, and he did it, just like that.  All by himself. 

Even though none of my three children have ever been to school, I feel like Charley (the youngest) is my one, true, unschooled-from-birth child.  When his sisters were little, I hadn't figured out this whole unschooling thing yet.  I was still "teacher-turned-mom-extraordinaire."  It was Janey, my oldest, who humbled me and taught me how to unschool when she was five and not thrilled about my new plan to be her Kindergarten teacher.

I have this theory that because Charley was born into a household fully committed to unschooling, he's had it a bit easier than the rest of us.  Yeah, I know.  There's birth order, and gender, and all that as well, but I'm sticking to my theory.  He just knows he can do stuff.  He's got self confidence in spades.

A few weeks ago, we went skiing.  Charley had been dying to learn to snowboard.  We are all skiers, and renting a snowboard and trying to teach him how to do something I have never done didn't sound like much fun.  Charley begged and pleaded.  I put him off and suggested we try that another day.  Charley had other plans.  At lunch, he bargained with a friend, and ended up trading gear.  It only took him 15 minutes of dragging the board up the gentle slope outside the lodge and sailing down, with only a handful of spills, to get the hang of it.  "I'm ready for the bunny hill, Mom,"   he declared.  Sure enough, he was.  As we stood in line to get on the chair lift, I chuckled to myself.  Here he was, once again, proving to the world that he could do it, all by himself.  As we rode up the chair lift, I asked him, "Charley, how did you know you could do that?"

"I dunno, Mom.  I just decide I'm gonna do something, and then I do it."

So true. 

The other day, it was time for us to leave for art class.  As I hitched the tag-a-long onto the back of my bicycle for Charley, he groaned.  "I'm tired of that baby-ish tag-a-long, Mom.  I'm ready to ride my own  bike."  I glanced over my shoulder and watched him back his bicycle out of the rack.  "Are you sure, Charley?  It's several miles, and you know we've got that hill at the end," I explained.  He glared at me.

"I know, Mom.  I'm ready."  And ready he was.  He decided he could do it, and he did.

I'm always amazed by his self-confidence, but really, it makes sense.  This is a child who has always been given the opportunity to choose.  He's never had it any other way.  His experience in life has always been that you find what you love, and you decide to do it, for no other reason except that it brings you pleasure.  That's the thing about these always unschooled kids.  They're not motivated by much outside themselves.  Great for them.  Frustrating at times for the rest of us.

One of my biggest challenges as an unschooling mom, is remembering to let go of my ideas of the way life should look.  All of my kids, and Charley, in particular, remind me daily that my way is only one of many.  Charley deciding he's done with riding on the back of my bicycle is exciting.  He's growing up.  But honestly,  it's also a bit of a hassle.  It takes us longer to get places now.  More patience is required from me as I coax him up hills and home from a long day of errands and classes.  But when I get irritable or frustrated with his newfound independence, I have to remind myself of why we're doing this in the first place.  It's all about independence.  It's all about self-reliance and trying new things.  It's not all about being on time, and it certainly isn't all about me.  Phew.

This unschooling life that we've chosen is full of challenges and gifts.  It's not that it's any easier or more difficult than a more traditional way of raising kids, it's just that it stretches me to remember why we're all here:  to grow, to love, to trust, and to find joy.

Becky is the unschooling mother of three (Janey, 11, Macy, 9 and Charley, 7) attempting to raise her children with compassion and respect.  She taught elementary school for 9 years before discovering unschooling when it was time for her oldest to go to Kindergarten.  She credits Sandra Dodd, Mary Griffith, Jan Hunt, and just about every other person she interacted with at her first HSC Home=Education conference 6 years ago, as her inspiration to find a more natural way of living and learning with children.  She is a Homeschooling Consultant, offering support and guidance to families looking to clarify their vision as a family of learners.  You can read more of what Becky has to say at http://lifewithoutschool.blogspot.com   She can be reached at homeschoolconsultant@gmailcom.

It's Not the Child

by Stephanie

"Why doesn't my child understand what the worksheet is asking?"

"My 5 year old can't remember her letter sounds even though we go over them every day."

"He can do math in his head easily, but ask him to complete a math worksheet and he just doesn't get it. What is wrong with him?"

I find that the longer I homeschool, the more paradigm shifts I have. One of the most reassuring shifts I have had is that if my child is struggling with something, he either is not ready to learn it and needs more time or the information is not being presented in a way that makes sense to him and he needs a different approach. Either way, the problem is not with my child.

In school we get the message that there is a specific set of information that every child of a particular age must and should know. The interesting thing is that no one seems to be able to agree on what that is. Go to different states and you find different "standards". Check out different curriculum and you find different concepts introduced at different times. Look at different "scope and sequences" and you see different focuses.

What this means is that the concept of "every child should know X by age Y" is a myth. It is borne of necessity because schools, driven by the fact that they have so many children to teach, can not tailor a learning program to the individual child's needs.

The great news is that, as homeschoolers, we have the freedom to let our kids learn on their own natural timetable and can tailor our approach to their needs. But this also means that we have to overcome the mindset of blaming the child if they are not learning. I read on an email list one time "resistance is a child's way of letting you know something is not working." Good advice and something that I try to keep in mind.

So then the question is, how do you know whether the child just needs more time or if they need a different approach? My answer is: know that you have time and listen to your child.

Jason (now 11) was a "late reader". At different times over the years I tried to gently introduce reading. However it was obvious that he was not ready...he was not interested and nothing seemed to "click" so I backed off and waited.

A little bit before he turned 8, I realized that he had a lot of sight words, but was not making the leap to reading. He seemed to have all the pieces swirling around in his head, but was not connecting the dots. I could see that he was ready but also that he could use some help pulling the pieces together

I tried one reading program and it was obvious that it did not make sense to him (it focused too much on phonics and letter sounds). I switched to another program (that had more visual cues) and it was obvious this was exactly what he needed. Reading "clicked" and it was very easy for him. He chose to finish the entire program and has never looked back.

Waiting for the right time and then finding the right approach resulted in a "late reader" who is not defined by his lateness. Jason never considered himself a "poor reader" because we never focused on his inability to read...we focused on his strengths and trusted that when he was ready, he would read.

This does not mean that I never worry or wonder if I am doing the right thing. And it does not mean that I never get frustrated when my kids are not getting something or that I never wish they would just get it already. But remembering "it's not the child" helps me put things back in perspective.

And best of all, it preserves my relationship with my children (by my not blaming them) and their relationship with learning (by them not blaming themselves). Which, when it comes down to it, is what homeschooling is about.

Stephanie is constantly trying to find that elusive state of balance in her life while enjoying her two energetic yet vastly different boys. You can read about their ongoing exploits on her blog, Throwing Marshmallows.

Product vs. Process Learning

by Marjorie

I've recently become a knitter.  I suppose you could say I'm obsessed with it. I love everything about it, really. I love selecting yarns, I love looking at patterns, I love sitting and knitting. I think about knitting a lot, about what yarn might work with what pattern, whether I can do the pattern or whether it's too hard for me right now. I encounter many problems when I knit and I'm learning how to solve them. I love knitting and I love learning about knitting. 

In a knitting book I was reading recently, I read about "process" verses "product" knitters. As you might guess, a process knitter really loves the process of knitting and is less concerned with the product - she might choose to knit something because it looks fun to knit, regardless of whether she would actually use or wear the item. A product knitter is more concerned with the end result and will forgo patterns for items she doesn't want. I'm a product knitter. I love to knit and learning is fun, but if I don't like the item, what is the point of making it?

A friend recently pointed to a similar attitude in my views about kids' arts and crafts. I have never been an arts and crafts mom. I hate those little "art projects" the kids make at Sunday school or elsewhere.