Raising Three Thinkers

Well I've done it again.  There is a backlog of items in my Google Reader, a good many of them are interesting science stories that I wanted to share.  So here they are, in no particular order, for your Sunday reading pleasure.

All from Science Daily, my favorite source of daily science news!

Nouns and Verbs Are Learned in Different Parts of the Brains - Our brains are just cool.  I was hoping for some neat tricks to help you learn foreign languages.  Like if you learn verbs in the right hemisphere, then you should draw the action of the verb as you think about it, or something.  Unfortunately, the article says there is no practical use for this knowledge in learning languages.  Oh well, it's still interesting.

The team knew that many patients with brain damage exhibit dissociation in processing these kinds of words, and that children learn nouns before verbs. Adults also perform better and react faster to nouns during cognitive tests.

Prayer Increases Forgiveness - When I saw this headline, I thought it would be about people praying about a specific wrong, who would then be more likely to forgive.  That made sense to me, because whenever I think deeply about something, I generally work it out in my head until I feel better.  Once I feel better, I don't want to hold a grudge anymore.  I got it partly right.

They speculated that prayer would increase selfless concern, which in turn would boost forgiveness.

And that's just what they found. But why? How does this common spiritual practice exert its healing effects? The psychological scientists have an idea: Most of the time, couples profess and believe in shared goals, but when they hit a rough patch, they often switch to adversarial goals like retribution and resentment. These adversarial goals shift cognitive focus to the self, and it can be tough to shake that self-focus. Prayer appears to shift attention from the self back to others, which allows the resentments to fade.

I'm not sure I would think of it as moving focus from myself to others.  Well, perhaps prayer does that, but for me, thinking through something would mean I learn to accept it.  Then it would be best for me to let go of any resentment for my own peace of mind.  See it's all about me.



After a Fight With a Partner, Brain Activity Predicts Emotional Resiliency - The part I am particularly interested in is this:

...it may be that lateral prefrontal cortex function provides information about a person's vulnerability to develop mood problems after a stressful event. This raises the question as to whether increasing lateral prefrontal cortex function will improve emotion regulation capacity.

Since I've been learning about emotional intelligence, I think my ability to regulate my mood has improved.  I don't tend to hold grudges as long as I used to, and I think the same can be said for B, although he always got over things more quickly than I did.



Moms Influence How Children Develop Advanced Cognitive Functions - Just another study that reinforces the importance of moms in young children's lives.

Children of moms who answered their children's requests for help quickly and accurately; talked about their children's preferences, thoughts, and memories during play; and encouraged successful strategies to help solve difficult problems performed better at a year and a half and 2 years on tasks that call for executive skills than children of moms who didn't use these techniques in interacting with their youngsters. 

Vitamin D Supplements Could Fight Crohn's Disease - My mom has, or had before her surgery, Crohn's disease.  The doctor said she is Crohn's free right now, but it could come back.  So I suggested she look into this study recommending Vitamin D.  She's going to give it a try.

Dr. White and his team found that Vitamin D acts directly on the beta defensin 2 gene, which encodes an antimicrobial peptide, and the NOD2 gene that alerts cells to the presence of invading microbes. Both Beta-defensin and NOD2 have been linked to Crohn's disease. If NOD2 is deficient or defective, it cannot combat invaders in the intestinal tract.

Zen Meditation: Thicker Brains Fend Off Pain - I want to learn how to meditate.  I don't have chronic pain, but there are so many benefits to being able to find that calmness within.  There is also something appealing to knowing that meditation thickens the brain.  I don't know why, but a nice fat brain just sounds so much better than a thin one.  Maybe that's just me...

As part of this study, scientists recruited 17 meditators and 18 non-meditators who in addition had never practiced yoga, experienced chronic pain, neurological or psychological illness. Grant and his team, under the direction of Pierre Rainville of the Université de Montréal and the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal, measured thermal pain sensitivity by applying a heated plate to the calf of participants and followed by scanning the brains of subjects with structural magnetic resonance imaging. According to MRI results, central brain regions that regulate emotion and pain were significantly thicker in meditators compared to non-meditators.

Parents Still Major Influence on Child's Decision to Pursue Science Careers -  Yay!  We love math and science here!    So far, Robotson wants to build robots and be a musician (left and right brain getting used!)  Funny Girl is interested in marine life and says she wants to learn how to dive.  Dimples is our artist.  You know, there is a link between science and art.  I think we are well on our way to science greatness.

According to Miller, "The pathway to a STEMM career begins at home." He said this is especially true in families in which children were strongly encouraged to go to college.

... 

The research also reinforced the role mathematics plays in the pursuit of a STEMM career.

"Mathematics is a primary gateway to a STEMM career," Miller said, "beginning with algebra track placement in grades seven and eight, and continuing through high school and college calculus courses."

From Music to Sports:  Autonomy Fosters Passion Among Kids -  I've heard this before and I find it rings true with my kids.  Robotson loves his piano and guitar, but I know that getting him lessons is the wrong move right now.  He really loves being able to go in the spare room and play a little here and there.  He's never asked for lessons, preferring to figure things out on his own.  I'm often surprised by what he comes up with, with no formal training.  I feel pretty much the same about athletics.  Sometimes I wish my girls were taking dance classes and Robotson was playing soccer, but the truth is that would be more for me than for them.  If and when they are ready, they'll let me know.  That's the way it should be.

While parents do well to support their children to pursue an activity, such encouragement can graduate to unwelcome pressure. "Children and teenagers who are allowed to be autonomous are more likely to actively engage in their activity over time," says Dr. Mageau. "Being passionate should not be viewed as a personality trait -- it is a special relationship one develops with an activity."

~ Megiddo Message

-George F. Will

I am so glad we are not sick, because everyone around us seems to have the flu.  We had a slight scare yesterday when Dimples threw up her entire meal at IHOP.  Talk. About. Embarrassing.  Our waitress was so sweet though and brought us buckets and towels, then offered to clean up what hit the floor.  It seems that something she ate didn't agree with her since we've had no other symptoms.  Being sick would have greatly reduced our weekend fun as we are going to see They Might Be Giants on Saturday afternoon!  This is the kid's second concert.  We took them two years ago too.  We can't wait!  Then the AIR meeting is on Sunday and G.U.S.T is Monday.  See?  We have no time to be sick.


Books

The book club meeting was great.  No meltdowns!  Our next book is A Wrinkle in Time.  We read that one last year, but Robotson wants to read it again.  I have suggested that this time he read the book and I'll be there to support him if he needs me.  He's still getting used to the idea, but I know he can do it.  We started on The Lightning Thief and so far it's been really fun to read aloud.  Robotson doesn't seem to want to learn any additional mythology, but it's renewing my interest!

We've gone another week without reading much to the girls.  I wish I could put my finger on what is so difficult about this.  I know I need to make the time, and yet every week I feel baffled by our lack of book time. They did sit in while I read The Value of Love: The Story of Johnny Appleseed, with Robotson.


Math

I haven't forgotten we were working through all of our math books.  Robotson and I started The Easy Book of Multiplication.  I thought it might be interesting to at least introduce the idea of memorizing the multiplication tables, and amazingly, he wasn't opposed.   Within 30 minutes, he had 71 out of 100.  He wanted to make his own flash cards, so we started on that too.  Glad it was his idea.  The second part of the book is multiplying two-digit numbers.  We'll work on that this weekend, though it's not a new concept for him.

Funny Girl figured out the "teens" a couple of weeks ago.  Every once in a while she would come and ask me what came after 15 or 18, and I'd tell her.  Then later she would ask me if she was counting correctly up to 19.  Next she was asking about the multiples of 10.  She must be counting a lot because she taught Dimples how to do it too.  I think she taught her the alphabet song also, because I hear them singing it all the time.  I know it took much longer for Robotson to get through the "teen" numbers.  He may have been closer to six before he got them right every time.  And that was with me actively teaching him.  He also struggled with the alphabet.  The girls have the benefit of an older brother to model for them, but I also wonder if my not pushing the matter has any affect?


Writing

Funny Girl has also been writing more lately.  She loves the dry erase boards, chalk boards, and giant rolls of paper.  Her favorite letters are W, M, and of course the letters in her name.  Her favorite number appears to be 5.  She likes to play teacher and show Dimples how to do all the same things she is learning to do.

As a side note, though Robotson and I haven't done any sort of writing at all in ages, I noticed his handwriting on the flash cards was quite nice!  I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I think very little of learning how to print or learn cursive.  I rarely write anymore and I think it's only going to happen less often in the future.  I'm not saying no one should learn how to write.  It's just that I can see the argument for not putting too much effort into it when it appears to be a dying art, that's all.


Culture

We were looking at a photo series from The Big Picture on Indonesia this week.   Many of the pictures sparked conversations.  There was a shot of man being struck by a cane as punishment and protestors that had sewn their lips together.  When we got the shots of the mentally ill man who was chained to the bed, I asked him what he thought about that sort of treatment.  I explained the caption of the photo that says many people don't understand mental health disorders, and think it is black magic instead.  I tried to get him to think about the sort of help he would want if his brain was hurt.  Would he want a healer with a magical spell or medicine?   His first answer was the magical spell, which makes perfect sense.  Who wouldn't want to be cured by magic if it was an option.  I asked him if he thought there was really magic that could save these people and he seemed less convinced.  The next picture shows a man being hosed down and he is clearly starving.  Robotson wasn't quite so sure that magic was helping this man at all.


Science


We got a new computer set up this week and now Robotson can handle syncing his iPod on his own.  At some point he downloaded the Georgia Aquarium tour podcast.  He's been listening to it at night and during car rides for a couple of days now.  We are all learning quite a lot about the wonderful animals at the aquarium.


Links


Did you see this cool writeup about the Foundation Beyond Belief in the AJC?

The stereotype that atheists are unemotional or not compassionate is simply not true, he said.

"I know people who are non-religious and that's simply not the case," McGowan said. "It's just [that] it will never catch up with this community of giving, where it's a habit."

To help non-churchgoers dig a big deeper, McGowan, who is an atheist as well, formed the Foundation Beyond Belief in January. So far, the group has about 300 members, he said. Members sign up for an automatic monthly donation. They indicate how they would like their contribution distributed among various charities. At the end of each quarter, 100 percent of the donations go to the charities and a new slate of beneficiaries is selected.

Since its launch, said McGowan, the foundation has raised $6,500 for charity.

It feels really good to be part of something like this. If you haven't joined, please do. Even a little can help a lot.


Are you familiar with Ask a Ninja? You should be. Robotson and I love him.

"When was the last time you saw a tombstone with SAT scores inscribed on it?" 

Read Parts One, Two, and Three.

-John Cotton Dana

We also read The Book of Beasts about a boy who suddenly finds out he is heir to the throne and is called upon to be the King.  There isn't much to do until he finds a book in the library called The Book of Beasts. Each page has a creature on it, and as he turns the page, they come out into the world.  Some are harmless, but there is a troublesome dragon.  I thought the whole becoming King thing was weird and kept waiting for the revelation that he was just pretending, but it never came.  I guess that's what happens when you read with your adult glasses on.  The girls seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Look at my new iPhone app,  NASA's Lunar Rover Game!  I totally laughed out loud when I was having trouble getting the rover to move and the game asked me if I was a licensed driver.  I stink a video games, but it is a lot of fun.  

Another Symphony of Science song and video for your enjoyment!

Art

As I type, Robotson is making movies with the Zimmer Twins.

Our friend Kit went to a concert last Friday, and got Robotson a signed CD by the artist, That 1 Guy.  He was thrilled (thank you again!).  Robotson says he'll be writing to Apple to have the magic pipe added as an instrument in GarageBand.

Not a whole lot of other things going on this week.  I've been absorbed in my homeschooling posts and reading Dreamers, Discoverers, and Dynamos:  How to Help the Child Who is Bright, Bored, and Having Problems in School.  I'm not reading it because we are having problems, but because Mo really sold it here.  It fits in really nicely with all of my other EI parenting books and gives basically the same advice.  It's still good to read a book from a different author that adds a little more strength to my conviction that we have chosen the right parenting style for our kids.

Remember those kids down the street that were giving Robotson a hard time over the summer?  Periodically he'd go out for walks, with me always discouraging it, but never preventing him.  If he saw them, I never really knew what, if anything, happened.  But now that he has this scooter, it's been hard to keep him in the house and at some point while riding up and down the street he stopped to talk to one of the kids.  They ended up playing basketball together.  There were still three other kids who were standing off by themselves.  Robotson said they were saying mean things, but he and the kid were ignoring them.  I'm not entirely sure what the current situation is, but I have to hand it to Robotson.  He never let it get him down.  He kept going out there, trying to talk to them, and it seems to have paid off for now.  He certainly has more gumption that I ever did growing up (or maybe even now!)

In Part One, I wrote about how we came to the decision to homeschool.  Part Two described how I realized we were unschoolers.  I want to take a step back in this post and talk about how our days have evolved over the last 2.5 years.  It's one thing to say we are unschoolers, but the devil is in the details.  

Most homeschoolers have a designated area for school.  Ours was the living room (we have no "room" now).  The couch was my friend since I was nursing quite a lot.  I'd have Robotson sit at a table with one of workbooks I'd picked up over the years.  After breakfast, I would set up Funny Girl with a movie in the bedroom, and then try to convince Robotson that it was school we should be doing, not watching t.v.  Workbooks were novel for a few days, but that didn't even last a week.  I would set the tracing book in front of him and talk about working on letters.  He would say he already knew how to write.  I'd ask him to show me in the blank spaces.  He'd start letters from the bottom and go up.  He also wrote many of them backwards.  I'd show him the arrows and ask him to trace them correctly.  Most of the time he ignored the arrows, or me, or both.  We'd move on to math.  Here are four apples in this bucket and there are three apples in this bucket.  How many apples are there all together.  He could count them - seven, *yawn* "This is boring Mommy."  Yes, yes but we need to complete the workbook so we can do the test at the end.  Soon he was fidgeting.

I'm hungry.  I need to go potty.  I need a drink.  I'm too tired.  Why can't I watch t.v.?  How long do we have to do this?  Why do I have to learn?  Can't we do a science experiment from the book instead?  I want to play on the computer.  I hate this.  When will Daddy be home?  Can't we take a break?  Can we do this after I watch t.v.?  And on and on...

Funny Girl would come in bored or needing another show. She was almost two, and I felt awful for sending her off to another room.  Dimples would have fallen asleep while nursing, and I couldn't put her down without waking her up.  I'd go help Funny Girl, Dimples would wake up, and Robotson would run off.  Then I would have to find him and drag him back.  He would start to cry or throw a temper tantrum.  Dimples would be crying too.

I kept telling myself that he just wasn't used to this school thing.  It was going to be a hard transition for him to learn to sit still and pay attention.  It wasn't my intention to keep him sitting for three hours a day.  I wanted to start small and work up to it.  On the very good days I could get ten minutes out of him.  Most days he was protesting before we even began.  There were timeouts, lost privileges, punishments, rewards, and threats.  Nothing made a difference.

I decided to jump into TJEd.  We'd read classics, do kidschool, have chores, and spend the rest of the day playing!  It was a routine we needed- structure.  I was sure we could do this.  I was also reading Alfie Kohn's The Schools Our Children Deserve.  Workbooks, separate subjects, and tests were all bad anyway.  Anne of Green Gables was our first classic.  I envisioned Robotson sitting or playing quietly while I read out loud some predetermined number of chapters.  Kidschool would follow, and then we would do chores together.  This was all before lunch, because I wanted to have the afternoon free to play.  I also flirted with the idea of a monthly field trip.  Here's a blog post I wrote describing a typical day.  You can probably see the first flaw in my plan.  I was having trouble waking up early enough to accomplish all of that before lunch, and Robotson was watching t.v. before I even got out of bed.  Once he had the t.v. on, it was going to be a fight to get him off.  I wrote this at the end of November 2007.

Educating has got me at a loss right now. No matter how I try to manage a routine, I simply can not get my son to work with me. No one should know this kid better than me but I'm really just not sure what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Out of complete and utter frustration I finally just removed the power cord to the computer and informed him that we need to come up with some sort of compromise so that we are both happy and until then it's just not going to be played with. He thinks it's a punishment but I see it as a distraction.

Four months into our first year, Dimples was able to sit up and play. I thought maybe it would help if we moved our "classroom" into the toy room.  The girls could play while we tried to get back on track. In addition to reading, we did things like dance around to the They Might Be Giants kid's albums, draw millions of robots, and I'd written out a couple of stories dictated to me. The girls were still a distraction:  snacks, nursing, diaper changes, naps, meltdowns, t.v., and boredom reigned supreme.  I never could find the time (or money) for field trips.  We never seemed to get everything accomplished.  It was all I could do to get us to playdates once a week.

Reading out loud to Robotson wasn't what I had imagined.  He didn't want to just sit and listen, and he could get loud if he had toys to play with.  If he was drawing, he would interrupt me to show me his robots.  It was the same with LEGOs.  I'd frequently stop to ask him what I'd just read, and then get upset if he wasn't listening.  Anne was a great first book to read, but many of my next choices were not well received.  A Christmas Carol, Anne of Avonlea, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and Black Beauty were all flops.  You may remember that we have since read all of those except Anne of Avonlea.  Clearly, at the beginning of our journey he wasn't ready to listen to anything he didn't already know to be good.

In January of 2008, I began reading about emotionally intelligent parenting.  I was still struggling to find a routine that worked.  I'd given back his computer time and was now trying to do schoolwork in the afternoons instead.  We bungled along.  By May, things were looking up.  Robotson was used to me reading to him, we were part of the book club, the girls would adorably grab books from the shelves and pretend to read them.  I stopped quizzing him on what I had read and let him be in control of his listening.  My only request was that he stay quiet.  We continued to have constant interruptions from the girls and each one meant I had to bring Robotson back to what we were doing.  How I wished he could just stay put or the girls would just stay mindlessly glued to the t.v.  Additional education resources included podcasts, and computer games.

Something I forgot to mention, but it was a big part of our lives at the time, was that B had been laid off in December.  He was unemployed through most of that first homeschool year.  I know as I write it, it sounds like it was just me and the kids, but he was here.  B spent most of the year in his office searching for jobs and becoming more and more depressed.  It was a really stressful time financially and emotionally on top of everything else.  He finally found a job in September, and to celebrate, we dropped everything to go to DisneyWorld.  We would start our second year of homeschooling when we got back.

Since this is getting long again, I won't be as detailed about year two (Beginning in September 2008).  Everything was improving slowly.  The girls could entertain each other a little bit more and watch entire shows before coming out to us.  Dimples would often nap while FG watched.  Robotson's attention span was increasing and we could read longer books.  We could also read up to two hours a day.  He began listening to a podcast called The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd and would come and tell me all sorts of things he'd learned.  It also gave him ideas for books he wanted to read.  I felt like I was cheating in some way because he was learning more from a podcast than his own mother.  I had so many worries.  First we weren't doing any math, and very little history.  He wasn't reading on his own, in fact he was flatly refusing to even try.  Science was always coming up in our house, but we rarely did anything hands-on.  And while we were reading a lot, there was no talk about grammar or spelling, no practicing of writing.  The only area I'd say we really excelled in was music and art.  He was getting into GarageBand and learning about instruments, loops, and composing all on his own.  His drawings were becoming more detailed and interesting.

I tried something new regarding computer time at the beginning of the second year.  I went totally unschool and allowed him unlimited computer time.  I was trying to subscribe to the idea that he would eventually regulate himself.   I'm glad we did it.  I learned some really important things during those months.  Maybe Robotson would eventually have learned to balance his computer time with chores, play, and schoolwork, but it wasn't happening quick enough for me.  I guess that is one area that I can't let go completely.  We cut it back slowly over several months to the level that it is at now: 25 hours a week.  That is still a lot, but it's a ton less than unlimited!

I focused a lot during that year on housework.  We were reading about the Ingalls and Wilder families.  I wanted him to know that being part of a family meant helping out around the house.  He really did learn how to do quite a lot of housework, most of which he can do without help, though he rarely wants to.  He did chores daily and I'm really proud of what he accomplished.

I was still reading all of this time.  Each book helping me understand more about how humans are motivated, how they learn, and how they grow emotionally.  I still didn't realize we were unschoolers.  I still felt terrible guilt that we were just coasting along.  I kept thinking it would get easier when the girls were older, when Robotson showed interest in reading and could work on his own, when we weren't battling the two stomach flus, and the still very worrisome financial trouble we were in.  There were also behavioral issues that had come to head with Robotson.  It was affecting the few social activities that we had.

In the second half of that second year I started up kidschool again.  Kidschool is basically where the parent shows the child things that are of interest to them.  It could be educational, inspirational, interesting, thought-provoking, etc.  It might be a game, a website, a book, a poem, a piece of music, a science project.  The list goes on.  It's just your way of throwing something new their way (strewing).  It also shows them that you are always learning too.

By the summer of 2009, I'd moved away from Thomas Jefferson Education.  As I said before, I still use many of the ideas that I learned from that philosophy, but I prefer to distance myself from the conservative views of, and by, other TJEd'ers.  Besides, you can get to the same ideas by reading Alfie Kohn, John Holt, John Gatto, Haim Ginott, Sir Ken Robinson, Thomas Gordon, Faber and Mazlish, and so many more that I don't even know about yet.

By the fall, I knew we were unschoolers and that's the attitude I took into this year.

Yeesh!  I'm sorry for the never-ending post.  I'm nearly done though!  Up next where we are this year and what I think education means for us.

Interesting Homeschool Tidbit

In Georgia, you don't have to register your child with the state until they are six years old.  Since Robotson's birthday is in December, I waited until September of 2007 - three months before he turned seven.  Our school year runs from September 1 to August 31, a full 365 days.  We are required to keep monthly attendance records.  Students must complete 4.5 hours of schoolwork for 180 days.  I dutifully fill out our attendance sheets until that magical 180th day is checked off, at which point the state doesn't hear from us again until September.  We are currently in our third year of homeschooling and I checked off the box for Third Grade for this year.  The only other requirements in Georgia are that you administer a standardized test at the end of the third grade, and every three years after.  You must also do an annual report on your child's progress and keep it with your files.


Part Two

I left off in Part One basically having a panic attack.  I had no homeschooling friends, no curriculum, a one year old, I was pregnant again, and my son wasn't in the least bit interested in school in a traditional sense.  Best to just dive right in, right?!

The Reader's Digest version is that I sent an email out on one of the homeschooling lists looking for playmates and met Mo.  We hit it off immediately.  Kitmama started a playgroup, which we joined.  The playgroup grew and next thing you know we had the greatest friends in the world. Homeschool friend and support - check!

So of course the first thing I wanted to know every time I met another homeschooler was: "What curriculum are you using?"  There are as many answers to that question as people using them.  I'm going out on a limb and say that it's the worst question for anyone who is considering homeschooling to ask.  Why?  Because no one uses the same thing, and even if they do, they mix it up with other things.  I've never talked to anyone that doesn't personalize their educational model in some way.  I'm not saying that it's not an important question to ask, especially when you don't know what your options are.  And I think every person who is or will homeschool should ask as many people as they can, but it will confuse you beyond your wildest imagination.  I lost sleep over it all.  Maybe that's just me.

Mo had introduced me to Thomas Jefferson Education.  I've blogged about it before.  I read all of the books and tried to implement many of the ideas.  I guess I still use a lot of what I learned from that approach, but I don't call myself a TJEd'er anymore.  I was also reading books on the topics I blog about here most:  EI Parenting, manners, mindsets.  Then there were books on happiness, education, children's learning and personality, and mindfulness.  All of these books seemed to connect for me.  As I've written about them, I try to describe how they fit together in my mind.  Sometimes I wonder if anyone else sees the links the way that I do.  (I am considering a separate, ever-evolving, post of all of these books that I think fit together for future reference.)  These books, and a number of blogs, articles, and conversations with other homeschoolers eventually brought me to my aha! moment.  I can't really say exactly when it was.  It just became increasingly clear to me that we were unschoolers through and through.

I don't think this is exactly a revelation to anyone who's been reading this blog.  My Homeschool Day's posts are a pretty obvious giveaway that we aren't curriculum based.  It's a "fly by the seat of our pants" sort of schooling.  After looking up that idiom, perhaps that's not the best description.  True, I have no training in childhood education, but I would quibble with the word "required."  Not to downplay the importance of educated teachers, but there are plenty of homeschooling parents with no formal training that are doing at least as good at college educated teachers.  O.k. moving on.

Unschooling is a scary word.  Actually, homeschooling is a scary word.  Unschooling is bone-chilling, blood curdling, petrifying - you are totally going to die - kind of scary.  Most homeschoolers I know wouldn't ever dream of unschooling their kids.  Unschoolers are either completely irresponsible or incredibly brave, depending on who you ask.  Either way, they would never do it.  Let's get a definition.

Unschooling refers to a range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including child directed play, game play, household responsibilities, and social interaction, rather than through the confines of a conventional school. Exploration of activities is often led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child. (via Wikipedia)

Unschooling will look different in different families, and "radical unschooling" simply means extending the philosophy of unschooling (that children will learn what they need to know when they are ready and want to learn it) into every other aspect of life (i.e. children will go to sleep when they are tired, eat when they are hungry, and will learn to be a functioning, helpful member of a family/household without being forced/required to do things like chores, given punishments, limited on tv/videogames, etc.) Radical unschooling could also be called Mindful Parenting, or respectful parenting (although one could be parenting mindfully, and their children attend school). (via Sandra Dodd)

~ H. L. Mencken

But the truth is that I'm probably doing both.  Right now, I'm specifically talking about homeschooling, but you could probably substitute that word, and a few details, and get the same basic reasoning behind most of the decisions I make.  I've been thinking a lot about homeschooling because I seem to be reading and listening to a lot of people talk about it lately.  I don't generally talk about it much, but I listen and what I usually hear is just how much more everyone else does than we do.  And I always find myself asking the same question in my head, "How on earth do they do all that?"  I can not wrap my brain around any sort of schedule that looks even remotely like an actual school day.  It simply does not compute.   The really weird part though is that I very much like control, organization, and schedules.  Before I began living this life, I always imagined it would look very differently.

I'm not sure how it started.  I knew what it was because my aunt homeschooled my cousin.  What I don't really know is why I decided that we should do it.  My best guess is that while working for EarthLink, I spent a lot of time browsing the Internet.  Frequently I would come across news stories about kids getting suspended for bringing butter knives to school, or having colored hair.  Boys couldn't wear kilts to dances and girls couldn't be voted prom king.  There was also B's and my own experiences in school.  Neither of us felt that public schools could give our kids the sort of education that we thought they should have.  School seemed more like an evil social experiment than a place of learning.  Private schools were all religious, and discounted immediately.  That left homeschooling.  

Robotson wasn't even out of diapers when I started joining local homeschool support groups.  I never attended events or participated in the email loops.  I barely even read them as they came through, but I wanted to know what was going on.  When I was laid off from EarthLink, and decided to go ahead with the SAHM thing two years earlier than originally planned, I had a lot of really grand ideas.  We would spend our days in academic pursuit, the house would be spotless, meals prepared on time, and on and on.  Absolutely none of that happened.  I think I was a  bit lonely for a while.  B was working.  We lived far from all of my previous coworkers, and most of them were childless.  We didn't have any non-work friends because we hadn't had time for them.  Robotson never had any playmates for the same reason.  It was just him and I; so we got a dog.  Then I got pregnant.  All of a sudden I had three creatures that needed my constant attention.  Robotson would be starting school soon, and I had no idea what to do, with no real support system.

Plus during all of this time, I realized something very important about Robotson:  he is not the sort of kid to sit at a desk and do workbooks.  This is not a major revelation really.  Most boys (kids) are not all that interested in sitting still and listening to someone else do all the talking.  But I fought him.  Boy did I fight him for the entire year before he was to be officially registered with the state.  I kept putting off finding a curriculum because what would be the point in spending money on something that there was no way he was going to learn while bouncing off the walls?  I had a million doubts about whether I could do this, and I still lived in the fantasy land of weekly field trips, science experiments, and a son that was reading before Kindergarten.  It was a stressful year to say the least.

At this point, I'd only heard of unschooling once.  I saw a bumper stick on the back of a mini-van and had no idea what it meant.  I looked it up online, thought it sounded a bit scary, and never really thought about it again.

We moved into our first official year of homeschooling with no curriculum.  I had a book, Home Learning Year By Year that I used as a guide.  I spent hours piecing together my own First Grade course and then set about the task of teaching Robotson.  It worked alright for a little while, but eventually it became obvious that this just wasn't for us. At this point I wasn't sure if homeschooling was the problem, or me, or my son?*

To be continued...



*Wow!  I had no idea how long this was going to be!  It seems like a good place to stop and let me collect my thoughts before I move into where we are now and how we got here.