I am the Dread Lord of Schooling

[mom5X's]

You say "relax". I say "how". It is so hard to become what you don't know or do what you have never done.
I used to love roller coasters, now is a different story. They scare me! They never used to be this big or this fast. Oh my Gosh, we went to Kings Island a few weeks ago and I committed the first part of the day to my 16 yo DD. I figured, yeah, its scary but I can get through it. The first one we road was a big swing sort of thing that spun around and almost put you upside down. It was called Dilerium. It was AWFUL! Oh my goodness. Talk about peeing your pants because you are so scared. WOW! I vowed I would never ride it again. And I'm thinking as soon as I get off of this I have to do more!

What is the difference between now and back when I was her age riding these things? I became scared. FEAR!

So, I think this is my problem now, with schooling or unschooling. FEAR!
How do I make myself deschool. I am trying but I'm thinking the kids are going back to school now. There are so many learning cues coming around, but it seems they are at such unconvenient times. I was preparing supper the other day and my one son asks me how a light bulb lights? There is one! But, I'm making dinner, I want to get it done before the baby awakes because when she wakes, she will be grouchy and will want to be held for awhile. The moments gone.

Field trips take planning. I have the baby to consider. Trips to the library also take planning.

I read a bunch on Sandra's sight and I 'm reading John Holts books, I just wish I had someone to coach me on how I could do better. I also read the article on how to ruin unschooling and I pretty much am guilty of all of it. How could I not be? I am used to being a set of rules sort of person. That is so hard to change. I'm thinking deschool, deschool, deschool. (Breathe) deschool, deschool, deschool.

Those of you who have had to change this way, how did you do it and keep your sanity?
PLEASE HELP ME!

[EL]

First and foremost, relax!! Relax and understand that there is no "right way" to do this.

As for your light bulb example, you will find that the opportunity isn't so fragile as you might image. Often, when asked such things, I have responded, "How that works? It's magic!! But we'll talk more about it in a few minutes." The interest isn't like a wavering match in the wind, it won't go out that easily. You've got all the time in the world. That is, the moment's never truly gone.

Don't look on unschooling as something mechanical or prescribed. It is much more akin to a song, a poem, a dance than it is to a formula. When someone tells a good story, is there any one right way to laugh??

You know those marvelous koans: How can you be an agnostic (someone who says nothing can be known for sure)? Then how can you know for sure that nothing can be known for sure??? Ha! Gotcha! Or like the Buddhist whose greatest desire is to give up all desires ... eh?? Like that, you cannot school yourself into unschooling.

That's why I always say it's foolish to try to be a Rebecca of Sunnybrook farm all positive all the time. One has to look schooling right in the eye and call it what it is. But don't let it get to you, don't let it grapple with you. Rather observe it like a passing cloud and say, "Yup, there's another instance of schooling coming around." Laugh at it, perhaps sneer at it, but let it go.

How much sense does it make to have a list of rules on how not to have a list of rules? As to your sanity, don't hold onto it so tightly. Be crazy a bit when you need to.

Although it might sound like it at first, you really aren't walking on eggshells. Have fun, be a little afraid, be a little insane. That's how you know you are doing it right

[Katherine]

Follow the joy in your children. If it helps a schoolish, rulish mindset to do so, think of it as studying the joy in your children, and making note of how to join the joy. Ask the question: where do I fit in to my child's process of joyfulness in this life? Because it's easy as an adult to squash children's joy and to get derailed. Jump out of your own thought processes and observe your children's. Learn from them not by simply watching but by following their lead and playing with them. They haven't forgotten how to do joy yet. But they can. So don't wait. Do it now.

Go to the park. Get down in the dirt and sand and play and be "silly" and watch your kids have fun if it doesn't seem fun to you yet. It will if you learn enough about why and where your children find joy. You can learn all sorts of things not only about your children but also as a happy by-product you can learn all sorts of things about yourself that you didn't know either.

The most important word is PLAY. Play is the work of all living beings. It's what we were meant to do. During play all sorts of living, working, learning and being happens. Initially it's probably a more important word than "relax." With play, relaxing has an environment to thrive in. So don't neglect to play.

[Robyn L. Coburn]

You and your kids can't deschool while your kids are in school. Let them be on vacation. Really - a no-expectations, relax-and-only-do-it-if-it's-fun vacation at home.

Stop looking for "learning cues" - that is school speak. Stop worrying about what they are learning and trust that it is constant. Ask yourself if they are enjoying what they are doing. How can they follow their interests today?

Don't go on "field trips". Just because school groups call the Museum of Natural History a field trip, doesn't mean you should. Go on outings to fun places that your kids enjoy. Accept, truly in your heart, that there is just as much learning at the amusement park as at the library.

Why are you going to the library? If it is because you believe that is part of home schooling and you have to keep up with what is expected...then that is a lot of pressure.

We almost never go to the library. I prefer to buy used books on the internet, plus we own a huge (HUGE) library already - so much so that most of our books are in storage. We have numerous magazine subscriptions - ah the convenience of home delivery. We search for information on anything, including how light bulbs work, on the internet. The library is just one resource.

Your dd might enjoy the Teenage Liberation Handbook.

Stop thinking of a simple question as a mandate to create a unit study! "How do light bulbs work" is something that can be answered in a short sentence. Most of the time the short answer is enough in the moment. If not, you simply promise to look it up later. Please read my most recent blog post about Jayn's Learning Process and how she rejects too much information.

You're thinking in terms of negatives. Yes the process is called "de-schooling" but "to deschool" is not the activity. It is replacing one set of thoughts and the related activities with another set of thoughts until they become automatic. Instead of thinking about what you "should" be avoiding, replace the thought with something positive and active or pro-active. Action verbs instead of absences or "avoiding nouns". If you post some, we could make some suggestions.

But here is a big question - Do your children want to stay home from school? Have you offered them the choice and had them say "Yes"?

Just like the deschooling, Unschooling truly blossoms when what is happening is not merely the absence of school and those negatives, but replacing it with something much better and fuller.

The true goal of unschooling is not education paid off in some vague future. It is creating a joyful life today. Are you scared of being happy?

[Ren]

~~There is one! But, I'm making dinner, I want to get it done before the baby awakes because when she wakes, she will be grouchy and will want to be held for awhile. The moments gone.~~

You're still seeing moments as those darned "teachable moments". It's a big lie. El is right....those moments of some new interest aren't fragile things at all. They swirl up over and over again anyway. If they don't learn how lightbulbs work today, or next week or in a year, who cares? They'll learn it when they're truly wanting the information.

Sometimes a question is just a casual thing. They don't necessarily want to know about the filament and construction. Maybe they do. "I'll look that up with you later, I'm not really sure how they work" is fine!! Let it go. Let THEM let it go too...if the "later" you encounter doesn't contain that desire to know anymore.

Learning is a lot about connecting bits and pieces of information over years and years...not some magical moment that will never be found again. Lightbulbs will come up frequently, since we live in a world filled with lightbulbs!

Trust is what's been lost. Trust in the learning process. Trust that the desire to learn is a tenacious beast! Not some gossamer thing that slips away if you screw up or put something off a bit. Sometimes dinner CAN wait for a minute too. Sometimes dinner can become waffles or sandwiches because playing together was more important.

[mom5X's]

hmm-mmm I knew I could count on y'all for some good butt kicking advice. Thanks, I needed that. I think I will copy all of this and read it often. Actually I think I will copy it, chew on it and swallow it, maybe then it will sink in.
I guess I wanted to do field trips and library trips as not to miss out on the possible "learning experiences".
They don't want to go to school because it is school, so I guess why should they "school" here. A vacation sounds nice.

[Ren]

Once you ease into vacation mode you just might decide to STAY there. Good.:)
Because that is unschooling.

[laura b]

it's not possible to miss out on "learning experiences" because they are everywhere all the time. the trick is to stop looking for them. and just live.

[mom5X's]

Well, I'm really not as scattered brained as my post appears. As I was trying to get my point across, my beautiful princess also had a point she was trying to make. So forgive me for the misspelled words and the fact that I don't make a whole lot of sense.
I'm kind of worried about what the other kids will "tease" them about. I've come across the comments before that because they are "homeschooled" they are not as smart as the public schooled kids. It seems, this neighborhood especially, that the questions are always how much they know, not only from kids but adults as well. If my 5 yr old can't read or write that makes him "behind" or my 9 yo will not be able to do multiplication tables like most kid his age will leave him feeling inadequate. I can usually handle much of it but I'm wondering about them, how they feel, and how they are going to handle it.

[EL]

Our kids physician has nine children and all are homeschooled (and were born at home as well). He tells that the most frequent question he fields is "But what about socialization?" To which he characteristically removes his spectacles and looks at them squarely and says, "My point exactly!"

The notion that one can be "behind" in reading or math is so egregious an artificial construct that it makes one want to cry out. Our children get asked the same sort of drivel. It seems that as soon as someone finds that they are educated at home, they feel it is their duty to test them. Submitting to testing and interrogation is a learned behavior which none of mine have ever learned, thank the gods. So when some well meaning busy-body says to them, "Well, let's see, if I had ten apples and gave you ....", they have a puzzled look on their faces and get the response, "Ah, so you don't know." If I am about, I say, "No it isn't that they don't know, they are wondering why you would be so rude as to presume to ask such a thing!"

Unschoolers don't tend to look at it as a 5 yo can't read or a 9 yo can't recite the multiplication tables, but simply that they don't. Don't know it, don't think it's important, don't want to ... it's a wash and doesn't matter which. What we are really saying is not that they can't but rather they choose not to submit to being queried about it. And good for them!

That is, how on earth would anyone in the neighborhood know who knew what unless they were committing the colossal rudeness of presuming to quiz them? And it is the epitome of rudeness. In the everyday world, when is it polite to go about giving people pop quizzes? Do you approach a dentist and demand that he tell you the dates for emergence of various teeth to prove that he's really a dentist? When you hail a taxi, do you make the driver describe the route he's going to take to make sure he knows where he's going? When you eat at a restaurant, do you demand to talk to the chef to make sure he understands the safe temperature at which to cook something? No we don't because it would be taken as an affront and an offense.

So why should it be any different for our children? Children must not be led to feel badly about not jumping through hoops like a circus pony, but rather must feel free to treat uninvited quizzing and critique as the affront that it is.

[Meg Walker]

My computer is in the kitchen and it's always on. When questions like the light bulb come up, we just Google it. Often, during dinner conversation, a question will come up. Someone just walks over to the computer. At the end of the day, the History of the websites my computer has been to is soooo long! Google has changed my life! When my kids were young and my hands were busy with meal prep, I could still do that and talk them through the search.

But I wouldn't say we make a big deal out of it. We want information and we get it. Then we generally move on to something else. What I have modeled for my kids is how I get my questions and their questions answered. I think this is quite different from the many schooled kids we know, who will just shrug when they don't know something--if it's not on a test, they don't care.

[Katherine]

Kids don't learn to read at 5 just because they're in school. They're introduced to reading concepts a little at a time, and at the end of grade 3 or 4 or so... there are still kids who haven't figured out reading, even in school.

A (school) kid twice Karl's age was carrying on about what a baby, loser, etc that he thinks Karl is. One of the things I did was to redouble my efforts to find a sweeter crowd of kids for Karl to hang out with (which takes time). Then I pointed out all the words that Karl knows (from playing video games) since one of the comments he got was about him not being able to read. Knowing some of the words he reads on a daily basis satisfied him.

One of the best things about unschooling is seeing that the pace of learning varies from person to person and it doesn't ever focus on grade levels. You can see kids learn all the time.

Just like adults who aren't in school. Being challenged by others could throw anyone for a loop if they were asked about something they haven't gotten into. I wouldn't know the first thing if someone asked me on how to do a scrapbook and I might feel uncomfortable if someone expected me to be able to. If I were interested, I could pick up the knowledge though, and how well I do would depend on my ability.

It's possible to introduce the idea of how to multiply numbers without ever mentioning the word "multiplication" or using a table. I never memorized the multiplication table because I'm not a good memorizer, but I can multiply. Just because schools use memorization doesn't mean that's the only way learn something.

~Katherine

[Ren]

~~If my 5 yr old can't read or write that makes him "behind" or my 9 yo will not be able to do multiplication tables like most kid his age will leave him feeling inadequate.~~

What is your reaction if another child asks these kind of questions? How comfortable are YOU with leaving comparisons behind? Because your reaction will hugely affect how comfortable your children become with all the ridiculous comparisons.

I used to ask other kids "When did you learn to walk?" or something of that nature and then point out how it doesn't matter that one of my kids walked before or after them, they all know how to walk! In my home, schooled children didn't do the whole comparison thing because they learned very quickly how I felt about quizzing someone.

My kids were baffled by it anyway, so they didn't get the reactions they were used to. Comparing knowledge or skills isn't anything they understand. Except when someone has more skills in a certain area you know to ask them when you need help! :)

Reading at any particular age is a myth. There is no way a person can be "behind" or "ahead" of themselves! Are you "behind" if you don't have the same body of knowledge that I possess? Are you "learning disabled" if you don't know color theory? The ONLY population in society for which that kind of comparison is considered acceptable is CHILDREN. It's completely false.

I have a child that started reading at 12. He was learning to read all along. The fact that he wasn't a fluent reader until the age of 12 is utterly and completely irrelevant to his life journey. Actually, it's been an integral part in the sense that his trust in his abilities and his sense of self has NOT been affected because he didn't read on some unnatural time table invented by bureaucrats.

If YOU are completely and utterly confident in natural learning and can be a helpful intermediary when needed, your children will probably be totally comfortable too. The other factor here, is get some unschooling friends!!