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!

[greenlee]

Ren, that was a beautiful post.

[mom5X's]

My initial reaction to any comparisons is defensive. I don't think it is fair to quiz my children, period. It is usually the neighbor kids or my mother and mother in law. But, my norm is structured homeschooling. Probably the comparisons are mostly my fault, partly praising each child for excellence, partly praising myself for teaching them an unknown skill, and partly proving to the world that homeshooling is good. In fact, just yesterday, dear m-i-law asked me if we started school yet. Well, kind of. How do I explain that we are not "doing school" anymore. And I really didn't want to get into a debate question in front of the children either. I don't even want to tell my mother about this new natural way of learning. I call it new because it is new to me.

Being relaxed and confident in natural learning is completely out of my box. This is very much an unnatural thing to me. I'm trying to get myself ready for any reactions. I found a great assessor who is very unschool friendly. But finding great unschooling friends,I'm looking and hopefully will find some for playgroups. I guess time will tell.

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-How do I make myself deschool.-=-

You want to "make yourself" do things? How about re-thinking that in this way: "Now that I want to deschool, what might help?" And if you decide you don't want to deschool, don't! But don't be making yourself (or anyone else) try to learn anything.

So I'm assuming you're wanting to choose to move away from school and schooliness. Each time you have a choice (for example if you need to say or do something, or decide whether to say something or not), think of two things to do. This is important. If you haven't thought of two things to do, you can't make a choice.

Then choose the one that takes you closest to your goal.

Make the choice that leads more toward peace or harmony or humor or learning or whatever it is, and away from fighting and frustration and sorrow and boredom.

[Katherine]

Sandra Dodd has often made the suggestion in the past to announce homeschool decisions to family via letter, and keep a copy. I'm sure, as in the past, people would be happy to suggest any content that you want help with.

[Sandra Dodd]

True that I often say "put it in writing and keep a copy," if things are tense. If things aren't tense, though, it's often best not to intensify them. Just casually say "We're going to try homeschooling for a while" and "If this doesn't work, we'll put her in school," or "It seems to be working for now."

[mom5X's]

o.k., I know you are probably tired of me and my worries. Just one more thing I've got on my mind. What if something happens to me (God forbid) and the kids have to be put back in public school? If they are not up to "school standards" they will be humiliated, not only by their peers but the teachers as well.

[Ren]

Not true.
Kids IN school aren't up to "grade level" a lot of the time. I've watched several unschoolers dabble with school and every one of them found it pretty dang EASY to "catch up". I hate that term...it's just not based on anything REAL or true.

But anyhoo, it seems silly to spend one minute of time worrying about them being put back in school if you die. Having a parent die will be a MUCH greater influence on their lives!! There would be more difficulties from a death than from school....though adding that to a difficult time is so unecessary.

My dh would continue their lives at home if I died, fortunately. If both of us died my sister would raise them, but they also have a brother of legal age that might consider raising them as well. Right now, our agreement is with my sister though....who happens to be a radical unschooler!

[James Coburn]

Keep in mind is that connections (which I believe are a key concept here) just happen. They require very little intervention from us.(as parents)
Children are natural sponges of connections. When the connections start connecting for a person then more complete concepts begin to form and grow. This process is not unique to kids, it works for all of us.
this is an organic process and is very natural if allowed to happen.
I hope this makes a little sense...
James

[Katherine]

In order to help Brian get more comfortable with Karl's education and our unschooling him, I was going through the objectives for Kindergarten and 1st grade that our state has adopted. I printed them out and put a check mark by every objective that Karl knows (going by my observations not by asking Karl anything), and showed it to Brian. Karl knows a lot, all but one objective for Kindergarten and quite a few for 1st grade. *I* knew that Karl has been learning everyday but Brian doesn't see it since he's at work everyday. Come to find out that Brian's been hearing from co-workers that we're short changing Karl's education by homeschooling him. (WHY do they have an opinion?! Like they really care.) So what I printed out and showed him has given Brian some confidence.

What's not good about all that is if a child doesn't obviously meet objectives it's harder to feel confident if you don't see the learning happening everyday like the stay at home parent can.

But it's true that children don't meet grade level in school either. I had trouble with that one especially in reading whenever I changed schools, which was frequent. And reading was the thing I loved to do. ?? At least I was able to enjoy what schools kept telling me I wasn't very good at. ;)

[Meredith]

"In fact, just yesterday, dear m-i-law asked me if we started school yet. Well, kind of. How do I explain that we are not "doing school" anymore."

One of the things I do is tell people who are interested stories about my kids - not "guess what Mo learned" stories per se, just fun kid stories. Mo building a time machine out of paper. Ray learning to breathe fire or getting his nose pierced (hey, y'all he's getting his nose pierced Today! hooray!). I keep everything really positive: Teenagers are amazing! Kids are soooo creative! I love being a mom! All my kid stories have smilies and exclamation points all over them, even when I'm talking face to face.

I've used my blog as a way to dialog with family about unschooling. I've written long, theoretical posts and replied kindly but firmly to questions and then gone on to tell more fabulous kid stories. I assume family members want most of all to connect and asking about schoolish stuff is the only way most people know to do that where kids are concerned. How's school? Learning anything interesting? So I skip right over the "school" part to the learning part, and since unschooling is all about learning via living, I often don't even comment on the learning, just talk about our life.

Its funny that you asked how to get yourself to deschool. When Ray first moved in with us he was all concerned about "deschooling" - would it hurt? Okay, he didn't actually ask that, but he did ask how we intended to deschool him, as if it were some sort of physical process, like having a tattoo removed. Deschooling is a process, for sure, but its the sort of thing you look back on and say "oh, I guess I was still deschooling then...hmmmm I'm still sort of deschooling sometimes, now that I think about it." Its like watching your kids grow - you don't notice it until the shoes don't fit or someone can suddenly reach the light switch.

"Being relaxed and confident in natural learning is completely out of my box. This is very much an unnatural thing to me."

Something that helped me a lot, early in my unschooling journey, was to study learning. I built myself a little home-study course, even took some classes online. I think wrapping one's mind around "natural learning" is easiest/most obvious with very young children and teenagers. With teenagers you can study the way adults learn and apply the information pretty easily. With young children, there's a Huge body of research on the value of experiential learning. The hardest, imo, is between about 7ish and 13ish. There just isn't much "out there" in terms of scholarly discussions of how learning happens without teaching. That's where the unschooling lists and message boards were really helpful for me. I could read story after story of kids learning things without having to be taught and think "okay, it really does work, I can Do this!"

"My initial reaction to any comparisons is defensive. I don't think it is fair to quiz my children, period."

I agree! My kids are pretty confident in their answers, though. Ray will tell people its none of their darn business and Mo will change the subject. I try to remind myself that, annoying as it is, its a cultural standard for how one speaks to children. Everyone does it bc that's what everyone does. So I can work on modelling another way to interact, I can try to gently deflect questions, tell a story, change the subject, ask the questioner a question of my own. And smile when my kids do all those things more eptly than I can.

But mostly I try to remember not to take those stupid, intrusive questions personally bc they really aren't personal, even though they seem to be. They are part of the script that begins: How old are you? Do you like school?