HARD first week!

[Kerry M.]

Hi everyone,

OH boy it's been a hard official first week having my kids home this year and not going to school. I can't believe how difficult it has been for myself and all of the feelings I am having.

The whole week has mostly been my 13 year old son going to the barn for chores in the morning and then being outside all day w/my husband and running to cattle auctions, hay auctions ect.. he also likes to be on the computer at night looking at tractor sites and other machinery and 4-wheeler sites as well. He was also running equipment quite a bit this week (including the payloader).

My daughters have been going with me into town for groceries, riding horses, and playing around on the computer mostly. They also are outside feeding their farm animals at night while we milk. They also did a few math lessons in Teaching Textbooks. That was my fault mostly, I kind of freaked out and made them feel bad for not doing something that looked like school! as I said it has been hard for me. I hadnt anticipated this to feel so difficult. Add people asking you why your kids arent in school during the day and you have a mix of really uncomfortable feelings for the parent. I am trying to work through the " I am ruining my kids" feeling.

One bright side to all of this though is the fact that my 13 year old son is feeling alot less stressed and with no homework he seems to be mellowing out a bit and being easier to get along with. He seems like a happier kid right now and it hasnt been long yet that we have come to this.

I hope the feeling to buy curriculum goes away soon, all I think about at night is what maybe I should be having them do and what might happen if I don't. I find myself second guessing myself and feeling like they have to be actually doing something that looks like school. On another note, I have signed them up for some fun classes like zoology, theatre class ect.. (at their requests). Anyone else went through this? thanks for letting me vent my feelings here! I love this site very much and read alot.

Take care,

Kerry

[Sandra Dodd]

-=-I hope the feeling to buy curriculum goes away soon, all I think about at night is what maybe I should be having them do and what might happen if I don't. I find myself second guessing myself and feeling like they have to be actually doing something that looks like school.-=-

http://sandradodd.com/deschooling
http://sandradodd.com/wordswords

Those might help you back off the "schooly" stuff, and it's really important to do that because every time you go back to school, your deschooling starts over. Some people never deschool, and then they can never unschool.

[Elisabeth]

I think any major change in thinking can be challenging and scary....I was going to recommend Sandra's deschooling page....but I see she's already chimed in BWG :).......I'll add that I remember that feeling of 'I/we should be doing more'. I think it's very common when you're comming from a all we knew is school background.

The # 1 thing that helped me the most was to look at what we were doing...I even jotted it down for a while and then graduated to a blog. From the feel of your post...it sound like your family is very busy currently engaging in thier interest.

For me, the blunt, 'STOP '.....looking at everything thru Schoolish lens, was the best advice. ( I actually said the word "stop" in my head when the feelings hit me)

Be with your kids, have fun...go with a no first week...but cont'd summer vacation mentality!!!


Elisabeth

[Kerry M.]

I know, I am trying to get started and I have already failed! I am reading so much about this subject, I have spent the past several months grabbing up everything and anything on unschooling. I get it but yet it scares me! its that ole traditional school mentality coming into play.

It has felt good just trying to continue on with summer like activities. I guess the hardest part is the fact that most kids are locked in school and not around when we go out and about. I am sooo tired of all the questions we get when we are out. I know my relatives think we are crazy for keeping kids home. They dont understand regular homeschooling let alone unschooling. I know we are doing things but to most people it wouldnt look like regular school learning! I came home today and my DD(13 almost) had made muffins. My 13 year old son was w/my huband moving some equipment out of a shed that we rent(gearing up for fall harvest). He helped load steers today as well as feeding, cleaning ect..

I guess I have to start all over again with deschooling! maybe I am just to type A to unschool or something?! maybe I just dont have enough confidence in myself or my kids? I want to think I do though! I just need to quit thinking so much!!

[JennyStar]

I am trying to work through the " I am ruining my kids" feeling.

I hope the feeling to buy curriculum goes away soon, all I think about at night is what maybe I should be having them do and what might happen if I don't.

It might help to know that schools "ruin" many kids. It's more unlikely for a caring parent spending time with their kid to ruin their kid than a school system.

So, worst case scenario is that your kids get "behind" in schoolish things, you have to put them back into school and get them "caught" up. School objectives change over the years. What you did as a kid in school is different than what your own kids would be doing in school. What a kid in Japan is doing in school is different from what a kid in Germany is doing in school. What kids "need" to know is relative.

It's better to focus on what your children ARE doing and finding joy in and then see the learning in those things. People learn ALL the time, especially when they are interested and enjoying life. It's way more likely for a happy relaxed kid at home to learn, than a stressed kid at school.

He seems like a happier kid right now and it hasnt been long yet that we have come to this.

Kids that are happy, learn easier. Unhappiness and doubt create mind blockages. You have a happier kid, that's great! Happier is better for everything and everyone!

[JennyStar]

I know we are doing things but to most people it wouldnt look like regular school learning!

I don't think it will look like school learning. I don't think it should look like school learning. Unschooling does something better than sitting in a classroom being taught. Unschooling isn't passive like that, your kids will DO things, and that always looks different than school.

Maybe it would help to look at the means to an end and what those means are and what end you are looking for, if any. What do you want for your kids? What do they want? What is the best way to achieve that? Perhaps those are the sort of questions you could ask yourself. Type A people tend to think about goals and the reaching of goals. Not that I necessarily believe in categorizing people into types like that, but there I did it anyway, for the sake of understanding.

What we do as unschoolers, looks very very different than what kids in school are doing. There is no comparison there. My older daughter is about to start doing training for make-up and cosmetology. It sounds formal, but she came to it very informally. She came to it by doing things she loves to do and finding ways to keep doing it, meeting people and learning along the way.

Help your kids do what they love to do and the rest falls into place. Let go of what they would be doing or should be doing, if in school.

[Alex Polikowsky]

Kerry I have offered a few times and I am inviting you again to come over to Rochester and meet some homeschoolers. It will make you feel better. Another plus is that we are unschoolers that are also Dairy Farmers like you!

[Meredith]

Let go of the idea that you've "failed already" - your kids are happier? Then you've succeeded. Everything else is icing on the cake.

If you're telling people you are unschooling, maybe switch to saying "homeschool" instead. If people want to know what you're kids are doing (and you want to answer) talk about deschooling. Even regular homeschoolers use deschooling as a concept - the idea that kids need time to "recover" from school in order to "regain their ability to self motivate and learn independently". But remember, you don't have to tell anyone anything. You can say "we're trying this for now" or something similarly vague and change the subject.

[Meredith]

Something that I find helpful during any kind of transition is to remind myself that I'm in the middle of a transition. That sounds silly, maybe, but I can get stuck in my own head, thinking doom and gloom and craziness, and then start beating myself up for thinking those things. "What's wrong with me?!? Oh, wait! I'm in a transition. This is the part where I'm freaking out."

Remembering that, I can stop and do little bits of self-care, take some deep breaths, spend some extra time making something I really like for lunch, make an extra effort to look at the sky, buy a quilt book...whatever. It helps break the cycle. I'll still freak out, because that's part of my transitional process, but knowing its just part of my process, I'm better able to handle my emotions. I'm not mad at myself for those feelings any more.

[Kerry M.]

Hi Alex,

I would love that. Please let me know when you may be meeting again. As you know with fall fast approaching fieldwork is gearing up and time may become a little harder to come by for awhile.

Alex Polikowsky said:

Kerry I have offered a few times and I am inviting you again to come over to Rochester and meet some homeschoolers. It will make you feel better. Another plus is that we are unschoolers that are also Dairy Farmers like you!

[Valerie]

I was writing out a recipe to share on my blog...when I first found this recipe I followed it mostly step by step and ingredient for ingredient. It's an amazing recipe, as is. Sometimes I don't have all the ingredients, the required equipment, or the desire to follow a recipe exactly. So I tweek it. I understand the author of the original recipe yet I make it work for me. Sometimes the original recipe is a disaster to my taste buds and I can pull enough information from other sources to rework it to better suit my tastes.

I'm 38. The wold is my school and I'm on an amazing adventure!

Autodidact and Universal Teaching

The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

Explication the myth of pedagogy ~ knowledge is not necessary to teaching, nor explication necessary to learning. Explication creates incapacity. The pedagogical myth divides the world into two: the knowing and the ignorant, the mature and the unformed, the capable and the incapable.

Explicated Explicators....representing inequality in terms of velocity: as "slowness", "backwardness", "lag".

There is no one on earth who hasn't learned something by himself and without a master explicator. This way of learning is known as "universal teaching".

William Buttler Yeats said ~ “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”