Light and Momentary

Interview

Tell us what it's like to be homeschooled in this family. What? This is an interview? Yep. If this is an interview, then it's kind of like regular school.  However, there are a lot of big differences.  For one, the teacher pays a lot more attention to you.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a mixed blessing.

What's good about being homeschooled? What are your three favorite things about our school? I can actually voice some of what we learn -- I mean, like, decide some of what we learn.  For instance, if I were to say I'd like to learn a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, then maybe we'd learn one.

The teacher makes the problems interesting -- like, as in math stories where Mom tells a story and you have to put in the subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication answers to make a very funny story.

And number three:  in recess you can play with Legos.

What's bad about being homeschooled? Well, the problems are usually a bit harder compared to the ones that kids in public school do.  (How do you know?  Sometimes I find some spare homework when I visit my friends' houses.  It looks easy.)  Also, there aren't any other kids you can hide behind if you don't think you can solve a problem.  (What do I do if you can't solve a problem? You usually help me so it turns out going a lot longer and sometimes if I answer them very quickly then I get to get ahead on schedule so I have a longer recess to play with Legos and build awesome new creations like The Dragonfly.) 

What's one more bad thing?  I have to do three of these?  Here's the third bad thing:  there isn't any playground equipment in our backyard.  In normal school at recess you get to go on a playground.

Do you think we fight more than we would if you went to a conventional school? [note from Jamie:  this is a worry of mine, that homeschooling causes conflict between us.]  Well, probably yes, but only because we spend more time together.

Would you rather be doing easier work?  Some people might say I ask a lot of you. Depends on the quantity of easier work.  I mean, I'd prefer a bit of hard work to a lot of easy work.  It sounds like I'd be doing a lot of easy work in regular school.

How do you feel about being with your brothers full-time?  Do you wish you spent more time with kids your own age? or kids who weren't family? It's a mixed blessing, because with smaller kids then they'll play almost anything with you.  They think of you as the figure who does know everything.  However, sometimes my mind goes RED ALERT RED ALERT BROTHERS GETTING CRAZILY HECTIC SHUTDOWN SHUTDOWN

What would you say to a mom who is thinking about homeschooling? Here my second son, who declined to answer my other questions, chimed in.  He and my oldest said the same thing: Good choice!

Why We Homeschool

Rachel said:

This is a hot button, I know, so please forgive any crude phrasings on a delicate issue. As a foreigner living in the States, I'm suprised and slightly puzzled by the idea of home schooling. I've had it explained to me as a fundamentalist way of avoiding any contact with the government/state; I suspect you would explain it very differently, and would really like to hear your reasons and experiences. Any chance?

Thanks for asking, Rachel.  I would indeed explain it differently.  We homeschool because we believe it's the best choice for our kids right now, academically, socially, and spiritually.

Academically, homeschooling affords me the freedom to help my kids acquire a rich and thorough understanding of the world around them.  In some areas I am more rigorous than a classroom teacher would be; in others I'm more relaxed. 

As an example:  I'm a believer in memorization, even though it's out of vogue among most educators.  I think it's easier to be a good writer if your head is filled with examples of good writing.  My two oldest sons just learned "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; starting tomorrow we'll tackle "The Raven."

On the other hand, I haaaaaaated doing endless worksheets in school.  Is it necessary to do 30 problems to hammer home a straightforward math concept?  I say categorically: no.  Ditto for grammar exercises, the memory of which causes my eyes to glaze over so fast you'd think I had a nictitating membrane.  (When Jamie [thinked/thought] about her elementary schools' approach to language arts instruction, she [lay/laid] down on the floor and said, "[Shoot/Bludgeon] me now.")

With homeschooling, you can go at your kids' pace.  Do they need some extra help?  No problem -- your tiny class size means you can handle it.  Are they ready to move faster?  Off you go.

Rachel also asked, "How do you deal with a teaching subject that isn't your strong suit?"  When it comes to drawing, I have the ability of an abalone.  I am approaching it from a few different angles.  I have a book called Drawing with Children, which I am slowly working through alongside the kids.  I have a talented friend who teaches my boys art twice a month.  I have also enrolled my oldest son in park district art classes.  I expect this approach will work for as long as we homeschool:  I can learn more myself, or I can find someone else to teach my kids, or I can do both at the same time.

The most common question about homeschooling is "What about socialization?"  I homeschool in part because of the socialization issue:  school socialization can be negative as well as positive.  You can bet than in a house with four boys, each child will get ample practice in the arts of appropriate negotiation and respectful disagreement.  In a classroom, there can be a lot of under-the-radar cruelty and nonsense.  In my home, the bar is set pretty high:  the key question about behavior toward others is not "Is it disruptive?" but "Is it loving?"  (There are days, of course, when not a one of us clears that bar.  But we keep trying.)

I do try to provide my kids with opportunities to learn the social skills they'd develop in a classroom:  working in groups with other kids, solving problems without adult intervention, taking instruction from other adults whose style differs from mine, waiting for turns in conversation or, just occasionally, at the water fountain.  One advantage of homeschooling is that time wasted standing in lines is kept to a minimum.  I certainly hope my kids don't grow up to work in jobs where they have to ask permission and wait in line to use the bathroom.  In small doses, though, it's worth practicing.

Our faith is a major reason why we homeschool.  We reject without reservation the bunker mentality that says "Keep your kids home because the schools are full of evil."  (I do think it's easier to safeguard a healthy innocence when you homeschool, but I'm not teaching my kids at home because I'm afraid of the schools here.)  Our family hopes to become a "city on a hill"; homeschooling allows us time and space for construction projects. 

My foremost goal for each of my children is a transforming relationship with the living God.  I want my children to live their faith:  to know its tenets well, to keep asking hard questions, to grow day by day in the discipline of yieldedness.  I want them to look at their lives through the lens of the greatest commandments:  how can I love God today? how can I love my neighbor?

I am all stirred up at this moment, carried away with my efforts to get across the vision I have for my boys.  How I hope they will grow into men who will inhabit this world gracefully and leave it a wiser, richer place.  The reality right now:  an 8yo who grouses almost every day about the work before him, a 5yo still learning that I expect him to ask permission before he dashes away from the table to run around in lopsided circles, a 3yo who interrupts my explanation of the Bernoulli effect to say, "Will you be Obi-Wan Kenobi now?", and a baby who has been known to spit up on a writing assignment as a I lean over it to correct its punctuation.  But the vision remains regardless.

Over and over in the schools I attended we asked, "Why are we learning this stuff?"  I hope my homeschooled sons can say that we learn because there's joy in learning.  I hope they also know that learning is good stewardship:  we train our eyes to see the beauty and mystery of the world around us, our ears to hear God's call.  We train our minds to reason and remember; we train our hearts to say gladly, "Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will."

--

Some of you homeschool; some of you (like Tracy) used to homeschool; many of you don't and perhaps wouldn't.  Please join in the conversation -- why do you do what you do?  If you homeschool, I'd rather hear about homeschooling plusses than about school minuses (though I will acknowledge that No Child Left Behind is a factor in my decision to homeschool).  Rachel, let me know if this answers your questions.  Some days I may feel a little crazy, but I think our decision to homeschool is pretty sane.

Six Months and One Day

Yesterday marked six months in this town for our family.  I was going to post about it yesterday, but I was too busy.

On Friday mornings we go to Mass with a few other mothers, which is something I've hoped to organize for years.  (The other mothers part is as much about camouflage as fellowship.  If you're the only person at a weekday Mass with small children, the source of the kid noise is distressingly obvious.  This ratchets up my anxiety level, which ratchets up my sensitivity to kid noise, which never fails to ratchet up my kids' noisemaking.  With all this ratcheting we are less a house built on a rock than a house built in the Amazon flood plain.  Consequently my efforts to get to daily Mass have always been short-lived in the past but hurray! here several of us go each Friday morning.)

We are also trying a little co-op on alternate Fridays:  one woman teaches art and I teach Latin.  My kids are more enthusiastic about the doughnuts than the teaching, but enthusiasm is good, right?

Fridays are a short school day for us.  When we got home we read a chapter of Luke (each boy does his own illustration from the chapter to add to his notebook) and talked about the Sabellianist heresy.  We are doing a little study of heresies this fall, with the idea that one aspect of knowing Christ is knowing who he isn't.  I'm using this page as a guide; it should take us up to Advent.  Each boy wrote a letter, and then we had a quick review time.  The history we studied last year didn't seem to stick very well, so this year I'm setting aside time each week to go back over what we've been learning.

My husband has every other Friday off so he was around -- mostly fixing the upstairs bathroom sink, but available to listen to Alex recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade" as well.  The boys started piano yesterday after lunch.  They were both a little reluctant, but they enjoyed the lessons and sat down at the piano today without prompting.  I found a teacher who is willing to come to us, something I've been hoping would turn up.

Elwood took the three oldest boys out in the afternoon, and I used the time to plan the next two weeks of school and catch up on some desk work while Pete slept.  Marty had soccer practice in the late afternoon; after dinner Elwood took Alex and Marty to see an adaptation of a children's novel put on by the community theater group.

Yesterday morning I was putting on a pair of jeans and thinking, "I bet it's been a year since I wore these jeans.  I had no idea, a year ago, that I'd be here in this town today."

A year ago my husband was working past ten o'clock every night -- it wasn't unusual for him to stay until midnight.  Having him home more is so so so nice.  Getting time to plan while he takes the big kids makes homeschooling much easier.

A year ago I knew I needed support to homeschool happily, but I was having a hard time finding crunchy Catholic homeschoolers.  Here I have found a little circle of like-minded moms, some who homeschool and some who don't, who understand where I'm coming from and pray for me to get where I'm going.

A year ago I was feeling stretched thin, dealing with first-trimester ickiness and my husband's schedule.  I just didn't have the energy to find a piano teacher and get Marty to soccer. 

A year ago I was still really stressed about my pregnancy.  A good outcome seemed implausible.  Today my Pete is working on getting mobile:  he wants to crawl but he can only scoot backwards.  He has two teeth, too.  They popped through on vacation; I had no idea they were coming.  (Don't hate me, Moxie.  I'd send some easy teething vibes your way if I could.)

A year ago I was thinking that to afford a home where we wanted to live, my husband would need to keep working those crazy hours.  I didn't know how I would manage with four, doing dinner and bedtime on my own every weeknight.  When my friend Kate was here, after she finished looking around our house, she said, "This house is so you.  All those years that you guys were moving around, this house was waiting for you."

Maybe it was.

The last time I wrote a really happy post about my life, my middle boys locked themselves in the garage the next day.  It makes me wonder what tomorrow will hold.  But I guess if this last year has taught me anything, it should be that I can trust God with my future.

Hey, I have a question before I sign off for the night.  It is a question especially for other moms, but any opinions are welcome.  One of my favorite things about summer is the respite from laundering socks.  (My boys wear sandals all summer long.)  I hate pairing socks.  I hate the sock terrorist who appears to live in the back of my dryer, where he captures sock hostage after hapless sock hostage.  Now I am going to be laundering socks for six people.  I need a System -- any ideas?

SWOOP, Unmasked

"Superheroes" is the theme of this month's Blogging for Books competition, and here goes because we are Superhero Central at Casa de Gladly.  I cannot walk to the front door without dodging the detritus of discarded identities:  the Batman cape, Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, Spiderman's mask.  (On our recent trip Joe and I took turns wearing the sling.  Such a good robe it makes, said Yoda.)  Our costume bin also includes knight's armor (blast-from-the-past superheroes, with added rivets), and Stupendous Girl's skirt.

(You may ask what a house with four boys is doing with a Stupendous Girl.  The answer: I don't know but I think she came from Calvin and Hobbes.  The boys found a flippy yellow skirt at the thrift store and begged piteously for it, so Joe could stop wearing a pajama top with the neck stretched around his waist when he wanted to be SG.  After a brief consideration of the torments his brothers will inflict on him in later life as a consequence ("You! You wore a flippy yellow skirt and called yourself a girl!"), I bought the skirt.  Stupendous Girl is always more interested in donning all her pajama tops at once than in fighting crime.  [sexist comment deleted.])

Anyway, you probably guessed I was up to my neck in superheroes.  But I have a secret:  I want to be a superhero too.  I want to be Super- Wonder- Outstanding Optimalicious Parent.  Y'all mere mortals can call me SWOOP, 'cause that's what I'll do in my deluxe cape.  (Purple, I think.  With handy nursing zippers.)  SWOOP is wiser than Yoda (not to mention less syntactically fractured), more patient than Job, and juster than the entire Justice League mashed into one and served à la mode.

Lately I have been worrying that my style is less a SWOOP than a LIMP (that would be Loud Inconsistent Mediocre Parent).  I've been thinking a lot about whether my approach is part of the problems I've been having with discipline, or if problems with discipline are just part of the landscape.  (Interruption to help Joe, who is simultaneously Captain Underpants and Spiderman but is unable to get his pajamas on without assistance.)

I have been kicking around the idea of a post on parenting gurus -- I was going to call it "Crackpots and Cracked Pots."  The crackpots bit is obvious:  there are some alarming people out there eager to tell you how you ought to be raising your child.  I nominate the Pearls as Exhibit A on the authoritarian end of the spectrum. (May I say again how much it disturbs me that they advocate physical punishment of three-month-old babies? who are probably doing what they're doing because they're teething?)  In the far corner of the ring, I would put Marshall Rosenberg, who sings folksy songs like, "When you use a voice that's mad, I feel awfully awfully sad," and who says one shouldn't make demands of a child, only requests, and who would probably be dismayed at the very idea of entering a boxing ring, no matter how metaphorical.

In between the extremes, though, there's a minefield of well-intentioned and frequently conflicting advice.  Some days it makes me want to put my hands over my ears and say, "La la la la I'm just going to sit here and eat peanut butter cookies until these kids stop fighting on their own."  (My husband made peanut butter cookies, the kind with crisscross fork marks on top that speak to me of my childhood, and no one else in this house likes them.  I have been trying to pretend to myself that peanuts are a vegetable but alas the evidence to the contrary is mounting.  Want to come over and have peanut butter cookies speak to you about your childhood?  Because what they are beginning to say to me is, Hey, Jamie, remember childhood? when your pants zipped?)

This is the "cracked pots" part of the post that never made it out of my head: the part about the uncertainty and the intermittent helplessness that go along with being a mother.  I think my favorite chapter of the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 4, which says in part, "We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us."  But see, I would like the surpassing power to be from me.  I would rather be a treasure than a pot.

I have always been self-critical (sometime I will tell you my story of coordinating music for a retreat, during which a priest friend told me, "Of all the people I've ever known, Jamie, I've never known anyone as hard on herself as you are") but just recently I've been thinking that I ought to be a little gentler with myself.  I wrote an article for a newsletter put together by a good friend, and helped her with editing a few weeks later.  There was a sentence in my article that struck me as awkward, and I went off about it in the margins.  What a stupid sentence! I can't believe I wrote that! Yuck! 

I was really embarrassed to discover that my friend wrote that sentence, filling in a gap I had asked for help to close.

And it made me think:  if I wouldn't speak that way to a friend, why am I speaking that way to myself? And when I do, what message am I sending my kids about having shortcomings?  Am I teaching them to be afraid of their limitations?  Am I teaching them they can't be honest about their imperfections?

I want my kids to know that God will equip them to do the work he calls them to do:  that the purpose of life is to receive the treasure and not just to pretty up the pot in hopes that no one notices it's made of clay.

More practically, pressuring myself to Do It Right All The Time is stressful.  It obscures, I think, my ability to see a situation clearly and make wise decisions.

As always, even though I loathe the letting go, it brings freedom.  I'm in the middle of seeing what Barbara Coloroso and Greg Popcak have to say about outbursts in 8yo boys.  Will that be what we need to weather this recent round of storms?  Maybe.  Will we need to get professional input on why these difficult spots seem to pop up regularly?  Maybe.  I don't know right now.  I'm okay with that.  For now, at least.

I am trying to think of one more acronym since neither SWOOP nor LIMP will fit.  Perhaps you could call me HOP (for Humbled Optimistic Parent).  The Energizer Bunny of mothering, you think? -- still going, even when she's not quite sure where.

Better acronyms welcomed.  Tonight instead of sitting here trying to figure one out, I'm going to wash the dishes and go to bed.  Gentler with myself, and all that.