Sundays with Stretchy Pants

You guys, you don’t even know. I’ve been away. There was snow. There is even more snow now, which is making me miss out on paczki which is total bull! There was an unschooling conference that blew my freakin’ mind all over the place in a million different ways from moment to moment and I love it when that happens. Well, after the anger goes away I love it when that happens. I can always tell when I need to look into something more by the level of my defensiveness. The more defensive I am, the more I need to take a hard look at myself and figure out why. Even if you’re not an unschooler, I promise this post is relevant because I think it boils down to treating children respectfully while not being a doormat or a martyr. It’s a difficult dance and I don’t do it well, but I’m open and I’m learning.

There was one particular conference conversation that devolved into defensiveness on both sides and I’ve been thinking about that for days now. For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that it boiled down to one person saying, “I’d like my child to take his dirty oatmeal bowl to the kitchen instead of leaving it in the living room,” and the other side saying, “But that’s your need, not his so if it’s important to you, you take it to the kitchen.” What does that have to do with unschooling, you ask? Don’t ask. Just go with it. Don’t worry about it unless you are an unschooler. And if you are, join a yahoo group and ask them. It will be fun, I promise. Anyway…

One thing led to another and there was shouting. It wasn’t pretty. I can’t speak for the other people, but I know that my defensiveness can be attributed to my own baggage. Those two sentences up there are rife with subtext, depending on the baggage each listener carries. When some people hear, “That’s your need, you can take care of it,” they interpret that as, “The precious baby children never, ever, ever have to help clean up anything. Ever! And you’re a big fat meanie for telling them to.” As a recovering doormat, I have all kinds of that baggage for sure. When I hear that, I imagine scenarios in which I am called upon to do everything all the time with no option for anyone else in the family to pitch in. I look even more haggard than usual in those imaginary scenes. You guys, I can’t afford to look more haggard. For real.

On the flip side, when somebody in the audience at an unschooling conference says, “I think my child can clean up after himself,” some people interpret that as, “I think it’s okay if I scream at my child in order to get him to clean up his stupid crap that’s spread from one end of the house to the other.” I have maybe a carry-on size piece of that baggage, too. I imagine all sorts of scenarios with a shrew-like parent barking orders and belittling the kid. In those scenarios, I’m the wide-eyed little kid and I was a super cute little kid so those imaginary scenes are especially heartbreaking.

I know for sure that my sizable baggage collection and my knee-jerk defensiveness really don’t allow me to see the middle ground that might be there in both of those instances.

Maya (6) gave me a perfect example to show me where our middle ground is. She wanted some hot chocolate and she wanted to drink it in the living room. I said, “Sure, just bring your mug to the kitchen when you’re done.” A half hour later Maya was off doing something else in the kitchen and I walked through the living room on my way to the kitchen and I saw the half-empty hot chocolate mug on the coffee table. Here is where the middle ground came in. I had a choice. I could call Maya back out to the living room and say, “Young lady, I thought I told you to take care of this mug,” or I could just take it with me on my way out to the kitchen and not say anything. I did the latter and when she saw me bringing her mug to the kitchen she said, “Oops! I forgot!” and I said, “No big whoop, I was coming out here anyway,” with a smile and we both moved on because it’s not a big deal if my kid forgets to take her mug to the kitchen when she’s done with it. If I had been in the living room with her when she got up to go to the kitchen, I might have breezily said, “Grab your mug, Sweetie,” and she would have done it without a second thought. No big deal.

The situation playing out in just that way is what I strive for. Cleaning up is not a big deal. I didn’t take it as a personal attack that she didn’t pick up her mug. It had nothing to do with me. I didn’t need to shame her for forgetting and it’s not just because of her age. I don’t want to emotionally manipulate any of the members of my family in order to get them to do something for me. I don’t want to withhold affection until they do whatever I ask them to do. I also don’t want to just never ask them to do something like take care of their mug because it’s no big deal. It’s a big picture thing, not a nit-picking, point by point, make sure the scales are always balanced kind of thing.

I asked her to take it to the kitchen, knowing she would likely forget just like I sometimes forget my own mug because I get distracted by something. No big deal. Why did I say something, knowing she would likely forget about it? The same reason I say, “That’s a flower,” to a baby who can’t say “flower.” It’s part of the language of our family and it’s a skill that will be picked up and used and then put away and not used from time to time. Because cleaning up is no big deal and forgetting to clean up is also no big deal. This is not setting her up for failure, because I don’t consider forgetting to take care of a mug a  failure. We don’t treat it that way, so it’s not.

And now a fun thing from Maya. “The jaguar is stalking the hot dog.”

She likes to cut out pictures and make them do stuff together. This is what it looks like when she’s done:

And later I say, “Pick up the pictures that you want to save because I’m putting the scraps in the recyclables,” and she sorts them out and I scoop up the scraps and then she plays with the pictures again and it’s no big deal.

How convenient that New Year’s Day is on a Friday! Last year, my resolutions looked like this:

Pepper Paints is my friend Kristen in real life. It’s true. I know you can’t tell by our blogs, but we have a lot in common. I don’t want to sully her reputation by outing her poor choice in friends, but yeah, we’re friends. My kids go to her house and you’ll see them in some of her gorgeous pictures. And, you’ll notice, I ain’t no Pepper Paints.

In case you didn’t know, my kids run a product review website called Kids Know Stuff. We get pitches for stuff and sometimes we say yes and sometimes we say no and sometimes we get a pitch to review food and, because I’m hungry when I read it, I agree. That’s what happened when we got the pitch for some meatballs. I didn’t realize that the  best thing about the product was that they would come packed in dry ice. It came early in the morning. Ten o’clock is early some days. It was still summer and we are homeschoolers. It was after Labor Day, but that is still technically summer. Anyway! The dry ice came and we played with it. And I took pictures:

Not good pictures, and you’ll notice that everybody is still in their pajamas, but still. Technically, Maya is wearing a real shirt, but she slept in it so it was pajamas. ANYWAY! I documented it. We talked about it. I hit them with a ruler every time they said, “Look how it’s melting!” instead of “Look how it’s sublimating!” I thought that was appropriate.

It was out of the ordinary for our homeschool and Liberty hit the nail on the head when she said, “It’s almost like we’re at Kristen’s house.”

She was so right. It’s just not like Pepper Paints over here. But, let’s get into the way-back machine for a minute so I can tell you about a time when it was like Pepper Paints around here. People who knew me in Chesaning before Lena and Liberty were 6 can vouch for me. We did art stuff. All the frickin’ time. Until Lena and Liberty developed their own interests. And even after that, I still made them take clay classes and other art classes. Until they cried and I decided to take a hard look at why I was placing value on those things instead of letting the kids do what they want and just valuing the process. It’s easy to value traditional art over digital art. It’s easy to value reading novels over reading graphic novels. It’s easy to value perfect spelling instead of bloggy brainstorming (Lena and Liberty both have blogs and I used to make them do spell check and grammar with it, but that’s what Kids Know Stuff is for now. Their own personal blogs need to be their own personal brain farts, so back OFF! Sheesh).  But that’s not cool and that’s not what we’re about. We’re about teaching kids how to learn instead of forcing what to learn on them. Kristen’s house is the same way, but her kids’ interests are different. This is art for Liberty:

And Lena:

Maya is a bit more traditional artsy, and she gets out the scissors, paint, glue, fancy paper, stickers, and whatever else and does stuff with them. She also does this:

It’s called “Warren and Ruth.”  Warren and Ruth are Maya’s little friends.

This post is dumb. It started out being “I’m feckless because I suck at being like Kristen,” but then it turned into “I’m feckless because I used to try to force my digital kids to be more traditional,” and now it’s just “I’m feckless because this wasn’t really thought out all that well.” Sheesh.

Maybe you can do better. Be feckless (or point out the fecklessness of others) on your blog, on your Twitter, on your Facebook and leave a comment telling me where I can find your fecklessness so I can feel better about myself. You can link to me if you want to, but you don’t have to because I took my ads down and so I’m not a stat whore anymore. Good day.

Unlike Michigan, Ohio has laws about homeschooling. Every year we have to notify the school district that we’re planning to homeschool and we have to tell them exactly how we plan to do it. Also, the kids have to either take a standardized test or have a certified teacher assess them. And, while I know that some of you will think that’s a good idea, I can assure you that it does nothing to help the poor school-less children learn any better than in Michigan where you don’t ever have to do anything to notify the school district or whatever.

I don’t like to do the stupid notifying and I guarantee the school district doesn’t like to have to read and respond to all of the notifications. It takes time and money and I’m strapped for time and money and I know the poor saps at the office of Pupil Outreach or whatever are strapped for time and money, too. I know they are because it’s on the news all the time. Lame.

We’re supposed notify within 2 weeks of the start of the school year and I have forgotten about it until late August every single year until this year. Well, technically, I haven’t even notified yet, but the assessments are done. They’ve been done since May. I’ve just been procrastinating on the bit about writing the how-I-plan-to-teach-5th-and-1st-grade stuff. I don’t like to do that. I suddenly get very Ron Paul and I’m all “They’s my babies and I’ll do what I wants with ‘em!” Which, of course, is the stereotype that they’re trying to combat by making us do this kind of junk. This year, I just want to write, “I’m fixin’ ta let the young ‘uns lookit the internit and I’ll haul ‘em to the liberry every once in a while, too, iff’n they finish they chores on time,” and see what happens.

The thing is, we can say we’re going to do anything. ANYTHING. And then we don’t have to prove that we did any of it. See why it’s a silly system? I think the kids might have learned more in Michigan when I wasn’t bitter and didn’t have an unnatural urge to not do what I said I was going to do on the notification. So there, Laws! I think I get this attitude from Maya. My children have all taught me wonderful, precious things like how to love and be loved and how to annoy and be annoyed and whatnot. Maya (and maybe South Park) has taught me all about disdain for authority. Last night, she asked me to read the “How to Go Green-and make every day Earth Day!” tips out of the back of one of her lib’ral learnin’ books. After I rattled off the list of 7 tips she said, “Well, they’re not the boss of us.” And I said, “You’re right, honey, nobody’s the boss of us. Let’s go light some garbage on fire!” She wrapped her little arms around my neck and said, “I love you, Mommy.” Truly a precious moment.

(Cue mature motherly voice) I will notify today (or maybe by the end of the month, we’ll see), but the notification will be incomplete because true learning True Learning happens in those moments like I had with Maya last night. We can’t possibly plan those organic “teachable moments” which will stay with a child throughout her lifetime. So suck it, Ohio, because you’re not the boss of me.

This picture is a pretty good indicator of how Maya is all the time. Her mouth never closes and she’s always moving or posing. If she were my firstborn, I would have ruined that by now. She’s one of those self-motivated learners that I used to dream about before I had actual kids and only ever had dream kids. If Maya were my firstborn I would have taken her conventional, easily measurable learning style and I would have made it my thing and she would probably be having migraines at the sight of pencils by now. It happens. But it’s easy to just let the third child be. The first child (or set of children, as the case may be) does all the hard work, teaching us what’s really important and how everything all comes out in the wash. Nice of them. Maya can thank Lena and Liberty. They really had to work hard to show me everything will always be ok.

Lena and Liberty are unconventional learners and I used to panic about silly things at least quarterly until about 2 years ago. When it’s not easy for me (and The Entire World) to point to progress and measure “success” with grades and honor rolls, it’s hard to relax. At first. We have all of this hope (and fear) and all of this expectation (and fear). Academics can be measured, so it’s easy to feel like they’re the most important thing. But by the time the 3rd kid is here, we understand that these things all come out in the wash for the unschooly as well as for the schooly. It’s the kid’s life that’s the important thing. And we understand that she doesn’t need us to drive her and guide her as if her future depends on it because her future doesn’t actually depend on it. She has her own drive and we’re just there to supply the stuff for her that goes along with her particular brand of drive. Her future really only depends on knowing who she is and what she wants and knowing how to get it. Really. Besides, even the super-smartest child eventually turns into an average kid when all the other kids’ learning starts coming out in the wash so what’s the point of getting their identity all wrapped up in being the smartest when most everybody catches up eventually? Then they have to be all anorexic or drunk or something in order to stand out and that’s no fun for anybody. Nobody wants a drunk 7 year old on their hands. Then you’re in a pickle. Especially if the 7 year old was an early reader or math genius, then they really know about proof and alcohol content and stuff. Then where does all that learning get them? In the gutter! And then on a reality show with Dr. Drew or something. So sad.