Cindy at Applestars asked about how my kids and I managed ownership in the middle years. She writes:At about 11, when my children start to do more formal things, they learn to be in charge themselves . . . by about 13, they are doing well without any oversight or assignments from me . . . just curious if you’ve tried that to free up your time (with a large family like mine
and vest them more, or not?
In her page called The Collaborative Learning Process, which I printed out last summer because it was such a helpful outline, she writes:
The Collaborative Learning Stage (Ages 11-13). This has been an important transition stage between a more unschooling collaborative approach (collecting valuable information and honoring it) to a collaborative learning approach (sharing valuable insights about adult living and supporting the process in working toward their unique futures). This is where more formal discussions and frameworks are created in helping each child own and take responsibility for their goal-oriented learning lives.
I spent a lot of time in this stage helping each child figure out how to structure their learning and create goals by sharing information and insights about their learning style and timeframes by using learning collaboration.
I guess this is something like what I do, one reason why I thought her summary of “stages” was helpful, particularly since she compared it with Thomas Jefferson Education and several other “methods” that I’ve also read about. Her approach seems to focus on the signs that the child gives about readiness and to work in an organic mode rather than try to impose something top-down or on a strict schedule. This is something I value.
When I look back at what we did with our first three kids (my third is now 17) I see that they did come to this point where they were largely self-”vested”, but the details differed with every one of them. I think most of them were closer to 14 or sometimes a bit older when they got to the point where they said (more or less plainly) that they could do it basically on their own, thank you very much. By that time the older ones had internalized what we (the parents) were trying to do and as teenagers they seem to have a need to work out how that works in their own lives and with their own talents and interests.
For example, my oldest became very academically oriented. He studied Latin and Greek and went much further than I could have taken him. My second is a classic auto-didact, and there were some things I mishandled with him because I didn’t know enough about right-brained learning. I think there were some things I would do differently now with him, but a lot of things we did right by instinct, too. He devoted huge amounts of time to immersing himself in subjects of interest and I did a small amount of “requirements” with him on a daily basis because he needed the interaction for motivation and to work on some executive function skills. My third, my daughter, has become very focused on music and learning more about her faith heritage and on several other things. She is willing to plod through math and the less naturally interesting subjects because learning these things will help her meet her goals for college and life.
My 17 year old daughter meets with me for informal discussion and to set strategic goals and discuss future plans, but the daily and weekly work she manages pretty much under her own steam. Obviously, I’m always there to help her, but I haven’t needed to very much.
I see my 14 year old as just emerging into this stage. He has started to take an interest in planning for his future and already is the prime mover in getting his required subject areas done in the morning. I am still exploring, trying to find the parameters of what he is capable of. Besides occasional difficulties with math, he can coast easily through almost all his subjects. He has a bit of trouble with mechanics in writing and wants to tackle that. I decided to devote the rest of his 8th grade year to finding how he learns best and how to transition him towards seeing the big picture in his studies.
My just-11 year old is in a different boat. We spent much of last year basically radically unschooling. I learned so much from watching him and interacting with him during those days. However, my instinct at present is that he needs more one-on-one time and that some of it should be (loosely, collaboratively) structured. He doesn’t run to me asking to do his formal work in the morning, but he really interacts with the material and it’s a joy to be around him when this is happening. I don’t want to move him towards more independent work just yet in those areas. It is a chance to mentor him — being the easy going child in the middle, with two medically needy younger brothers, he hasn’t had as much one-on-one attention as some of the others.
About freeing up my time — honestly, when I was radically unschooling, I struggled radically with boredom. I even gained a fair amount of weight. It might work great if there were lots of community opportunities in our area or if my kids were very social or if they were all close in age. But as it was, I had to be on task to supervise the little ones and I tried hard to keep engaged with the older ones but it was just too much open time, too much waiting, too much the same every day and no real signs of progress. When I read Cindy’s Collaborative Learning outline and Anne Lahron-Fishers book “Fundamentals of Homeschooling” I realized that there wasn’t enough of a balance of open time and more structured time. I am really glad I experimented with it since it showed me a lot about how our family works, but it was a bit of a wilderness experience and I’m glad we’re past it now. At present, most of our formal work is finished by noon and we devote the afternoons to more unstructured activities. I’m finding it to be a nice balance.
This got looong and I don’t know how interesting it is, but anyway, it helped me to write it all out. Being right-brained myself, I work in fuzzy global mode a lot of the time and sometimes don’t know exactly what I’m thinking until I sit down and write it down and see it right there in front of me . LOL!
