Story Club #5

We have a busy day today, and yesterday was full too, leaving me little time to write. Yesterday evening was the 5th story club. Liam read a couple of sections of his, then Clare read, then I read some of Kieron’s and some of mine, then Liam read a rather long section of Brendan’s. This one particularly blew us all away. It was about the hero of the story meeting up with a legendary Titan, and the Titan’s Lear-like tale of his sons’ rebellion against him. Brendan’s “book”, started when he was fifteen and ending when he was 17, displays a trajectory of his increasing writing ability, and this part was a benchmark.

Afterwards Clare’s friend asked the boys how they came up with their ideas and how they planned. Brendan described what he calls a “plotline” — what he does to plan is write out a simple narrative of the events. He said the first plotline he made was simple a run-on sentence separated by commas but now he’s a little more precise, he says.
I think this is a good idea…. I may try it.
Yesterday, I was a bit humbled in feeling that my story came off quite low on the scale! Liam and Clare and Brendan can really write. I have lost some of that story-writing intensity (through my own grievous fault) and it’s hard to get it back…. but rewarding to see the teens doing something they love, working together as colleagues. It is a good thing. I wanted to write it out briefly though I wish I had time to write the account of the whole day, a day that “walked in beauty” . Maybe some other time….

Wonder is a word that gets stale from overuse but the concept is an important one and worth trying to capture in words

But this is not my day to do so since I now have to scramble into practicality and get two little ones and their equipment ready for a trip to homeschool group and then to town to shop with two teenage girls!

Aidan and the Vacuum

Aidan has a gift for challenging himself, in his good time.

Last fall our old vacuum cleaner died and we got a new one. Aidan was terrified of it. At first, he cried whenever I brought it out of the closet. All this winter, whenever it came out, he would run into the master bedroom, the most remote place in the house, and shut the door.

Around spring, he started coming out of my room after I switched the vacuum off, to tell me “I need to hug the vacuum.” He would approach it reverently, give it a brief faux embrace and run off. The next step was wanting to wrap the cord, which he expressed as “I want to do the up and down.” (because when I’m helping him wrap it, I help him with mental motor processing by say “up, down”).

The other day:

“MOM, I want to do the vacuum!” Wow! What a sudden breakthrough! So the day Clare’s friend was coming, he vacuumed the upstairs. And today he asked if he could vacuum his daddy’s home office, which inspired Kevin to put away all the boxes that had been living on the floor space for several months.

I am so encouraged not only by his motivation to “emerge” but also by the way he is incrementally mastering various self-help and life skills on his own time-table. He loves to help in the kitchen, as well. It gives me a projection into his eventual adult life. Of course, we don’t know what the future will hold for him but the more he can cope with these kinds of tasks and show desire and ability to learn, the better it will be.

His occupational therapist called up sick today and won’t be up here again until the 19th. Summer’s always a scanty time for formal therapy but he seems to progress pretty well in the interims, too.

Aidan and one of his teenage brothers.

Planting (A Few) Seeds in June

We didn’t seem to have a whole lot of strewing this June. I’m going to call this post “planting seeds” instead of strewing because I notice that a lot of the neatest things that happen here come out of tiny, almost imperceptible or else quite casual beginnings.

Photography

This month, getting a camera was a big one. Before that, Clare had been motivated to start taking pics using her older brother’s basically obsolete digital. This motivated me to splurge a bit and buy a quite basic but still decent updated model. I love my camera! It’s to my old analog like email is to writing letters. I used to hesitate to take pictures because I knew several of them would turn out badly, I’d pay money to develop them and have to go through all the trouble of sending them out or bringing them somewhere and then picking them up. Then all the organizing — not worth it to my inner sloth, I guess.

But now!! So easy and it’s been a family thing into the bargain. The kids can take pictures and if they aren’t good, so easy to delete. I stay in the moment better, I find, if I can DO something in the moment, and picture taking fits the bill. Then there is the reinforcement of memories (which is the main reason I wanted to buy the camera in the first place).

The camera was the main thing as far as strewing went, then.

Music

We also may have the startings of a musical plant, too. Clare of course has been devoted to music for some time, but now Liam is regularly practicing the guitar and on Sunday we had a beginner duet from the Noad book. I am planning to buy the Suzuki violin books and at the same time, maybe, the piano accompaniment and a couple of the beginner Suzuki piano books as well. I would like to teach Kieron or have Clare teach him.

Real Seeds

Or rather, bulbs. Clare planted her grandma’s irises that the Forest Service made her remove from next to her cabin up near the summit. She has been taking care of the front yard.

That’s about all. We had 3 birthdays, 1 surgery, and an anniversary. So maybe that was enough to occupy the month. Now life gets busier with a friend visiting, then Independence day and a possible stay with relatives, then a trip up north to visit friends, then football season. Summer always goes faster than we expect it to!

What Else Could You Need?

Maureen at Trinity Prep School summed it up:
Black Coffee and Conversation
A roundup of carnivals of interest to homeschoolers.
So, next time I have a cup of coffee in my hand....

Being Present

It has been hot and unusually humid up here in the mountains, Brendan remarked on how high the barometer was, and today the weather finally broke and there was rain and some thunder. We have acquired a habit of going outside after dinner when dusk is falling, to avoid the heat of the sun. Aidan likes to roll his wheel and trucks down the driveway and push around anything that he can find with wheels — the wheelbarrow, the utility wagon, his stroller.

The older boys like to give the hose to Aidan or Paddy and run away from the spray. Even more fun than a sprinkler!

Kieron is reading the Narnia Chronicles and tonight I read him some of The Horse and His Boy. Tomorrow I’d like to look through our books and find some more so we can get back in the habit of read alouds. For some reason it seems to get pushed aside a lot.
We spent a lot of time cleaning today because Clare has a friend coming to stay for a few days. On busy days I have trouble remembering everything I am supposed to be doing — I get sidetracked so easily — so I came up with a system of writing each thing I needed to do, or memoranda about things I didn’t want to forget, on an index card as it occured to me. So that’s what I did and it was so helpful I’m going to keep doing it. It was easy to have cards in different convenient places and to shuffle and reorganize in order of priority. It is also encouraging when I look back over the completed cards and can actually see what I’ve accomplished. I wrote the memos on the top of the card so I can cut off the completed part or blackline it and then re-use the cards some other time
We had Story Club meeting #4 tonight and I read a bit of Kieron’s story The Adventures of Link. Liam had written a really nice description of a giant lizard. I am struggling with my “background story”.
They watched The Maltese Falcon.

It seems pitiful to have to write this out, but in my continuing efforts to “be present” for my family I wrote out the following which I’ll paste here since this is a pretty pitiful journal day:

Ways to Be Involved with the Family Life:

(without stressing out too much)

• Take pictures
• Cook
• Organize things and plan how to use them with kids
• Read Aloud
• Play a game
• Go outside
• Exercise and talk
• Eat together

Take an interest in the family:

• Their ideas, what they talk about
• What they do and look like
• What they learn.
• Their possibilities

I actually did do most of these things today but I don’t seem to be able to summon up the energy to write about it

Special Needs and Learning

Cindy at Apple Stars wrote a beautiful post bringing out some aspects of teaching special needs children that I had skipped too lightly over in my post on Readiness. She writes:
“However, I take exception with trying to connect these ideas with more challenged children, such as those with autism (not high functioning or Asperger’s), Down’s Syndrome, mental retardation, etc.. I have first hand experience in this area, and it is very, very different than just providing an unschooling environment. I have several children with autism and one with other pervasive developmental difficulties. If all it takes is the typical learning environment that values and respects the child’s timeframe, there would be no such thing as autism! There are some biologically different brain structures that prevent a child with autism, for instance, from learning from their environment.”

I do not have Cindy’s experience with severe developmental disabilities in children and I respect her wisdom on the subject. I think she is right to make the qualifier , so I wanted to post it on here. I should note, though, that the book I was commenting on does not support standing back from intervention or merely providing resources. (though I see that what I wrote originally probably sounded that way). Rather, it was talking about suiting the intervention to where the child was at the time, not trying to somehow “catch him up” to his chronological peers by skipping through important developmental steps.

So the focus was on critiqueing certain types of early intervention that look more like applying a band-aid of “scatter-skill” behavior than truly treating the disability at its source. My experience with Aidan’s Early Intervention, for instance, was that it sometimes functioned as a sort of “pre-HeadStart” — teaching the children to sit in circles and accomplish prescribed tasks that had little to do with his developmental level, and often in a behavioristic way that had limited effectiveness for him. I don’t feel he really benefited much from therapy until he got past the EI stage and started working with therapists who were more focused on him as a unique individual.
I am still thinking through how unschooling works with a child with significant developmental disorders. So far, my experience with “unschooling” Aidan has been positive. However, it has definitely been in a context of regular therapy focused on his developmental needs. He sees an occupational therapist weekly and receives speech therapy weekly during the school year. His team of therapists have been extremely helpful in targeting problem areas and giving suggestions for exercises. During the week, I look for ways to put these exercises into his life in natural ways suited to his interests. So there is a mixture of targeted therapy and flexibility. So far that has worked and he has progressed well.

In the spring I wrote an article about special needs for a Catholic newsletter. I’m going to post it here because it goes into more detail about the way I approach Aidan’s learning. I hope it clarifies what I was talking about with the interaction between developmental timetable and living environment. Because it was a homeschool newsletter, the article deals mostly with the academic side of learning, but it’s basically the approach I take with other aspects of his life too.

I should mention that Aidan has cerebral palsy which affects mostly his left side. He also has had many hospitalizations for complications related to his birth condition and subsequent liver transplant. He just turned 7 and functions as a 4 year old. So his delays are significant but moderate. He had less than twenty words at age 3 when he phased out of EI but by now has a pretty sizeable though slightly rigid vocabulary probably comparable to an average 4-5 year old’s.

Aidan learning to walk at age 2

Special Needs in the Homeschool

Aidan is going to be 7 this summer (website www.topm.com/aidan). He is a wonderful child who has some cognitive delays and processing difficulties. He has 5 older siblings, which has given me some experience with the quirks in “typically developing” childrens’ learning. So I have been trying to reflect on what has helped me with them and what parts of that can be applied to Aidan’s education.

First of all, I believe every child can benefit from a Catholic classical education. The goal for an Ignatian education is that the student learn to think, speak and act well, and to be a Christian influence on the sphere in which he lives and works. Aidan will do these things in a different way than his oldest brother who is presently attending Thomas Aquinas College. But the broad goal is the same: they are to do their best in whatever area God has called them to.

Secondly, Ignatian education is meant to aid the student in mastery at whatever level he is capable of. This means that the general methods used are effective for everyone, whatever their natural gifts or limitations might be. The methods are meant to lead to a higher level of achievement than the student would reach if left on his own. In other words, we can help our special needs students be successes in their own ways. A solid grounding in a few key skills is much better than superficial understanding of a scattering of subjects, for everyone, but especially for a child with learning difficulties. We do not have to hurry; we can take things at the child’s pace.

The first step in teaching, whether a lesson or a long-term skill, is preparation. Prelection, or the preview of a lesson, is basically whatever the teacher does ahead of time to prepare the student to learn effectively. Motivation, demonstrating a method, and providing an introduction to the material in the body of the lesson are all elements of a good prelection. These elements are all related to each other. Knowing how to do something ahead of time inspires confidence, which helps with motivation. When a student recognizes parts of the new concept or information already, it connects with knowledge already in his mind. This kind of recognition can also inspire interest because it forges a new connection.

For the special needs student, preparation is especially important. It is important to know what the child’s likely struggles will be so we can know how to lay the groundwork for his learning. For example, knowing Aidan will have trouble with fine motor control, there are lots of things I can do with him during the time (hours, days, or weeks) before we ever sit down to a handwriting lesson. Scribbling on a chalkboard, writing in the sand with a stick, pointing out letters on a license plate and tracing them with our fingers. Preparation for holding a pencil or crayon may include exercises for hand control and strength. The opportunities are everywhere and they don’t have to take long if the child has trouble with attention span.

Because these preparatory activities may take more time with a special needs child, I have found it useful to plan some general goals ahead of time, and list the special difficulties that might be obstacles in the path of the goals. That way, I can look for a variety of different ways to work on the tools he will need. Perhaps an older child could help set some objectives for himself. Knowing that I want Aidan to progress in reading, I look for different ways to find reading in his environment. Since he has trouble with concepts like numbers, we count wherever we can so he has a concrete understanding of how numbers work.

I have noticed that preparation also helps build motivation and confidence in my child, and inspires some interest that might not have been there otherwise. For example, when he sees an “A” on a handwriting page or a reading book, he already recognizes it from several different contexts. If he can already hold a writing instrument comfortably and is familiar with the form of the letter from tracing it in other contexts, he is much more likely to succeed in actually writing it.

Laying the groundwork is important for all children, but even more important for children with learning difficulties, I think. There are benefits for the homeschooling mother, as well. Working with him ahead of time helps me to understand Aidan better: how long he can focus, what he is interested in, what his strengths are, how much repetition he might need. If the groundwork is laid, sometimes the actual lesson itself can be very short. If the lesson seems too difficult for him, I go back to preparation. Sometimes there may be a learning obstacle that I hadn’t noticed, that the lesson itself brings out. Knowing that, I can figure out strategies to work with the difficulty.

Once new material is introduced, repetition and recitation ought to follow in order to consolidate the knowledge. These words simply mean that concepts usually need to be presented several times and that in some way the child should have the opportunity to display what he has learned. In the younger years, or with a delayed child, this can be very informal. When Aidan memorized a short poem, he was thrilled to repeat it to all the members of the family. This provided recitation and repetition at the same time, and inspired confidence and joy. We try to look for lots of ways to celebrate Aidan’s progress both for his sake and ours. This is a great life skill for him to learn!

The goal is mastery of the material or skill. Basically, mastery implies knowing the material well enough to use it easily in a new context. I found that Aidan knew how to write a number 6 when he came up and showed me he had written one on his arm! Patience and flexibility are useful teaching tools to develop with any child, but especially with the special needs student. They lead to perseverance which again, is useful for all students but especially to a student for whom progress is often a challenging as well as a rewarding task.

Family Culture

I found the MotherStyles book at our tiny local library and was skimming through it yesterday evening while outside keeping an eye on the little ones. The basic idea is to find your Briggs “type” and apply it to the way you mother: “MotherStyles helps you break through the myth of the perfect mother and equips you with the self-knowledge you need to become a more effective …” The quiz was making the mommy-blog rounds a couple of weeks ago (I came out as an INTP though in the more complicated Meyer/Briggs tests I come out almost even between Thinking and Feeling) and the book basically expands on that, listing the strengths and struggles of various temperamental types in the Mother role (and also in the Dad and Child roles as well).

Personally, I find the personality typing concept very interesting. I understand our homeschool and family life much better now that I see that my kids are largely introverts, for instance. It helps me read various advice books in better perspective — for example, I read so many homeschooling books when I first started out that seemed to indicate that the perfect way to parent is to be an ESTJ — IE extroverted, focused on sensory and practical details, very routine-inclined and seeing things in plain black and white (ie behavior and character issues). There is nothing wrong with this personality type and it is actually one of the more common ones in the population, but it’s not the only one and it often made me feel like a “bad homeschooler” because I didn’t have the kids building our house, doing lots of chores and projects and unit studies, and keep behavior charts on the walls. Then I moved to classical where being an NT is rewarded and valued, but used some Charlotte Mason ideas to affirm my F and P traits.
One thing I found of value in the book was the idea of Family Culture being influenced by the composite types of all the members. For example, we are largely introverts rather than extroverts in our family. Both my husband and I seem to fall on the NT “intuitive/thinker” side of the continuum though the book suggests that most “T” women have strong “F” (feeling) traits as well because they have been enculturated in this.

I’m a “P” (perception) rather than “J” (judement) oriented person which means that my J family members are sometimes frustrated by my hesitancy to make snap judgements and decisions. I would tentatively put our Family Culture as an INTJ which makes our family focus on “Individual Integrity” — doing our own thing our own way and preserving carefully our own sense of honor. This does seem accurate. Knowing this and knowing my own temperament, I can be more thoughtful about balancing our family traits and my own traits so that what the book calls the “odd man out” doesn’t get misunderstood. (For example, Aidan seems to be an ESFP which makes him activity-oriented, wanting to be around people, influenced by his moods — I find that he wanders around and seems at loose ends unless there is a certain amount of activity and plans in the air).

Thinking about Readiness

On my other blog I collected the homeschooljournal conversations going on about readiness.

On a message board, someone mentioned Piaget and questioned whether it benefits a child to assign “accelerated” or above-grade-level work.

I’ve read some Piagetian theory in the context of special needs education…. just a very little. One very interesting book that talks a bit about Piaget’s theories is “When Slow is Fast Enough” . It is a thought-provoking book about the flaws in the way Early Intervention programs tend to be set up nowadays. The author Joan Goodman discusses Rousseau, Locke and Piaget in terms of their ideas of child development. She thinks that EI nowadays tends to be Lockean (”filling the vessel” or “writing on the blank slate”) with a thin and slightly hypocritical overlay of Rousseau’s child-centered theories.

She finds Piaget’s theories to be a balance between the two. According to the VERY little I’ve read on this, Piaget believed that children’s cognitive development was an interaction between their inherent developmental timetable and various triggers in the environment. The point of her book is that all the therapy tasks in the world cannot jumpstart or advance a child’s readiness.

Her solution is to create a rich environment both in terms of open-ended resources AND in terms of creative, warm personnel who are willing to play with the child on his or her own terms and be sensitive to the child’s developmental timetable. Somewhat like unschooling, in fact! and also quite a bit like Stanley Greenspan’s concept of Floor Time.

Momof3feistykids wrote in A Room of Her Own:
I once read (I have forgotten where … in one of John Holt’s books?) something that spoke volumes about what our culture does to children. The famous psychologist Piaget (well known for his research on stages of cognitive development) said that whenever he lectured in the U.S. - describing the typical stages through which children pass in developing cognitive skills - he was invariably asked what he came to think of as “The American Question.” The question was some variation of “How can I make my child progress through these stages faster?”

John Holt, whose thoughts I very much admire on the subject of children’s learning would I think go even further than Piaget in emphasizing the active role of the child in making sense of the world. The world and other people may have an immense influence on the child, but it is the child who is processing, sorting, assimilating, reflecting.
My Half-Thoughts….
What I have gotten out of all these theories is an essentially “real learning” type concept of learning. A continuum. You expose children to things that are above their heads but let them interact with the things in their own way and at their own pace. Of course, LIFE does that itself — babies enter a world of language, vision, motion — and what they do to adapt and respond is perfectly incredible.

At it’s best, education follows in that manner…. For example, the kids can listen to read-alouds that have rich, complex language — my 4yo loved listening to his Dad read Beowulf (the Ian Seraillier version) many years ago. Of course, he couldn’t have written a high school essay on it, but his enjoyment was real and vivid.

I believe Suzuki does this kind of thing with music (though I don’t know much about it) and I have read that the Japanese present math by letting the kids take part in solving very challenging math problems, way above their grade level.

John Holt recommended letting children participate in the real world and in real work, the meaningful kind that adults do. To me, this is another way to do the same thing. Apprenticeships and internships are based on the concept that being involved in a skill or profession — watching, helping, learning — is a great way to gain experience in a less stressful, richer situation.

And finally, John Madden and Bill O’Reilly in two books I read fairly recently, make a plug for the vanished world of sandlot sports where the children get to play a sport in a non-threatening, personal, informal environment. Again, rather the same type of thing.

On the other hand, when I give the kids a structured course where the material is “only one correct answer” and also too advanced for them, I find that poor academic results occur. They become experts at playing the guessing game, they don’t retain well, their understanding is second-hand and therefore artificial — all things I want to avoid in their learning process.

So much learning is consolidation, breadth and depth, not speed and height. advanced material has been worthless or even harmful when the readiness isn’t there, in my experience. But letting children participate in the world in all its complexity and richness allows them to take what they need and set aside the rest, without the opposite perils of fear of failure and boredom of too-easy material that John Holt described so accurately in How Children Fail.

Other References:

Continuum Concept — Jean Liedloff makes a case for the idea of natural discipline — children being brought up to participate in the daily work of the community.

My Five Year Old Knows Basic Interesting article– Will there someday be labelled “computer disabilities?” — “In summary, I have tried to present a basic outline of the ways children develop both intellectually and behaviorally. It is important to let a child work at his own speed and remember that not every child will take to computing, no matter how desirable a skill it is to learn. Understanding the child’s cognitive abilities and experiential world can help us construct the most meaningful teaching experiences possible.“

Fahrenheit 110

That’s how hot it’s supposed to get in town during this weekend. Help! So glad it’s about 20 degrees cooller up at this altitude.

In the car today on the way back from the homeschool group meeting, Clare told me about High Noon which they watched earlier in the week. She and Sean both reacted strongly to the film and despised the do-nothing townspeople. We had an interesting discussion about the different facets of pacifism and justice.

It was SO hot down in the foothills. Clare got to play the piano in the church down there. She brought the Phantom sheet music and the SEnse and Sensibility one. It is funny to glance in at her every few minutes. Every time, she has a different pair of kids sitting with her. First it was the little girls, then R and A (quarrelling) and then Paddy and Aidan. Cute.
The moms talked about when/if kids get organized and start keeping their rooms tidy, and how much help to expect around the house. It actually sounds like I have more household help from the kids than the others do, which makes me feel rather weird. But then, I have by far the most kids and so probably need the help. We all found that our kids were fairly willing to be helpful but weren’t exactly consistent. So I guess this is sort of the norm at least in this tiny sample

Aidan had a complete meltdown when we got home. He was all right during the meeting and then at the grocery store but flipped out and wanted me to keep Paddy in his car seat in the car. Paddy said rather pathetically, “Aidan wants me to stay outside. I’ll go outside, Aidan!” Paddy is usually the more aggressive of the two in the relationship but this time Aidan was being the unreasonable one. I put him in our bed with his Pika (and Kevin gave him a talking-to, which rarely happens) and he calmed down. He said he was sad about the bird getting angry — Oh-kay! I find it is very difficult, well-nigh impossible to know what is bothering him if I don’t already know what it is about. I am putting it down to fatigue since after all, he is still only 4 days out of surgery.

I thought of something else I want to try to do more of. Playing music. Now that the kids are a bit older, maybe I can squeeze in a few minutes here and there. Liam has been trying to be more consistent about the classical guitar playing so maybe we will have a lesson this week.

Kieron has finished several Narnia books and is now reading Robin Hood.

Sean has been playing Jedi Academy and Warcraft. I showed him the local newspaper where some of the kids he knows from seasonal sports are graduating from 8th grade and were photoed on a visit to Washington DC.

Kevin is still playing Rome: Total War off and on.

I actually got to read a storybook to Paddy — Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which Aidan got for his birthday. As I mentioned before they have been lodged in the board book/toddler story stage. It’s nice to go up a level, and Aidan was listening in a bit too.

Aidan is trying to learn to spell. He has his V-tech phonics board and has been focusing on the section where he is asked to spell words like Ink and Jet, etc. I tried to show him how to find the word on the board and then use it as a model but he is not there yet. However, he can consistently (about 60% of the time) find the vowel in a word, in another one of the game options. It helps that they are marked in red and there are only five of them. Also that the word is displayed on the little screen. But being able to glance at the word and correlate the letters with the choices on the board — that’s a fairly complex readiness skill. So can a developmentally delayed child benefit from unschooling? I would say yes from sample of n=1.

I wrote a little more of my story and saw Kieron typing away on his too. Every once in a while he asks me to spell a word: “prey” and “around” are two recent examples. Can’t wait to see it. Brendan is on page 80 of his new book and Liam tells me he is having some trouble keeping going on his.

We played outside for quite a while. Aidan got to be in charge of the hose so the older boys could practice duck and run. I only got sprayed about three times trying to read behind a post on the front porch.

Teenage Boys

If you have teenage boys, read Stephanie's great post on the 4reallearning board about Affirming Teens Great reminder and summary of general principles; and the ideas apply to all kids, as well.

I think the emotional tanks concept comes from Ross Campbell's How to Really Love Your Child;-- at least, that is where I first heard it. He has another book called How to Really Love Your Teen which I haven't read, but moms who I respect recommend it highly.

Teenage boys have their challenges no doubt but they are So.Much.Fun as well. My latest 13 year old.... cracks me up. I can remember when my younger brother went through that "superstar" stage (he's now a pastor), but my older two boys didn't, really, so it's fun to relive it now after 25 years. (The comments are attributable to him as well, if you couldn't already tell, and no, he's not really like that all the time -- how could he be, with 2 older brothers and 1 older sister? -- he was in a Gilderoy Lockhart mood when he wrote it)

Another book I am reading that presents an interesting account of the life of a Catholic teenage boy, from his own present perspective as a young father, is Swimming with Scapulars.

The St Michael the Archangel prayer is a good one to say for the young teenagers in our society. I say it nightly for my teens and for teenagers universally.

Typical Day #2

This is the way our days have been going recently.

I have been going to sleep pretty late at night so not waking up until about 8 am. I spend a few minutes checking email while the younger kids wake up.

Then I go downstairs and make breakfast and do some cleaning (since Aidan’s surgery — amazing how I have energy nowadays). I made waffles. Today my main project was to vacuum in the corners upstairs and shampoo all the carpets. I convinced Kieron and Sean to take Aidan and Paddy outside. I also swept all the accumulated ashes out of the wood stove and polished its windows and surfaces.

By then it’s about time for Brendan’s overview — so I make him hot cocoa and read Beowulf. Then I usually make lunch, then check mail again.

(I don’t clean for 3 hours straight — I have 7 kids so various interruptions occur).

Then I spend some time with the little ones, then have a rest and usually a nap. Since I am going to sleep at 2 am and being wakened at 8 am by Aidan saying, “Mom! Get up and make me some nachos!” I need to make up the extra hour or two somewhere.

Then some more cleaning or making phone calls or sorting papers or reading or hanging out with the kids, then dinner prep. Today I cleaned up a bit more, did laundry, then read When Character was King and watched City Lights with Kieron.

After dinner we go outside, then tonight baths, and then Liam and I say a Chaplet of Divine Mercy and a Rosary. Or sometimes we all say a decade together. Kevin and the older kids watch a movie (Murder, She WRote right now) while the little ones fall asleep.

Then I usually spend quite a bit of time on the computer, recently. Today I was tracking back through archives of an elist where I was posting updates on Aidan when he was having all his medical problems. My laptop that had all that stored crashed and died and I lost all the writing I did from that time period, so this was an attempt to salvage some of it. Yesterday night I wrote my article for a homeschool newsletter.

I am thinking we need more outside the home activities now that Aidan is on the mend, so I’m going to spend some time thinking about possibilities for that. NExt week a friend of Clare’s is coming to stay for several days, which leads to all sorts of planning, and then in two more weeks we will be driving up north to see friends.

Things I think I am neglecting too much:

• Healthy eating and exercise.
• Reading aloud to the guys, playing games, doing crafts — fun mom things.
• Writing my story.

Things I’m happy I am doing:

• Getting outside with the little ones daily.
• Getting the house looking better. Today was the first time in several weeks I haven’t been absolutely ashamed of it.
• Taking photos now that we have our digital camera.
• We are eating dinner together at the table! Big change and seems to work for everybody.

Eating Lunch!

Thinking about Laziness

I’ve been reading old discussions about unschooling; for example, here and here. One concern that seems to come up often with unschooling is to do with “laziness“. A lot of people seem to think that unschooling might work well if the child was naturally diligent or motivated, but that not all children are naturally that way. The idea is that some people if left to themselves would grow up to be bums or couch potatoes, and that that kind of person would be a disaster as an unschooler — unschooling wouldn’t “work” for them.

This idea bothers me on several levels so I thought I’d toss around some half-formed thoughts (this blog is my place to toss around half-formed thoughts ).

First, when I think about grown people who are un-productive or who don’t produce in a manner commensurate with expectations, I can think of a few categories they fall under:

1) Alienated. That is, people who aren’t very commited to whatever they’re engaged in, or who are resistant (passively or actively).

2) Debilitated. That is, people who have some underlying health condition or inability because of physical, mental, emotional difficulties. Either temporary or chronic.

3) Misplaced. Maybe this is a bit of both #1 and #2. Sometimes a person gets in a job or lifestyle which has demands that aren’t suited to their temperament or ability. Or don’t LOOK suited to their temperament or ability. I read an example recently — a shy college student who needed to earn money and got a job as a door to door vacuum salesperson.

All the people in these categories could LOOK “lazy” — which is a word difficult to pin down, because it is ultimately subjective and relative. But in each case the issue goes deeper and so would the solution. In the first case, the problem is not being engaged. Either the person doesn’t feel he CAN affect things, or he doesn’t care to do so. In the second case, the problem is with the underlying condition. Pinpointing and treating the condition would help with the problem. In the third case, the problem is the mismatch between the person and the situation. Since the person is more important than the situation, it seems reasonable to change the situation so there is a better match.

I wonder WHY we so often assume it’s the other way around — that the person should be stretched or compressed to fit the situation? This part of it puzzles me.

It can definitely be valuable to stretch or compress oneself, in certain circumstances. For example, a person who works very hard to accomplish a meaningful goal is doing something worthwhile. Laziness is defined as the lack of desire to do this.

But is it still laziness if you CAN’T do this in a particular situation? If you don’t really want to because it doesn’t seem important enough to you? If you sort of want to, but the difficulty is such that it doesn’t seem commensurate with the value of the result?

This seems to be where temperament and constitution come in, and these are embedded in one’s nature. My 10 year old is placid and calm and fairly slow-moving. His favorite activities are reading, eating, walking around outside watching things, and playing on the computer. My 13 year old is quite a contrast. He is always bouncing, jumping, wrestling, competing. He likes reading, eating, and playing on the computer too, but his pace is much faster and more aggressive.

They are hard-wired this way, so it doesn’t make sense to say that my 13 year old’s ability to do something quickly and efficiently is “better” or “worse” than my 10 year old’s ability to work calmly and patiently. There is no real moral virtue in either because it’s how they are.

They both stretch themselves by going outside of their comfort zone, whatever it happens to be. For 13 year old Sean, his comfort zone is activity so stretching might mean slowing down and taking time to think. For 10 year old Kieron, his comfort zone is an unhurried state so stretching means doing something strenuous.

But given this, is there good in ME requiring them to move outside of their comfort zone? I would think it depends…. I think natural family dynamics tend to move people beyond their comfort zones almost by definition. And that’s a GOOD thing. Families at their best also build natural commitment and help support weak areas.
My tentative thoughts:

–I think that it’s unfortunate, and usually futile and perhaps untruthful, to “label” someone lazy. Even in one’s own head. Because we don’t know what’s REALLY going on with someone else, and it’s unjust to put a label on someone that might turn out not to be the truth. We might see a disparity between what is expected, and what is actually produced, but that could be from any number of factors, in the categories I listed above.
–If we define laziness as an inclination to stay in our comfort zone, we can agree that all of us are tempted sometimes to that, not just certain types of people. So as unschoolers, we could acknowledge that and work on helping our kids manage the tendency just as we manage it in ourselves.

–Plus, I think it is not right to try to “solve” laziness by relying on other human factors that are just as unpleasant. For example, often schools try to eliminate what they see as laziness by using punishments and rewards. But putting fear and greed and pride in place of indolence is not really a great trade-off. Sometimes, the people who look diligent are really anxious or selfishly ambitious.

–Unschooling works from the inherent motivation of the child. And with the natural talents and temperament of the child. From what I’ve been reading, doing what you love and are suited for is the best way to develop diligence and perseverance and these traits can transfer over to other areas. But the key is personal choice and direction. Most fields of human endeavour involve some direction from outside sources, so “personal choice and direction” does not mean anarchy and aimlessness. To excel in almost anything means following in the footsteps of predecessors, and taking some kind of orders or advice. But it is important that this be self-chosen, I think. Even a small child who goes to brush his teeth at bedtime is choosing to act in response to his parents’ request.

–Unschooling, if it works for anyone, seems like it ought to work as well for the slower person as for the more energetic person. If a person temperamentally or physically has more difficulty doing certain things, is that a reason to push harder and coerce more? Unschooling would seem more likely to avoid the dangers of mismatch and alienation that result in people “looking” lazy. And it would let the “slow” more reflective person operate from his strengths while the fast energetic person could operate from his. A slow person might make an excellent naturalist while the fast one might be better suited as a soccer player. Both would probably have strengths as surgeons — Aidan’s pediatric surgeon is very calm and unhurried but obviously can do his work efficiently and well. But no one becomes a surgeon unless they, personally, think it’s worth devoting much work to the training. And that “worth” part is the part that unschooling focuses on.

(Here is a page about the danger of “lazy” which works at getting beyond the terminology a bit.) Oh, and update: it looks like Susan has been thinking about this subject too! Work Ethics Part I and Part II

Also, Unschooling and Laziness – message board discussion

Curriculum Planning and Laziness – about the efficiency of “laziness”.

Recovery Mode

Now that Aidan’s surgery is past, I feel energetic for the first time in about a month. I am looking at the house, wondering how it got so bad without me really being aware of it.

This is my basic system, when I have a system:

Daily Focus

Weekly Focus

I have these jobs written on colored index cards and I think I need to get them out because it seems to help me to work efficiently when I have some tangible objects to shuffle through and categorize.

Today, I basically just spent sorting and tidying. There were so many things out of their rightful places that it will take some time just to restore them, let alone the actual cleaning that needs to be done.

Oh, and yesterday the digital camera finally came. So yesterday Clare took pics and today, we spent a long time installing the software and hardware so we could upload the pictures to the computer. Mission finally accomplished and we kept fairly even tempers though Clare has either inherited or acquired my habit of vocalizing frustration, only she does it in reverse ratio to our respective ages. She’s about a third my age and she multiplies the venting times three. Whatever. But it was definitely one of those life skills sessions and I was glad to have her helping me since reading instruction manuals and interacting with computer capabilities is not my thing.

Tomorrow, the kids need to do their weekly jobs, and clean their rooms.

This evening, we had our third Story Club meeting. The second one was held on the porch of Grandma’s cabin by the lake last week, and I never wrote about it because, well, we were at the cabin and when we got home there was too much going on in the present to actually write about what had gone by. The first one was just Liam and me. The second one included not only us, but also Clare, Brendan, Sean and Kieron. Kieron expressed a wish to start working again on his Adventures of Link story which he had stopped working on almost a year ago. Clare and Brendan said that they might like to read parts of their stories in the next meeting.

So at this meeting, Clare and Brendan brought their stories as well. We made hot chocolate and I had coffee. First Liam read, then I read a bit of Brendan’s (since Brendan was a bit embarrassed to read himself), then Clare read some of hers, after a LOT of stalling and Sean teasing and generally being a “swine 13 year old” (Inspector Clouseau’s choice of adjective). When she did read, she read absolutely beautifully with a slight brogue that made her folky tale of faeries come alive.

Then I read mine, and Liam read some of Brendan’s.

Results: Brendan is thinking of doing his own reading aloud at the next meeting, and Kieron got Liam to transfer his story over to my computer so he could print it out and start working on it again. Pretty good! Times like this make me feel so good about how we function as a family.

After that, since I’d promised Aidan I’d take him outside, I went out with him even though it was 9 pm and dark outside. All the kids came out, except Liam (who isn’t really a kid, of course). That was good too — Paddy was so cute like a small white shadow with white feet, since he was in his socks. We kept the little kids clustered near us because though we hardly ever get any traffic on our cul-de-sac, any car that would chance to come would not be expecting little kids on the street at that hour.

Aidan actually was acting BETTER today than he has at any time since he got his tube out May 18th. Poor guy has been living a post-surgery life for a month and this is real progress now! No more leaking or acid pains. The incision is absolutely beautiful. The scar will be minimal.

Story Club Meeting

Finally Past

Aidan’s surgery went well

I will sum up Monday in a few words:

• Significant PMS.
• Trying to keep a post-surgical but active pre-reader a “couch potato” for the day, per doctor’s orders.
• 5 hours of interrupted and nightmarish sleep the previous night, in a strange bed.
• Weather — temperature in the 90’s, no airconditioning, hay fever.
• A panic attack when I realized I had given him the Motrin dose for his age rather than his weight, which puts him in the lower dose category. (No harm done other than to my nerves and mother-guilt levels)

Nuff said, I’m sure. We all survived.

A night’s sleep made a BIG difference and I woke up to what felt like a different world. Really! trite as it may seem. Aidan’s medical condition and the pending surgery combined with the normal June post-trauma stress put a cloud over everything. I was struggling through each day and, I wish I would learn not to do this, berating myself for my sloth and laziness.

I woke up today and it was SUCH a big difference! For everybody.

Life’s much better now!

Learning and Readiness

Interesting blog conversation about developmental readiness:

On Being Ready by Steph at Throwing Marshmallows
My Thoughts on Being Ready by Faith at Dumb Ox Academy
Thoughts on What, When and How Children Should Learn by Mom of 3 Feisty Kids at A Room of My Own
Interesting Converations by Steph at Throwing Marshmallows

I have no working brain to speak of, heading out of my oldest son's 20th birthday -- wow, it isn't every day that one's oldest son reaches the 2 decade mark! -- and into Aidan's surgery and Brendan's 18th birthday -- TWO of our sons old enough to be considered voting citizens of the USA! not to mention our 21st wedding anniversary. Talk about transitions! I don't know if I am ready for this learning stage in my life. But I think they are ready and that's what counts.

The two oldest sons!

Classical Unschooling for Dads

A couple of years ago, my dad gave us some Teaching Company tapes — one set was Rufus Fears Famous Romans which Kevin (my husband) just loved. He is on his third listen-through of it, currently. Later on he went on to listen to Garrett Fagan’s History of Ancient Rome — not quite as lively as Fears’, but interesting.
When we went up to Oregon for a work trip, he went to the used bookstore and bought Caesar’s Commentaries which he has just finished reading.
Now he has just started playing Rome: Total War which he bought for Brendan a couple of years ago. Tonight he played part of the Rufus Fears tape for Brendan — who laughed out loud, it is so funny the way the professor summarizes encounters with the Belgii, the Helvetii, the Gauls and the Germans — and now is asking Brendan for advice on how to play the game.

He’s also “toured” Italy and especially Rome via GoogleEarth.

Meanwhile, Liam is trying to read the Commentaries in Latin after having studied Latin last year at college via Wheelock’s. Caesar was traditionally used as the schoolboy’s entry into reading Latin according to this site — which is borne out by the anecdotal evidence — Liam’s grandfather remembers being introduced to the Gallic Wars in his Catholic high school St Ignatius back in the late 40’s.

Dr Fears says that Cicero called Caesar’s style: Nudi sunt, recti et venusti “Spare, direct and engaging”. Quoting Plutarch, he said that Caesar was once found weeping and when asked by his friends why, replied, ‘I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?’ He remarks that Caesar can rightly be reckoned a genius when you think that, during his brilliant campaigns, he was learning as he went along — quite unlike Alexander who had been trained to be a campaigner from earliest boyhood.
Why am I writing this out? Because it’s interesting to see how learning connects across generations, over time and in different media.

Two Decades and Counting

Liam brought me over to the granite ridge near our house to show me the carpenter ant hive he had discovered last year before he went off to college. We walked along a trail dotted with wildflowers, jumped over a small creek and were at last near a fallen, decaying, massive trunk of a tree broken into several sections. For several minutes we watched the ants busily going in and out of a crack in one of the sections, Liam pointing out how they worked to push little scraps of sawdust out onto the dirt below, how intricate and quick their work is, little details that were almost invisible to my eyes.
Today is his twentieth birthday. I was not that much older than he is now when he was first given into my arms as a newborn. It’s strange to think that, as I discussed with him this morning, that his memories now will be clear, adult ones. I can remember so clearly how I thought and felt as a 20 year old. It is not so different from how I think and feel now, even though I am more than twice that age.
He asked for Pierre De La Rue’s Lamentations for his birthday. He got some other CDs and a couple of books and games. We went to Mass. We had a vanilla cake (Aidan blew out the candles) and watched Liam get his presents (Aidan helped me wrap them and eagerly helped Liam open them!). We said our usual Chaplet of Divine Mercy and then just a decade of our usual Rosary, since it had gotten late and Liam had a cold. The other kids went to watch Amadeus while he went to bed.

Tomorrow we’ll be going to Grandma’s house to spend the night and then, Aidan’s surgery. Tomorrow’s also Father’s Day. The next day’s our anniversary, and next week is Brendan’s 18th birthday. Seems so strange somehow — when I think of that newborn Liam. So much has happened since then, and still it seems like such a short time.

Update on Baby Birds

Today’s the day that the baby steller jays left the nest! We’ll try to get some pictures later but right now, we’re afraid to step out on the deck and spook them. They are so precarious in their flying ability –right now it’s more like coasting and dive-landing.

Bits and Pieces

As usual, when I write out my journal, I miss various things that are going on that I am not directly involved in.

For instance, Kieron and Clare have been taking pictures:

Paddy playing with “guys”

Can you see the steller jay on the pine branch there? This is one of the parents of the four baby jays living on our deck light.

You can’t see the babies, really, but you can see the messy nest sprawling off the side of the lantern.

Whenever I go out on the deck, the parent bird flies off with a mad rush of wings. One of the boys said she was a coward — she should stay and protect her babies! It could be though that she is trying to misdirect our attention — she is certainly not quiet in her retreat and she stares intensely at us until we leave. If we seem to get too close to the nest, she starts flying from branch to branch. We have not tested what she would do if we actually touched the nest — and don’t intend to. I suppose in the next few days the babies will actually emerge — they already look quite crowded in there.

Aidan and I have been spending quite a bit of time “googling” — he loves to look things up on the image option of Google and when he sees something he especially likes, he says, “Make it bigger!” whcih means put it in the photo editor so he can enlarge it and if he REALLY likes the image, he says “Print it out!” Recent print-outs have been: a stroller wheel, two pictures of Saturn, a picture of a cat, and a picture of the freeway with lots of cars.

No math taking place that I can see — well, except for Kieron calculating and handing over money to order a Bionicle. I guess that is math.

Clare has switched from Saxon Algebra to Jacob’s but hasn’t given me an indication of how it is going, yet.

Waiting Days

Aidan woke up asking me to make doughnuts. Since it’s cold enough up here so that I’ve actually made a fire in the woodstove for the last couple of days, I guess the timing is right! Dough in the process of rising right now. Thanks Kitchen-Aid!
Aidan, Paddy, Kieron and I are all suffering from colds. So the past couple of days have been slow, and sort of drippy. Aidan is sitting in my lap and saying, “the egg evolved into Togepi!”

Things have seemed in a bit of a slump recently. Objectively, I KNOW it’s because of Aidan’s upcoming surgery combined with cumulative stress (he’s so often sick or in surgery in June for some reason). Yet I can’t seem to help feeling guilty and discouraged about it. Kids playing too many computer games, me taking too long to transition from one activity to another.

So, things I am happy I DID do:

• Spent a long time outside with Aidan and most of the others, timing Sean’s runs and chatting with the neighbor about her track experiences.
• Made a pretty good dinner for all of the family — grilled steak, asparagus, corn and homemade icecream for dessert.
• Pushed Aidan around in the stroller for a long time while Clare did a play by play compare and contrast of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean with the lame junior novelization version we got at the library.
• Almost finished reading the most recent section of Brendan’s “book”.
• Interacted with Aidan’s occupational therapist.
• Got the guys to do their weekly house cleaning in preparation for the OT coming, so it actually looked pretty OK by the time she arrived –whew.

Clare has taken the front yard in charge — raked out the pine needles and bark chips and has plans for gardening.

We got the inexpensive digital camera we ordered — or at least, we got the box and all the accessories — no camera inside! SO I sent a complaint to the company and got an excellent response, and they are sending us a new one and letting us keep the accessories. Good enough, but we won’t have the camera in time for Aidan’s surgery, unfortunately

Sean and Kevin went for another run.

On unschooling and games

–since that’s about all we have been doing around here anyway…. not really, but that’s how it feeels right now.
Waiting days and in-between days are hard, I guess. I would like to think of some way to make them beautiful; maybe they are beautiful in their own way but I am usually more tuned in to the beauty of an energized, creative, free flowing day.

Off to change a diaper and put on a bandage.