Our Homeschooling

Our Homeschooling Approach

A Day in the Life the LONG essay that explains it all
Other Tidbits:
Perfectionistic Children Got one? Me too.
Why Do We Homeschool? I turn the question around.
Learning to Tell Time the unschooling way
Not Attending Preschool? They'll miss out on...
No Uninvited Teaching Don't push kids to learn!
Process not Product Making learning enjoyable
Parent-Teacher Conference Schoolish expectations and homeschooling.

Question:

My oldest daughter (6), seems to be a perfectionist. She gets very frustrated with learning a new skill if she can’t do it perfectly right away. She often pouts and refuses to do it at all. The latest example was learning to print. I have worked with her a bit and tried to give her encouragement. Already she has made great progress and I am not concerned about her ability, only her reluctance to try things that she can’t do perfectly right off the bat. Do any of you have ideas about how to get a child to accept less than perfect? I understand the concept of “practice makes perfect” but she doesn’t.

Response:

A while ago I responded to someone else’s question about a child who seemed to get easily frustrated and have very high expectations for himself. I suggested that certain children set very high expectations for themselves partly because they are extra-sensitive to their parents’ expectations for them. The parental expectations aren’t necessarily unreasonably high or misguided, and they spring from the wonderful belief we all have in our children’s abilities. But the child may not realize the expectations are reasonable. So I suggested that parents of such kids (like myself) should frequently examine their own expectations to keep them as low-key as possible. So I try to stop myself from saying things like “you’re doing so well with this, I’ll bet you’ll be able to do such-and-such soon!”

The other thing that I’m gradually coming to believe more and more is that trusting your own child is the key. Children who are pushed into learning skills before they are sure they are ready will react with anger and frustration. This is where an unschooling approach is helpful. If we wait until our children tell us (verbally or otherwise) that they are ready to learn something, they will generally learn it without tears, frustration, anger and with enjoyment of the process.

My daughter has insisted that I trust her to decide upon her learning readiness, as she is extremely clever at undermining my efforts to teach her when she is not ready. I’m teaching her to play the violin and often she will refuse to try something, or do it badly on purpose and then erupt in anger saying “I can’t!” So we leave it and some time later (a day, a week, or several weeks later) she will return to the skill and perform it almost perfectly--mastered immediately. She had clearly been building her readiness, rehearsing the skill in her mind, learning internally.

Some kids are happy to learn by doing. These are the ones for whom “practise makes perfect”. Some might call them kinesthetic learners. Others learn differently, developing a blueprint for even kinesthetic skills internally before trying things out. Their learning is no better or worse or more efficient or less; it’s just harder to see and therefore harder for parents to believe in.

It does not matter whether your daughter learns to write legibly at 6 or 8 or 15. I mean, it would only matter were she in public school where children who learn in different ways or on different schedules make the teacher’s job far more complicated. Since you have a computer, help her to learn some keyboarding skills instead so that she can express herself through writing without handwriting skills. Give her opportunities to explore other activities which involve fine muscle coordination if she likes--Spirograph, K’nex, Hama beads, a musical instrument, knitting. But mostly just let her show you when she is ready, then be there to offer what help she asks for.

I used to worry that my daughter would never learn that practise makes perfect, since I never see her stick with something that is hard. But you know what? She learns just fine anyway. It’s just that her “practise” is internal, where I can’t see her struggling with it. I just have to believe it’s happening and it is!

Why Do You Homeschool?

Not to be facetious, but I turn the question around. Why do others send their kids to school? Why do they feel that a 20:1 student-teacher ratio is better than the 3:2 ratio we have in our home? Why do children need their learning contracted out to paid professionals once they hit the age of 5? What makes learning about pioneers and simple fractions so different from learning how to brush one's teeth and answer the phone properly? Why do they feel that children should be "socialized" by a pack of age-mates? Why do they feel the need to be rid of their children for the better part of the day? Why do they feel that some educational bureaucrat's idea about what their seven-year-old should learn on a given day is better than their seven-year-old's own idea? Why do they feel that it is important that academic skills be mastered in a prescribed order at prescribed pace? Why do they believe that early independance from the security of the family environment is good for children?

See, my "status quo" is having the kids I love learning enthusiastically at home. It's working wonderfully well. Right now they are 5, 2 and 7 months. Why should I mess with the status quo just because they reach the age of 5 1/2?

Learning to Tell Time: the Unschooling Way

Most parents who are new to homeschooling probably put in more hours than are necessary, making it more like school than it needs to be. Since my children have never been to school, we have found it easier to steer clear of unnecessary structure. I have just continued with the sort of life we led when the kids were younger. I provide them with fun books, toys, art and craft materials, computer games, etc., and let them at them and help them pursue areas of interest.

My daughter Erin (aged 5) recently asked for help learning to tell time. No one was telling her this was what she needed to know next, but she knew this was something she was ready for. I've always talked to her about time; if she asked me at age three "when can we go to the park" I'd say "in fifteen minutes, when the big hand on the clock is pointing here", rather than "once I'm done this, in a few minutes". So she saw clocks being used in her world. When she wanted to learn herself, she had some conceptual framework to put it into, and she already knew how it would help her in her day-to-day existence.

Erin had become fascinated with a classical music/story tape we were loaned called "Maestro Orpheus and the World Clock", a fantasy story about the grandson of a clockmaker. It integrates music, time and memory in a poetic way, and Erin had been playing the tape several times a day. She then dredged up the works from a broken clock, begged a battery and carried her "pet Clockie" around with her, telling stories about it, talking to it, watching the second-hand and minute-hand move.

At my suggestion, we made a “learning clock” together from the workings of an old clock. We made a cardboard face, drawing out the numbers, measuring angles, using a compass and protractor and so on (I did this part, but she watched, and I explained what I was doing). Once it was made, she was able to move the hands around and ask me "what time is this?" and "is this 4:30?". We found a shareware time-telling game on the internet and downloaded that. She spent about 45 minutes total on it, on her own. After two days Erin was able to tell time.

I don't know how long it takes most teachers in public school to "teach" time-telling, but I bet it's a lot more than the 25 minutes I spent with Erin making our learning clock and answering a few quick questions. Probably weeks of sequential learning tasks: counting by fives, recognizing quarter-circles and half-circles, drawing clock faces, drawing in hands of clocks on worksheets. What made our approach so quick and enjoyable was that I waited until Erin wanted to do it herself. She chose to learn this quite early, but if she'd not been interested until she turned eight, I would have done my best to wait patiently.

Will My Children Miss Out By Not Attending Preschool?

Absolutely not!

Think about it: fifty years ago kids started school at age 6 or 7, not 3 or 4. Literacy rates were higher, academics more demanding, teenagers were more responsible, etc. etc.. Why is there a push to lower the age of school enrollment? Because it provides guilt-free child care for double-income families, NOT because it increases the well-being and achievement levels of kids. Home is best for our little children.

Somehow we've come full circle, though, and we stay-at-home no-preschool families are expected to justify our practice, which is no longer the norm.

Your kids will miss out on some things not going to preschool (I can tell you because my own eldest child was enrolled for a few months). It will take them a little while longer to learn that people can be brutal, racist, mean-spirited, and incredibly competitive. Instead they will believe, for the duration of their early childhoods at least, that the world is a sensible and reasonable place. They will not have little contrived assembly-line "crafts", made in "the correct way", just as the teacher shows them, to tape to the fridge. Instead they will draw and create for a few more years out of their own desires to express their artistic sensibilities. They will not learn that life is about conforming to age-stratified expectations. Instead they will continue to learn in ways which suit their own particular needs, personalities and developmental stages. They will not learn that it is a child's job to separate himself from the support and safety of the family environment as quickly and completely as possible. Instead they will have a firm sense of belonging in a haven where people love them no matter what.

The next time you catch yourself trying to justify your decision not to enroll your kids in preschool, turn the tables, at least in your mind. Ask how the preschool parents are intending to compensate for the early forced separation from the home, the early adherence to conformity, the loss of family-time, the reduced sense of security. Remember, you're not crazy -- everyone else is. Really.

Question:
I worry that given TOO much freedom of choice, children will choose not to focus on some important things that might be difficult. I am a university instructor and I see too many students who expect to be spoon-fed because they (as one student admitted to me) are never really required to work at difficult topics in high school. If they don't get it, they aren't pushed. And then they want all the answers and questions for my exams before the exam is given. I'm not exaggerating. Sure, we need to follow our children's leads, and pushing them too hard at an early age will just hinder progress. But sometimes, I know, they will need to be pushed. I know I sometimes did when I was in school. (My weakness was reading!)

Response:
A long comment about the idea of "pushing" students to learn things, and my alternative mantra: "no uninvited teaching". Your examples of university students hold no sway for me as the parent of young children, because I feel that once you push a child to learn, their love of learning, their thirst for challenge, begins to die, and of course the only solution then is to push more.

My baby is now 9 months and looking like she'll be an early walker. She's trying to take a few unaided steps today. It's darn hard work, frustrating, frightening and sometimes painful. But she's doing the work because she is hard-wired to learn, because she wants to be able to walk, because it is such an important part of growing up and becoming a little person of her own. Some babies won't start this sort of self-directed walking practise until 15 months, but barring some sort of physical disability, they all will become fine walkers.

But imagine that some expert decided that all babies should learn to walk by ten months, or be shunted into some sort of remedial program, and it was suggested that parents spend three 15-minute sessions on walking practice a day. My daughter would probably love it. She's ready to walk. But the child who wouldn't have been ready to walk until 17 months would probably tire of the practice, and then grow to resent it, fear it, resist it, and would start doing things like crying and going floppy when his parents approached him for walking practice sessions. Eventually he'd learn to walk, perhaps at 12 months, or 17 months, or maybe, if his resistence and fear were strong enough, at 21 months, but regardless, he'd start life feeling he was a "poor walker", a failure at one of his first important learning tasks. He'd probably have many of the same fears and expectations of failure when it came to other learning tasks. But his parents, and the experts, would probably end up patting themselves on the back, saying "Isn't it a good thing that we pushed all this walking practise? It was a lot of work, but it did work... look at him, he's walking just fine now. Good for us!"

See, although the "walking lessons" thing is a ridiculous hypothetical example, I think that many of these issues do get played out in the arena of learning to read, or studying basic mathematics, or whatever. You said you needed to be pushed to learn when it came to your weak reading skills. See, I'm guessing, but I'm pretty sure that you were like that baby boy who wasn't ready to walk until 17 months but was pushed to do it a 10. Some kids are reading-ready at four. Some don't get there until 9. It's not an intelligence thing, just a developmental thing. Late reading and poor reading are *not* correlated, unless (and it's a big unless) rigid expectations lead the late reader to see herself as a failure.

I have a homeschooling friend whose daughter showed no interest in learning to read until the age of nine. (My friend was a precocious reader herself, and is a writer by profession, so she found it very tough to sit back and wait for her daughter's readiness, but she did it.) One day, at age nine, her daughter picked up a "Frog and Toad" early reader and struggled through it from start to finish. Within one week she was reading "Anne of Green Gables". She's now seventeen and one of the best-read, most intelligent, interesting and impassioned teens I know. I'm sure that if she'd been in the school system and pushed to read by age 6 or 7, if she'd had to struggle because of her lack of readiness, she would be a "poor reader" to this day. And then, because she thought she was "slow", she'd have feared and resisted learning in other areas. So she would have needed to be pushed there to. And if she'd got to university she'd have wanted to be spoon-fed in exactly the same way that your students are wanting.

I realize my "no uninvited teaching" approach is rather idealistic, and that once kids enter the school system, there are lots of inevitable expectations that have to be met. For some kids, the ones who are lucky enough to have their developmental readiness mesh with the school expectations, this is no hardship. But for those whose timetable doesn't match the "mean", they may indeed get "pushed" in order to meet expectations. Then they become fearful, and begin to see themselves as "learning failures" and of course, then they have to be pushed harder the next time.

But my point, really, is merely this: we just need to make sure that we try, for as long as possible, to preserve our children's unadulterated love for learning, challenge, and hard work. From my point of view, this entails sticking to the idea of "no uninvited teaching". It also, from my point of view, is inextricably wrapped up in my decision to homeschool my kids.

Problem:
Last year when my son was in kindergarden ( at home not in a classroom ) the experience was NOT very positive, I feel like this yr has to be positive or my son will lose all interest in "school".

Response: I had to respond to this because it resonates very much with what I've gone through with my 5yo within the context of teaching her to play the violin. At one point I pulled myself up short and realized that I had to make the experience a positive one, or my daughter would lose all interest in music.

I wanted her to learn to play the violin, but I wanted the process to be enjoyable. There seemed to be an immense conflict between what she needed to do in order to learn and what she wanted to do in order to enjoy the process. There *seemed* to be an immense conflict. But, as it turned out, there wasn't. I suspect the same is true of your son's "academic" education. Let me elaborate.

What is most important right now is the enjoyment of the process. A kid who loves learning cannot possibly fail to learn, so your primary aim needs to be nurturing that love. If that love is strong, the rest will look after itself. So here's the trick: when you're working with him, stay "in the moment" with him. Ignore the learning objectives you've got in mind, and do a "system check" every minute or two: are we having a happy time? is he creatively and autonomously involved in this process? If the answer is no, you should back off, change tack, give him choice and autonomy, and above all, stop focusing on *your* list of learning objectives. Let him take control, even (and especially) if he chooses to abandon what you've been doing together.

I'd wager that by keeping the learning pleasurable for him, honouring his feelings 100%, putting the ball in his court, it will take less than a month until he wants to learn the stuff you're despairing over teaching him. With my daughter's violin, it took about two weeks. Once she realized the ball was really in her court, she picked it up and went farther with it than I could ever have hoped.

We're lucky, you and I, because our children are young and will forgive us quickly. When we take away their autonomy and stifle their love of learning with our own short-sighted goals, the "deschooling" process takes just a few days or weeks. Children who have had negative experiences in school often take years to get over it.