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Genevieve
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WJFR wrote:
When I look at families where the kids buy into their parents'visions and work ethics, WHAT is it that makes the kids buy in? Is it modelling by example, or exhorting, or directing, or punishing?
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I'll take a stab at this... I think deep down everyone wants to belong, children and adults alike. Everyone will grow to imitate those they are surrounded by. In the gentleness thread, Bridget suggested that I cultivate friendships with women I would like to be. For better or worse, my children will have some of my traits and visions, likewise I have picked up some of them from my parents. I think modelling, exhorting, directing and punishing all have influences, whether they are desireable or intentional. The question I think lies in atmosphere. Everyone soaks up the atmosphere they are in, children more quickly than adults. My time is up. Interesting thread.
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Genevieve
The Good Within
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Leonie
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I lkie the comment on atmosphere.
My twelve year old is interesting. He has been my most "out of sync, highly sensitive " child ( I hate labels but at least you'll know where he is coming from).
I can't think, off hand, of anything that I require from him. But he *has grown up in our home and
atmosphere so has picked up on certain habits.
For example, I don't make him brush his teeth or wash his face ( never have) or do his daily fitness - but he does them.
The other night he asked if he could miss these - I said the choice was up to him and so were the results.
Thomas said " I hate it when you give me choices. I wish you would tell me what to do. Then I could get cross with you. Now, I can't get cross cos what you say is OK. But I feel guilty if I don't choose the good thing."
So he chooses good over not so good. 
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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School
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juliecinci
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Willa I loved this whole post!
WJFR wrote:
| I doubt if many unschoolers actually do parent that way. I like the "mindful parenting" term better because it implies that the parents don't do things reflexively, just because of their own personal temperament or because they were raised that way or raised the opposite way. They think and explore alternatives, and try to model that for their kids. Anyway, that's what we try to do. |
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Yes, this appeals to me so much too. Love this way of wording it. It's that we are taking them seriously and we are supporting and exploring and helping and sometimes (for me a very few times) also limiting.
WJFR wrote:
| If the kid is putting up a stiff resistance, there is usually a REAL reason in their mind. |
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Exactly! This is just what I want to underscore in unschooling. It's the appreciation for the idea that a child's resistance is real and based on meaningful (to him or her) things.
When I teach writing, I often say that writing problems are not will problems. The mistake we make is often assuming that when a child is "blocked" in writing, that he or she is just being lazy or willful. But actually, blocked writers can be "unblocked" and most of them are so grateful to finally be unblocked.
Still, you don't get there by "requiring writing." You get there by accepting that the block is real and discovering together new ways to "unblock."
If we apply this principle to "chores" for instance, then we are not saying "no chores required." What we are saying is "how can chores be something a child willingly does and cares to do?"
When I first asked this question in our family, I saw that I needed to stop required chores for a time to discover why they needed to be done and who needed to do them. I did most of them myself for quite awhile and shifted my attitude in how I asked for help.
Instead of saying "Hey you made a mess, clean it up." I started saying, "I notice your art project is on the table and we're about to eat. Is it convenient for you to pick it up or can I clear it for you?"
If they said they were busy, I cleared it up, cheerfully. (I had not been cheerful about chores before.)
I did this kind of thing for over six months.
About six weeks in, my most resistant chore-practitioner came to me spontaneously in the kitchen one day and said, "Hey, I'm free right now. Can I do the dishes for you?"
Knock me over with a feather! As it turned out, the kids were so much more responsive to helping out when it was their idea or they knew what was being asked was respectful of their time. They also loved feeling like they were giving me a break, rather than doing it because I made them do it. Such a different way of thinking. I also started accepting as answers: "I'll get to that after my TV show is over."
We do have enforced chores now, but that was a family decision. After six months of no chore requirements, we saw that the key areas of the house weren't getting cleaned often enough or consistently. So the kids helped recreate how to get the house clean. It's been a different world keeping a house clean with kids who created the system instead of parents who force them to do it.
WJFR wrote:
| Even if I don't agree with the child's reasoning, it is helpful to listen and try to understand and see the germ of truth in their viewpoint, and work from there. |
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So agree.
WJFR wrote:
| I personally also think there is a real JOY in doing something just "because it is right" or just out of simple obedience. |
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And I've discovered that this is the most possible in a home where the kids know that they are taken seriously. They see that the routines we want to create are not arbitrary.
WJFR wrote:
| My children really do benefit from being asked to do things on that basis. One thing that bothers me sometimes about the secular unschooling rhetoric is that sometimes it seems too individualistic, too little appreciative of the way our nature is set up to be hierarchical -- what Charlotte Mason calls the "fulcrum of authority and obedience". Authority/obedience is not the same as superior/inferior. |
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I liked your comment in the other post about habits. For me, even more than the obedience word, habits are the way to go. Habits are the rails for the train to run on.
Obeying has a lot of baggage attached to it for me when I hear it because so many people I know use the idea of obedience to run rough shod over a child's feelings.
But when you talk about a fulcrum of obedience and authority - I can see it a bit more easily. The way I see it is this. The parents are the authorities in the family. Everyone knows it. The parenting decisions we make (whether permissive or authoritarian) are the ones that stand.
So I want to respect the fact that my kids live in a city we picked for them, in a house we chose (size, amount of furniture, size of lawn to mow), at an income level we picked, with the number of children to share all that with that we believe is right....
These are not their choices.
As I took that fact in, I realized I wanted to help my kids know that I feel the weight of responsibility for my choices, not just that I have power/authority over them, the kids.
So as we looked at our humungous yard, for instance, we realized that while the kids could be "forced" to mow the whole thing, we decided instead to divide it into sections with Jon taking the largest section of all. We all mow (not just a few of us).
When we clean on Saturdays, we all clean.
Homeschool, then, for us is similar. I want their active participation in making that vision one they embrace and want to live. I will go the distance that is mine to go to help them get there.
To me, this is what mindful parenting is - it is recognizing that our kids have limited power in their own lives. We can help them to find ways to become more responsible and happy when we help them to feel that they are valued, contributing, free will agents in the family.
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Julie
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juliecinci
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Leonie wrote:
Thomas said " I hate it when you give me choices. I wish you would tell me what to do. Then I could get cross with you. Now, I can't get cross cos what you say is OK. But I feel guilty if I don't choose the good thing."
So he chooses good over not so good. |
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I had this same thing happen!
My son wanted me to force him to get a good night's sleep before a trip out of town to a concert. He wanted me to say he couldn't stay up until the wee hours of the morning so he'd be rested.
I said it seemed clear to me that he already knew that was a good choice so why did he need me to "require" it. He then said, "Because I really want to stay up and if you require it, I can be mad at you for making me instead of mad at myself for ignoring my own best interests."
I said, "Hey stay up as late as you like!" and cheerfully went to bed.
He, too, went to bed early, amazingly enough. 
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Julie
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Tina P.
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Genevieve wrote:
WJFR wrote:
When I look at families where the kids buy into their parents'visions and work ethics, WHAT is it that makes the kids buy in? Is it modelling by example, or exhorting, or directing, or punishing?
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I'll take a stab at this... I think deep down everyone wants to belong, children and adults alike. Everyone will grow to imitate those they are surrounded by. In the gentleness thread, Bridget suggested that I cultivate friendships with women I would like to be. For better or worse, my children will have some of my traits and visions, likewise I have picked up some of them from my parents. I think modelling, exhorting, directing and punishing all have influences, whether they are desireable or intentional. The question I think lies in atmosphere. Everyone soaks up the atmosphere they are in, children more quickly than adults. My time is up. Interesting thread. |
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OK, but what I think Willa was asking is: Why are my kids not as motivated as I am? In my case, I have more motivation in my heart than I can express most of the time because I keep having babies and have to take care of them and heal myself before my energy is up to carrying out all those great ideas.
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
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Tina P.
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This post arrives incredibly late into this discussion. I went to college directly out of high school because I wanted to make money. Pure and simple. I even changed majors because I thought writing would be more lucrative than teaching (which it was). I look back now and think of how blatantly mercenary I was. I had no inkling that what I might do with my life might be for the greater glory of God. It didn't even occur to me that what I was aiming toward was a vocation, a life choice, not just a paycheck.
My brother was a lawyer and decided that he didn't like it. All that education was wasted. He turned into a botanist with no formal education in this field. My point is, he apparently was thinking in the same vein as I was: education = money. When he didn't like what he was doing, he didn't make money at it. He's better off financially now than he's been in years, with no formal degree in botany.
What I want to do is teach my children to choose their vocations wisely and then help them to steer their own courses toward their goals. As young as they are right now, my kids can dream all they want. We'll discuss how their future might help people see God in them. Then we must step back and let them decide. God will work through them. Every one of them is different.
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
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Mary G
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Tina P. wrote:
This post arrives incredibly late into this discussion. I went to college directly out of high school because I wanted to make money. Pure and simple. I even changed majors because I thought writing would be more lucrative than teaching (which it was). I look back now and think of how blatantly mercenary I was. I had no inkling that what I might do with my life might be for the greater glory of God. It didn't even occur to me that what I was aiming toward was a vocation, a life choice, not just a paycheck.
My brother was a lawyer and decided that he didn't like it. All that education was wasted. He turned into a botanist with no formal education in this field. My point is, he apparently was thinking in the same vein as I was: education = money. When he didn't like what he was doing, he didn't make money at it. He's better off financially now than he's been in years, with no formal degree in botany.
What I want to do is teach my children to choose their vocations wisely and then help them to steer their own courses toward their goals. As young as they are right now, my kids can dream all they want. We'll discuss how their future might help people see God in them. Then we must step back and let them decide. God will work through them. Every one of them is different. |
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YES! This is a by-product of American society. You should go to the right shcools, get the right major and then the right job. But society doesn't encourage getting the vocation that God wants you to have. Maybe that's why I'm so enthralled lately with the whole idea of homeschooling over "traditional" school -- at home we can consistently nurture the idea that you seek and find God's vocation; I'm trying to show the kids that success is measured by doing this rather than the car or house you have. One thing that's helping quite a bit is when they see how quickly the things can be gone -- whether thru a natural disaster (2005 was the year for that!) or company shutdowns. The things that are really important transcend the day-to-day junk.
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MaryG
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MacBeth
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Tina P. wrote:
My brother was a lawyer and decided that he didn't like it. All that education was wasted. He turned into a botanist with no formal education in this field. My point is, he apparently was thinking in the same vein as I was: education = money. When he didn't like what he was doing, he didn't make money at it. He's better off financially now than he's been in years, with no formal degree in botany. |
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I'm going to digress here...as the daughter of a lawyer who hated practicing (and quit), the daughter in law of a non-practicing lawyer, and the wife of a dh with a law degree who does not practice law  , I do want to say that a law degree is not a wasted thing, no matter what you do. I even know more than a few homeschooling moms with law degrees.
My father, who was the ultimate child-naturualist, and who has told me on many occasions that he would have loved homeschooling, as he would have spent all his time in the woods, told me once that he read a study showing a correlation between those who love nature, and those who excel in law school. These are hidden connections that we may not see, even as unschooling moms, until our children are older. When I think of a botanist with a law degree, I think of a disciplined man, with a background in legal Latin turned to botanical Latin, legal procedure turned to seasonal procedure, and of legal notes or review turned to garden review.
I would never suggest that a law degree is a wasted thing. I would even take it one step forward and say that no degree is wasted. I think a far worse thing for your brother would have been to stick with something he hates simply because he has the degree, and that's something that many people struggle against all their lives. Well, I got this degree, so I might as well use it.
The second part of your post, Tina, suggests to me that one does not need a degree at all to excel in a field. I think that may also be true. I know a guy who runs a scientific supply company who can tell you everything about every marine creature in the area, from the scientific name to how to find it for yourself, and he never went to college. College professors often visit him to find information.
Overall, a range of personalities come together to shape the man. We are not without the influence of our families, friends and coworkers. A child may do what he thinks others want him to do, and sometimes it will not be to his detriment. He may decide for himself, and this can also work well. But I am not sure that anything he chooses to do is wasted, even if he feels influenced or pressured by another. In a perfect world, I may wish to let my kids find a way to what they really wish to do without my prodding, but realistically, I am not as sure as I was when I began homeschooling that this will happen  .
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MacBeth in NY
Don's wife since '88; "Mom" to the Fab 4
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Mary G
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To second MacBeth's "no degree is wasted" comment, I have a couple of examples:
1. my dear SIL's parents went nuclear when she "threw away her Annapolis/Navy career to stay home with her children (at the time she had 2, expecting a 3rd). Now she has 10 kids (one in college and another fixing to go next year) and she homeschools them all -- she must have LEARNED something at USNA
2. It took me over 20 years to use my Print Journalism BA! I finally saw my name in print....was my degree wasted -- of course! I had learned to communicate compeltely and succinctly and did MUCH growing up!
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Tina P.
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My message came out wrong (sorry if I've offended anyone). What I meant to say, and it still might come out wrong, is that for what he was aiming to be at the time, the degree was a mismatch. I have a major in writing and a minor in Italian. Even though I'm sooo close to Italy right now, I've never been there.  I wanted to be able to at least listen in on Italians conversing and know what they're saying (I know my Italian language is too rusty to have an actual conversation).  So in that way, the minor was a bit of a waste. On the other hand, because I know Italian, all of the romance languages and Latin (not to mention basic Latin roots of *our* language) are easier for me to understand. So in this way, Italian is not a waste.
I was a technical writer for a few years directly out of college. What a dry, boring career! Luckily, my son whisked me away from all of that with the advent of his birth.
But yes, MacBeth, you nailed the meaning of the last part of my post in ever so many less words. There's a book that we have somewhere around here, "Do What You Love The Money Will Follow." I'm hoping my retiring-from-the-military husband can follow his dreams and provide for us at the same time. 
PS: The reasons I want to go to Italy have nothing to do with eavesdropping in another language! I am Sicilian and I thought it would be nice to tour from the bottom up (Sicilia, Naples, Rome, Venice, Assisi, Florence, and so on...), not to mention all the history involved in Italy (all of Europe, really), the food, the wine, the weather...
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Tina, wife to one and mom to 9 + 3 in heaven
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Willa
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MacBeth wrote:
| My father, who was the ultimate child-naturualist, and who has told me on many occasions that he would have loved homeschooling, as he would have spent all his time in the woods, told me once that he read a study showing a correlation between those who love nature, and those who excel in law school. These are hidden connections that we may not see, even as unschooling moms, until our children are older. When I think of a botanist with a law degree, I think of a disciplined man, with a background in legal Latin turned to botanical Latin, legal procedure turned to seasonal procedure, and of legal notes or review turned to garden review. |
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Wow, how interesting. A correlation between law and botany is counter-intuitive to me, which just proves how much mystery there is in the process. Certainly this seems like an argument for "real learning" or whole learning, where the child can draw from it what he needs.
I find it interesting to ponder how my husband, without realizing it, was prepping himself throughout childhood for a career that didn't even exist at the time. He loved math patterns and logic games, grew interested in filming when he was a teenager and made several little 8 mm "claymation" films for fun, then got one of the first edition personal computers out there and started making his first game in his spare time while he pursued a computer sci degree. He was in that first generation of Apple game programmers and it went from there.
I think there's a lot of mystery in the interaction between our gifts and our environment too. There were not many computer programmers back in the middle ages! What were they back then?
I've been interested in the comments that some of you unschoolers have been making about dividing things into categories: "HAVE to's" (though perhaps HOW the child does it may be flexible) and other things that I guess AREN'T have-tos. Lissa mentioned this -- writing thank-you letters to Grandma, and so on, are have-to's, like brushing your teeth.
Have you any thoughts on how you divide things into these categories? This area confuses me. Perhaps it's intuitional?
Perhaps you divide things up by how it looks in the big picture? For example, you can be comfortable if a child isn't doing anything obviously "math-y" because just living in the world is sort of math-related -- counting, pattern-sorting and so on? while Grandma, if she doesn't get a thank-you note, will be hurt now, in the moment, and there is no "thank-you" -readiness in just living in the world?
Maybe I'm making this too complicated??? Anyway, it's probably definitely one of the "Tough Questions" but I really want to understand how it works, how we decide what is a "have-to" and what is not.
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Willa
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Mary G
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Willa,
Maybe that's the key!
Your dh had no idea where his interests would lie. MacBeth's dad is a closet naturalist.....
Maybe we need to allow our kids to find THEIR vocation -by first giving them the tools of strong religious background, strong family ties and a bit of "chutzpa" to get them through the rough times.....
What do you think?
When do you turn them lose and allow them to make their own mistakes?
I know if Mom or Dad had "shut me down" and not let me go off to an away college -- yes, I would have been a good daughter, but would I have grown?
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MaryG
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MacBeth
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Tina P. wrote:
| My message came out wrong (sorry if I've offended anyone). |
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Tina, no offense taken at all (ever!)! In fact, I think you launched a very important discussion, a discussion that is imperative if we are to take a real look at unschooling in an honest way. We have to bring our preconceptions to the table.
I know that many of us look at folks who are not using degrees (myself included) and think, "What a waste!" Yet many of us homeschooling moms have degrees or are putting thing on hold in some way while we do the homeschooling thing. And if we look carefully enough, we can see how our past, whether academic of vocational, has helped us in our vocation as homeschooling moms. The same, I contend, can be said of anything educational, any time.
And that's why I lean towards making a kid do his math (or whatever) if he does not feel like it, despite my extreme unschooling tendencies. Someday, somehow, the hated subject will be useful. Or maybe I simply believe discipline for discipline's sake, sometimes ? That thought reminds me of the ads we see on TV for martial arts--"Tiger Schulman saved my kids from ADHD!" or whatever.
On the other hand, I hope to find the paths of least resistance for most subjects, and again, I hope to take the intellectual or vocational sparks that fly around here and put them to tinder.
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God Bless!
MacBeth in NY
Don's wife since '88; "Mom" to the Fab 4
Nature Study
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Willa
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Mary G. wrote:
Maybe we need to allow our kids to find THEIR vocation -by first giving them the tools of strong religious background, strong family ties and a bit of "chutzpa" to get them through the rough times.....
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I think you're so right about the chutzpa as well as the other things, Mary.... when I think about what I want my kids to have when they grow up, that sheer willpower to survive and thrive is definitely a big one.
It's something present in people I admire.... and when they ponder about how it developed in them, they usually tell some story about adversity. Which makes me think that whether I unschool or not, I don't want my kids to have it too easy.
Now, the other side of that adversity tale is usually someone or something they found to support them and be there for them during that time of adversity. The support and encouragement helped them through the dark times. For my friends who didn't come from great families, sometimes it was a teacher, or a friend, who helped them through.
This doesn't have much to do with what's being discussed, I guess. It's just one of the things I've been pondering recently.
On the subject of college degrees, I have never really "used" my English Lit BA, yet I use it every day. To some extent it has to do with how I live and think. I think higher education is valuable, and not just financially or career-wise.
But there's something weird about the way it's done in our country nowadays. So much angst and worry about it, and no general agreement what it is FOR..... whether it's for EVERYBODY, or only those who excel at the high school level; whether it's to form and enlighten the mind, or to advance one on the career path; whether it should be free, or wildly expensive; whether acceptance should be according to diversity and uniqueness of intellectual experience, or to what lines you toed and what tests you passed when you were in high school.
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Willa
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Willa
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Genevieve wrote:
| Everyone will grow to imitate those they are surrounded by. In the gentleness thread, Bridget suggested that I cultivate friendships with women I would like to be. For better or worse, my children will have some of my traits and visions, likewise I have picked up some of them from my parents. |
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One of my New Year's "mottoes" to dwell upon this year is "Purify the source." I think I read it in one Flannery O'Connor's letters and she was talking about perfecting her writing, but it occurs to me it applies to parenting as well, for the reasons you mention.
Thanks, Genevieve!
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AMDG
Willa
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Unschooling: the Tough Questions
