We Now Return You (Briefly) to the Topic of Homeschooling

Okay, here's the thing. I have been thinking a ton about the next several homeschooling-related posts I want to write. I haven't forgotten about it at all. I have lots of thoughts I want to get down just to clarify for myself and to share with anyone else who might be interested. The problem, however, is a complete and total lack of motivation. Ugh. I would like to blame it on this (and frankly, I think it's probably fair to lay some of the blame there), but plenty of people still manage to get things done even when they feel bleh. So . . . whatever.

Anyway, that was not the point of this post. The point was that even though I've been thinking about the homeschooling stuff, I haven't been writing it up. And then, just today, someone shared this video with me, and I thought, "I must pass this on." Here is a teenage boy doing a TED Talk about what he thinks education should be about. In the last few minutes he gets into his curriculum (and wow! is he epic or what?), but the first half or so talks about education and such as a whole.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am sure that homeschooling isn't a great solution for everyone. But even if homeschooling doesn't interest you at all, I think the idea behind this boy's talk is fantastic food for thought and should perhaps affect the way we go about teaching our children, both formally and informally.

Okay, here you go:

Other Blog Posts

I've got some posts on my other blogs today:

A MMW post about the break-in at our house

A Callooh Callay Callay post reviewing the book The Night Circus

Enjoy!

More Addra

Another small collection of amusing things Addra has said. She has such strange diction for a tiny child, I think. It just makes us laugh. I recognize that some of them are probably only funny to me and Brice, the parents—and only because we were there for it. The rest of you will be looking at me askance, thinking, “Another weird adoring parent sharing things that aren’t even remotely funny to read. *Long-suffering sigh.*” To you I stick out my tongue. And then I appease you by posting a bunch of photos of her at the end, so even if my stories are dorky, the pictures will be cute.

Here we go:

“I want to wear my Dora shoes, because they is very special to me.”

To Brice (a day or two after he shaved his head): “Let’s put your eyebrows back on your head so that you can have more hair.”

Addra has a lot of imaginary friends and imaginary creatures to take care of. All through dinner tonight she kept telling us she needed to take some of the food to feed her animals in the other room. Then she’d wander off (I know! we have terrible table manners), feed her animals, and come back to tell us about it. Also, when we asked her tonight who we should invite to her birthday party, the first person she said was “Lucy.” (Lucy does not exist.)

She says things like “fortunately” and “unfortunately,” and it just sounds so crazy and formal coming out of that little tiny body.

I told Addra I wanted to snuggle her to pieces, and she said, “Silly, I’m not made of fabric. I’m made of skin. . . . Except my eyes.”

“What are your eyes made of?” I said.

“Um, glass.”

Aren't you jealous that I get to hang out with her all the time?

Being excited about her crocodile pancake (yes, look closely,
there's a crocodile drawn in there--thanks, D, for the idea of using
a ketchup squirter for pancake batter!).

Coriel dressed her.

Coriel did her hair and makeup. That girl has a
bright future in the fashion industry, yes?

 

Posting Elsewhere

Just thought I'd put in a quick mention of my posts at the other two blogs:

MMW, another (I know!) post on the stories we tell about ourselves.

Callooh Callay Callay, a book review of Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing.

Enjoy!

Why We're Homeschooling, part 2

Her last day of preschool

In which I ponder the liberating possibility that all parents mess up their children.*

Read Part 1 here.

In thinking about homeschooling, there were a few things that came to mind as the Big Questions. One was this: Am I going to mess up my children if I homeschool them?

This is a question that can become an attack on homeschooling from sort of a more public level: “You people are messing up your kids by not sending them to public school with everyone else, you’re depriving them of opportunities and socialization, la la la.” I didn’t mean it that way, though. I meant it on a much more personal, intimate level. Am I personally going to really mess up my kids—give them emotional baggage, forget to teach them important things, make their lives occasionally squirmy and frustrated?

The answer: Yes.

Here is what I think. (And keep in mind that for this discussion, I’m purposely excluding the topic of parents who are actively abusive, neglectful, or in some other way awful. I’m talking only about parents who are generally doing a good job, trying hard, and loving their children.) We all mess up our kids.

We all prepare them to launch out into the world with the best we can give them. We stick a PBJ and a bag of carrots in their life backpacks with a little happy love note written on the napkin. We stuff their school books in there too, maybe a blankie or a stuffed animal to help them feel loved. But then there’s the other stuff we stick in their life backpacks. Those times we didn’t answer their questions because we were too tired or grumpy, the time they overheard us calling them ungrateful in a moment of anger. The way we wanted to read instead of interacting, a haunting certainty that they could be playing their sports or their instruments far better than they were. We stick that stuff in there too, no matter how hard we try not to, no matter how awesome we are as parents.

And hey, even those “perfect” parents can give us baggage. I think I may actually be grateful that I never saw my mom that way. So when my own kids came along, okay, I wasn’t as well prepared as I would have liked. But when I first got angry or tired or sad and had to run in my room to hide, at least I didn’t say to myself, “My mom never would have done that. I must be a terrible person. I will never be as good as she is.” I wasn’t constantly trying to live up to an impossible model of supposed perfection.

Okay, bottom line. We are all of us imperfect people (even the perfect ones). We will make mistakes. They will affect our children, sometimes in unexpected ways. Our children will have to learn to deal with that. Dealing with other people’s mistakes is part of life. The good news, though, is that despite the fact that our parents messed us up, most of us are reasonably well-adjusted individuals, living reasonably decent lives. So there’s hope for our own kids.

For me, this was a very liberating step both in the journey toward homeschooling and in the overall journey of parenting. I was being paralyzed by indecision because I was sure I had to make the absolutely perfect decision, that there was one thing I could do that would make everything else correct. This was, in a word, spazzy. I will do some good stuff and some less good. But in the end, trying something and working at it will be better than just sitting around feeling guilty and worried while I can’t decide.

So there you go: Homeschooling Decision Part 2: Accept that no matter what I decide, I won’t be perfect. And that’s perfectly okay.

*And no, you do not need to be a curmudgeon about this. I am at least sort of kidding. Ish.

Why We're Homeschooling, part 1

Pictures of some of our school events so far. Here we
are making a model of the Nile River to flood.

Coriel practicing being a flamingo at the zoo.

I have been meaning to explain in detail why I am homeschooling my little girl this year. There are so very many factors playing into it that I can’t possibly condense it into one single post. I also recognize that homeschooling doesn’t work or make sense for everyone, and in fact it remains to be seen whether it will make sense for us long term. It was a decision that took a lot of thought and consideration and prayer. There are pros and cons galore on both sides of the topic. In the end of all the considerations, I am quite certain it is a good idea for us for the coming year, and then we’ll go from there.** In fact, I’m loving it so far (we’ve been going for about a month-ish, depending on how you count). If you would like to hear a little about how this came about, read on.

***

“Parenting is hard.” These are the words of my older brother as we discussed the pros and cons of homeschooling. What he really said was something like this: “Homeschooling is hard. But seriously, parenting is hard.”

Yeah, this is true. There’s nothing particularly easy about being a parent. But that comparison there—hey, homeschooling is hard, but so is parenting—that kind of caught me. Life wasn’t going to be easier just because I was sending my child to school every day. It was just going to be different.

So instead of starting from the assumption that either homeschooling or public schooling or private schooling was going to make life inherently easier, I started with a question. Which method was going to be better for our family as a whole and for the individuals in it?

Then a more fundamental question. What and who did I hope my children would become?

When I asked myself that question, and really thought about it, I quickly stripped down a lot of stuff. Of course I want my children to be smart, well educated, fun, happy, hardworking, able to get a good job in the future, all that great jazz. But fundamentally what I really hope is that they will be good people.* Now, for me, this involves my beliefs and religion. I believe that our kids stand the best chance for being good if they follow God’s guidelines and maintain a close relationship with Him. However, even laying aside religion, I still believe that one of the highest and best goals for a human being is to be a good, moral, thoughtful, and kind person. You don’t have to believe in God to want your children to make a meaningful and positive difference in their world.

Asking and answering this question—who do I want my children to be?—was the first major step for me in deciding to homeschool.***

Stay tuned for next time, when I discuss the liberating idea that we all mess up our children.

Arts and crafts day--we made wire hangers for her dolly clothes. :)

* I will add that I believe that being a good person tends to improve your chances of being all those other good things. There is joy to be had in goodness, and there is motivation to improve yourself (which leads to working harder, educating yourself, being the kind of employee people want to have, etc.).

** I’m speaking in first person singular, but this all really came about between me and Brice. It was a very joint decision.

*** Even though answering this question eventually led us to the decision to homeschool this year, please remember that I am not saying homeschooling is the only answer. Seriously. It’s just the answer for us, for the moment.

Random Sillies

In case you haven’t been catching the random cuteness that is my children on Facebook lately, here are a few random items from the last couple weeks that have been quite enjoyable.

*

Coriel is enjoying lately how words are put together, and she likes to try out new things. Here’s an example: One night she was trying to lie on Brice (mostly by smooshing him) and saying, “Let me see if you are lie-able.”

*

Addra told me one day, “I am going to eat your head. Then you would have no head.” Then she paused, as if really considering the issues with having no head. “But that would be bad because you would have to go to the doctor.”

*

Similarly, she told Brice that she was going to eat him: “I am going to eat your head on a sandwich with jellies.”

Brice: And what else?

Addra: Grapes and oranges and eyeballs. And lots of jellies. (Then she pretended to pluck out all our eyes and put them on her sandwich.)

*

When asked what her yellow rice tasted like, Addra replied with something that sounded a lot like, “Starlight.”

*

Okay, now for just a little bit of bragfest: Coriel is totally jetting on reading. Earlier this week she came to me and told me she was almost finished reading Sky the Blue Fairy (it’s a maybe first/second grade chapter book). I didn’t even know she’d started it. She’d just been sitting on her own, quietly doing whatever she wanted for the last hour or so—and that was apparently what she’d been doing! It’s so much fun to watch her be so into reading.

*

I had to share the picture of me and my big sister M somewhere, because I think this is such a cute picture of us. Plus, when I look at Addra I occasionally catch this major glimpse of similarity between the two of us. Here is a place where I think that shows.

*

I discovered a new eight-letter, each finger word: BIPLANES! Hoorah!

*

The picture of the girls on this post is one my friend Meghan took for us one day just for fun (I can’t decide if I like the color or b&w better, so I posted both). It’s what happens when they get going on the dress-ups. Coriel dresses up as a pirate ninja, and Addra dresses as a fairy queen. It should be noted that there is something so perfect about these choices for their personalities at present. Coriel is all about feisty and heroic; Addra is much more about refinement and power. (Also, I believe that Addra’s expression here is her “fancy” face.) Give Coriel a crown, and she’ll become a princess—probably one who will dress up very fancy and then have to defeat a dragon. Give Addra a crown, and she will be a queen—and we will all become her servants and have to bow to her every whim. (This princess/queen dichotomy has actually happened with them on numerous occasions; I joke that Coriel knows which person gets to accessorize, and Addra just knows who rules the kingdom.)

*

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

Another Blog!

As if you didn't already have too many places to try to keep up with my random writings, here's another! I have joined another blog, called Mormon Mommy Writers. I will be posting there every fortnight (I love that word) on Thursdays, and today is my first one. So go check it out. And, you know, you could just decide to officially follow their blog, or mine (this one), or my other one. Because, it turns out, sometimes writers like to feel like someone's reading them. :)

And now I will bite the bullet and inform you all in one mass sweep that the two agents who I was most likely to get a response from have now officially rejected my manuscript. So, onward and upward, I suppose. [Insert rueful smile here, but not an emoticon, because that would just annoy me here for some reason, although apparently it doesn't annoy me in the previous paragraph.]

Also, in the event that you haven't read the said rejected manuscript and are still somehow dying to, I have the latest "final" version in actual regular kindle format. Well, it's not fancy, and the chapters are currently listed in the table of contents as "unknown." But still, I learned to convert to kindle, and that was just plain fun. And wow, let me just clarify that just because I said I liked being read doesn't mean you have to read my whole book. Blog posts are nice, though.

Okay, now I think I'll go crawl under a rock and pretend I don't sound pathetic, weird, and scatter-brained at the moment. And you can pretend too!