elephant

We went through a big change almost two years ago now, which I haven't really known how to talk about here. But I miss blogging, and the big change made me feel like I couldn't blog here. It was the elephant in the blog or in my mind.

The big change is that my kids are in public school. Eldest started going part-time in February 2015 and continues. I was just too overwhelmed and I wasn't being the kind of homeschooling parent I needed to be, and I thought that having him out of the house most days would help. I'm not sure it helped, but it hasn't hurt. Then we discovered an amazing kindergarten teacher at the school, with a Reggio-inspired approach, so we sent Youngest there full-time for JK and this year for SK. Eldest spends two days a week at the outdoor school and the rest at public school, now in grade 5. I struggle with the public system, as does he, but we are muddling through.

The next big change was a year later, last February. I realized we needed more money and the job I ended up finding was a full-time 12-month contract quite similar to my old job. I would definitely prefer part-time work but that is no easy thing to find. So just like that I'm leading a life I had kinda wanted to leave behind.

When my kids started back into the public system, I found myself with a bit of a social media dilemma. I had some time ago identified myself as an unschooling parent on most of my profiles because I thought it would help explain my perspective on a lot of the stuff I was sharing.  But when my kids went into public school, I was no longer unschooling. But I was the same person with the same thoughts and perspective on school, it's just that I wasn't able to carry it out. At this point, I'm simply not able to live according to my values. So that sucks pretty big for an idealist like me.

I also had shingles in April 2015 and ever since then I've been struggling with fatigue and exhaustion. I'll go a couple of days feeling reasonably well and hopeful the difficulty is behind me, then I feel flu-ey and exhausted for a couple of days or weeks. Now that I'm working full-time, that means pretty much everything else has been squeezed out. I'm not sewing much, I'm not parenting as well as I'd like, although full-time work has allowed me to call on some wonderful professionals to help fill in some of the gaps (although sadly finding after-school childcare has been almost impossible so I'm having to juggle my hours a lot for that). And we are mostly eating really, really poorly. Luckily, just before I started working, my husband got a new job with less than half the previous commute so he's able to be home on time to do most of the cooking during the week, when he has the energy.

So that all means I haven't felt like I have a lot to offer this space, which was meant to be all about making stuff and growing stuff and cooking good food from scratch. But I am still the same critical thinker, and I still have stuff to write about, so I'm just going to start sharing that stuff here. Expect lots of feminism and some fat activism and perhaps some trauma-based stuff, because we've been dealing with that in our family.

{moments}

It's been an intense several weeks. Lots of changes and stress and although the stress is mostly past, I'm still waiting for some sense of space, of opening up. I hope it comes soon.

But here are a few moments that made me happy in recent weeks.

Home Grown

I thoroughly enjoyed Ben Hewitt's latest book, Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World. It's a meandering kind of book, at times almost magical. Each chapter is followed by a different sort of piece, a meditation I guess? They're like a reflection or experience that crystallizes the rightness of all Hewitt's decisions that got him to the place (literally and figuratively) where he is today.

For a while it seemed to me that the book wasn't really very much about his kids' education. It was at least as much about Ben's own education and ideas and experience. But about a third of the way in, I realized, that IS unschooling. It's a whole family living, in the place and time they're in, with parents reflecting critically on their own experiences and using that reflection to support their kids' lives and interests.

Much has been made about the external facts of his kids' education. How they're out in nature so much, developing survival skills like hunting and trapping and tanning and basket-weaving; and Hewitt himself puts a lot of emphasis on the impact of their place in Vermont on his family. But a lot of the story seems familiar to me, if you remove the details of what specifically the kids are engaged in. When parents pay attention to their kids' interests and give them the time to go deep in them, the kids go deep. And in so doing, the parents' assumptions or beliefs are challenged in a serious way. For Ben and Penny, it was how much their young children wanted to kill wild animals, whether by bow or by trap, and their use of knives and guns.

From some of the comments I've seen online about the book and his related Outside piece, I think a lot of people (non-unschoolers?) who have read about the Hewitt family are conflating unschooling with the particulars of his family (which are beautiful). But in other families and in other environments, unschooling can look quite different. That said, I think unschooling always involves a critical view of the status quo of most or all of our society's institutions. Once you start questioning the value of school, it spreads to everything else. Or, once you start questioning another societal institution (for me it was industrial food and conventional medicine), it can easily spread to school.

All in all, I heartily recommend Home Grown to anyone interested in alternative education or kids in nature, or for that matter any kind of DIY stuff. It's just a great book. Here are a few of my favourite quotes from the book:

p 25 "They are big and graceful trees, overseers of decades and generations, and I cannot help thinking of all the cows that have loafed in their shade. […] And every year, they give their sap. Am I honouring or exploiting them by accepting this gift? Strange how it can sometimes seem as if there's not much difference between the two."

p 73 "Penny and I believe in presence, not praise. We are here to support and facilitate, but not to cajole and manipulate, through either threat or incentive. The boys' unhampered curiosity is incentive enough. The learning is its own reward.

"Can the same be said of schooled learning? Of course it can. Loving to learn and being compelled to learn from a prescribed curriculum are not mutually exclusive. But there is little question that the overwhelming majority of institutionalized learning occurs in isolation from the tangible realities of place and form, of how the world feels and looks, tastes and smells and sounds. I believe it is crucial for children to learn in ways that are not held in isolation, that involve the body as well as the mind, and that result in something real and tangible. Even better, something of service: a shelter where once there was none; food in a freezer that was previously empty; or even just a piece of clothing mended by their own hands. Interestingly, this is precisely the sort of learning that is rapidly disappearing from public education in the wake of diminishing budgets and immersion in the abstraction of technology."

p 104 "It has always bothered me to see how some parents chase their children away from productive jobs. I have seen it many times, and while I understand the impulse, I have little empathy for the shortsightedness of it, because the truth is that long before they are capable of truly helping, kids desperately want to contribute.

"Like all of us, children just want to be needed. It's our job to make sure they actually are."

p106 "Sometimes the greatest blessings come disguised as inconveniences."

p137 "In hindsight, I see now that our boys had done precisely what children will do: they'd surprised us, an din full candour, we struggled for a time with not being disappointed by this surprise. Where had their passion for hunting and trapping come from? Not from Penny and me. Not from their grandparents, or the parents of friends. We knew people who hunted and trapped, but most of these people were on the periphery of our lives. They were not part of our immediate culture, and we were fine with that. From birth, we'd immersed them in nature, expecting this immersion to install in them our particular idea of reverence for the natural world. It was a version of reverence that did not include bows and bullets and pack baskets loaded with traps."

p138 "Still, none of this prepared us for the reality of our children on the land, traps and weapons in hand. None of it prepared us for the possibility of examining our own feelings about such practices. Once again, our children were forcing us to learn and unlearn, to reach outside our comfort zone."

p140 "The role of mentors in our culture seems to have been reduced to programs intended for youth "in need," those unfortunate children whose parents are not fully able to embody healthy, stable role modelling. But of course all children are in need to a certain extent. As present, attentive, and well meaning as Penny and I are, Fin and Rye were in need of someone to guide them through the skills and ethics of trapping. They needed someone to validate their interests and instincts, someone whose words carried the authority of experience and respect. Because let's face it: children don't always consider their parents to be fonts of wisdom, and it was not long before the phrase "Nate says" became a common refrain in our home.
"Mentors are disappearing across the landscape of contemporary childhood learning and development. And how could it be otherwise? Because how many adults even have time to mentor anymore? Furthermore, after school and after-school activities, and after homework, television, and texting, how many children even have time to be mentored?"

p147 "We do not allow our children to learn at home simply so we can learn from them. Such a thing would be selfish. But in allowing them the freedom to learn as they grow, an unanticipated and beautiful thing has happened: We have allowed ourselves the same freedom."

{this moment}

{this moment}

This!

"Put simply, the freedom to self-determine how to pass so much of their time has cultivated a certain sense of entitlement in my sons. […] Fin and Rye are enormously particular about how they pass their time. In the absence of school's daily schedule and demands that they must adhere to it, they have come to believe that their time belongs to them, and they are not always eager to deviate from whatever task they've set their minds upon.

[…]

"Often, Fin and Rye do what is asked of them willingly, but often they do not, and my anecdotal observations suggest to me that they are uncooperative somewhat more frequently than many of their peers. Some of this, I think, is simply the result of temperament. My sons are fiercely passionate creatures, afflicted by a degree of willfulness that can fray my patience until only a single, slender strand holds it together. In these moments, my patience hanging int he abyss, I find it helpful to remind myself that this did not just happen. Our boys did not just decide to be opinionated and occasionally obstinate. Oh, no. They learned it from us."

Ben Hewitt, Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World

outdoor stories

Eldest has now spent three weeks over the summer at the Guelph Outdoor School, and each week got even better than the last. He told me yesterday that last week may have been the best week of his whole life. He lit fires and tended them endlessly. He shot arrow after arrow, and even hit a bull's-eye. He played games and watched and listened. He identified plants and helped forage for food. One night a week or so ago, I came into his room to tuck him in and he said, "I have my eyes closed and I'm just listening to my surroundings. I can hear a cricket outside my window." I don't know that I've ever known him to just listen before.

It feels to me like it's been a transformational experience for him. He seems to have grown up and found some kind of new confidence. And I've become hooked on the smell of woodsmoke in his hair.

With last weekend being so cold and damp, we cuddled up indoors and started looking through the books I've been collecting from thrift stores. With his new passion for archery, Robin Hood was one of the first to come to mind, and we had a version of that from the vintage Dandelion Library series. He was rapt. We went to read Peter Pan, but I was disappointed to discover that the Dandelion version was abridged. I wanted to read him the original. So that will have to wait. With his interest in castles and medieval history, The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White is also on the list, although I don't have a copy yet.

I feel like his newfound skills also give rise to a whole genre of stories of boys surviving in the woods. (He's already a big fan of the Swallows and Amazons series, and although we've only read two of them so far, I recommend them highly.) Yesterday, I happened upon this post about reading aloud, which also lists all kinds of titles. I made notes last night, including a number of titles I'd never heard of before, like My Side of the Mountain. I'd figure I'd look for them at thrift stores or the library over time. Today I went to a thrift store and in a lovely spot of synchronicity, there it was. When we read the description, he was keen so we started reading it that night. It is such a lovely book! Very well written, great for reading aloud, and so perfect for Eldest at this moment in time as he integrates all the new skills and knowledge he gained at the outdoor school. We're only about a third of the way through it, but we're all enjoying it so much, I know it's worth recommending.

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, dreamy moment I want to remember.

Free to Learn

Peter Gray is a psychology researcher and blogger on Psychology Today. In 2013, he published a book called Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I even found it a bit mind-bending, which is surprising, since in many ways he's preaching to the converted. We've already pulled Eldest from school and are pursuing an unschooling life for our family. But one keen insight I had while reading the book is that while my definition and use of the word 'work' has expanded far beyond the notion of paid work, I still use it as a way to show value. I have described Eldest's activities, more than once, as his work, to show that I place value on it and take it seriously as an endeavour of his. I still see 'play' as something that is optional and not particularly valuable. In Free to Learn, Gray shows that play is truly essential to children's development.

He looks at how our expectations of children and approaches to parenting reflect the wider culture. His main tenet is that our bodies and brains evolved in a hunter-gather context and so we can learn about child development from hunter-gatherer cultures, where children are given a lot of freedom to play with other children, handle dangerous tools to learn how to use them and to observe adults.

Given my interest in agriculture, I found this passage more than a little chilling:

"Agriculture offered many improvements to people's lives. It provided a steadier food supply and thereby reduced, at least initially, the threat of starvation. It eliminated the need to keep moving in search of food and allowed people to settle down and build sturdy houses to protect themselves from predators and storms. But agriculture also came with a big price tag, which could not have been foreseen by those who took the first, irreversible steps away from hunting and gathering. It altered the conditions of human life in ways that led to the decline of freedom, equality, sharing, and play. When we bit the apple of agriculture, as it were, we left the Garden of Eden and entered a world in which we had to do the gardening ourselves, in which toil, not play, was king.

"The hunter-gatherer way of life was knowledge-intensive and skill-intensive, but not labor-intensive. " 

He opens the book with some startling figures on the mental health of young people today. He shows how on a number of scales, young people's stress, anxiety and depression have skyrocketed over the last fifty-plus years. About "85 percent of young people today have scores [for anxiety and depression] than the average for the same age group in the 1950's. Looked at in another way, five to eight times as many young people today have scores above the cutoff for likely diagnosis of a clinically significant anxiety disorder or major depression than fifty or more years ago." Since 1950, the US suicide rate for children under age fifteen has quadrupled, and that for people age fifty to twenty-four has more than doubled. Gray correlates the rising anxiety, depression and suicide in young people to the reduction of independence and free play, and the rising pressures of school work.

I have been pondering why adolescence is so painful. I don't believe that it is inevitable; I believe some people have come through adolescence without pain, although I don't personally know any of them. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that teenagers generally don't get to be part of the adult world until their twenties. I had absolutely know idea what the professional adult working world was like until I started working as a temp. Teenagers don't get much real responsibility; they don't get to contribute in any real way. After reading Gray's book, I'm even more convinced that a lot of adolescent pain is related to age segregation in schools and the segregation of children from adults. Of course, I have no way of proving or disproving my theory. But I have to hope that there is some way for my kids to come through their adolescence unscathed.

My favourite part of Gray's book had to be his descriptions of the Sudbury Valley School, which I'd heard of but not in any detail. Not only are its students free to spend their time however they choose while at school, they can explore the campus and even go off-campus whenever they want. And all students have a vote in the hiring and firing of the adult staff members, who are not referred to as teachers, since their roles are more responsive and supportive than the average teacher. Truth be told, I think this would be a better environment for Eldest than the way we're currently homeschooling. But the nearest democratic school is in Toronto, one of the most expensive places to live in Canada, so it doesn't feel very possible. That said, I'm committed to finding ways for Eldest to get more free play time with other children and to relax our hovering.

on discipline

I think there's a common assumption, around school and other things in life, that sometimes you just have to do things you don't want to. The implication vis a vis children and especially education is that kids need to learn to do things they don't want to do by being forced to do things they don't want to do.

I confess I've been prone to this anxiety from time to time, especially since we started homeschooling. But I don't think the belief is factual at all. Discipline comes from love. It comes from connecting with the larger goal or need more than the short-term inconvenience or unpleasantness. I learned discipline from loving horses. Getting up early to feed them and turn them out before school, returning home early to muck their stalls, feed them and bring them in... well it wasn't always fun when I was a teenager. But I connected with the larger goal of wanting to ride one horse and compete and improve with one horse, and that required shovelling shit and getting up early and sometimes opting out of fun things to take care of this dependent creature.

I never make my bed. I'm sure some would label that behaviour a lack of discipline. But I think it's a matter of the pleasure of getting into a made bed at night (and I do find this a pleasure on days when I wash the sheets) is not enough to make me take the extra time in the morning or any other time of day. A few nights ago, at midnight, I proclaimed myself a rock star. Not because I was doing anything remotely musical but because I did the dishes when I really didn't feel like it. My husband asked, "Do you ever FEEL like doing the dishes?" And I do. In fact, most of the times I do the dishes because I feel like doing them. Not because I take pleasure in the act, but because I connect to the larger goal of having visual space to breathe (and actual space to prepare food) on the kitchen counters.

André Stern, a grown unschooler and French musician, takes it one step further. He says: "Learning takes place because of the interest we have for things; self-discipline arises from the pleasure one has from doing these things. We believe, wrongly, that discipline is a framework imposed from the outside, that it requires a system that forces the child to do something, to practice. However, the natural discipline comes from the child, from within. It grows out of pleasure and curiosity."

Speaking of discipline, we are still plugging away on the chicken coop. It's feeling pretty heavy and slow, but my dad came today and gave us a bit of a kick start to finish. We aren't finished yet, but the gate to the run is built (thanks, Dad!) and the fencing has begun. Soon, I will get a feeder and waterer, and set up a place to store bedding and feed... Soon, I think we may actually have hens cooing around in our backyard. Soon, when we want an egg, we may just be able to walk to the backyard.

homeschooling update

A number of people (in fact, I think, most people we've discussed the recent changes in our life with) have expressed surprise that Husband is just continuing the homeschooling now that I'm working full-time. I generally express surprise in return. We made the decision together. And it doesn't make sense to send a kid to school because another parent starts bringing home the pastured bacon. Or at least not to us. But I do understand that some couples are not on the same page around homeschooling. For all our problems, and there have been many (one day I will blog about how we narrowly avoided separating late this past winter), but there are two things that could have been a huge source of marital strife and haven't been for us: one thing that is unbloggable and homeschooling.

That said, we do deserve a bit of credit. I don't think every couple or maybe even most couples could change up their roles as successfully as we appear to have. He approached the transition like training for a new job, and I approached it as sharing what worked for me but with space for him to find his own way.

My sister recently asked us what our plans for the fall are, vis a vis Eldest and school. The question caught me by surprise, as our decision to homeschool is not a year to year thing, which makes the answer pretty clear: more of the same. I think Eldest is thriving. There have been a few areas where I thought the unschooling approach might break down, but it hasn't. (I've seen rumblings on the Internet that some people are quite dogmatic about what constitutes unschooling, but I haven't encountered them myself. And besides, I'm not much of a one for labels. I understand unschooling to be based on a trust in children's innate capacity and drive to learn and because of that fundamental trust, we follow our family's interests and give the kids space to pursue their own interests on their own timeline, rather than following an arbitrary curriculum or timeline).

One are where I thought approach might break down was swimming lessons. I believe swimming is an important life skill and it's one of the few things that I think my kids must learn (cooking and reading are two others), although I'm agnostic on the timelines for the learning. At the beginning of last summer, Eldest was afraid to even put his face in the water. He loved water in baths, but deeper water was very scary for him. Last summer, we discovered a wonderful learning opportunity: private lessons with a young woman in her family's backyard pool. No other kids in the water, and just one teacher to get to know over the summer. 

It took a while for him to trust the instructor, after a bad experience with private lessons at a public pool (the teacher told him she would catch him and then didn't - he was furious and so were we). But once he did, he made amazing progress facing his fears under her guidance. She just had a knack for when to push and when to withdraw and let him do something fun. This year, it's her sister who's teaching and she seems to have the same knack. He's now swimming across the whole length of the pool, treading water, and jumping off the diving board, all without a life jacket. What I love especially is that within the lesson he seeks out his challenges, asking if he can swim farther or tread water for longer or practice a particular stroke he enjoys. It's just wonderful to see his newfound confidence. It's worth noting that he made a major leap after our weekend at the cottage, when he spent an hour or two in the deep water (wearing his life jacket) playing with all the other kids with no intervention from grown-ups. 

The other area where I thought the unschooling approach might break down was with transitioning out of training wheels on his bike. For ages he was scared and refused and we didn't push him. I was of two minds: that he didn't really NEED to ride a bike without training wheels and that maybe we should just force him (Note to self: any time I've tried to force something on Eldest it has been not only unsuccessful but generally traumatic for everyone involved). Then, at the beginning of the summer, we realized that the training wheels had become bent and almost never touched the ground anyways. So Husband adjusted them even higher and taught Eldest how to put his foot out for stopping and starting. After a few days of that, or maybe a week, Eldest asked to have the training wheels removed and he's been biking like a fiend ever since. 

In other homeschooling news, Eldest is pretty much reading. Mostly he taught himself from road signs and grocery store signs and from having us read to him. Then one day he read a board book to Youngest, and now he's reading some of his own books. His vision remains a bit of an issue, I think, because he mostly reads larger print words and refuses to put his glasses on for smaller print. And he still likes the experience of being read to, which I think is great. 

I can't remember if I've already said this here, but I think there are disadvantages to reading independently at an early age. I was reading novels by age 5, and I don't really have any memories of my parents reading to me. And we never developed the practice of discussing what I was reading and thinking critically about it, so I got kind of messed up by reading all of VC Andrews' books when I was 11. And finally, I use words as my primary method of gathering information. If there are words, I pretty much ignore any other information. Whereas I see Eldest takes in all the other information first, and then the words add to it. 

I think one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling for Eldest has been that he can watch me try to learn my own things and make mistakes and learn from them. And he watches Husband too. Eldest has a bit of a perfectionist bent that was making him very private about his learning and making mistakes. But I think he's getting a lot more comfortable with exposing his learning and mistakes, and that's such an asset in life, I think.

life and stuff

So we're a few months into the new regime, of me working full-time, a couple of kilometers from home. I'm afraid to say it, but I think we all agree that life is pretty good. Of course I'm having to pick and choose how I spend my time outside work, and the kids miss spending as much time with me as they used to. But there are some very good things about life at the moment.

I swear my husband is happier. He's slower to commit to that declaration, fearing that it's just the novelty of change. But he has more energy, he laughs more easily and he snaps less at the kids. He really loves being outside for most of the day, and they've really been enjoying the summer. He and Eldest have gotten up to some really cool things. They built an insect hotel (it just needs some roofing), a rustic sailboat, and a cardboard airplane (this may still be in the works, but I think they decided it just wouldn't fly. They've bought balsa gliders and other storebought flying things. One got caught in the wind, did a 180 and landed high in some trees, irretrievable. My parents brought an awesome hawk kite home from China a couple of years ago, and we've been too afraid to fly it. But after seeing some kite flyers a few weeks ago, they were inspired to go kite flying, and the hawk kite was amazing. They've discovered the National Film Board of Canada's website and have watched a whole bunch of animations by Norman McLaren, among other nature and geography documentaries.

They all come to visit me at lunch, and I nurse Youngest and get to connect with what they've done and what they're planning for the rest of the day. I ride my bike or walk most days, or they give me a ride if I'm feeling cruddy or if the weather is cruddy. Life is much easier with Husband at home and Eldest homeschooling than when we were both working, Husband out of town, and Eldest was in daycare. In the morning, it's only me who has to get out the door at a certain time. I think this is pretty dreamy.

Husband does a lot more cooking, and we've discovered he does amazing things with meat. In late May, we got a quarter of a grassfed beef. We lost some of it in a freezer malfunction, but still have a lot left, and he's been learning to cook the new cuts with aplomb. He makes the gluten-free muffins and granola I used to make, so Youngest and I can have snacks. He hasn't yet taken over the broth-making, although we haven't done much over the summer because I haven't wanted to heat up the house. I wonder if he will in the cooler weather.

All in all, life feels pretty sweet for the most part. Of course, I could do without some of the office politics stuff, but I work with some wonderful people who make me feel like a good person, and I enjoy the thinking and writing aspect of the job. I just wish it didn't take up so much time.

I've been harbouring a farm fantasy ever since I read Radical Homemakers and realized that there could be a different way to have a farm than the way my parents did. Although I have moments where I think, maybe we could just keep things as they are, the fantasy isn't really abating. Now that Husband is experiencing the joy of life at home without a lot of external schedules (some days anyways), he's seeing the value of my vision, and I think he's finally on board with the farm fantasy. This is a very good thing.

Obviously, with us having no real skills (other than my years of horse shit-shovelling experience), it's at least a year or two out. And in the meantime, the community garden experience offers good learning. We're also going to get chickens this fall, to see how we like having them. If/when we get a farm, I think I'd like to start with chickens, provided we enjoy working with them.

I keep reading and watching memoirs and shows about urban folks moving to the country to grow their own food, and there's one major gap in their stories. Nobody talks about the money, about how you finance this dream without debt, especially when you have children you need to feed, shelter and clothe and who can't earn their keep just yet. In our area, you can't even get an acre with a house for much less than half a million dollars. So I'm pretty sure the farm dream requires moving some distance away.

I remember when we were debating whether to try homeschooling with Eldest, we noticed that it's very hard to make a decision to try something that could be better or worse, when your current situation is ok. It's much easier to try something new when everything sucks. You don't have anything to lose. But if things are ok, even nice, you stand to lose a lot. Especially if it involves moving across the province to a place where you don't know anyone.

Last fall I went to a parenting workshop with Ingrid Bauer. And she said, "This is sweet. And yet I want to reach for something sweeter." That's where I'm at, I think.

As sweet as life is at the moment, I don't want to sit at a desk for eight hours a day. I think three or maybe four hours, maybe every other day, would be perfect. I'm not the kind of person who goes outside for the sake of going outside in the winter. But if I have animals to feed, I'll enjoy it when I have to. I enjoy the forced observation of the garden and feeling my body move. I want more of all that.  I'm hoping to blog more about this process of learning and transformation, but that just seems to get squeezed out. If I'm honest, it probably doesn't help that this space doesn't answer back.

project-based homeschooling

Once the idea of homeschooling got into our minds, we did a lot of reflecting our own learning experiences. I have a three-year Bachelor of Arts in English that took me five years. My husband studied at university for three years before dropping out and eventually, many years later, getting a college diploma. But for both of us, the vast majority of our learning in our professional fields came after our formal education. I really believe I've learned more and had it stick better, in the 12 years since I finished school than I did in the 18 years of school I did.

I have also mostly taught myself photography, and I include seeking mentors as a very important part of the idea of self-teaching. When I think about what, when and how I've learned, I realize that learning only really happens when the subject is meaningful and relevant to me in that moment.

Formal education is often centred around learning information and skills in a particular sequence, like you can't run until you can walk. But I'm not convinced that is the case very often. There were times when I felt like I should learn flash, and I made a few attempts here and there. But nothing stuck until I was unhappy with the available light. That's when I was motivated enough to get past that awful, destabilizing feeling of total suckage and cluelessness that I think is normal when you're doing something you're doing something for the first time.

It just makes sense to us that it could be the same for children, that being allowed to pursue their own interests makes for better learning than a whole bunch of mandatory studies.

I can't remember when I first encountered Project-Based Homeschooling, but I quickly became a big fan. The idea behind project-based homeschooling is that an attentive caregiver helps the kid follow his own interests deeper than he might on his own. But it's a delicate walk, because as soon as you make suggestions, the kid loses that opportunity to figure out on their own the next steps they want to take. So the trick is to mostly observe, document and ask questions. Do I need to point out that this kind of thing is really not my forte? But if you can sit back, the kid will, in the process of following their own interests, develop their skills and learn how to learn much more effectively than they ever could with mandatory, assigned work from someone else.

Truth be told, I haven't actually finished reading the book yet. Nor have I really implemented many of her ideas. But I'm working on it. We developed a Fun Zone, as Eldest quickly named it, which has a small kids' table and chairs, some art supplies and toys and books. It also has a loveseat for cuddles while reading. But it's still not quite what I want it to be. I want more art materials visible and more inspiration. Eldest needs a workspace that Youngest can't reach and destroy his stuff (or choke on wee lego bits), so he tends to build his lego and other stuff behind a closed door.

(While I'm on the topic, does anyone have any tips for dealing with a toddler who keeps climbing onto the dining table? It doesn't seem to matter how many times we tell him no and remove him, he gets right back up with the most devilish grin ever. The kid is persistent.)

Anyways, even with the Fun Zone, we've been struggling a bit. Eldest has been crabby and seemed restless. I was frustrated with how little progress we've made working towards project-based homeschooling. We needed to do something.

Eldest has been nursing an obsession with horses for the last couple of months. He's started taking riding lessons in exchange for me mucking out stalls on Sundays (yay for bartering! My first real barter), so he gets the double learning bonus of helping out as well on Sundays. Every time we go to the library he only wants books on horses and if I get books on other topics, we never get around to reading them. So the topic to support Eldest developing into project work was clear. But how? My own mind was stuck on writing and drawing activities, perhaps categorizing the breeds he's been learning about or something. I knew if I suggested that it would go over like a lead balloon, in addition to not really being in the spirit of project-based homeschooling.

So I decided to ask Eldest. Yesterday morning, I told him that when I'm learning new stuff, I like to make notes in my notebook to help cement my learning. And is there anything he might like to do to develop his learning about horses? He immediately mentioned that he needs a barn for his toy horses. He has a Playmobil vet clinic and truck and horse trailer he got for his birthday, but he really needs a barn. I asked if maybe he could make one, because I know he loves constructing things with cardboard. So we went to the liquor store to get more boxes and he started to work as soon as we got home. He's been working on it off and on ever since. It has a hay loft, stalls and an indoor riding arena. I think for the moment he's finished, and of course it doesn't match up with my own vision of what a cardboard horse barn could be, but I'm pretty happy with the way that all went down.

The author of Project-Based Homeschooling, Lori Pickert, also hosts a blog and a forum to support parents in their efforts towards project-based homeschooling. She also recently started a series of blog posts to help grown-ups pursue their own projects. I recommend it all. And despite the title, it's not just for homeschoolers. I think every parent could benefit from her ideas and insight.

homeschooling angst

I've been meaning to do a homeschooling update for ages, but I haven't. I feel like Eldest is doing great in terms of his learning. He plays soccer weekly with the homeschool group, and it's such a great experience for him. The game is very informal and the kids who play are in a range of ages from about 4 to 11ish. He's gained so much physical confidence, and not only has his soccer gotten better, but it's expanded to other areas. He did amazingly in swimming lessons this summer and went from not even putting his face in the water in the first lesson to doing multiple dunks and even swimming underwater. I believe part of his success was due to the confidence he gained in soccer. Also, one day he announced he wanted to try riding the bike without training wheels. He hasn't taken it out since but I was so proud of his trying. (This is a kid who usually plays in the sand with trucks at the playground - he's just very physically cautious.) And the other day he even played around on some monkey bars and wasn't even troubled when he fell.

We tend to run a lot of errands thanks to my and the baby's dietary restrictions (sadly we can't get all the things we need at a single store), but I've noticed he's really creating a mental map of our town. He's always asking what the street signs say and saying things that show how much he's thinking about which streets go where. (Of course, this is the kid who, at 18 months, freaked out when I left a store and instead of going in the direction we came from, I went in the opposite direction to do a loop.) Our errands serve for math lessons too.

The other day we were buying some ham and turkey for sandwiches and he noticed that I asked for $5 worth of turkey but only $2 or $3 worth of ham. "Is ham more expensive than turkey?" I said yes. "Ohhhhhh," he said. "So if we got $5 worth of ham that would be like a POUND of ham." Exactly.

Later on, he mused, "I guess turkey must be more expensive to grow than ham," and started speculating about what that might be. 

We've also been weighing all the food we harvest from our garden plot. The scale has grams, kilographs, ounces and pounds. He thinks about numbers and measuring A LOT and has for a long time. He's been thinking about multiplication for more than a year.

He's not reading independently at all, but he's developing a great enthusiasm for words and signs. He has lots of sight words but for whatever reason he's not comfortable with sounding things out. We've been reading the Little House series and we're up book 6, The Long Winter. He's really developing a sense of history. The Olympics helped with his sense of geography too and seeing all the flags and country names. Although I find it slightly shameful how often we need to remind him that South Africa is a country but Africa is not. He gets the two confused all the time. (And in our house, because my husband is from South Africa and Eldest has been there twice, the topic comes up pretty frequently.)


So I feel like things are going really well in that way. It's exciting to see the connections he makes between something he hears today and something he learned three months ago. But I'm kind of struggling. Ever since Youngest broke the toddler barrier I've really had to shift my attention to constantly spotting him. It does help that our house is a totally open concept bungalow and cluttered and disorderly to boot so finds all kinds of trouble. Or that he is RECKLESS. (Did I tell you about our ambulance ride a few weeks ago?) Anyways, I feel like Eldest needs more engagement than I'm capable of right now. And I'm starting to wonder, can a mildly introverted parent and an extremely extraverted child (and reckless toddler) make unschooling work? I've heard that a good approach to unschooling is to start with the parent's interests and projects, but I want some alone time when I have mental energy. How do I get that?

Philosophically, I think unschooling is great, but I'm not sure I'm really capable. For weeks I had this question rolling around in my mind: What does it mean if I'm totally in support of homeschooling but I just can't do it? One day, an answer came to me: It means you don't have enough support. I believe that's true but community building is so slow, especially when it's a skill you havent really developed very well. (I recently realized that all my friendships have risen from regular contact like school or a job, and mostly disappeared when the convenience ended.)

Every time I ask Eldest if he has a preference, he votes for homeschooling. Until the other day. And I'm not clear why. He keeps throwing answers out but I have the distinct sense that he's saying what he thinks will matter to me and not what matters to him. That said, I feel strongly that I don't want him to make the decision by himself. The fact is my husband and I have more experience with school and its impact. Of course, as Eldest himself pointed out, he has more recent experience with school than we have.

Anyone out there with experience have advice?

homeschooling update

We've been homeschooling for six weeks now, so it's probably about time I gave some kind of an update. I've been pretty silent on the whole thing, because it's such new territory for us. If you'd told me last November that we'd be homeschooling in March, I would have thought you were crazy. It wasn't even on my radar of distant dreams.

But then my mind started working, and since I'm on mat leave, it seemed like the kind of thing we should just plunge into and see what happens. So we did.

It's been pretty good. We're taking a pretty unschooling approach, although we're careful never to use that word around family. Instead we describe it: we believe that children are learning machines so we use the things that we do anyways, the things that Eldest is interested in and the things that I'm interested to learn from. The first few weeks were heaven. The weather was mighty fine (26C in March!) and my parents were on a cruise in Asia. So every time we got an email from them, we'd look up where they were in an old 1984 world atlas I picked up at a thrift shop. Sometimes we had to google the old names of cities to find them on the map. Did you know Beijing used to be called Peking? You probably did but I didn't. And if my parents mentioned a specific site, we'd google that too and try to find pictures and videos. Eldest said he felt like he was right there with them. We'd go to the library and he'd type his search into the catalogue and I'd find the titles. Then we'd read them over the next week or so.

He also wrote emails to my parents himself. Given that he can't read (yet -- although he's making marked progress over the last several weeks), this was a time-consuming process for both of us, but very valuable. Sometimes he did all the typing and composing (I helped with spelling when he asked) and sometimes he narrated and I typed. And we spent lots of time outside -- at parks and in our yard. He's such an observer.

Then the baby started teething and waking up at all hours of the night and I felt awfully exhausted. We didn't do much in the way of deliberate, focused learning. Mostly it was about keeping our heads above water. He asked to learn how to operate the washer and dryer and has now taken to doing the laundry at every opportunity (Yay!) -- and there are many, trust me. He also asked to learn how to fry an egg and how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. He doesn't do all the steps but he did flip his egg successfully on the first try.

One day he announced he wanted to buy a toy hay baler he'd seen in one of those sneaky toy catalogues that sneaky toy companies put into their toy boxes. So he had to count up all his money before we went to the store. Then he had to figure out what he could afford (sadly not the hay baler) and whether he wanted to keep saving or buy something else. Since then he notes the prices of stuff at the stores we go to (which, because I'm still adjusting to the not-so-new restricted diet, is pretty much every other day).

But other than that, the learning has been a bit harder to track more recently. I did start to have some doubts. We haven't connected much with the local homeschooling group yet, so it's also a bit isolating. I still feel it's way too soon to tell one way or the other. But I'm feeling more confident again today. I read some blogs and a bit of a homeschooling book, and there are so many reasons we want to do this.

Today when we walked to a friend's house, we noticed the different trees, and we talked about when my grandparents were born and when his was born. We noted the native plants coming out in the small woodlot (trout lily leaves, mayapples beginning to unfurl and bloodroot already finished blooming). We talked about other stuff too, but of course I can't remember exactly what now.

I really don't think I need to worry about Eldest. He's such a curious scientist all on his own. He's picking up reading now that we have more time to read the books that really interest him, and also, I believe, because we've had time to talk about how being wrong or making mistakes is how we learn. And he also gets to see me making mistakes and feeling frustrated and disappointed about it, but also learning for the next time.

But I think my family thinks I'm crazy. Or at least my parents do. On Easter we visited with them and the homeschooling only came up if I mentioned it. And then I swore I saw a pinched expression on their faces that I haven't seen since I was much, much younger. And probably drunk. So that part is hard.

Anyways, this whole homeschooling thing still feels like a fragile little flower I'm cupping in my hands. One strong gust could blow it away, so that's a lot of why I've been silent.

On teaching my child about Apartheid

When Eldest had just turned four, we took a trip to South Africa to visit my father-in-law and other aunts and uncles. Before the trip, we got some books about South Africa from the library. I read most of them to Eldest, but I couldn't bring myself to read the pages about Apartheid. I just didn't want my child to know yet how awful human beings could be. So I didn't say anything.

We still haven't told him about Apartheid, two years later. Until today.

Yesterday, Eldest's Nana gave him a copy of Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, a picture book version of Mandela's biography. He was too busy with other, flashier presents to notice it yesterday, but today at lunch I reminded him of it. I told him about Nelson Mandela, that he is an amazing South African. I told him about the unfair laws under Apartheid, and how Mandela and others were sent to jail for fighting against those laws.

His eyes nearly bugged out at this. To Eldest, jail is where bad guys go. To hear that somebody good could be sent to jail was, I'm sure, a head trip for him. So we talked about how good and bad can sometimes be hard to figure out. Eventually, we got to the part where Mandela was released (the same year my husband came to Canada with his mother) and the first democratic election and how most people voted for Mandela (including my husband, from here in Canada).

We also had to go over the fact that Africa is not a country but a continent with about 50 countries, one of which is South Africa. (Eldest was quick to say, "No wonder [his friend whose family is from Ghana] lives here so I made sure to emphasize that not all African countries had such unfair laws.) And we talked about democracy too.

As we read the book, I remembered - and told Eldest - that my husband's grandfather owned or ran (or both?) one of the schools Mandela went to as a child in the Eastern Cape. When we got to the part about Mandela marrying Winnie, I told Eldest I would show him the photo of my husband and I with her in Soweto - a totally chance encounter. When Mandela was sent to Robben Island, I told him I'd show him the photos we took there before Eldest was born.

One spread was especially difficult, about the Sharpeville Massacre. I didn't want to read it, but when I told Eldest I didn't want to read it to him, he insisted. And he'd already seen the picture, so I thought not knowing the words might scare him more. So I read it. Right down to the part where the Police, who to Eldest are always Good, opened fire on unarmed people who were protesting the pass book laws. They killed 69 people.

At times I nearly cried, imagining Eldest's experience of hearing this story. Like the details about Mandela's jail cell at Robben Island and his solitary confinement for reading a newspaper one of the guards left behind. Or when Mandela got released, after his hair turned gray, and he got to see his grandchildren. Twenty-seven years is a very long time.

It occurred to me that no other one-day-away-from-six-year-olds in Canada probably learn about Apartheid. I worried it would upset him too much, that I was damaging him. But this is part of his family history, kind of. And then I thought about the six-year-old black children under Apartheid, who were forced to learn first-hand about Apartheid and human cruelty. I don't know if it was right or wrong to tell him this now; I never will.

But after we read the book, we looked at the photos I mentioned, and we listened to some South African music from the Amandla! soundtrack, which as it happens, I'd just started listening to in the car again since this drive. I've actually been singing this song for weeks. The video I've attempted to embed below of Hugh Masakela singing "Bring Back Nelson Mandela" in 1987 when Mandela was still in jail is worth the watch.




So this is home/unschooling. In one hour we covered history, geography, politics, social justice and music. It was relevant and meaningful to his own interests, family and life experiences (he's been to SA twice already), so I suspect he will retain it better than weeks of dry grade 7 desk work. Granted, the subject matter is advanced, but he was utterly engaged. Every time I asked if we wanted to take a break from the book, he was adamant that he wanted to keep going. I remember doing an independent project on South Africa in grade 7 or 8. But all I can remember from it are that Johannesburg is on a plateau and they mine diamonds and gold. This is such a gross oversimplification of a beautiful and complex country. I also remember learning the term Apartheid, but it was such a dry description in the encyclopedia I was using that it never occurred to me to imagine what one person's experience might be like under that system. Today, Eldest imagined at least two versions of what that experience might be like -- Mandela's from the book, and his own father's experience as a privileged white person - and also his grandparents and what they did or didn't do to support the struggle for freedom.

I still worry about the effect of stripping the safe but false binaries from his world so young. But I think about that six-year-old child whose world was restricted by Apartheid, and I remember that we can't shelter our children from all the world's evils.

Edited to add: Apparently it was actually my husband's great grandfather who ran one of the schools Mandela attended. And legend has it that he was the first white person Mandela ever shook hands with.

diving in

It's funny the things that can suddenly push you to make a decision you've been mulling over for a while. For us, on homeschooling, it was a pizza day sign-up form.

It came home from school on Wednesday and had to be sent back on the next day of school, Friday. I hadn't gotten a similar form completed and returned for the first part of the year, so my poor child had been having to bring his own lunch on pizza days and watch everyone else eat it while he ate leftovers or a sandwich. I didn't want to repeat my error.

When I first started considering homeschooling, I figured we'd keep him in school until the end of the year. He's on alternate days and home the other days, so I've been experimenting with homeschooling on his 'off' days. He's not exactly suffering or struggling, and I do like his teacher. She takes a more play-based approach and seems to appreciate his quirky aesthetic and sweet soul, and he hasn't been complaining about going to school the way he did last year.

Delaying was also a bit of a defence strategy, I think. Being an ENFP, I love generating ideas and starting projects, but not so much on following through or finishing. As a defence measure, I've become very wary about what I commit to, especially what I commit to in front of other people. I ponder and I think and mull and then I set it aside for a bit, then I ponder and think and mull. With homeschooling, I thought I needed to have all the answers figured out and everything planned and all the plan B's in place.

But then I started to feel myself losing fire and momentum. And it occurred to me that some of the best stuff I do in photography is when I have an idea and just jump in and shoot. I do lots of thinking and pondering and mulling too, then shoot some more and ponder some more and each phase of shooting and pondering moves my ideas forward.

Maybe homeschooling, especially the more child-led approach we're going to undertake, is like that too. And maybe we just need to dive in and see what unfolds. Maybe waiting until the end of the school year would only cause us to lose commitment.

So back to the pizza sheet. It came and the form was for the rest of the school year. And it sounds silly but those pizza slices add up. So I talked to my husband and then to Eldest and we all agreed that we'll start homeschooling in March, at which point we will have our own pizza days, complete with homemade dough.

I had planned to work through my thought process on homeschooling in this space, but instead I did it in conversation with my husband. What a concept! And I'm wary about sharing all the many reasons for homeschooling on the Internet (again, what a concept!). But I will say that the reasons reflect all aspects of our lives -- not just academic learning, but our values, our lifestyle, our family relationships.

Anyways, we're going to just dive in, in March. We won't know for sure if it's a good thing for us until we try.

Me? Homeschool?

It all started just before Christmas when I was googling dairy and soy intolerance in babies. Somehow I landed on the Analytical Armadillo. And while I was exploring older posts there, I read one about homeschooling. It's pretty compelling, especially the bit that points out that if you think about all the herding that has to take place at school, the kids really only get a couple of hours of real instruction. And then I read this Fraser Institute report on homeschooling that says that in all measures - academically, socially, emotionally, behaviourally - homeschooled children perform at least as well as and often better than their institutionally-schooled counterparts.

So I'm considering homeschooling. For real. This is kind of a shock to me. I've always been intrigued by the idea, and reading Nan's reports of exploring the educational content in Star Trek, among other learning she's embarked on with her kids especially piqued my interest. But I was convinced I wasn't patient enough or earth-mother enough or crafty enough or [insert any descriptor here that you think might describe the cliched homeschooler] to do it. I also didn't think I would want to spend 6 or 7 hours a day actively teaching my kid at a desk.

But my mind is opening. First, it doesn't have to be many hours at all of formal instruction, if any. My kid learns from the conversations we have and things we do just going to the grocery store and the post office. Not to mention the learning he does on his own through play and pursuing his own passions. Second, I've had many niggling concerns about his experience at school. He's not struggling particularly and he hasn't complained this year, but there are many ways in which the school really doesn't model our values (I'll share more on that later).

In June 2010 (before my child was in school), I actually photographed two families who "unschool" their kids. One was more radical than the other, and although I totally understood and even agreed with their reasons for unschooling, it seemed so radical, such a hugely dangerous experiment. Now that my son is in school, it suddenly doesn't seem so radical or dangerous at all. School clearly brings its own set of dangers (as both my husband and I experienced personally during our earlier lives). And parenting is always a big experiment.

On Saturday, I found a copy of The Unschooling Handbook at my local used bookstore. That night, as I was reading it, something fell out of the chapter entitled "How can you tell they're learning?" It was a pressed stalk of lavender, known for its calming qualities. When I brought it to my nose, it smelled delicious. It feels like a gift.