The Gift of Each Other

Recently my husband questioned whether our kids, who home school, miss out because they don’t get to see their friends every day. We see friends three times a week usually at the various cooperatives we do, but those other two days we (I) desperately want to stay at home. It seems like the only way we can get any of our basic school work, like math, language, and library book reading done without it being a chore is if we can spend the whole day at home. In any case, in the late afternoon when many kids, I suppose, are leaving school and after-school activities and maybe going to have dinner at their friends’ houses, we’re just getting ready to make dinner and ease into a quiet evening.

I’m very fortunate that when we get together with other kids those three days, all the kids are genuinely their friends. The mothers and the fathers are friends, too, and all eager to share conversation (and pastries, if available.) Sometimes it’s hard to get things done for all the socializing going on. But I still worried—are my kids missing out?

Then it occurred to me. They do see their friends every day—each other. Even though they’re each about 2 ½ years apart, and drive each other crazy sometimes, they’re close friends and will happily spend hours playing with each other. My eight-year-old will still hug his sister in public, and my six-year old daughter and her three-year old brother are virtually inseparable (though he still wants to marry me). But yet (and you see this coming), I still worry. Is this normal? Isn’t it supposed to be Hell on Earth to have to stay home and play with your siblings?

Getting together for scheduled play dates is wonderful, but I’ve found that it’s the small joys in the random, unscheduled, unplanned minutes of downtime that really feed us, and you can’t make those happen. You just have to hold hands and wait. Today, the kids rushed outside after doing their schoolwork, eager to be out in the sun. I’m taking a moment to rub my eyes and have a cup of tea. “Hey Mom!” I hear from outside. “We’ve found a midget in a bucket of water!” Though I was pretty sure we didn’t have midgets, I ran outside anyway. It’s November, it’s unseasonably warm, and my kids are all leaning over a bucket and looking in awe at what my son claims he knew are called midges, not midgets. They’re probably some kind of gross larvae, but they’re beautiful, and suddenly I’m not so tired any more.

The other day, I tried to pry my oldest out of the playroom, where they were using the sides of the guinea pig play-pen to grill baby-wipes as pretend fish, in order to do some of his work. I ended up letting him play, with the promise that he’d do his math later. As I stood in the kitchen in a completely, wildly, improbable moment of peace, I realized that more than math, more than social studies, more than any academics or information I could give them, this was the true gift of home schooling: the gift of each other.

Published in the Groton Landmark, December 2006

Be a Sponge

As home schoolers, we strive to be learning all the time, and this month we inadvertently put it to the test. At our karate school, the kids participate in a Character Education program in which they earn “STAR” pins for monthly activities. This month’s was to “Be a Sponge,” and try to learn something every day.

My oldest son interpreted this literally, figuring he needed to make a list of what he learned every day. By the time I found out we didn’t have to be quite that thorough, it was too amusing to stop. He’d worried briefly that by “learning” they meant what you learned in school, but I told him learning is learning, and anything was up for grabs. So, for the month of October, in his own words, this is what he learned:

1. That dad will drink clam juice coffee because he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.
2. Catching snails was easy.
3. That falafels taste better than I thought they would.
4. How to do a Hijikiukierankenski.
5. How to identify a yellow-throated strangler frog.
6. How to draw a human head.
7. That I wouldn’t die if I went out in the woods (with Mom) at night.
8. How to build a set of walls out of pipes.
9. Some red foxes can be black.
10. That sassafras is used to flavor root beer.
11. That the Day of the Dead is October 31 (Halloween).
12. How to play Zum Gali Gali on the accordion.
13. That guinea pig hairs are bigger than human hairs.
14. If you find something in the corner of the bathroom, don’t eat it.
15. How to launch a rocket.
16. That our cat Oreo likes cheese.
17. That guanabana can cure fever.
18. How to make Dia de la Muertos bread.
19. How to make a presentation.
20. How to draw mixed animals.
21. How to do Sanchin in mirror image.
22. Today was Divali, not yesterday.
23. How to perform a good skit.
24. That Queen Elizabeth only got to the throne because all her siblings died.
25. How to sing a cappella.
26. How to convert fractions.
27. How to add suspense to a comic.
28. How scary someone yelling “Gabba Head” could be.
29. How to make frozen peas.
30. How to tell Vinca from Poison Ivy.
31. How to make improper fractions.

When I was done laughing (with him, not at him, but in a separate room) it struck me how utterly random and appropriately sponge-like his list was. Sometimes we learn new, exciting things, things that will impress other people or show up well on a standardized test, but sometimes we really need to learn obvious things, or things that just call out in their own simple glory. But I consider the experiment a success: he had fun, and I got an easy column out of it.

Half-way through this effort, my son raised the stakes. If learning is fun, as I claim, why don’t I see what I can learn every day next month. If my less spongy brain cells are up for the challenge, I’ll report back.

Ready for School

For most families, getting ready for school means buying school supplies, new clothes, and sending the kids off to one grade higher with a mixture of sadness and relief. Even though the new school year brings on a hectic return to busy routines, at least the routines are familiar. When you home school, though, a big challenge is adapting to completely new routines and rhythms. Most of the time you don’t know what they are yet, and when you figure them out—they change, or life throws you a curve-ball.

Because you’re dealing with children of different ages, especially if they’re small, things are never the same as they were the year before. I had a plan at the end of last year. It was a good plan, but now everyone had to go and get older on me. It’s like changing ingredients: I had eggs, flour, and milk, and I was planning to make cake. Now I have anchovies, flour, and a South African spice rub (and here I must give a nod to middle-child syndrome—my poor middle child is only flour) and I’m thinking why did I ever think I should try and cut out caffeine at the beginning of the school year?

Last year, my little one was two, my five-year old daughter said she wanted to be in kindergarten forever, and my oldest needed a lot of help with his work. I figured I’d consider my daughter Kindergarten, and I’d spend most of my time reading aloud to all my children and working on math with the two oldest. Now my 8-year old wants to do all the reading and math by himself and the three-year old wants to learn how to write and keeps chasing me with his Kindgergarten math book and a pencil. So apparently I will be working with the two little ones, and my daughter will be in “First Grade” so she gets to feel bigger than her little brother. This really wasn’t the plan.

But, most of the joy of home schooling comes from not having to have a “plan.” A few years of doing it wrong and right (and not necessarily in that order) have shown me that finding a rhythm is better than having a plan. Plans go awry, but rhythms will always be there, even if you’re not attuned to them. If we work with our biological rhythms, with the tides of both our pleasures and our challenges, then we seem to get everything done that we need to without anything seeming like a chore. Productivity Researchers have called this “Flow experience.” With three children this is often more like white-water rafting with at least one person trying to jump out of the boat and having forgotten the paddles due to shrieking and whining-induced temporary amnesia. And then there are the Monday morning asthma attacks, missing baby-wipes and errant carseats, and other minor and major catastrophes that have made our weeks so far start out with clenched teeth rather than any sort of “flow”

Maybe that’s the lesson. I can’t control my kids any more than I can control the universe, and I don’t want to. You can’t sing when you clench your teeth. These days our daily rhythm starts with funk bagpipe music at breakfast (again, not my plan). We’ve gotten a lot “done” despite my worry, and had fun doing it: we made taxonomically correct insects out of recyclables and learned all about bees in a graphic novel called “Clan Apis,” gone on several wonderful hikes, and all learned that no one wants to play with you if you’re being a jerk. My son took it on himself to update our write-on-wipe-off map of the United States with apparently all of the known Native American Indian tribes, complete with waves of foreign invasion. My son and I have both learned how to recognize Black Widow and Brown Recluse spiders, which is useful because, according to the field guide, they’re everywhere and hide in blankets.

All of this hasn’t happened because I planned it. It’s all happened because we’ve got enough time at home that our learning doesn’t have to be restricted, or scheduled, and when we’ve got that time, learning and fun are the same thing. We take turns being leaders and followers, teachers and students, just like on a good hike with the sun at our back and the delectable earth crunching underfoot.

Published in the Groton Landmark on Friday, September 29, 2006

Living Books

Whenever anyone asks me “you don’t do school over the Summer, right?” I’m not sure what to say. Do I mention that we’ve taken out hundreds of library books already, or do I say we’re just having fun? And what do I say when someone looks at my five-year old daughter and asks “is she reading yet?”

None of my children have had any patience with easy readers. The oldest learned to read by sounding out the name of the states in his state quarter folder, then dove into a book about Uzbekistan. The second asks me to read her the American Girl books and will follow along as I point to each word, but uses her Bob books as play food. The third one, still three, sits on the couch staring at comic books about Indian mythology and claiming he’s reading them.

I’m willing to bet, Uzbekistan freaks excluded, that most children will, ironically, learn to “read” slower if you read good books to them frequently than if you sit and decode low-level readers. Why would any child want to read “The Cat Sat on the Mat” when they could curl up and listen to the grand story of Narnia? Eventually, the service gets too slow and they want to do it themselves, but in the meantime they ingest the sounds, the sentences, and the structure of stories the same way they would well-cooked food.

What children learn to do when they are taught to read is this: they learn to decode the sounds of the English language. They learn to read what they can be successful at, to perform for their teachers or their parents. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as it's not a question of the end justifying the means. We’ve certainly done our time with Reading Reflex and reading games. But I wonder if we pressure our kids to read too early, they learn to please us instead of themselves. Reading should be an adventure that we all follow with our own pace and interests. When we teach, we expect a return on our investment, a stroke for our ego; when we help children learn, then the path is theirs.

If you look at the history, and the use of the word “read” here’s what you get: we read tea leaves, we read entrails, we read faces, we try to read minds. Reading is power. Long ago, only the elite could decipher written language and monks scribed books individually, by hand. Even now, “literacy rate” is a measure of a country’s well-being and civilization. Merriam Webster defines “read” as “to receive or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) especially by sight or touch;” the word comes from the Middle English reden to advise, interpret.

So, unless we read just to escape, or to check off “read a book” on a list, we read for meaning, to touch the world and other souls no longer on it. But not all books can do this for us. “Living Books,” as educator Charlotte Mason describes them, are written by someone with an interest and genuine care in the subject, with a human touch and a fire that lights the imagination. Real literature gives us truth, nobility, and beauty, and kids can sense this just as well as adults. A good book leaves you begging for more, and this I believe is the key to everything—making kids need to read. My main role? I just get the books.

When I used to lie down with my older two children to ease them into their naps, I’d tell them sweet little stories about mice with characteristics oddly like themselves. Now with the youngest, I tell violent stories about Pirate Mice and Bad Guy Mice. This is in no way real literature, but it does have heart, and moments of inspiration. And I always laugh when I finish and my son says “read me another!” I try to explain to him that I’m not reading—I don’t have a book; I’m making it up. I guess I am the book. I am happy that he is full of stories, and I hope that later, when he does find the words in front of him, he will come to them with love and pleasure.

Published in the Groton Landmark

I am obsolete

We've been doing the Story of the World for the past two years, and this year, now that Mira is old enough, I figured I'd read some of the material aloud to her and Wiley so they could both get it. I'd forgotten to tell him *not* to read certain of the library books, because I was saving them to read aloud, and apparently he's been staying up late and reading them all.

So I asked him yesterday "I got books to read to you and Mira, and I was figuring you might still enjoy being read to, but you seem to like reading them at night. Would you rather sit with us while I read them aloud, or read them by yourself?"

"I'd rather read them on my own," he said.

"And as long as we're talking--math. Would you rather we sat down for a certain period of time and worked on math together, or would you rather I mark out what you're supposed to do for the week, and as long as you get it done, you can do it when you want?"

"I'd rather do it on my own."

"Oh," I said. "Is there anything you'd like to work on together? I don't want you to feel left out or ignored while I'm working with your sister and brother."

"I don't know. I'll think about it."

Fishing for Chicken

This week, we drove up to the Salem Seacoast for a Marine Ecology Analysis program run by the Family Resource Center, an organization that arranges field trips for New England home schooling families. We were looking forward to tossing crabbing nets off the harbor pier and seeing what marine specimens we could pick up off the rocky shore. There were about twelve baskets tied to the pier, and a couple of marine biologists ready to help us identify our catch. We had water. We had snack bars. We had about an hour.

We set ourselves up at our net with our timer and clipboard, and got set for our first five-minute “soak.” The net, which was actually a metal basket, had a chicken leg firmly tied to its bottom to act as bait. One good toss and our rope reeled over the edge, the chicken leg disappearing in the clear, blue water. There were no clouds in the sky, and I thought how perfect it was to start the day off with some hands-on learning outside on such a glorious day.

After three fruitless periods of “soaking,” however, it became obvious that my eldest son would consider the entire day, and possibly his whole life, a dismal failure unless he caught a crab. I could read it on his face; this little boy with the personality of Captain Ahab crossed with Eeyore, his jaw set with the grim travail of Man vs. Nature. We pulled up the basket again, and again it was empty except for the gleaming chicken leg. We tried again. And again. The chicken leg danced back up to us through the water, briny and alone.

We passed some time looking at other people’s crabs, and learned the difference between the easily confused Rock Crab and Jonah Crab. The teeth at the front edge of the rock crab’s shell are smooth-edged, while those of the Jonah Crab are bumpy and rough. In addition, our materials pointed out, while the Jonah Crab is timid “the Rock Crab is “usually very aggressive when disturbed.” Which makes me wonder whether it really isn’t a good idea to try to classify an animal by seeing if it’s aggressive when disturbed.

Soon it was made obvious to me how different my children are. My oldest sulked and silently reset the timer. My daughter seemed uninterested in the entire affair, except for the pregnant crab, gravid with the thousands of eggs she would carry for two years (and you thought you had it bad.) Meanwhile my three-year old yelled excitedly, each time we brought the empty basket up, “Look everyone! We caught a chicken!”

Finally, after the program was over and we sat around discussing our finds, we approached the bucket for a last hopeless time and pulled it up. Two crabs, quickly identified as Not Chicken Crabs, a gift from the sea. I found myself torn between being happy that my son caught something of his own and worrying that he will always expect a full basket from a life that has no guarantees.

We freed the crabs, then walked down to the beach and kicked our shoes off and waded in the surf. We had nowhere to be and nothing to do, and I could see no trace of the morning’s frustration on my son’s face. The water was warm and it was low tide, so there were little purple shells everywhere. Everyone was happy and wet as the salt water wicked into their clothing, and my little one ran around telling strangers how we just caught chicken in the ocean.

And so I’m reminded: attitude is everything. Crabs will come to those who wait, eventually, and when you’re barefoot on the sand hardly anything else matters but the sea and the sky.

Finding Joy

One of the main reasons I chose to home school was to be able to spend time with my kids; for us to have time as a family instead of being cast to the wind like so many different seeds. There would be enough hours in the day for everything, I figured, and we could enjoy a peaceful, sane life. We’d have fun, and I could manage to write while the children played, or do my work while they did theirs. Instead, while I wasn’t looking, all my children have stripped naked and are loudly reconstructing the plot of “Star Wars” entirely in the buff, and I’ve misplaced my son’s math workbook while yelling at him to put his underwear back on.

But what has truly surprised me about our home-schooling reality is just how hard it is to find moments of peace and grace even when we’re supposedly “at home” all the time. We still spend so much time rushing, or getting ready to do something else, or just tending to basic input and output needs. I never seem to have enough time to myself, and there are piles of laundry on the guest bed yet at the moment all of our pants and socks seem to be missing. There seem to be very few moments where we are perfectly at rest, and enjoying the moment, and when that happens it usually means that someone is about to whack their head on something or the dog will need to pee. In any event, I’ve found these moments only tend to happen when we’re home all morning—not running out to lessons or play dates, not doing errands or, oddly, deliberately trying to get school work done.

I have spent a good few years now trying to cultivate joy, to plan, and poke, and prod us all into some kind of harmony that will leave us at the end of the day with more than just exhaustion and frustration. If we have eggs for lunch then they’ll be able to hold out for a hike; if we go on a hike, then everyone should be settled down enough to work or to play nicely; if we get our work done soon then we can eat lunch before the toddler crashes, and so on. Most parents know how dealing with the logistics of daily life can tire you out. Being home with three kids means a lot of daily logistics, day after day. It’s truly humbling to see how much work it takes to get just a few moments of grace, and how quickly they end when someone yells “Who wrote “butt” in this math notebook?!”

But I’ve finally realized that joy can’t be manufactured, and sometimes the way to make music is just to shut up first and listen for the tune. The best moments we have are often when I’m just doing something else (like writing this column) and my kids are free to be themselves. The little one picks out “Pepperoni Pizza” on the piano, then decides to pull out a workbook and trace his letters (unfortunately, “p” also stands for “poop”), and my daughter helps him with the big O’s. We all get distracted by the dusky red bird on the bird feeder, then spot the female cardinal with her beautiful orange beak. Now they’re talking about various forms of dismemberment and how mechanical limbs are far superior to peg legs.

So I try to remind myself: do less. Listen. Be quiet and just watch. The best part of home schooling is getting to hoard all these moments, the big and the small, against the day everyone’s gone. I’m very grateful that I get to enjoy these bittersweet moments as they fly by; singing John Denver songs together in the car, realizing that I’m not allowed to kiss my son in front of his friends anymore. More and more of our special moments are tinged with the obviousness that the kids are growing up. Last week my son was snuggling in a sleeping bag with my daughter, his arms around her and his nose nuzzling her neck. I snapped a picture with the digital camera, and he quickly instructed me “Don’t show that to my friends or any of their mothers.” (I presume I still have print rights.)

This morning I am lying in bed, sandwiched between my two youngest children and desperately trying to write in my journal as the school bus rumbles by. My daughter was up during the night vomiting, and bits of her hair are stuck together. My son smells Real Bad, having come in to snuggle with a full diaper. This is not how I pictured things, but I figure this proves that joy is a lot more accessible if you can overlook a lot. We may have no pants, but we have each other.

How to Tell if your Child is Not Ready for Toilet Training...

When you point at the cheerios floating in the toilet and tell your pirate-obsessed boy "Ahoy matey! Sink those mighty ships with your trusty cannon!"...and he says "I don't want to."

Buried Treasure

We have been bored at my house lately, full of ennui, suffering from some sort of unscratchable itch. It’s not just Spring, or strep throat, or the fact that we’ve eaten way too many fish sticks. I don’t mind if my kids are bored some of the time – it’s a cue to be creative, to find a new book, to live a little and stop looking for entertainment. I do mind if my kids are bored with their schoolwork, all ego-related issues aside (we home school).Learning is supposed to be fun, I tell them (usually when we’re not having fun). When I’m bored, though, that’s a sign that something’s seriously wrong.

I’ve found myself too often rushing through the morning, wanting to be doing something else, not being present in the moment with my kids or myself. Then lunch time comes, and even though my children would love for me to light a candle and sit with them, I sit by myself at the big table and steal a few moments to read a book. And so I beat myself up—should I really be home schooling? Why am I doing this if I’d rather be doing something else? And what is that something else, anyway?

A wise teacher once asked me “What is your treasure?” What nourishes you, more than the air you breathe? What is most dear to your heart, what you would give to your children if you could offer nothing else? For me—I love learning and creating; I love immersing myself in the process and losing my goal-oriented self. I love the moment of brilliant coincidence where two pieces of the world somehow fit together into something new. And so I’ve realized—our school routine has been nourishing neither myself nor my children.

We do the math, we do our spelling, we do history and science. But what I need is the magic. I want the discovery, the surprise, the joy of coming across in a book something we just happened to have seen. Yet, at the same time, what about the workbooks, the checklists, the “What Your Child Needs to Know” books? Am I an ADD School-at-Homer, or an anal-retentive Unschooler? Do I need to add “magician” to my list of jobs? (I can’t even pull the wax out of my ears, never mind an educationally metaphoric rabbit out of a hat). But you can’t teach love – of learning, or anything else. The most you can do is offer it, and then if you’re lucky, hang on and go along for the ride.

It’s hard to let go and trust that my children will learn what they need to know without my ruthlessly planning and scheduling, or even to believe there’s a middle ground. What am I afraid of? That my children won’t end up making enough money? Won’t impress the cashier at the grocery store with their brilliance? Or is it that I’m venturing into territory that can’t be measured or quantified or boxed in terms of competence or success (theirs, or mine?) Why do we try and cram information into our children? Are we just afraid that our children are elemental, powerful creatures, capable of anything (unlike us) unless we bore them to death?

Maybe I’m a lazy control-freak, or a perfectionist with job-completion issues. But I have chosen to school my children at home and spare them any labeling or pigeon-holing, so I suppose I should extend myself that courtesy. We are officially winging it, learning (together!) how to enjoy life and let the magic come to us. Last week, we plowed through more of book 4 of the Narnia series (The Dawn Treader), and got to the part where Prince Caspian and the Pevensies encounter the Monopods, invisible one-legged hopping creatures. The very next day we visited the MIT Museum, and lo and behold, there was a video and construct of a robotic monopod, hopping around like a cross between an ostrich and a kangaroo. Yesterday we built an astrolabe and now we’re discovering trigonometry. How exciting!

The last time it snowed, my two-year-old Captain-Hook wannabe insisted on bringing his pirate treasure chest outside so he could bury it. But, but, but, I insisted….it’s cold, it’s almost dinner time, we were doing math, what about practicing our instruments? Fortunately, little can match the force of obsessed toddler, and I got his boots and his coat on and sent him out. My two older children and I watched from the doorway, giggling and smiling as he scooped pitifully small amounts of snow onto the chest with his little mittened hands. He came in, I got him undressed, and he promptly decided he needed to go dig it up. I tried to explain to him you’re supposed to dig up someone else’s treasure, then looked at his determined, utterly happy face and realized that maybe I was the one that had it all wrong. He dug, we laughed, then we all sat down with hot cocoa. He had it right. The good thing about digging up your own treasure is you always know where it is.

Written for next week's Groton Herald

Teaching English at Home

When I was in grade school, I used to sit by myself with a pencil and a notebook making up stories. This, I imagine, qualified me nicely for a future career as either a writer or a sociopath, or both if you go with the stereotype. I also remember endless six-sentence essays, diagramming sentences in seventh grade, and being spat on by a tenth grade teacher showing off his ability to speak Old English. Now, teaching my children at home, I’ve been forced to think what to make of all this, and to come up with what I consider an essential “English” curriculum.

After two years, ironically, we’ve logged zero hours in “English” in my nifty Edutrack software. We get our composition and grammar through our history and spelling curricula, and my kids spend too much time reading for me to bother logging it. Everything ends up being connected, and if I double or triple-counted everything, we’d end up with a gerbillion hours home schooling, most of which I’d be spending figuring out what to call everything. Much of what we do is tied together by narration, an idea popularized by Charlotte Mason, an influential British educator in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Children’s compositional ability, she said, usually exceeds their writing ability until they’re at least 10.

For history, we read aloud a chapter of “Story of the World,” at the beginning of the week and then on another day I grab a pen and paper and sit my son down to narrate back to me what happened in the chapter. I do the writing, so that he can focus on organizing his thoughts instead of lamenting his handwriting. Because I’m a harsh editor, and because I’m doing all the writing, I’ve imposed on him a sense of brevity and clarity of thought. I’m not going to write down “Hello, my name is Wiley and I’m going to tell you all about the Normans” or write down some long rant that has no beginning or end. He does remarkably well considering that if someone sat me down first thing in the morning and said “tell me about the Ostrogoths in six sentences or less” my head would explode. I was particularly proud when he came up with “The barbarians were a savage people who only liked war.”

In our spelling curriculum, the words build logically upon each other (i.e., in, pin, begin, inning, beginning) so the words used are often not words traditionally found in grade level texts. We frequently get onto tangents like why the British put a u in the word mouldering, the difference between “did” and “have done,” what slandering means. We’ve talked about things like tense, alliteration, homonyms, as they come up (and it really isn’t worth putting that 30-second lesson into Edutrack). When we discuss these things in a normal conversation, I can tell that my kids are interested and understand the concept.

Mason pioneered the concept of a “living” education for children, one in which the environment engages the heart of the child and the choice of books should be the best-written, most inspiring and high-quality books available. We don’t do abridged books, or “grade-level” distillations, and I often read aloud if something is particularly difficult or full of good language. Even my two-year-old will sit still for myths and fairy tales, or middle-ages history filled with fighting and weaponry. Kids can’t help but internalize the English language when exposed to real literature and asked to retell, or narrate back, things in their own words.

Writing is about communication and the organization of ideas. I want my kids to be passionate about this, and I want them to care enough about what they think to speak and write as best they can. Why spend the time doing exercises just for the sake of teaching skills when no one, including me, is interested in the material? It’s much more fun reading things we can both learn from (and it’s rather amazing how much I’ve learned). When it comes time for them to put pen to paper and learn how to write an essay, they’ll already have had practice and will look for the words inside them, rather than trying to fill up the paper.

These days my kids often get to see me writing. I’ve been working on a novel, and I’m now wrangling the third revision. They see me fussing and deleting, and lining the guinea pig cage with old drafts. This shows them how writers often end up being sociopaths, but also gives them a view into the creative process, the magic that makes everything worth while. I don’t necessarily work in order, and had to try to explain to my son what my outline was for when I was starting on Chapter 6. I’m not sure he bought my answer, but he did respond with a charming economic insight: “you’ll sell your book for $20, but then after a few months it will only sell for $12.” Hopefully he’ll have better luck.

Published in the Groton Herald, Wednesday March 24, 2006

Fun at the "Fight Guy" Museum

This past Saturday I brought my family to the Higgins Museum to see a long sword demonstration and a “genuine” live Viking Warrior. Now that I have two boys, a membership at the Higgins is a must, especially since one of them now has more swords and shields than I can count and calls himself “Fight Guy.” This year in our world history curriculum, we’re studying the Middle Ages. The last time we went, I spent the entire time explaining to my two-year old why none of the “guys” were fighting, so I figured sword fights and a chain-mailed warrior would make his day.

The Higgins Armory Museum is the only museum in the Western Hemisphere entirely devoted to the study and display of arms and armor. It’s got African armor, Viking armor, Asian armor, swords, maces, and among other things a life-size crusader mounted on a horse in a giant Great Hall. They have an ongoing calendar of events for all ages including arms demonstrations, an Old Norse reading group, and hands-on courses in the historical martial arts. My kids are still clamoring to go back and take the full audio tour.

The Viking warrior was a stocky guy with long blond hair and a bushy beard, both which appeared real. Viking helmets, he explained, did not have horns. The metal piece down the front is very handy for keeping your nose intact. He disliked the name “Viking,” preferring “Norsemen.” The word ‘Viking’ came from the expression “I Viking,” which is what the Norsemen said when they took time off from their farms to raid other lands. Most of the time, they were busy with their own farms and settlements; they were, in fact, part-time-pirates.

I was interested, but not suprised, to learn that what we know about the Vikings is suspect. Most of the educated historians of the Middle Ages were monks living in monasteries. They were the ones able to document the attacks by Vikings, and were often the ones violently attacked because of the treasures they kept cloistered with them. This, obviously, made their writings somewhat one-sided. When we read about the Vikings during our History lessons, we hadn’t learned much about their lives at home, only their attacks on English monks and the Franks (or, “the other guys” according to my little one.)

None of this, however, impressed my children as much as the weaponry. When I asked them what they liked about the visit to the museum, my older son said “I liked the long sword.” My two-year old said “I would like the spear, because it was longer and had a pointy tip.” Obviously he thought I was asking not to find out what he’d learned but to plan a future weapons purchase. He clearly picked up some new fighting techniques (only the final third of a long sword is sharp, so you can hold it with your other hand in the middle and use it to whack people, generally while yelling “ha HA!”)

All of this is somewhat puzzling to me. We used to be a peaceable household. My older son, who was into geography, and my daughter would merge their interests by staging weddings and other events with their stuffed animals (“it’s a dance class in Micronesia!”) But then Fight Guy came along. At the same time, my older boy started getting into a series of comics about Indian Mythology, which are all about “brown guys fighting” as my little one says; executing various revenge plans, stealing brides, chopping off heads and things like that. And then there’s the Middle Ages, full of sacking and looting and crusading. Practically every section in the Activity book that accompanies the text in our history curriculum includes a make-your-own-weapon activity.

How do we teach these things without glorifying violence? How do I make sure my kids realize the crusades weren’t all fun and games without scaring the pants off of them? How do I read the newspaper without scaring the pants off of me? The Higgins, at least, is all about violence from another age, a quaint age where you could actually wear something that would protect you from harm. Going to the museum, you learn that violence used to be a way of life, that an “honor” society meant that you plowed your field with your sword in your lap, just in case you pissed anyone off over a pint of mead the night before. Maybe things haven’t changed much. For the moment I’ll just enjoy watching my kids whack each other with foam swords. At least they’ve all got shields, and the welts don’t last.

Published in the Groton Landmark on March 3, 2006

Detecting Childhood Vision Problems

”If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Right? Sometimes, it’s not so simple. As my children’s teacher, I get to see them work through their challenges and frustrations daily. Most of the time, things that are hard one day give way to new competence (and less whining), and even the kids can see the progress they’re making little by little. But occasionally, the tears just keep coming and things don’t get any easier. If you’re homeschooling, you can catch the problems that won’t slip past one-on-one attention.

When he was five, my son taught himself to read and devoured hundred-page books faster than I could get them out of the library. His handwriting, however, was awful. It wasn’t just that it looked bad, but that he couldn’t write even half a line in our penmanship program without breaking down into tears. Some letters were larger than others, some veered off the line, other letters, like “b” and “d,” he kept mixing up. Math was torture, too, because he kept messing up writing the numbers. For months, there was no improvement.

So, we started vision therapy. What vision therapy does is teach children, using a variety of games and exercises, what they should be seeing under certain conditions. Knowing this, they can make their eyes work to produce that result. One of the exercises, for example, was a plastic w-shaped contraption with a picture of a fishbowl on one side and a fish on the other. If you pull your focus closer toward you, you should be able to see the fish go into the fishbowl. If the fish disappears, you’re in trouble -- it means your brain is ignoring input from one of your eyes.

Vision therapy entailed 12 weeks of driving to Worcester and doing exercises three times a day for 10 minutes each. Between that, practicing music, karate and managing to do any schoolwork, we had an awful lot on our plate. But it helped immeasurably. Afterwards, my son could write an entire story with hardly any complaint, and the writing was actually legible and at grade level.

Lucky me, now we’re back there with my daughter, who’s now 5. She would rub her eyes whenever I tried to work with her on her math workbook, and tilt her head to the side. Unlike my son, she won’t complain -- she’ll just refuse to do anything that’s “hard” or pretend she has no interest in reading and writing. When I try to “buddy read” with her following along as I point to the words, she can barely make it a few minutes without rubbing her eyes and saying she’s tired. I’m really, really hoping my third child doesn’t have vision problems, because I’m tired of spending one afternoon a week driving back and forth from Worcester.

Aside from that minor complaint, I’m very grateful I caught these problems before my children got older. The vision therapy office is usually full of middle-school kids who’ve likely been told for years “you just have to work harder” or “you’re not paying attention.” Many of them have been falling behind for years and have finally been crushed by the sheer weight of their middle-school homework. Vision therapy can help the vision, but it can’t help the years of feeling stupid or the hours lost struggling with homework.

In the home school, excess whining or running from the room in tears is generally a good indicator there might be a problem. In a class with 20 or 30 other kids, vision issues can often be missed, or misinterpreted as poor behavior or a learning disability. Some things to look for are: holding a book very close, squinting or covering one eye, holding the head at an angle while reading, constant poor posture during close work, poor attention span and fatigue. Correcting a vision problem can make a huge change in a child’s life. I can sure see the difference.

Published in the Groton Landmark on February 17

Living with Little People

When I tell people I home school my children, I often get asked, “Wow, how can you spend so much time with your kids? I don’t think I could do that.” My kids are still young, so for the most part we’re together, from the moment they wake up until Dad walks in the door after we’ve eaten dinner. I find it amusing that no one ever asks anything like “how on earth can you spend so much time with your husband?” It’s almost as if children are another species, like gremlins or large, carnivorous snakes—you might feed them and play with them a while, but what the heck would you do with them the rest of the time?

Part of what I’ve learned is that when you spend so much time one-on-one with children, they cease to be children as much as little people; little people who happen to be around a whole lot. They’re not just a set of ages and behaviors to be managed according to the latest parenting advice. We’re all learning how to get along with each other, when we’re at our best and worst, similar and different, and not just a few hours a day. It’s good practice for the real world. In any case, any group of people functions better with a set of ground rules that keeps them from eating each other up and sucking on the bones. We’ve all got to work together.

So, here are our house’s ten rules for living with little people:

• Everyone needs to get along. The seven-year old, five-year old, and the two-year old all need to be able to play together. Many toys on the market these days are made for one child playing alone, or with at most one child of the same age. We don’t have many of these toys. Instead, the kids play with each other—they build houses, make up games, and whack each other with foam swords. I want my kids to learn to value the people around them over the things they have. Also, since they’re around each other so much, they need to learn how to share, be fair, and resolve conflicts (often with the help of me, the indescribably old person).
  
• Everyone gets time to themselves. Especially Mom. We’re generally all done with each other by lunch time. After lunch, we have quiet time in separate rooms (even the two-year old will sit with books or play by himself for an hour). It’s important to have time to hear yourself think, not have to be social, or play something that you simply can’t do with your little brother around. As the mom, I need to catch up on my own projects, and simply have some peace and quiet and a break from being Chef, Nurse, Mediator, Teacher, Boo-boo-kisser, and Hostage Negotiator.
  
• Balance your life and take care of basic needs. I’m at my best when I get to go to kickboxing, get enough sleep, and have some spiritual nutrition. My kids are at their best when their basic, physical needs are met. It’s nearly impossible to balance all our needs as well as managing to cover the curriculum work I’ve planned, and often I’m restless, tired, and feeling like my cup is empty (last time I spent some time listening to a meditation tape, I was interrupted by my kids fighting over a urine specimen cup. If it was from the 2-year-old doctor’s appointment, but he didn’t use it—does that still make it his?) Still, I figure that modeling for the kids how to lead a balanced live and take care of one’s self and other people is better than any curriculum. These are life skills. Big ones!
  
• Share meals. The whole world knows this. If you want to make friends, and keep them, eat with them. Break bread and share food. Sometimes we light a candle. Sometimes the dog snatches someone’s food.
  
• Everyone pulls their share. Mommy is so much happier when she doesn’t have to cook and clean up the table, never mind pick up the pants and underwear that someone has molted in front of the (unflushed) toilet. The kids clear their own dishes, wipe the table (onto the floor, of course), and are supposed to clean up their toys before both lunch and dinner. Loud ABBA music makes cleaning more fun, and drowns out the complaining.
  
• There will be no toys that drive Mom ape#$%*. I want to enjoy being with my kids, not spend all my time cleaning up toys that they play with for only thirty seconds or grit my teeth when someone’s sitting on the talking Elmo doll. I learned early on that my kids don’t really play with toys that make noise—they just make them make noise and go play with something else, then go back and make them make noise again, and so on, like a big repetitive motion injury. Open-ended, multipurpose toys are great, and quieter (except for the shrieking and foam-sword whacking noises). Why should I have a gazillion toys when “Mr. Sockie” is driving the pirate boat?
  
• There needs to be a rhythm to the day. There is a Japanese concept called “ma,” which means “the space in between things.” Things go smoothly when there’s a feeling of enough time to the day. If we have too much to do, or we’re out all day, we really feel it. The best days are when I’ve left enough space in the schedule so that we feel like we’ve done what we’ve wanted and needed to do without feeling pressured. These days are rarer than I’d like, but we aim for them.
  
• Lots of hugs.
  
• Keep your perspective. I keep reminding myself that the child humming the Nutcracker on a kazoo while banging on the trash can is a good thing. And it will feel so good when he stops!
  
• Everything in its place. At least socks, pencils, and baby wipes. I’ve found it highly disturbing to my sanity to have to spend half an hour looking for crucial things (like the plastic hook that goes with the Captain Hook outfit). Things are hard enough that we don’t need anyone having a tantrum (me) because they can’t find something important.
  For the most part, this works for us, especially if I get my quiet time. Some days go well, and other days we’re all waiting at the window for Dad to come home. But usually, at the end of the day we’re still happy we get to be together. And that’s still heaven, even if I’m hiding in the bathroom.
  
  Published in the Groton Landmark on January 27.

Humility and Home Schooling

One of the best things about home schooling is that there’s always something to learn; in the best spirit of “child-led learning” I get to be the biggest child. I’m a packrat, too, and have to admit that probably I’m home schooling solely to rationalize buying all that “cool stuff” that would have made learning so much fun when I was a kid. If the kids weren’t home, who would build the transparent horse model with me or blow up a pig esophagus to see if the lungs inflate? (They do, and it doesn’t sound pretty). Sometimes, though, things don’t go smoothly or as well as I’d like. We can’t play that math game if I don’t get around to reading the directions; all the pencils are dull and the pencil sharpener is missing; my son disappears from the table, and the room, in the time it takes me to change his little brother’s diaper.

When things are going smoothly, and perhaps at their best, I’m reminded that I’m not really my children’s teacher as much as I am their guide along a lifelong path of learning. So many times, when I think I’m the Curriculum Master bringing down knowledge from on high, I’ll get the reply “But Mom, I already read that book,” or get a lecture back (who would have guessed that my son would have already read about Eastern Orthodox Christianity from a book on Moldovia?). Obviously I’m learning as much as they are.

Two years ago, I was having colitis problems, and the doctor requested “samples.” Well, I messed it up. You might be wondering why someone who can screw up a stool sample is qualified to teach their children, but obviously I am teaching them about things like humility and “asking directions” by personal example. So we’re in the car on the way back from the doctor’s the second time, and after explaining to my then five-year-old son how I could screw up a stool sample (again, humility), he asks to read the directions. The directions, of course, are in many languages, which fascinates him, and he spends upward of fifteen minutes in the back of the car reading the thing. Then he asks me, “Mommy, how come the directions aren’t in Icelandic?” So I tell him that statistically, there aren’t that many native Icelandic people with intestinal issues in Massachusetts. That made him think. I chugged my tea and tried to make the headache go away.

Recently we’ve got new chore charts in our house, and the kids earn tokens for chores done, which they can redeem for warm fuzzies like backrubs, special dinners with mom or dad, or falling asleep in mommy and daddy’s bed. One night, my 7 and 5-year olds chose to spend 100 tokens to stay up late. Fine, I thought. I usually chill out after they go to bed by watching “What Not to Wear.” They could watch it with me. Unfortunately, this was beneath them. Instead, they wanted “Hidden History,” and we learned about the Celtic Causeway, which was some sort of sacrificial platform in ancient Britain (I confess, I wasn’t entirely paying attention.) My son was really excited, and fortunately without a trace of condescension said “Mom, you really should watch this instead of What Not to Wear.”

Every day, I discover new gaps in my own education, and look forward to learning along side my kids. Whether it’s a new math trick, or history that I never learned, I’ve learned to say “I didn’t know that” with pleasure instead of embarrassment. At the same time, though, I’m aware that I’m never going to cover all I want to cover, never going to teach my kids everything I think they need to learn. Even being home all day (which we rarely are), the days are still too short. Fortunately, we all get the benefit of having the two-year-old Zen master around to remind us that knowledge isn’t everything, and neither is having time for everything. Maybe it’s just the joy of being with people you love. What is the sound of one child jumping into the room?--“I’m Golden Poop Pot!”

Published in the Groton Landmark on 1/06/06