But How do They Learn?

Jeff Sabo's Blog has an older, but timely post regarding compulsory education and the Cradle to Career educational  policy of the Obama Administration.

Ch...Ch...Ch....Changes....

I have not created a post in a long while.  The holidays, illness, work, and more illness has interfered with my ability to stay on track with regular posts.

So much change seems to be going on within the lives of my kids, and in me, and it is not easy to document all that I want to with regards to life learning.  I have been reading so, so much about radical unschooling lately, and every day I want more, more, more to fill up my brain so that I'm at maximum capacity with understanding all that I can about trusting my children, responding to their needs and desires, bringing them a world of interesting things, and being a nurturing and responsive parent who is not critical, cynical, or mean.

This winter has been challenging in some respects because we've not had much snow, we've had a lot of very cold weather that makes being outside unpleasant, we've had two different viral infections, and I think all of us are a little stir-crazy.

The upside has been going to my nephews basketball games, where the girls can meet up with friends and new acquaintances, and play in a completely different setting of the gym.  It's been loads of fun to watch them explore the gym, talk to policemen, interact with young teens, kids their age, and all those in-between. 

N. got an iPod Touch for Christmas, which she requested, and uses every day.  It was definitely the perfect technological tool for her.  She can take pictures and videos, watch TV shows and movies, listen to and sing along to music, and play games.  Some of the apps are so creative, and it's fun to see how she transforms her own pictures into creative works of art.  Now if only I could figure out how to communicate with the router so she can get online with it!

N. is also changing in big ways.  Being 8 is such a profound time.  She suddenly has a personal awareness of her place in the world, and a much vaster comprehension of her likes and dislikes.  Emotionally, this awareness can be challenging.  She misses her best friend so much that it hurts physically.  Then the mundane reality of conflicting schedules, illness, and other life stuff causes great big emotional reactions when things don't really go her way.

I can recall being 8 pretty vividly.  But being in school, and being a minority, made things challenging for me in ways that are much different than what N. is experiencing.  For me, I had so much freedom and desire to be outside, and I was all the time.  We rode horses every day, rode bikes, played in the mud, made our own adobe houses, and hotwheels tracks out of dirt embankments.  We played in the river, and just explored every inch of every place we called our own. My desire to be with my friends was generally met easily and without much conflict.

N. prefers to be close to home, and her discomfort and anxiety levels escalate when things get pushed outside her comfort zones.  She has a great desire to see her friend each week, but between families getting sick lately it's been hard to get together enough.  Hopefully nicer weather will bring more ability to get together.

Little S. is expanding her horizons as well.  She's suddenly, and overnight writing letters and numbers.  She has been enjoying me reading to her before bedtime, and she's been pretty easygoing and even keel.

My biggest dilemma is working and not being able to be present enough for my kids each day.  All the illness meant much more time together, and I did relish every bit of it.  Just being sweet, and caring, and giving to them when they were feeling bad meant so much to me.  I have wished for decades now that I could be the one who stays home, but alas, it is still not meant to be.  This aspect to our life-learning journey is the most difficult.  Add to that my extremely gung-ho attitude when it comes to my own interests, and it makes for some feelings of guilt and many questions of how things will evolve.

I'm very excited, however, to learn that there will be 3 Always Learning Live Unschooling Conferences in Albuquerque within the next 1.5  years.  I'll post more about that as I learn more.

Helicopter Parents

Heard the term Helicopter Parents? I only recently heard the term from author/blogger Lenore Skenazy on her blog Free Range Kids, but apparently the phrase was coined in 1990 by Jim Fay and Foster Cline in their book Parenting with Love and Logic, which has a zingy title, but after a review of their website and the book, I concluded that book is not on my recommended list.

A helicopter parent is one who hovers closely around all their child -- never out of reach -- whether or not the child needs them or not.  This parent will  pay close attention to the child's experiences and problems with the purported reason of preventing negative experiences from occurring in their child's life.

This past Saturday I had the misfortune of witnessing a hovering helicopter father cause anxiety and irritation to his two sons during our morning Tae Kwon Do class.  I'd observed this dad a few times in the past several months. When I was working with either of his sons he'd slither over and feign interest all the while casting stern-looking glances at me as I took the students through their forms. He'd make no eye contact with me at any other time during the 2-hour classes. The fact of the matter is that his kids seemed uninterested in Karate.  They have noodle arms, can't keep still -- even for 1 second, look around at everyone when they should be looking straight ahead, continue talking even when others' have asked them to listen, refuse to try being strong or accurate, and in short probably hate Tae Kwon Do.  In that respect, I feel sorry for them.  I doubt they have a choice.

The father, however, really irked my ire this past weekend. We were working out in a small room with no seating. He hung in the doorway like rotten mistletoe and took notes.  I figured he wasn't working on his Thanksgiving shopping list, which was confirmed during our first break when he came into the Do Chang and proceeded to ask his boys what they did wrong during Basics -- the opening part of the class.  "I'm taking notes, this time," he said with smirk that made me want to take his head clean off.  Both the boys grew alarmed almost immediately and the younger tried snatching the tablet from his dad's hands.  I couldn't believe that this dad was taking notes on a style of martial arts that he didn't even do himself ( and can't possibly understand) in an effort to what....teach his boys what they were doing wrong?  Did he even have any hopes of trying to help them improve?  And how was he to do this?  Extra workouts between homework and whatever other extra-curricular activity these kids do? A surefire way to cement their hatred for the style.

At each two minute break he came into the room, and proceeded to taunt his boys with this list of wrong and then would snark at them to keep quiet, not snatch it from his hands, and to hush up and get back to work. At one point he looked at me, and I realized that my chin was scraping the floor. I just couldn't believe the way he was interacting with his sons. He looked away quickly, and almost looked embarrassed.  Of course, I was asked to work with the yellow belts again, and I ended up with his oldest son. I'm pretty sure the kid must be on some ADHD drug.  He was entirely unable to stop moving and he seemed to hear what I said but could not incorporate it into his form.  Despite the small quarters, the dad moved closer in an effort to watch more closely.

I refrained myself the entire class from taking the dad into the hall and stating in no uncertain terms that he should leave the instruction to the instructors and let us do our job rather than hovering around his boys and causing them more stress.  But if he does it again next week, I'm going to. 

Cerebral Celebration

Living this life requires a certain amount of celebration. 

 

Living on this planet requires skill, work, and a positive attitude. It is often joyous and full of adventure. Sometimes it is mundane. Sometimes life is rocky and rough and the celebration of something as small as a job well done, or as marvelous as a birthday can smooth out the edges, and add sweetness to an otherwise tastes-like-dirt kind of day.

As a summer birthday girl, birthday celebrations have always meant swimming pool parties and up-till-late slumber parties. Memories of my own birthdays can be invoked with just the right hint of Copper Tone and the damp smell of chlorine laden towels.

When my oldest daughter was born two days after my birthday, I was giddy with the knowledge that the summer birthday tradition would carry on...and on and on it has!  My sweet July girl loves her swimming pool birthdays, and her friends always rave that they are the best ones of the year.  We make no fuss and do no fancy games or themes or treats.  Just cake and pizza at the pool... and the kids just swim, swim, swim.

Remarkably, here it is just days before my youngest turns 5.  A Halloween-y baby is she.  Thanks to indoor swimming pools, she's decided she wants a pool party too, and so we'll head down to the pretty cool Genoveva Chavez Center in Santa Fe, and maybe my little one will try her new found dunking skills on the big slide.

 

Birthdays are important.  They create big anticipation and are almost always filled with laughter, joy, and smiles. But I never would have realized how important they are to Moms if I had never become one. Before I had children, birthdays were a selfish fiesta of  a day that was "all about me," or a more generous, "what can I do for you," when it came to my dear friends and my partner. 

But now that I'm a mother, and I've experienced the intensity of pregnancy and birth, and all the wonder and amazement, exhaustion and excitement, confusion and cuddling that accompanies growing with my children...I can honestly say that I have a new-found respect for birthdays. As my soft spot for my children's birthdays grows deeper, I have a better understanding of my own Mother, and why she always helped to make my birthday special. She still does, in fact. She, too, must have that same sweet collection of memories of my actual birth day...her own pregnancy, labor, and delivery of a little baby that turned into me. 

 

Birthdays are a festival of the very best cake, a wonderful dinner, and presents.  Nowadays, I tend to splurge on a nice thing or two for myself, but I tend to get a little crazy when I shop for my kids...they deserve it all, you know...whatever it is they want. And if I am unable to get everything on the list, I hope that others can fill in the holes.  So far, it seems that most everything on Signe's wish list has been acquired, with a little help from family!

This desire to fulfill my kids' wishes was discovered when Nena was still a tiny baby and probably wasn't wishing for anything yet.  Only 5 months old for her 1st Christmas, I went a little crazy with gifts in anticipation of all the joys she'd have as she grew older. It was made worse by the fact that her grandparents and we were burgeoning with extra money, and a baby seemed like the perfect person to shower the gifts upon. Late night Christmas eves have been the norm around my house...with last minute Santa placements, and sometimes a few mechanical struggles to make the hours grow later and later.

Lately, I've been wishing for a different Christmas tradition. The excess consumption and waste of paper and plastic does sometimes make me cringe inside. I wish to be more creative so that I can still fulfill my sweethearts' dreams for Christmas joy, but feel like I'm being gentler on the planet. 

Time with family, friends, baking, and creating...these are all the best parts of any celebration.  I would like to focus on those aspects more--to fill up the hearts of my loved ones with love and attention.

Someday, I would like to find a new location to celebrate the holiday season...a place completely different from our mountain location. 

My dream involves a bungalow on the beach, swimming in the ocean all day, and lounging peacefully in the tropical air in the evening.  Someday...

Photo Copyright Sandra Aamodt