Why I Don’t Use Grades. Or School.
As the kids and I were driving towards Utah and all the national parks they have in that section of the world, I could hear Naturalist talking to her friend. She was on speaker phone in the car, sitting beside me as I drove and the other kids slept, so I kept my eyes on the road and my ears on their conversation.
Naturalist has been concerned for this girl who is a few years younger and in 5th grade. We’re betting she’s dyslexic and gifted because of the experiences they share: frustrations and difficulties with reading/writing/doing math combined with her super smartness and ability to cover up her struggles by her heightened gifts in other areas.
This friend has been depressed and crying to Naturalist the past year. Each grade above 3rd gets increasingly harder for dyslexic kids due to the focus on more independent reading, an increase in written essay work, and smaller fonts. She feels stupid and different from everyone else. Even though she has tons of friends, she feels alone. She has stomach aches every day, even though she likes her teacher and is at a good school.
Naturalist has been a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on, so their discussion in the car was a follow up to some conversations around testing this girl did in the week before.
I could hear her tiny little 11 year old voice through the phone.
“The tests were to separate us into groups of advanced, average, and below average. The reading wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and I might even be in the advanced group! The math one really made me nervous, and I couldn’t even finish the whole thing. I left a lot blank. I guess I’ll probably be average or below average…”
She went on and on, ranking herself in terms of average or below average in many academic areas. I could hear her disappointment in herself in the areas she wanted to be better in, and her pride in the things she excelled at.
Honestly, my stomach was churning and I felt sick to listen to her use external criteria to judge herself in such narrow terms.
These words…average….below average….they’re used by the school to describe one year’s work. But I know that their effects can be lifelong. That this girl will never forget being ‘below average’ and might even start to believe it. For life. I know because I was that girl. I know because that girl is also my daughter. That girl is also thousands of others who right at this moment are being defined and judged by something so trivial as a math problem or reading assignment or science test.
I also know that in life, the range of important things to know is much wider than the three R’s. I know that in life, this particular girlfriend of Naturalists is way ahead of the game. She’s insightful, curious, playful, quick to laugh, kind, creative, smart, and witty, with a strong moral compass. I know many kids who excel at school and fail miserably at life.
She excels in ways they don’t test for at school. She has abundant gifts that aren’t recognized in grade letters. Her capacity for life goes far beyond the scope of anything on a standardized test. I wanted to grab the phone and tell her all this, because I can tell that she doesn’t know this. That her best and most beautiful talents are going unrecognized and unsupported, and even worse, she’s completely accepted the much narrower view of what is important to know in her life.
She stayed on my mind for the rest of our trip. While we went about our unschooling days in open nature, I knew she was behind a desk labeling herself according to her work production. While we yelled and ran and hiked and experienced the great outdoors, I knew her day was spent indoors ignoring her strengths.
My kids know their strengths and weaknesses, but without the judgement of a grade or grouping. My kids are engaged in learning, but without the narrow focus of an outside curriculum. At the end of the 12 years of formal schooling time, my kids will be literate in Math, Science, and English. I’m glad they won’t have this develop at the expense of their other natural talents and abilities.
It’s just one small reason why I love unschooling so much!
The Blog Post That Started It All….
yep, let’s jump back to 2005…I was a young whippersnapper at the tender age of 33 with long frizzy brown hair and 3 kids. Naturalist was 8 1/2, Golfer was 5 1/2, and Sassy was a young and still spectacularly sassified 1 year old. I was stressed and sad, trying to figure out why Naturalist was so miserable at school. We had talked with her teacher, gotten her tested, met with ‘experts’ for IEP plans, and generally tried everything we could to help her during her 3rd grade year…and slowly it dawned on me that maybe she wasn’t the problem, but the school was. Here’s what I wrote:
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“It dawns on me that I have skipped over the part about why we have decided to homeschool. I came across a ‘vent’ I wrote to a friend in April (2005), right after coming back from the Assessment meeting with all the specialists who tested The Naturalist to decide if she needed an IEP plan (Individual Education Plan). Here’s my letter:
“I just got back from a meeting at my daughter’s school. I requested testing to see if she would qualify for any special ed. considerations, because at this point in 3rd grade her work (to me) is significantly behind and she is increasingly more frustrated and emotional about school. She cries every day before school, and after school she has NO IDEA how to do her homework. We spend 2-3 hours a night trying to finish one homework sheet doing things she tells me she’s never done at school. She frequently is late turning in assignments, which stresses her out.Her spelling concerns me. She spells purely phonetically (bucuz, not because) and frequently turns her letters and numbers around. She struggles with ‘tracking’…words on a page, words on the board, soccer ball on the field…and struggled to read. As a baby, we dealt with sensory issues with Brooke, as in, only smooth foods, only certain clothing, only certain colors. She cannot concentrate if there are other noises/things going on around her.So, she gets the testing done, and I met today with the people who did the testing and the special ed people. They basically tell me that while her test results did have dramatic highs and lows, they all fell in the “average” range which precludes her from the special ed program. They did concede that she isn’t an average learner…that she will need special considerations from her teachers/environment to learn (but that those special considerations are my problems to figure out, not theirs).
Here’s the upsetting thing….THEN they tell me she is showing major and concerning signs for anxiety/depression. That I should definately get her some counseling and put her on medication. I’d had it by that point. Instead of addressing the problem, they want me to address the symptoms. OF COURSE she’s anxious, OF COURSE she’s depressed…she struggles so hard at school and KNOWS she’s different from everyone else. It breaks my heart. But instead of helping her learn at her own level, the school wants me to give her medication and counselling.
They tell me she is a “special learner”, but refuse to help me help her. I don’t know what to do.
I feel the need to express, that my daughter is dynamic, creative, inquisitive, thoughtful, unique, and spirited. I’m so afraid that the older she gets, the worse she’ll feel about herself and her performance at school. I’m afraid she’ll lose all that and just be really, really sad/frustrated/depressed. I want her to perform at her potential (which is enormous…in some areas she was testing well above her age/grade level) but I don’t know how to help her do that and they won’t help me find out how.
I’m so upset about all this.”
I spent the next 2 weeks tossing and turning all night, knowing that we weren’t going to get the help we wanted from the school, and knowing that my daughter was depressed enough to have a psychologist recommend medication. It got harder and harder to send her crying off to school (which happened every day). I decided that it was time for me to advocate for her, rather than trying to make her fit into a situation that obviously wasn’t working. And so I started thinking “homeschool”.
My next blog was this one:
“It’s not easy to disconnect from the Public School system. Psychologically and socially, that is…it is surprisingly easy to do it from a practical and legal standpoint. All that’s needed in Colorado is a parent and 14 days notice. I’m her parent, and I gave my 14 days notice, and am left wondering….”now what?” And it’s left the people around us wondering how quickly we are going to seclude ourselves on a commune, and just how illiterate our kids are going to end up.
Telling people about the decision to homeschool is a bit like telling them what you plan to name an unborn child–in either instance people aren’t afraid to tell you just how they feel. I guess homeschoolers develop some pretty thick skin. At first I tried to defend homeschooling by quoting all the success stories and positive facts. The National Spelling Bee champions! The National Geography champions! All homeschooled! Unfortunatly, most people are unsettled by this and usually mumble something about how their kids could win, too, if that’s all they focused on all day. Then they turn the tables and wonder why we would make the district suffer by removing my child and thus removing the money allotted to the school for her. (And all I can think of about that is…Hmmm, does that mean I get the money?! Sadly, no, but it would be really cool if that were the case!) There are the comments wondering why do I think I can do any better than the school? The arguments about school being important for socialization. And on and on…so many reasons for not taking the drastic step of swallowing the green pill and disconnecting from The System.
Right now, we have made the decision to homeschool but don’t know much more beyond that. I have no idea what is going to work for us. I don’t know how to respond to the concerns of others because I have many of the same concerns! (Although, I did find that there is a Homeschooling Bowling League at some lanes near me, which in some strange way made me feel better. “Look! Homeschoolers are just like you and me! And they bowl, too!”)
The only thing I know is that I know Naturalist better than anyone. And I know that another year of school like this last one would snuff out any remaining love of learning that she has in her. There’s got to be another way. So…she and I are venturing out to find it!”
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So there you go! I didn’t start out as an unschooler right away…just a reluctant homeschooler.
You can go through all the archives by looking to the right and scrolling down on the “archive” tab underneath the calendar widget. I just put those up to make searching back a little easier. And by back, I mean waaaaay back to the beginning of our journey in 2005! Which gives solid proof that Sassy was born with a stink eye:
Movies To Learn By.
Do you want to know how I know that I’m a radical unschooler? Because I can say, in all earnestness, that if my kids are going to basically sit still for 7 hours a day, I’d rather have them watch movies than sit in school.
That’s not a really mainstream opinion to have, and it brings insta-scorn down upon my head when I fess up to that in mixed company. But. It’s true! One of my all time favorite books is The Film Club: A Memoir
(I even wrote a blog about it!) about a Dad who pulls his struggling high schooler out of school as long as they watch one movie a week together. I’m not alone in my movie appreciation, there’s a website devoted to teaching through movies! Only $12 a year, and you get fully supported lesson plans with each movie over at Teach With Movies.
Here’s why I love movies:
*movies are engaging. They aren’t lecturing and they are hard to tune out (unless they happen to be “The Tourist” *snore*). You know what’s not engaging? School. It’s not the teacher’s fault, it’s NCLB’s fault. Everyone knows it, but no one knows how to stop it.
*they invite discussion. How many great conversations have you had after watching a movie? I can still talk at length about “Momento” or “Se7en” or “Blue Valentine”. After getting back from a seven hour day at school, never once did I have a great conversation with my kids about their day. After we watch a great movie together, we can talk for hours, days, even weeks about it and what it means in our lives.
*they spurn curiosity. “Titanic”, “Percy Jackson”, “The Prestige” are just a few movies that turned into serious study around here…study of the Titanic, ancient Greece, and Nicola Tesla. This happens all the time. Interesting movies + a bit of factual knowledge = a springboard into deeper study.
*they are literary. So many movies are adapted from books, obviously! We’ve read books after watching movies, and we’ve watched movies after reading books. The best thing ever was when my previously reading phobic daughter with dyslexia realized that books are always better than movies.
*they always have a message. Even the god awful Transformers movies have a message. Think about it:
<3 Ferris Bueller 4ever! <3
Thanks to Mike Hedge for sending me a link to this youtube video, where you get 7 minutes of messages from over 40 movies. I watched it with the kids and they all loved it!
Movies are a big part of our unschooling life!
Share TweetRun Your Own Race. And Let Others Run Theirs.
I love me a good metaphor. I also love me a good mixed metaphor. I usually shy away from sports related stuff, though, because up until recently they never really rang true to me. I’ve never been much of an athlete, even though I’ve tried just about every sport on the planet. None of them have been able to overcome my complete lack of spatial or body awareness, unfortunately.
I know there have been lots of running metaphors, in particular, that are really great. But I’m not a runner. Even in high school, at the prime of my fitness level (I wake up at night and hear my abs weeping for the days when they so effortlessly kept themselves toned and shapely no matter how many cream cheese potato chip sandwiches I ate…), I could never run a mile in under 12 minutes.
That all changed when Sassy turned 5, 1 1/2 years ago. There was something fundamentally life altering when I realized the days of me being a mom to little babies was over. I always had another one coming up from behind to take the place of the baby turned big kid…until then. All of a sudden the energy I used to expend doing things like breastfeeding/changing diapers/wiping butts/rocking to sleep/putting down for naps/hauling in and out of high chairs and cribs and carseats…all that energy had no where to go and nothing to do. I felt like I was strapped to a rocket without a destination…so much potential energy, so little focus anymore!
So I started running. First, walking slowly, then walking faster, then eventually running. A year and a half later, and I ran my first half marathon. 13.1 miles! Me! Impossible! But I totally did! Last Sunday! I know I did because I’m still hurting real real bad all over!
I was at the back of the pack because I’m still not very speedy, and even though I ran the race alone I was surrounded by a lot of people running in big teams.
For the first time in my life, I really understood the expression “Run your own race”. When you start out, people are running by left and right, and the inclination is to keep up with them. The danger is that if you run at someone else’s pace, then you overtire yourself and the race gets harder and harder to finish. Instead, it’s best to find your own rhythym and flow, and stick with it regardless of what other people are doing.
I heard it said over and over during the race as encouragement…mostly to people who, at the back of the pack, were not great runners. People like me who maybe weren’t fast or streamlined or with a great ‘gait’…but people who were still out there, doing their best to accomplish something difficult. Again and again I heard shouts of “Stick with it!” “Go at your own speed!” “Keep at it!” “Find your own pace!” “Run your race, no one else’s!” “You’re doing amazing! Keep it up!” I was surrounded by big people, little people, old people, young people, people who walked most of the way, people who cruised by and quickly disappeared. Some people finished in 1 hour and 21 minutes. I finished in 2 hours 38 minutes. Some people were on that course for over 5 hours.
Regardless of our different times, one thing was true…we all finished.
I was really touched by the effort and encouragement I saw around me. I wish we could offer that same support to and confidence in kids. I wish, instead of this crappy No Child Left Behind act, which pretty much dictates the equivalent of everyone running the same race at the same speed with the same end time, we could embrace the idea that kids are as diverse and unique as the runners I ran with.
I wish it were easier to accept our kids for who they are and what they are able to do right now, rather than stress out over who they are not and what they can’t do yet.
I hear parents say things to their kids all the time like, “You didn’t try hard enough”, “If you paid more attention you’d understand”, “Why didn’t you do better? I know you can do better!”, “Practice more!”, “It’s because you’re lazy, otherwise you would…”
These things are not inspiring. They are not encouraging. They are not compassionate. They are not respectful. They are not productive or useful!
Can you imagine being in the midst of a half marathon and hearing words to that effect? “You slacked off last week, that’s why you’re not faster than everyone else”, “You should’ve worked harder, then you wouldn’t be so slow now”, “Why aren’t you beating that guy in front of you? I know you could if you wanted”, “Too bad you ate so many cookies this month, all that extra weight is slowing you down…”
Be honest with yourself and your kids. Acknowledge the things that are roadblocks or difficulties. Naturalists dyslexia kept her from reading or writing well past her preteen years. It’s only when I stopped trying to fix her, stopped making it into whether she was working hard or trying enough, that she found her own way to run the race towards literacy. Now, she’s a fluent reader and is on her way towards publishing a novel. Her race. Her pace. If I want to see her get to the finish line, then she needs support, not blame or shame.
It’s true, and I can use this metaphor now because I totally get it!, life isn’t a sprint. It’s an endurance race. Winning is in the running of it, not in the who/what/when/where/how fast of it!
The best thing we can do for our kids and ourselves is to run our own race and let them run theirs. In fact, this is a great thing to do with everyone in our lives. It’s compassionate, inspiring, supportive, gentle, and yet gives such a sense of strength and positive affirmation! And that makes everyone’s race a lot better.
Domesticating.
I remember, back in high school, my guidance counselor kept asking me if I wanted to go to college in an urban or rural environment. Did I like the city or the country? Back then I was operating under the flawed assumption that my opinions didn’t matter. That, in fact, more important than having my own opinions was to be able to adapt to any circumstance. Put me in a college in the country, I’d adapt. Put me in a college in the city, I’d adapt to that too. I didn’t care where I went, I didn’t have an opinion on where I went. I knew I could make anything work. So, I went to school in a tiny town in a rural state. After 4 years, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Turns out, there’s a big difference between ‘making things work’ and ‘going somewhere you really want to be’!
This is just one reason why I encourage my kids to have as many opinions and beliefs and passions as they can, even if they are different from mine. Especially if they are different from mine! I don’t want them to waste their time being at places and doing things simply to ‘make do’. I want them to know what it is they really want and not settle for anything else. In order for them to do this, I work to foster their sense of independence of thought, no matter their age. Teach them that their opinions have value, even if it flies in the face or comes in direct opposition to my own. In the democracy of our household, they are not penalized their voice because they are ‘just kids’.
I slowly learned how to value my own oppinions. It wasn’t easy. But. You know where I really love to be? Big cities. I surprised myself when I fell in love with Budapest after living there for 6 months in 2000. I had small kids, 4 and 1. We lived in the middle of Pest, a stone’s throw from the Danube and a quick subway ride to anything and everything. Friends and family alike were unsure about how safe/smart/easy it would be to live in such an urban environment with kids in tow, and so I was unsure about doing it….until my mantra of ‘making anything work’ kicked in, and I figured I could do anything for 6 months.
I woke up every morning feeling the hum of the city in my blood. I looked forward to each day’s new adventure, and the kids enjoyed riding the metro much more than being strapped into a car. We didn’t have a yard, but there were playgrounds all around with soviet era concrete slides. If the kids were overstimulated or overstressed while we walked around, there was always an ice cream stand or candy store to stop and chill out in. My favorite were the pastry shops at every entrance to the subway. Almasretes…apple danishes…that were divine. We could eat out and have any regional cuisine, with our favorite being a tiny little thai food restaurant that Naturalist, then 4, would beg to go to every day. “Chan Chan’s! Mamma! Can we take the metro to Chan Chan’s?”
I found parenting in a big city to be so much easier. Everything was a short walk or metro ride away. No cars, no traffic. I walked past a local grocery store under our apartment, and so we had fresh food every day rather than a weeks worth of food at one time. Culture like museums and zoos were right next door. It was a vibrant and exciting place to be, and I loved sharing it with my kids!
This is how I felt while living in West Hollywood. Coming from Colorado, it was a big change of pace. I loved our little town in Colorado, I loved the views of the Rocky Mountains and the cows we passed by every day and the easy access to amazing hikes and scenic drives. It wasn’t so much vibrant and exciting as it was relaxing and calm. And safe, in the way big cities aren’t. And planned, with the HOA and everything. Planned in the way big city living can never be. And also? restrictive. Mom’s Nights Out never lasted as long as we wanted because everything closed down at 10. We alternated between Starbucks and another local coffee shop in Boulder, because they stayed open the latest. Driving to do anything in Denver was tough, because it took an hour to get into the city and everyone’s schedule was difficult to arrange around it.
The Mom’s Nights Out in West Hollywood were remarkably different. Drum circles in Santa Monica, vegan restaurants followed by photowalks along Venice Beach, Lucha Vavoom where I watched Mexican wrestlers in all their glory for the first time, a burlesque show in Hollywood, rooftop poolside gatherings, campfires at the beach..and…and…and…I ran out of time living there before I ran out of things to do.
City living is wild and crazy..dynamic and unique. I felt less like a domesticated mom, and more like a free spirit sharing the world with the kids. Going to the farmer’s markets around there, especially the one at The Grove, was one of my favorite things. Any kind of food, fresh and available, from any and every culture. We also loved to visit all the different towns…Little Armenia, Chinatown, Little Tokyo…
When our lease was up, and I knew we’d need to live closer to where their dad lived and worked, I considered going back to suburbia. Back to planned housing and strip malls and organized sports and all that jazz. I thought about just making it work. But I’ve learned a little bit about myself and know that making things work means it has to work for me, too. So, that’s how I find myself in Old Towne. There’s a community here, but no HOA, which adds an interesting element to the mix. My neighbors live in what the kids call a ‘haunted house’ because of neglect. It’s delightfully spooky and run down in a way you just don’t get with housing police patrolling paint color and outdoor landscaping. I’m in a neighborhood with kids all around, but also a quick walk to a vibrant city street with a Farmer’s Market, antique stores, local restaurants where everyone gets to know your name, and charming non-chain stores that sell the personality of their owners along with whatever trinkets you can find in there.
It’s less wild and crazy, and I am slowly getting re-domesticated. In the mornings, I head outside to pluck perfectly ripe oranges from an orange tree while hawks circle above overhead. That certainly never happened in the city!
I really haven’t cooked much at all this last year, and now I’ve got a cookie sheet and I’m baking again. I have a linen closet and washroom and my very own washer and dryer again! I miss the laundrymat though, and the communal element of doing something tedious with other people that usually had interesting stories to help pass the time. But I found my old aprons and cookbooks, and brought them out again for the first time in a year. I’ve also found some charming vintage dresses from the 40′s–things my grandma must have worn. If LA was all about my red opera dress:
then Old Towne Orange is all about something else. Something less flashy and yet just as charming in an old school way. Something less wild and more domesticated…but hopefully just as exciting!
Going By The Numbers Doesn’t Tell The Whole Story.
Everything in the whole wide world can be broken down into numbers. Everything that we can see and touch has a numerical value…volume, width, height, length, dimension. Even you and I can be expressed as nothing but numbers. I was reminded of this when Naturalist and I went to a casting audition to be part of the Pageant of the Masters program this year. They create life sized tableaus of a selection of famous artwork, using hundreds of volunteers…I’ve always wanted to be a part of it, and this year we’re close enough to volunteer!
So, anyway, Naturalist and I show up and are led through an assembly line of people measuring us in every possible way. First our head size. Then our arm length and shoulder width. Then our bust, waist, legs, thighs, inseam, outseam, shoe size…you get the picture. Every number was written down on a sheet of paper until at the end there was the sum total of me.
This is what they’ll use to see if I am fit for a particular part in the show. Am I the right size, height, shape, width, and proportion, or not. It was strange looking at myself from a very scientific and factual point of view. Me, as described by nothing but cold, hard statistical data. (Statistical data that proves, once and for all, that my hips have gotten bigger while my bust has gotten smaller…humph…)
We can also quantify things that we cannot see or touch. Entire careers are made out of trying to hammer down statistical data from nonstatistical things like experiences, thoughts, dreams, and intelligence.
In fact, our entire public school policy as written in the ‘No Child Left Behind’ act, is based on statistical data gathered from every child in the school system. The curriculum is written up by each state, and the kids are then tested on it every year as part of an effort to make sure the data supports the goal that the curriculum is being followed and every child is following moderately successfully along on the same track. The learning experience is based on a dance between a set procedure and a test that focuses primarily on Math and English, with maybe a little Science thrown in.
The entire school policy is also based on test scores and grades. Numbers and letters that are filled in on a report card, much like my measurements were written on a card. The student is judged on those numbers.
The problem is, I am more than the statistics on my sheet. The sum of me is greater than my parts. This is true for all of us. The numbers may tell you what I look like in a 3 dimensional space, but they don’t tell you about the most important parts of me. What I love. Think. Feel. Enjoy. Cherish. Dream. Hope. Want. They tell you what makes me look like I do, but they don’t tell you what makes me human. And being human is the most important part!
Test scores, grades, state testing every year…these tell us statistical data about each child, but they don’t tell us the most important things. They don’t tell us about what makes the student a human being. And at its most basic, isn’t education an exploration into humanity? Answers to questions about who we are, what we’ve done, where we’ve been, what we’ve thought, and where we’re going as a human race. A study about what we think is true, and what we’ve found isn’t. If we can’t connect to each student on a basic human level, how can they connect to the relevance of learning? Even if they are getting straight A’s, they may be profoundly depressed and uninspired. Which is more important…testing for the grade or investigating the student’s well being?
Currently, holistic learning is not a focus with the current public school policy, at the expense of countless students who need more than just being defined by a bunch of numbers and grades.
To quote one of my favorite articles:
I was at a meeting recently when a colleague told a story of being in India, where an educator there asked her, somewhat skeptically, “In America, you test your students a lot, don’t you?” She replied, “Well, indeed, the United States has a national policy that requires testing of all students in certain grades.” The Indian educator said, “Here, when we want the elephant to grow, we feed the elephant. We don’t weigh the elephant.”
Now, I’ve never been to India, and I’ve never tried to weigh an elephant. But this strikes me as the most concise and sound educational policy advice I’ve heard: Concentrate on what we should be doing intellectually (and physically) — feeding our children, and not just measuring their weight. But our nation, burdened by NCLB testing, is finding it’s incredibly difficult to weigh an elephant accurately. The obsession with testing is slowing down an already lumbering educational system, at a time when we need to be speeding up.
There isn’t much I can do about NCLB, but there is so much that we as parents can do to minimize the impact of it on our kids. We can:
Remind ourselves that tests and grades are just one part of the whole.
Give our kids permission to grow in areas outside of statistical data.
Reduce the amount of tests and grades they are given (wouldn’t it be great if every parent of every child in the country withdrew them from the totally voluntary state testing every year?!).
Focus on the child rather than the report card.
Define them using more than statistical data.
Love, cherish, encourage, embrace, explore, and expand along with our kids.
I Encourage My Kids To Talk To Strangers.
I think this whole “stranger danger” concept has spiraled out of control, and I’m not sure when or where it got its start. I remember being a young kid, growing up in Orange County, getting the whole ‘don’t talk to strangers’ lecture before lighting out on the streets of San Juan Capistrano with my super sweet bike with a radio on the handlebars. Being a rather anxious child anyway, I was constantly on guard against being kidnapped. What didn’t help my fearful state of mind was the fact that no one told me what to do IF I was kidnapped…I was just told to be suspicious of other people and keep my distance from them in order to prevent a kidnapping from happening.
I probably took it to an extreme, but this really messed with me. “Stranger danger” became a kind of “stranger phobia” because I filtered everyone I didn’t know through a lens of crazy murdering psychopathic weirdo that only wanted to stuff me in the back of their trunk and take me to an isolated spot in the woods to dispose of me. (uh, did I mention that I’m prone to anxiety?!) This made me a twitchy kind of girl who avoided looking at people in the eye. Charming, no?!
It wasn’t until I started unschooling with the kids that I started questioning the validity of teaching them stranger danger. One of the first effects of incorporating life into learning was a widening of our social sphere. I realized that other people have stuff, know stuff, do stuff, think stuff, feel stuff, and enjoy stuff that we don’t, and there is a beautiful synergy when you engage other people to learn more about their life. I realized that we were in such a great position because of unschooling…that instead of having one teacher in a year, we could branch out and find dozens of mentors/teachers in the world around us. There was a wealth of information and learning all around us everywhere we went…people doing their everyday jobs, going about their everyday lives.
In order to tap into the resources of the people around us, I had to take a leap and actually start engaging people I didn’t know in conversation. This was so difficult for me, I had to dive into a 100 Strangers project, where I challenge myself to ask to take a picture of 100 people I don’t know. I feel braver approaching people with my camera than I do without it. That helped me get over my stranger danger fear and learn how to strike up conversations no matter where I am. And I’ve learned so many things and met so many amazing people because of it. My unschooling life with the kids has flourished because of random connections with people that sometimes blossom into something wonderful and enriching. I’ve met photographers, documentary makers, museum directors, novel writers, and lots of other interesting people who have all been willing to share what they do and know with me and my kids. In fact, since this move, I’ve met some great people who were total strangers at one point!
I want my kids to know that it is better to talk to people than it is NOT to talk to people. That you get further in life using the strengths and knowledge of the people around you. That in general, people are good and to be trusted. That collaboration is a skillful way of getting what you want and need out of life. That people are fascinating. That you can learn some amazing things in a short 5 minute conversation with someone you don’t know sitting in a subway car. I want them to know that strangers do not equal danger.
So I actively encourage my kids to talk to strangers. We’ve discussed what’s appropriate to talk about and what’s not (like personal information…address, age, last name, etc.), what to do if you don’t feel right being around someone, and what to do if you don’t like how someone is talking to you or how close they are to you. The rule is be intuitive and smart about who you talk to, when you talk to them, and where you are; the rule isn’t to never talk to strangers.
In fact, I think teaching my kids to engage with people around them has increased their safety. They understand what a normal level of conversation is, and intuitively feel different vibes coming from the people that it may not be the best to talk to. Certainly this is true here in Los Angeles. They are good at reading people. They are confident around people, rather than insecure and scared.
The bottom line is, you just never know who the person beside you will turn out to be, or know, or do; and the slim chance they are a psychotic killer isn’t a good enough reason not to try and find that out.
A great resource is the free range kids blog, if you haven’t seen it already!
Share Tweet5 Ways To Work With Anger.
When people tell me I must have the patience of a Saint to unschool, I get what they’re saying. They think about how the day is when their kids get home from school, or when they’re home on the weekends or vacations…they think about the conflicts that happen…they extrapolate it to what it would be like 24/7…they think “no freaking way!”…they assume I am superhumanly patient to deal with the ruckus and tantrums and attitude I must be getting from my kids.
The thing is, when you have your kids around 24/7, you begin to form a working system together. If it wasn’t a working system, then I wouldn’t want to unschool and either would the kids. Creating a happy healthy situation for all of us was one of the first things that evolved from unschooling…and one of the many benefits that help a learning environment thrive at our home. Before unschooling, when the kids were going to school, our schedule was dictated by outside sources. So, when we got up, when we ate, when they did their chores, when they did their homework, when they did extracurricular activities, and when they had their downtime were all according to how they fit with the school/sports schedule. Anytime you work on someone else’s schedule, it ramps up the anxiety and pressure. But now we have the ability to work around our own timing, and this helps calm down a lot of the issues I had when they were all in school.
That being said, it’s impossible to ignore that a common equation is kids+life(parenting)=angry situations. I think that before gently drifting down to earth, each kid we get is tweaked by the universe so that they have an intricate understanding of all our hot button issues. That way, when they reach the earth and step off the cotton candy cloud that brought them here, they are able to start pushing our buttons. Pushing and pushing them without stopping until they fall asleep at night. Day after day. Year after year.
It’s also impossible to ignore that nothing throws a wrench in a working system like mismanaged anger.
“Anger erodes relationships; it resides deep in a person’s soul, affecting reactions, the ability to love and even physical health.”
So here are 5 ways I work with anger when it comes up around here.
1) Realize where anger is coming from and what it’s purpose is.
Anger, as an emotion, has value. All emotions have value. It shouldn’t be ignored or unvalidated, and it’s good to express healthy anger so kids learn not to be afraid of it and express it themselves. The trick is making sure it’s healthy rather than destructive.
Underneath my calm, unschooling, attachment parenting exterior, I have an interior designed to whip up some anger and rage pretty darn quickly. I constantly remind myself that rage is appropriate in life or death situations…if it’s not life or death, then I tone it down by looking at what my primary emotion is. Usually it’s frustration and fear stemming from my own expectations. MY expectations, which have nothing to do with my child’s behavior…no matter how frustrating it is.
2) Have a verbal dialogue with yourself.
In other words, talk to yourself out loud before talking to your kid. Especially if they’re right there in front of you. I like to do this while holding out my finger in the universal sign of “give me a minute!” Usually, if I’m angry or upset, the first words out of my mouth to my kids are not healthy expressions of anger. So I make the first words out of my mouth be to myself. I also make sure my kid is listening to the process. Eyes wide, they get a first hand look at anger, but without it directed at them.
“Tiff, you are freaking out right now. And why? Why! WHYYYYYY! Why does the fact that the kids sprayed red kool aid from their sports bottles all over the newly tiled and grouted bathroom, so that it looks like a murder was committed in there, make you want to commit a murder in there?! Do they understand the difference between “grouted and unsealed” and “grouted and sealed”? Do they care about red kool aid dripping from the ceiling, or is that the coolest thing they’ve seen all day? Is this punishable? Should I now make them scrub the grout between every tile from now until next Christmas? Take all their money from their allowance? How am I feeling about it? Frustrated? Disrespected? Anxious? What?” etc. etc.
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now you are ready to address the culprits, I mean, kids, directly. If you can do so calmly, after understanding what your primary emotions are, then start a discussion. Usually, though, even after I have my open dialogue with myself, I’m still really amped up. And when I’m amped up and try to have a discussion with my kids I notice they totally turn me off. Because usually when I’m amped up I’m trying to lead the discussion. Manipulate their behavior into what I want it to be. Get them to see my point rather than have an open discussion. These are not good things for any of us. Everyone wants to be heard and listened to.
If kids feel like they’re being talked (or yelled!) at, they will retreat emotionally. If you are angry to the point of lecturing or yelling, then you’ve retreated emotionally.
The next 3 ideas are admittedly crazy things I do to keep everyone emotionally present. For our family, this means finding the dark humor in the situation. And if you’re too angry to find the dark humor, then maybe give yourself a little time out before approaching your kids.
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3) Start pantomiming.
If you really feel like losing it, do so without making any noise. Mime it. You may find yourself exaggerating your emotions to compensate for the lack of sound, and it becomes almost comical. There’s something about watching someone acting out pulling out their hair, pretend to bang their head against a wall, beating on their chest, pleading ‘why, why, why?!?!’, and shaking their fists in the air, wordlessly, that takes the edge out of anger but still provides the deep emotions the person is feeling.
4) Speak in slow-mo.
Say what you want to say, but slowed way down. You can say a lot of cutting, mean things in the heat of anger. But if you slow it down, then by the time you’re done with the first sentence you may realize you don’t really need to say any of the rest of it. I usually get out as much as this: “Yooooooooooooooooooou kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddddddssssssss aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaareeeee kiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg mmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhhhhhttttttttttttt nooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww” in that deep slow mo voice, and then realize the rest of what I wanted to say isn’t important enough to finish with. And then I start the discussion of what happened that is killing me.
5) Yell in an opera voice.
Become your own Wagnerian epic opera by singing your lines. This one is my personal favorite. I never look crazier, I’m sure, than when I sing like this. And you know what? When kids thing you’ve lost it, they tend to listen really really closely because they just can’t predict what will happen next or if they need to call the white van to take me away.
I usually employ the last 3 before I’ve hit the actual anger, but before that point when I feel that I’m ratcheting up for a full on anger explosion. So, when I feel myself getting frustrated and know that anger is right outside my door, then I’ll opera sing “You are ignoring me and I’m trying to get us out the door on time! Because it’s very important to me to be on time! And so help me if people don’t start listening to me around here then I am going to lose my mind! For reeeeeeeeeeaaaaal!” and then maybe I’ll throw in a pantomime of me losing my mind. You know, just for kicks.
The goal is to go from this:
to this:
This can be done when you separate your primary emotions causing the anger, from the behavior of your kid or situation you’re in. This lets you address issues honestly, without trying to manipulate or coerce or shame or yell or rage or any of the other 340934093248 destructive ways mismanaged anger can lead you too.
Share TweetYou Say Tomato, I Say Nothing I Just Flip You Off…
So there’s a little bit of a situation brewing here, one that I’ve never encountered before in my 14 years of parenting. It’s a little something I like to call, “My 6 year old likes to flip the bird.”
She doesn’t do it randomly, or to strangers, or to friends she knows…she does it to her siblings. I told you she was an instigator! As is often the case, the youngest grows up a little bit faster than the older kids. Add to that a sassy attitude and a generally bossy disposition, and voila! A bird flipping 6 year old who only does it when I’m not looking. Except once, when I saw her do it out of the corner of my eye.
Golfer and she were wrestling at the park, and she was getting the better of him so he used a bit more of his big brother power to shove her down harder than was warranted by their play. I saw the look in her eye, I watched her deal with the realization that because she was younger and smaller and weaker, he could do whatever he wanted and she couldn’t stop him. She was frustrated and he was gloating about it. I wondered if I should jump in, but then everything deescalated and they went their separate ways. And then. A couple minutes later she wandered back over to where he was laying down. She dropped into a crouch right in front of his face. She extended her two hands. She gave him the double middle finger while looking him straight in the eye.
Now, here’s the deal. I’ve never flipped anyone off. I find it vulgar and unnecessary. I don’t want to encourage any of my kids to use it as a way to communicate or voice their displeasure.
And yet…
I do admire my friends who are artists in the use of the middle finger. Sometimes, it’s the quickest way to voice an opinion. It cuts to the chase. It’s a way of standing up for yourself when nothing else will do. And maybe, just once, I’d like to step outside of my chronically nice mode and use it myself.
There’s nothing super appropriate about Sassy flipping off her brother…but if it comes down to being shoved to the ground and trying to stand up for yourself, then it also wasn’t super inappropriate, either. So until I could come to grips with the ethics of 6 year old middle finger usage, I ignored it.
And then tonight, Naturalist had Frito and Sassy wanted to play with the dog. Naturalist said no. Sassy flipped her off.
This time I couldn’t ignore it. The traditional parent in me told me to punish her for being so crude and aggressive and disrespectful. The unschooler in me told me to explain the principle behind the gesture rather than shame her for expressing herself. I took a deep breath and looked around one last time for the real mom in charge. Oh yeah, it’s me.
“Sassy! When you use your middle fingers like that, it’s done when you feel really angry.”
“I DO FEEL ANGRY!”
“But not just angry. It’s done when someone is disrespecting you, too.”
“SHE WAS DISRESPECTING ME!”
(At this point, instead of arguing, I picture my kids as foreign exchange students who don’t have a big grasp on the native language. So my energy goes in to coming to an understanding rather than getting defensive and arguing…)
“No, Sassy, she was disagreeing with you. Disrespect is when someone tries to make you feel bad about yourself or make you feel not important. So when you flip someone off, make sure you are both angry AND being disrespected.”
“Well, I don’t have any rules.”
“Well, but I do, Sassy, and you can come sit with me for a little while any time you flip someone off without feeling those two things so we can talk about it more. Because flipping someone off is really really disrespectful, and rude, and it’s a pretty serious thing. So I don’t enjoy when you flip off people in the family. We try to use our words, not our fingers.”
She sat and stewed.
I sat and wondered if I am enabling the rise of another Lady GaGa or heaven help us all a mini Ke$ha. This is the girl, after all, who figured out how to flip people off with her toes a couple days ago.
But when push comes to shove, I err on the side of freedom of expression over heavy censorship. Even in the case of middle finger flipping 6 year olds.
Momentos vs. Memories
When I brought my daughter home from school, to be homeschooled, there wasn’t much I missed about anything…except the momentos she’d come back with at the end of her day. I missed the handmade Mother’s Day cards. I missed the special crafts she’d make with construction paper and glue. I missed the Santa head she’d make out of paper plates and cotton balls. I missed the glass jars covered with gold pasta. I missed the special valentine’s day card.
I missed them because at home she never did any of those things again. Turns out, she hated doing most if not all of that. To her, it felt like forced labor. So, the first year out of school, for the equivalent of 4th grade, she had no inclination to do anything remotely resembling a craft.
My other two, while not rebelling against making forced momentos, also do not enjoy making most arts and crafts. They love creating, but in their own way. This doesn’t include cards with haikus of love for me inside them, darn it. But while I don’t end up with lots of “Ode to Mom” stuff, I do have an overflow of memories. Memories of sitting around a table/couch/floor deep in concentration with my kids, making things. When my kids were in school, I had no memories but lots of momentos. So I cherished the stuff they made because it was the only thing I had of them for the whole day they were gone from me. Now that they’re here at home, I have a lot less momentos but tons of memories.
When Sassy sculpted Frito, we had a great time with the model magic.
We huddled together, and I dutifully followed her lead. I let her vision be the template for our Frito design. And then she wished for some pink, which didn’t come with the assorted colors, so I was able to share color mixing for apparently the first time because she freaked OUT when I put red and white together to make it. So then I showed her what yellow and blue make, and then red and blue. It was so fun seeing her excitement, and we made little happy faces whose eyes became the primary colors and heads became the secondary color.
These cute little heads probably won’t last a long time, and will be lost within the week. But I’ll always remember her squeals of happiness, and our hands working together to make them. The longer we unschool, the luckier I feel that I have so many memories of time spent with my kids rather than momentos they’d bring home from school…as cute at those things are.
After 24/7 with Sassy every day, I’m not so sure Frito feels the same way…
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