Jack Out of the Box

Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything. -John Holt, Teach Your Own

Jack and I spent the evening meandering through fields and scouring our driveway for trilobites. (No luck this time, but we found some fossilized clams and coral!) I love our quiet walks together, because sometimes he gets a little overshadowed by his very vocal older sister and younger brother.

Of all my kids, I think homeschooling suits Jack the best. He is very much an introvert, and needs his connection to nature the way most of us need oxygen. Some days he's outside before I'm out of bed, and it's unusual for him not to be covered in dirt. I honestly cannot imagine him in traditional school right now, as I think an integral part of him would be lost being forced to sit inside all day, five days a week. Short recesses on some manufactured plastic playground could never replace trees for that boy.

Jack is one smart six year old, and the questions he comes up with show the beginnings of great critical thinking skills. He will discuss subjects at great length and listen to books all day long, as long as the subject interests him. Interest is really key though, because as soon as I try to work with him on something he doesn't like, such as reading, he tenses up and it becomes a battle.

John Holt says that there are no teachers, only learners, which I am seeing more and more with our little homeschooling endeavors. I know there are hundreds of books about teaching your kid how to read (and I've tried several of them) but I really think it boils down to the kid wanting to learn for it to happen. I have NO doubt that by instilling a love of reading in our family and by the kids seeing Kelly and me read all the time, that Jack will also be a reader. But it's going to be in his own time. (Potty training analogies do not seem out of place here.)

Given all of that, as well as believing that it's not necessary for a child to read young to be a good reader later, doesn't totally take away from fact that, especially as a homeschooling mom, I feel pressure to have my six year old reading. It's kind of this benchmark that we all use to judge elementary kids, isn't it? And it doesn't help that Kelly (who incidentally was a very late reader who became a very good reader) isn't quite on board with all of this unschooling stuff, or that Bonnie is an amazing reader who picked it up very easily at a young age.

So, while pocketing fossils, picking wildflowers, and rescuing a box turtle from the dogs, I said to Jack, "I'd really like it if you'd let me teach you how to read."

He thought about it for a moment and replied, "I'd really like to learn how to swim."

An Odd Day in the Life of a Homeschooling Mom

Or maybe this post should be titled "A Day in the Odd Life of a Homeschooling Mom?"

Or even "A Day in the Life of an Odd Homeschooling Mom?"

Yesterday morning, I finalized Bonnie's lesson plans for the day. (Because I never do that the night before, even though it's more sensible and intelligent to do it ahead of time.) She and I completed her math and grammar lessons before I headed to town to run errands. Thankfully I have a wonderful aunt who watches the boys for a couple hours on Tuesday mornings so that I don't have to drag them to stores, the bank, post office, etc. Some Tuesdays I finish all my errands and read a book in the parking lot before it's time to get the boys. Yesterday was not one of those days. While I was in town, Bonnie worked on her math and grammar assignments and independent reading.

The boys and I came home for lunch with Bonnie. I glanced at her completed work to make sure she's on track, then the boys and I headed to my part time office job. Bonnie occasionally comes along and brings her work, but yesterday she wanted to work independently and be allowed to watch Harry Potter after everything was done, which she normally cannot do until the boys are in bed because Fred is still terrified of the television.

About ten minutes after we got to the office, Fred busted his chin on the concrete floor and we headed to the urgent care center, where he received five stitches. I am the opposite of a mom who takes her kids to the doctor for every little scratch and sniffle. In fact, I think it had been over a year since Fred had been for anything. On the drive to the center, I started talking myself out of going (Fred wasn't even crying anymore and hardly bleeding) and I felt a little silly. The nurse practitioner took one look and said "He definitely needs stitches," so I'm glad I stuck with my original gut feeling on taking him in.

After our urgent care visit, I stopped at the drug store for Neosporin (not something I keep in the house but strongly suggested by the nurse) and to allow Fred to pick out whatever ridiculous treat he wanted. Poor little guy had been mummy wrapped and was completely hysterical while they stitched him up.

Then the boys and I went back to the office and I worked for a couple of hours before coming home. (While I'm there, the boys play outside or play with toys and draw inside.) Without the urgent care trip, I would have only been at the office and away from Bonnie for a few hours, but it ended up being all afternoon. I came home around five to fix supper and had to make a really difficult decision between having wine or having coffee. I chose wine.

Bonnie did a great job of completing her work and chores while we were gone. And she benefited from us being out longer than expected because she had time to watch more of her movie. I felt like I hadn't seen her enough though, and the time we had together we were both a little snappy. Actually, it reminded me of weeknights when she was in public school, and I always felt like I missed the "good" part of her day and had her for the cranky, needy time. I seriously don't know what I'm going to do with that girl when she is a teenager. At any rate, I think that from now on, she will either come with me in the morning for errands or to the office in the afternoon on Tuesdays.

With our trip to the urgent care center, yesterday was definitely not a "typical" homeschooling day for our family. But I'm pretty sure that typical doesn't exist for us.

Play Day Week Challenge: Day 5

It's fifty-three degrees out and sunny, and Jack's already been outside off and on for about two hours. I sent Bonnie and Fred out a few minutes ago so I can make lunch and write this, obviously.

In addition to being the last day of the Play Day Week Challenge, today is also the fifth and final day of Kelly's week out of state for work, and will be the third afternoon in the first week of me working my new part-time, bring-kids-along, out-of-the-house job. This is my first paying job, other than in-house babysitting when Bonnie was little, that I've had in ten years, and it has both the upside of being able to bring my kids along, and the downside of being able to bring my kids along.

Bonnie is sick today with the kind of sickness that requires sleeping late and not doing school work, all while planning a sleepover for this evening, and both boys seem to be fighting off whatever little bug struck earlier in the week. They are fever-free, but basically don't feel great. That combined with being out of sorts with Daddy gone for the week (he does not usually travel for work) has left their little dispositions rather unpleasant. What I'm getting at is that it's been a really long week and I am thankful it's finally Friday.

While we do plenty of outside activities with the kids, it's more important to me personally that they have unsupervised free play out there as much as possible. It's a win-win scenario really, because not only do they get the chance to explore the world and their relationships with their siblings without my constant input and direction, but I get some critically necessary time to myself while they are outside. (Not to say this time is not punctuated by kids running in and out of the house with questions, complaints, and needs.) Soccer and treks into the woods are awesome and wonderful ways we spend time together as a family, but they don't replace my kids' need for free access to the outdoors.

This week has been a good reminder for me that that need doesn't disappear in "bad" weather. Almost without fail, when I send cranky kids outside, they come in refreshed, calmer, and happy. I hope to make an effort to continue the "outside, everyday" mentality this fall and winter.

Play Day Week Challenge: Day 4

The only challenge today has been redirecting Fred's mud balls from the window to a tree stump.

Play Day Week Challenge: Day 2

It's fifty-seven degrees out and raining, and the kids are happily playing outside. Fred just came inside fessing up to having jumped in a rather large mud puddle, assuming I would want him to take a bath immediately. This pretty much cleared up any lingering doubt about whether their hindrance to playing outside in questionable weather came from me or from them. Though I am not looking forward to dealing with all the wetness when they come inside, I sent a very excited and relieved four year old back out into the rain.

Every Day is a Play Day Week Challenge

Today I was very happy to stumble across the Active Kids Club website and learn that this week is their "Every Day is a Play Day" challenge. The concept is super simple: get your kids outside every single day. We're in!

Bonnie and Fred are both sick today with fevers and general "feelbadiness," but this has not kept them inside the house on this dark, incredibly windy, but relatively mild fall day. In fact, they were outside playing during a break from school work this morning when I sat down and read the above link. If they are well enough to be out of bed, they are well enough to be outside. On a typical day in our house, it's a challenge for me to keep the kids inside.

Tomorrow will be a little more challenging to get them outside because it's supposed to be both cold and rainy all day. Cold I can handle. Rainy I can handle. Cold and rainy? That's usually a play-puzzles-and-read-books kind of day in our house. But I am loving the philosophy of Active Kids: There is no bad weather, only bad clothing, and I will make an effort to get them out there.

Who else is in?

My Free-Range Kids

Jack and Fred are outside and I have no idea what they are doing. They rolled out of bed, ate breakfast, and headed out. I'm happy that my kids look at the outdoors as another room in the house. They certainly don't have to ask me first if they can go out there, any more than they would ask me if they can walk into the kitchen. (Unless I'm mopping, which I rarely am.)

When I first read the book Last Child in the Woods and started following Lenore Skenazy's blog about free-range parenting, we still lived in a subdivision, Bonnie was about seven, and my boys were toddlers. I had mostly practiced attachment parenting with my babies... breastfed them on demand until they weaned themselves (with the exception of Fred, who received some maternal encouragement to wean after his third birthday), didn't let them "cry it out", and generally let their needs determine my parenting. Free-range parenting really seemed intuitive to me, the way attachment parenting had with the kids were babies, but it took a while to transition to it. We had a fenced in back yard, and Bonnie was able to play back there any time she wanted, but I kept her on a fairly short leash when it came to playing in the front yard. She did play with her friends in the front, but we had a rule that she had to come tell me any time she was going to be walking behind a house or before she went into her friends' house. There was a driveway several houses down that was the "border" she was not allowed to cross. The boys played in the backyard, but I'd only just started letting them play in the fenced in area unsupervised. I was fairly scared of moving vehicles in the neighborhood, and no, I'm not talking about kidnapping. I know that is statistically not something worth worrying about, especially if you raise strong-willed kids. (You think anyone could make Bonnie get in a car if she didn't want to?) But I was scared of moving cars that could potentially hurt my kids if they were playing outside. Now I believe that we should have been teaching Bonnie respect for moving vehicles rather than keeping her essentially at the base of our driveway on very quiet culdesac. I also recognize that my personal fear came from the fact that I was not raised in town where I learned the rules of being a pedestrian or cyclist and sharing the road with cars. Kelly did spend parts of his childhood in large cities and towns, and he was always more comfortable with the kids around vehicles than I was.

(Fred just brought me a  "clam shell" which ended up being a peach pit the dog dragged out of the compost. The boys decided to plant it.)

When we moved to the Hill, I was more than comfortable letting Bonnie and Jack run around outside to their hearts' content, but I really worried about letting Fred (then two and a half) outside AT ALL without me. I had completely bought into the idea of free-range parenting, but a culture of helicopter parenting still nagged at me. What if he eats something he shouldn't? What if he steps on a bee? What if he goes down the driveway to the road? What if he goes up the driveway to the lake? What if I don't know which way he went and go the wrong way when looking for him? The questions and worries went on and on. What I kept going back to however, was the fact that I had grown up here and not only survived, but thrived with the freedoms I had outside. I didn't want to stifle that with my kids. I also knew that a two and a half year old is still more baby than not, so I wasn't about to throw Fred to the wolves either. Jack was four and very serious for his age. Over time, I drilled it into Jack's head that if he was outside alone with Fred and he saw Fred go up the driveway toward the lake or down the driveway toward the road, NOT to follow him but to come get me quickly. (I was worried that if he followed him, he'd end up chasing him and then I wouldn't know which way either of them had gone.) Over the course of that first spring and summer, I gradually let the boys outside without me for longer and longer periods of time, keeping an eye on them through the window, making sure I knew the general area they were playing. Bonnie was still in public school then, but in the afternoons, she was out there with them. Of course, I was out with them a lot too, but it seemed ridiculous to bring them in every time the phone rang, or I needed to use the bathroom, or if it was time to start supper and they were having fun outside.

(Jack just ran excitedly in the house to tell me that they found a toad. Toads and frogs are on the decrease, and this is only about the fifth we have seen this spring. Jack knows it's a big deal!)

Only once last year did Jack come in and tell me Fred was going down the driveway. In retrospect I feel like I drilled it into his head a little too hard, because he was near hysterical. I ran out, and Fred was slowly walking on the driveway. In fact, if I'd been outside with him, I wouldn't even have thought he was "going down the driveway" at that point, but Jack took his role as big brother very seriously!

Now, at three and a half, Fred does understand that there are some boundaries outside, and that it's not safe to go up to the lake or down to the road without Kelly or me. The boys are also not allowed in the barn, until we repair the loft. During hunting season, the kids know that they aren't allowed to wander into certain areas of the woods. Usually they come find me and clarify anytime they hear gunshots in the distance. (The hunters know where our house is, and would never shoot anywhere near us.) Bonnie and Jack are starting to go farther and farther into the woods together, always with the dogs, which reassures me, as it did my mom when my brother and I played in the woods when we were young. Fred's little legs don't keep up well on those long adventures, so they usually go without him while he's napping. We have a general understanding that if they are going to be out of yelling range of the house, they need to let me know first, and they always do. This way I don't worry, and I can give them a time to be home if we have something else going on that day. They respect the boundaries they have, because they understand the reasons behind them.

(Bonnie's awake now and outside with the boys, and they've found two baby toads. We've been watching and waiting for them for weeks.)

The kids love it outside so much, it's hard for me to imagine a life where they didn't have such easy access to nature anymore. I'd like to think that if we were still in the neighborhood, the kids would spend more time in the woods behind our house, than inside that fence. But even in that small back yard, my boys were learning the joys of getting dirt under their nails and finding all sorts of bugs. I love spending time with my kids, but there is a special joy in having them excitedly tell me about something they did without me. And yes, often it's something I would not have allowed them to do had I known about it at the time.