Techno-Geek Takes Techno Vaca

Jerry was really down on himself the other day. He said the only thing he's good for is pushing buttons. He doesn't want to be a "techno-geek" a anymore, he said. He feels like he's lost his creativity. So my suggestion was that we take a vacation from all things techno. He agreed but said we'd have to do it together (doh!). I have a story due on Thursday so I need to use the computer until then, which means our "techno vaca," to put it in 21st century slang, will start on Friday.

But will it? Jerry's friend, Jackson, helped him rediscover his creativity later that same afternoon by suggesting a trip to Radio Shack where we loaded up on little motors, battery connectors and other electronics equipment. They're going to make a car. Jerry says they're thinking of it more as a work of art than a vehicle so it's not imperative that it be operational. They've already started working on it. 

So he says he may not need the "techno vaca," but I wonder. By allowing him all this freedom to choose his own activities (and he has been completely in charge of his time) am I making things more difficult for him in the long run? Traditional parenting would say yes, I am. But what does unschooling say? And, more importantly, what does my heart say?

I'm guessing unschooling says that Jerry will find his way and be stronger for it in the end. And that may be true. But my heart says a few more gentle nudges, a detour or two on the road to the Wii or the computer, might not be such a bad thing. 

It's tricky, though. I've really liked giving him freedom, trusting his choices, and keeping my nagging voice securely under wraps. I want him to have the power to make choices for himself. But I also want him to nourish his entire being. He is a creative kid. And yes, playing video games requires creativity and problem solving. But that's only one type of creativity. The video games only tap a fraction of his creative potential. What about the rest of it?

So I'm going to suggest we stick to the plan and take our "techno-vaca." It may be a looser version of the original plan but I think some kind of shift is in order, if only for a short while, to remind Jerry of his (and the world's) full potential. 

I'll let you know how it goes....

My Very Own Unschooling Philosophy

I'm gearing up to apply some major coercion and bribery to get Jerry out and about when we're in New Zealand. He's a real homebody. He almost never wants to leave the house unless it's to play with a friend. And since he doesn't have any friends in New Zealand (yet) and I know I'm going to want to get out and about, I'm thinking I'll need to rely on coercion and bribery. I know as an unschooler I'm supposed to respect his wishes and all that but if I was always putting Jerry's wishes above mine I'd be extremely unhappy, and I'd never get out of the house except as a taxi driver. The thing is, I know Jerry will have fun doing the things I want to do. It's getting him there that's the problem. Leaving the house for Jerry is like going to the gym for me (not that I've stepped foot in a gym recently). He doesn't want to go, but when he gets there he's glad he made the effort. Monday was a typical example of this.

He said he was bored, so I said "Let's go somewhere." He hemmed and hawed but finally agreed to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Takashi Murakami exhibit. (He's a Japanese Pop Artist.) On the way there Jerry admitted that he didn't really want to see the exhibit but I said we were almost there, and I really wanted to see it, and he did SAY he wanted to go, etc. So we went and of course it was awesome. Of course Jerry had a good time. We went into this room: And we saw stuff like this: And this: And cool toys like this:
Yes, there were some bare breasts (monstrously big ones in a couple cases), which bothered Jerry a bit. He's not too keen on nudity and wishes artists would stop putting it in their work. But we managed to avoid most of that stuff.

All in all it was a fun outing. We ate lunch in Little Tokyo, talked about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, marveled at some really cool architecture and played with my new iPhone. Here's a picture (taken by Jerry) of the refrigerator where we ate:

So, back to my original topic--coercion and bribery. If I'm the parent and I know he's the kind of kid that needs a little extra push to make it out the door in order to do something I'm 99% sure he'll enjoy, I think I'm going to give him that extra push. I'm not saying I'll ignore his needs or desires, or that I'll resort to intimidation to get him to go along. I'm just saying I'm willing to nudge him a little.

I've noticed a pendulum effect on this unschooling journey of mine. In the beginning I wanted to dip my toes in the water and wade in slowly, then I thought it was best to jump in all at once, which is what we did. I was really focused on unschooling the "right" way for a while there. I'm completely aware of the fact that there isn't a "right" way to unschool. But since I didn't have my own way I had to follow somebody else's and I chose to take the (mostly) Radical approach. Now that I've been at both ends of the pendulum I'm starting to find my own place within the two extremes. I'm not saying I know where that place is. I just notice that I'm finding MY way. And this decision, to give gentle nudges when needed, is my first step toward creating an unschooling philosophy that's just right for me and my family.

On Trust

Now that we're starting to settle in to our routine (or non-routine, really) I can finally get back to talking about trust.

Here's how my handy widget dictionary defines trust:
(noun)
-Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something.

-The state of being responsible for someone or something.

-A hope or expectation.

(verb)
-To allow someone to have, use or look after (someone or something of importance or value) with confidence.

A couple weeks ago I was telling Jerry that there's a form of unschooling where the parents give their children complete freedom to make their own choices. His eyes got really big and he got a huge grin on his face. "Would that be a good idea for us?" I asked.

"No way!" he said, "I'd probably just play video games all day."

I laughed, but at the same time I felt a little sad. I want him to trust himself with those choices, but I know I'm not entirely ready to hand them over to him. Thankfully, I've (finally!) recognized that I don't need to hand them over all at once. I'm working my way up to a "firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength" of my son. But I'm taking baby steps.

One thing that stands out to me in the above definitions of trust is the emphasis on "belief" and "confidence." Part of the problem I was having at the start of our unschooling, with letting Jerry set his own screen time, was that I was giving trust without belief or confidence--and that's not trust. No wonder we were having problems!

Jerry knows I don't have all the answers. He can see that I'm asking questions, making choices, evaluating, and correcting as we go. We talk about my choices, and his, and we try to come up with a plan that works for all of us (my husband, included).

I still think Jerry takes comfort in some of the boundries we've set for him. But as time goes by, we'll lift those boundries and shift control to him. When we're ready.

As my confidence and belief in my son grows, so will his confidence and belief in himself grow.

That's my hope.

A Revelation (& Some Poetry)

I'm gearing up to start a teeny bit of "teaching." Not a huge amount. Just enough to make my husband relax a bit. We all have to be okay with what's happening in our house and at this point Warren is having some doubts about the whole child-led learning thing. I'm not quite ready to break out the workbooks, but I did order the "I Hate Mathematics Book" and I bought what looks like a really cool science book with some history thrown in called--shoot, I can't find it. That's the down side of being messy. You can never find anything when you need it. Anyway, the book is all about great inventions throughout history, who invented them and why, and it gives you instructions on how to create the inventions yourself. There's a pottery wheel, a trebuchet, vegetable dye...it looks really fun.

The reason I'm not jumping right in, though, is that I want it to feel kind of organic. I'm not sure if that's possible since organic would be coming from Jerry. I'm trying to devise a plan that will make it seem organic, at least--maybe even make it seem like Jerry's idea. But, before I start that I really think I should write out my educational philosophy. I know. I know. I said I was going to do that weeks ago. I'm procrastinating.

Why am I procrastinating? I think I'm kind of scared. Dumb, huh? I mean, I've already chosen homeschooling, then I went even further outside the norm and decided to try unschooling, so it's clear I'm taking my own path but writing down my educational philosophy will mean that I have to own it. It will mean that I'm not going by what other people are telling me is "right."

Oh my God! I've just had a revelation! I went from doing what the Waldorf school said was right, directly into doing what the unschoolers say is right. So I'm comfortable being told what to do because that's the usual way of life. The "experts" give their opinions, tell you what you need to do, and you do it--at least I do. So this whole time I thought I was such an individual, but really I just went from following one (not so mainstream) set of rules to following another (even less mainstream) set of rules. Sure, they weren't rules the majority of people in the US were following, but they were still rules. Wow! That explains my fixation with unschooling the "right" way. This is fascinating! I've been a follower for so long, that even though I'm on the road not (or less) taken I'm busy trying to step into someone else's footprints. Wow! I have to stop that!

Okay, here's the Robert Frost poem for some inspiration:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

So, for about the 500th time I'm telling myself to mellow out, and do what feels right to me. I guess I don't even really need to "gear up." It's okay if I don't know what's right immediately. It's okay if I don't have a plan. I can still move forward.

One of the reasons I felt the need to prepare for this teeny bit of teaching, though, is that I'm still unsure about the place of the computer and video games in our daily lives. Jerry likes to turn them on in the morning as soon as he wakes up, which I completely understand because I like to do the same thing. It helps me ease into the day. It also tends to suck the day away, if we're not careful. So maybe I won't wait until I "figure out" the screen thing before I make some changes. I'll start the teaching (facilitating? guiding?) slowly by showing him some of the books I bought, by doing some of the experiements with him, by continuing our mental math and maybe even writing some of it down. Maybe our daily rhythms will adjust on their own and I won't have to "gear up" for anything.

But I do have to figure out MY philosophy on education. That I'm sure of. I need to know what I believe, so I can stop trying to do what other people think is best. Okay. I'll do that but I won't wait until it's finished to start making small changes to our daily lives.

I'm going to end with another poem. This is by my favorite poet, Mary Oliver.

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

The Great Allowance Debacle

Before I get to The Great Allowance Debacle I just wanted to thank everyone who has been commenting on my entries. Some of the best, most insightful stuff is found in those comments. I really appreciate you all taking time out of your day to share your thoughts and experiences.

Oh, and one other thing. Read this post if you're struggling to find the right degree of unschooling for you and your family. It's great.

There's been such great "talk" in the comments on this blog about trust lately that I feel I should be writing about trust, BUT I've just spent two hours reading Money Doesn't Grow on Trees while sitting on a bench at the mall waiting for Jerry to finish playing and painting War Hammer, so my mind is on allowance.

We have swung every possible way a pendulum can swing in regards to giving a child an allowance. We've given no allowance. We've given allowance for chores. We've given allowance for merely existing. We've given a combination allowance (a base rate for merely existing plus extra for completing chores). Our latest system uses the combination formula except that we've done away with the word chores--they're called "responsibilities" now. Jerry gets a base rate just because he lives and if he takes care of his chores (I mean responsibilities) without being told to (this has NEVER happened) he gets a bonus. As you can see, the last twelve years have truly been an allowance debacle.

But, today I was at the ISP store buying a few books, because buying books always makes me feel better, when I stumbled upon Money Doesn't Grow on Trees by Neale S. Godfrey. Now we have a new allowance plan. A New Deal, as it were. It's probably not very unschoolish but after reading Tammy's entry about Zen-Schooling (the link is up at the top where I wrote "Read this post") I've realized it doesn't matter if it's unschoolish or not. It sounds good and I'm going to give it a try.

Here's the basic idea. The allowance WILL be linked to chores (we're back to that word again). We'll require both savings and charitable giving. We'll give Jerry enough so that he can conceivably buy his own manga, video games, War Hammer (that stuff's outrageously expensive!), and whatever else he would usually be begging us to buy, as long as he manages it wisely and saves. He'll get his allowance on the same day every week. 10% will go into the charity jar and the other 90% will be divided up between long-term, middle-term and quick cash. If he doesn't do all of his chores he won't get the allowance. That's it.

The really good thing about this plan is that Jerry will be learning a lot about spending and saving and it will all come from direct experience (so maybe it's a little unschoolish). I've already figured out that even though he hates math I can slip in loads of mental math while we're driving, as long as it's related to buying something he wants. For example, I might say "If you want to order one song for $.99 and one game for $4.99 from iTunes, what will the sales tax be? And what's your total?"

So that's the plan. I hope it works. My battery is about to die so I'm signing off!

Degrees Of Unschooling

I've included some pictures of our kittens today. They have absolutely nothing to do with this posting.

Last week I felt such a sense of relief. I really thought I was settling in to the deschooling groove. I wasn't having all kinds of angst over televsion or computer use (it was down). It was so freeing not to think of the television or computer as evil. When Jerry was playing a game, or watching a show, I wasn't feeling like a terrible parent for letting him do it. For all these years, almost every time he's in front of a screen, I've felt like I was not parenting the way I wanted to or the way I "should." Last week, though, there was a shift. Instead of thinking "He's watching television--I'm a bad parent." I just thought "He's watching television." So that was one milestone in the deschooling process that I definitely felt.

I've been thinking a lot about degrees of unschooling lately. I mean, first of all (and I know this sounds really dumb and will show how judgemental I can be) it had never even occurred to me that a thinking, intelligent parent would ever allow their child to watch television or sit in front of the computer all day. I had just assumed (backed up by a fair amount of research) that these things were bad for children and that any parent who allowed unlimited time in front of them was not parenting very well. It certainly never occurred to me that allowing unlimited screen time could be a conscious choice! So, my eyes have been opened and I'm trying to fit this recognition into our lives.

Like many parents who come to unschooling later in their child's life, I struggle with finding the right degree of unschooling for my family. I've read posts by other moms, and I've written a fair amount of them myself on this blog, that reveal a real sense of inner turmoil surrounding how much freedom we should give a child to make his or her own choices. On the one hand, there's a belief in the principles of unschooling and a budding sense of certainty that unschooling makes much more sense than the education and the lifestyle that most of us grew up with. On the other hand there's a lifetime of programming and stacks of parenting books that say children require limits--that they thrive on them.

It's confusing! I mean, we can't just flip a switch and reverse a lifetime of programming and beliefs. I'm doing my best to trust that Jerry is getting what he needs to have a happy, fulfilling life, however he chooses to define that. But years of expecting visible proof of learning die hard. As far as I've come in my own deschooling process, I still want to see results. But every time I try to influence Jerry's learning with more than a gentle nudge, or a book left open on the table, I wonder if I'm slowing the deschooling process. I worry that my desire for this evidence will somehow negate all the benefits I want him to experience as an unschooler.

This worrying doesn't help me though. I'm thinking that if there are degrees of unschooling, there can be degrees of starting to unschool. Why should I expect myself to make such a big leap right off the bat? Maybe there are ledges where I can stop along the way for a rest. Little outcrops where I can stop to assess the situation before taking the next jump.

So I'm going to try thinking more in terms of a slow decent instead of leaping into a void. I've got to stop worrying that I'm doing this the wrong way and just do what feels right to me. One of the best things I've learned in the process of researching unschooling and reading other blogs is not to negate my son's interests. This realization has been a real gift to both of us. If I really do take his wishes and interests into consideration, I can be sure that what feels right to me won't be wrong for him.

All Volcanoes All The Time

This is a photo of our Mt Veusvius model - phase one. This project (we're building a model of Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii, then making Vesuvius erupt) is keeping me sane these days. When I start to worry about the whole deschooling process I comfort myself with the knowledge that J is learning so much about geology and Ancient Rome (with a bit of geography thrown in). We're both having a lot of fun with it.

These are some of the homeschool volcano resources we've discovered:

DVDs:
The DVD that sparked J's interest in volcanoes (Mount Vesuvius, in particular) was the first disc of Secrets of Archaeology.

Roman City is a DVD companion to the book City (listed below) by David Macaulay. J refused to watch the DVD (he didn't even give it a chance!), but I really liked it.

Books About Volcanoes:
Usborne Understanding Geography: Earthquakes and Volcanoes by Fiona Watt

Volcano by DK Publishing

Mount Vesuvius: Europe's Mighty Volcano of Smoke and Ash by Kathy Furgang

Fun Books about Ancient Rome:
Roman Soldier's Handbook: Everything a Beginning Soldier Needs to Know by Lesley Sims

The Roman Record by Paul Dowswell

City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction by David Macaulay


Web Sites:
Legends of the Volcano

A List of Resources from A to Z Home's Cool

Ancient Pompeii

This is a really cool experiment.

Volcano-Related Field Trips In California:
Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California has examples of every type of volcano.
The Getty Villa in Malibu, Callifornia has an exhibit called "The Herculeneum Women and the Origins of Archaeology." Herculeneum was buried in the same 79 A.D. blast that covered Pompeii.



Here's a photo of J at the Getty Villa today. The villa is a recreation of the Villa dei Papiri, a Roman country house built on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. Many of the statues throughout the gardens are replicas of those found in Pompeii and Herculeneum.