Stay out of child’s way +

Don’t try to be a teacher +

Don’t hijack your child’s learning +

Wait….wait…wait (and be patient) +

Don’t stress (talk to other unschoolers when you worry!) +

Read lots of books out loud when your child wants to +

Have lots of interesting books available +

Be ready as a resource when you child asks for it

____________________________________________________

= A child that reads. Eventually. On his own timetable.

Last night, as the whole family sat down to watch another downloaded episode of The Amazing Race, DS7 pulled out a sketch pad and starting writing words. Arp and I immediately looked at each other and shut off the waiting DVD player. Darn it – We were exhausted after a long day and really needed some veg out time, but we both knew that DS7 was working on something important and would be distracted by TV. The Amazing Race, and our own fatigue, could wait.

DS7 worked on writing short words and new combinations of letters for about an hour. I mostly just sat and watched, and answered his questions every once in a while. Many times, without DS7 noticing, I shared a happy look with Arp. Our son was learning to read. I couldn’t help but take pleasure in it.

Later, as Arp and I laid in the dark, the kids already having drifted off to sleep, we talked about how amazing it is to see DS7 learn to read, all on his own. I was mostly taking pleasure in the fact that DS7 would always be able to say that he did this himself. Kids do things themselves all the time, so there may be a tendency to understate the significance of that phrase. This is really significant, as reading is perhaps one of the first big learning processes that is stolen from children every day in school. Seeing my son start reading and writing on his own is amazing because we almost never see it anymore.

There has been a fair amount of discussion on unschooling lists about the difference between “teaching your child to read” and your child learning to read on his own juice. This is what I mean when I say that the process is stolen from the child in school. In school, the reading lessons start from day one. First you have the letter drills. Flash cards with letters and sounds. Phonics. Worksheets with those 3 lines (was it the red line on the bottom?) so that the child “writes correctly”. Through all of this, the child essentially sits back and waits for the next lesson. The child becomes a bystander. A subject. A member of the army waiting for the next order.  One of the herd.

A significant proportion of children won’t be immediately successful at reading on the school’s timetable. That’s because the school’s timetable is made for the benefit of teachers, not for the benefit of your child. It’s much easier for a teacher to teach other lessons if all the children are reading as soon as possible, and at as close to the same skill level as possible. Raise your hand if you have a child that “needs extra help”, “has reading difficulties”, or has a reading problem. Maybe the only problem is that the child is not reading in a time-frame that makes the teacher’s job easier. It’s all about the teacher, not about the child.

This is what I remind myself every time I’m tempted to become a teacher in my own home: DS7′s learning experiences are not about me. My son’s learning is his alone. He will tell me when he would like my help. He will tell me if he feels like he is having difficulty. He will tell me. He will tell me. Wait. Wait. Don’t say anything. Wait. I have to keep repeating these words to myself. I’m a product of school, after all. I’ve been programmed in those roles – teacher & subject- after all. My son’s experiences are different. He is no subject. He is in charge of his own learning.

I’ve made mistakes along the way, surely. I wasn’t always this confident that DS7 would learn to read. Early on, I invested in several stacks of Bob books in the hope it would assist his learning to read. I’d act excited and pull them out, intersperse a little phonics as we read. DS7 was not impressed. Those little lessons were pretty obvious to his attentive mind. He just wasn’t interested. He wanted to hear a story, not get a lesson. I don’t blame him. I’d be pretty miffed if Arp interrupted my coffee one morning to give me a lesson on roasting coffee beans. Please! Just let me enjoy my brew! On the other hand, I was happy to learn about coffee roasting when I chose to live on a coffee finca in Costa Rica. Remember, I chose.

Another mistake I made: thinking DS7 was ready to read simply because he wanted to read. Another mistake due to the school mindset. You see, motivation is the all-important issue in school. Teachers spend hours of the day figuring out how to motivate students. They take seminars on the subject. The thinking is that once motivation is there, learning will follow. (I know a lot about this. I used to be a teacher.) Teachers are always looking for the interest, and the “teachable moment”. Then, when they see it, they launch into a lesson that will solidify things and make the learning magic happen. Here’s how it works:

Reading in school = Teacher motivates (fun??, grades, parent/teacher pressure, stickers, “good job!”) + appropriate age + lessons from teacher.

Unschooled Reading = intrinsic motivation (fun or utility) + starts & stops of learning over several years.

My mistake was thinking that all a child needs is a little motivation and they would read in lickety-split. Sometimes that does happen. Sometimes a kid decides to read and manages to get from non-reader to reader in a number of weeks or months. More often it seems to happen gradually, in little steps, over several years. Totally normal. In school, the teacher might be panicking that her student is suddenly unable to get to “the next level”. Diagnosis of some sort of “reading problem” usually follows. As an unschooler, I had to learn that these pauses are natural. I learned to reassure DS7 that it would pass, the learning would come. No need to panic. I reassure myself, too.

As exciting as last night’s accomplishments were, I’m reminding myself all those things again. Maybe DS7 will work on this every night for several weeks. Maybe he’ll put it aside for awhile and work on something else. It’s OK. He’ll get it eventually, in his own time. No need to rush. Life is long. There’s plenty of time.

Look at my nostrils, world, and despair

I’ve been noticing how M, now 7, has become more and more social as time has gone on.  Socialization is, of course, one of the hot button issues when it comes to learning outside of school.  Why people think learning to be social with 30 other kids who are also learning to be social makes sense – especially when the main lessons are to sit down, be quiet and do what you’re told – is beyond me.  (If recess were 6 hours long, I could see school as a place to learn social skills, but not in a classroom.)

I wouldn’t have noticed his social skills much if it weren’t for other parents noting repeatedly that he is/was quiet, or adults who talked to him and tried to force the conversation along by noting how quiet he was.  Sometimes they were genuinely nice about making gentle jokes, but often it came across as a bit rude and judgmental.

To me, he was just himself.  I would know, since I was a quiet, shy kid with memories of being forced to be social.  I recalled feeling angry and embarrassed.  I was ok to let M be and not embarrass him needlessly.

It wasn’t always easy – sometimes people would say Hi to him and ask his name and he wouldn’t respond.  Or sometimes he would turn around and walk away.  I felt embarrassed on occasion and had to remind myself that it was about him, not me.  Once we had some privacy, I’d talk to him about politeness and why responding to questions about his name may be a nice thing to do.  He’d listen, and sometimes he’d respond to me, sometimes he wouldn’t.  That’s just him and how he felt at the time.

But from time to time, there would be glimpses of his growth and self-confidence.  When he was comfortable, he would often not stop talking.  He was like that at home, of course, and with family.  But one day he spent well over an hour talking to a neighbor’s relative visiting from Mexico.  An almost stranger, yet he was yabbering away.  We have no clue what they were talking about, but that doesn’t matter.  What matters is that he was confident and comfortable in that moment, with that person.

In the past year he’s finally started to make polite responses when strangers say Hi or ask his name.  Ever since we moved to the beach, he’s shown a much greater interest in meeting and playing with new kids at the beach.  We’ve given him suggestions on how to break the ice – smile, say Hola, offer a toy to play with.  He rarely takes the suggestion immediately, but he remembers (he’s always been like that – we can explain something and he’ll know it months later).

Yesterday he saw a kid on the beach, a younger kid with his parents.  The mother was familiar as she works in a store we’ve been in a few times.  He went over to where they were and the next thing we knew, he was yabbering away with the mom.  I realized then that he had the confidence in himself to just go and do it, and I felt happy for him – and a bit sad that the little boy isn’t so little anymore.

I should have seen it coming – he’s been more likely to ask strangers questions, like when looking for something in a store.  I wonder if it’s osmosis as I’ve found myself starting conversations with strangers everywhere I go – which was not common at all in the US.

I feel so privileged to witness this growth.  It’s a natural, wonderful progression – and it’s just him being himself.  We could have pushed him to be like this or that, but as we trusted, he grew at his own time and pace.  I believe the long-term benefits of self-confidence are well worth a couple of short years of not conforming to social expectations.

It was clear from the moment we arrived in Costa Rica that my son M (age 6 at arrival) did not want to learn Spanish, at least not immediately. He told us that on several occasions.  He was happy to learn a word here and there, but he seemed to have no plans to actually use the language and speak to the locals. When this came up in front of other expat families, most other parents recommended that I immediately put M into kindergarten in the local school system. When I frowned at the idea, they assured me that I could just put M in school for a few months, “just to learn the language”. They told me that he’d be speaking Spanish in just a few months, and then I could “pull him out” if I wanted to. The whole idea was to send my child to school “just for the language”, whether he liked it or not.

These conversations horrified me. Some people thought, because we are unschoolers, that it was the idea of school enrollment that upset me the most. But that wasn’t the problem. I was mostly upset by the assumption that children should have no choices when it comes to what and when they learn things. I guess it says something about how long I’ve been an unschooler that I was completely shocked by the idea of “putting my child in school” without asking him first. Frankly, I have trouble understanding how it is that a parent can do that to a child.

I met one expat family here that forced their two kids to attend school, even when both siblings cried and felt sad that they would miss seeing each other for those hours every day. Giving the fact that international moves are so stressful, I’d call what those parents did borderline abuse. When we (adults) take our family across the world, we are asking them to undergo a whole lot of stress. It is our job to support our children in that stressful adjustment. In the situation above, the idea of ripping siblings away from each other and putting kids in a situation where they will have no idea what people are saying sounds horrifying. Makes me wonder if parents ever imagine themselves in their child’s place.

Now that we’ve been in Costa Rica for a year, it’s become even more clear that we have all followed our own paths with regard to language. Arp has increased his knowledge of Spanish to the point that he feels comfortable and confident in most circumstances. I haven’t done quite as well, and I’m a little disappointed. Much of the reason that I haven’t done as well as I wanted to is that I haven’t been able to dedicate the time I wanted to doing some visual learning, through books and Rosetta Stone. I sort of forgot how much having a baby tends to throw a wrench into all the plans you make. Funny how that fact is so central in the first year of your baby’s life, and yet you forget about that once your children get a little bit older.

The kids have increased their use of Spanish at their own pace. After a year here, M has just begun to start feeling comfortable using short Spanish phrases with local children at the beach, or when buying things in local businesses. Seeing him do this happily, on his own initiative, makes me smile. It makes him smile, too. Regarding language, we never had to deal with stress and tears with M. He has eased into it gradually, as he does most things.

J has taken a different route to learning language, and it has been fairly gradual also. She seems to just pick up Spanish spontaneously, and suddenly she’s using a few news words here and there. I have a feeling she learns  language by hearing it, more like how Arp learns, although she can’t articulate that yet. J isn’t resistant to learning Spanish at all, and tends to learn new phrases as it becomes necessary and through regular interactions with kids at the beach. Even if she can’t speak to the children she plays with, she seems to have no trouble getting along and having fun. When she needs someone to translate, she never hesitates to pull Arp or I over for a quick translation session.

Even though our entire family is not fluent in Spanish, I feel glad that we have all taking the path to learning language that is pleasing to each of us. No crying, no forcing, and with joy.

[Photo by Shawn Econo]

I’ve always wondered that myself. Well, here is a post from a perceptive unschooled teen named Kevin that will give you an answer. He tries out public school for a year, for the 9th grade, and gives us his feedback. I particularly like this quote:

Would I recommend sending a kid to school? Absolutely not. It’s much too easy to lose your way. One thing I would advise though is to find unschooling friends. Would I recommend any other unschoolers go to school? If it’s going to do them good like me, sure. If they want to see what it’s like, sure. Otherwise, it’s going to be a shit hole. Plain and simple.

With all the sediment coming in, and the sometimes tea-colored water, we attempted to turn the water pump on and switch to well water. That experiment didn’t last long. The well water is literally black and smells most terrible. Well, it’s worse than “mountain water”, but that’s not saying much.

Arp and I are getting really excited about the coming move to Florida. We’ve both admitted to ourselves that we don’t do well staying in one place for very long. When Arp asked me, I agreed that if I had to predict, I doubt we’ll stay in Florida for more than 2-3 years, tops. We had a good laugh when we admitted to each other and ourselves that we feel this way!  I’m just incredibly thankful that we are both like this. I can’t imagine being married to someone who didn’t feel the same way as I do on this matter. We were obviously meant to be!

[Water photo icon by darkpatator]