An Honest-to-God Homeschooling Post!

Joanne’s Unschooling Voices is asking asked (I didn’t get my post done in time for the Carnival) the question “Do you extend the principles of unschooling (trust, freedom, etc) into any other areas of your child’s life?”. Now, considering that we’ve basically stumbled and fallen into homeschooling, it’s hard to say. I’m in a strange place right now — and I think Squid may be thinking that I’ve entirely lost my mind. Thanks to some conversations on parenting over at Atypical Homeschool and some grace-based parenting articles I’ve read over at Tulip Girl (no specific links, she’s always posting great articles and links on this subject!), I’m doing a total rehaul of how I parent.

For those of you who haven’t been around here for a while, we were GKGWers. We were blessed to have a first baby who apparently had absorbed the classes in utero as well, because she was naturally on a 2-hr schedule after her first week or so (like the book said she would), responded well to the eat-wake-sleep cycle, and stretched to the 3-hr and 4-hr schedules right when the book said she would, and was sleeping through the night at roughly 12 weeks, like the . . . well you get it. So, what’s not to love? We both came from families whose parenting patterns we did NOT want to repeat and the Ezzos seemed to have the answers. Spanking wasn’t an issue — it was a completely normal thing where I grew up, and at least they had a plan so you wouldn’t lose your temper and over-spank or beat (was my opinion at the time). Jasmine seemed to respond well to first-time obedience (of course she did, she’s eldest child!), so we thought we were hot stuff! We were doing it all right and it was working!!! Then, Pink Pixie entered the picture, 15 months after Jasmine was born.

The first chip in my perfect GKGW facade was her colic. According to the Ezzos, there is no such thing as colic — you’re just doing it wrong. Now, I did just fine with #1, why would I be doing it wrong now? Basically we gave up the schedule and did whatever it took to settle her down. We did somewhat of the eat-wake-sleep cycle, but if she was sleeping, there was NO WAY we were going to wake her up! It all went out the window after that. Once the colic was gone, we resumed the GKGW schedules and practices. She too responded pretty well to first time obedience, although she was a bit more stubborn. We still spanked occasionally, but it wasn’t an every day thing or anything like that. As they got older and we decided to homeschool, I got more involved with internet discussion groups and started hearing things about Gary Ezzo’s character that really didn’t sit well with me. The more I read, the more I didn’t like that we were depending on this guy’s “God made you the authority in your home” teachings when he wouldn’t submit to the authority of the elders in his church(es)!  Add to this the fact that it simply wasn’t working for us — I just end up yelling a LOT, and my girls are picking up on that habit, yelling at each other and Monkeyboy as well.  I guess my old mentor would say we need to get back in the funnel (get back to basics), but I think it’s just not a method that works with my kids’ temperaments or mine.  I just become WAY too autocratic and while I agree that God put me in authority over my children, I think there’s a loving, grace-filled way to exercise that authority.  But I haven’t quite found it yet.

What does this have to do with homeschooling? Well, as I move away from a rigid rules-based parenting style towards a grace-based, reasoning, pro-active parenting style I’m also moving away from a schedule-based, curriculum-based schooling style toward a more unschooling idea. Both moves are freaking Squid right. out. He trusts me, loves the idea of homeschooling, but is firmly in the “kids thrive on schedules” camp. I keep trying to explain, send him posts and articles, to convince him that is a public school philosphy we’ve heard so many times we believe it’s universal truth. Besides, I’m not going totally unschool, I just don’t want a rigid schedule.  Any advice for spouses who can’t quite wrap their minds around unschooling?

When we started homeschooling, we were just trying it out for Kindergarten the year before Jasmine was to start K. She is a December baby and was ready for K work, but missed the September deadline. We started 100 Easy Lessons, but didn’t do it every day. I got some Kindergarten workbooks at Sam’s club, but still went about it all very informally. The year she was to start Kindergarten, we just kept doing K work, but I was determined to start it ‘for real’. We couldn’t afford a Sonlight type curriculum in a box, although that was the most attractive type for me. I’m a procrastinater, a dreamer not a do-er. I’ll think about doing something until it’s too late to actually do it. So a curriculum that tells me everyday what to do sounded perfect (and is still quite tempting, frankly). Since that was monitarily out of the picture, we went to Sam’s club, bought a couple of workbooks and kept on with 100 EZ lessons. I looked at Ambleside Online, but was overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of books to read! I still keep it bookmarked, there’s GREAT stuff in those lists! But frankly, if my “I hate to read” 7yo likes twaddle for now, I’m OK with it.

As we progress with HSing, Jasmine has never finished the 100 lessons and has decided she can’t read. I encourage, read to her, ask what this sign or that says, but we’re not doing “reading lessons”. On the other hand, when Pink Pixie turned 5 I gave her a Dick and Jane reader collection. She had the entire thing read – by herself – in a couple of days. She is me at that age — she reads the cereal box, the instructions to games, the back of the shampoo bottle, anything with words she’s attempting to read.

So, for this year, we’re going to start a little more math (real-life math — monopoly, counting UNO scores, cooking, money-money-money, worksheets only if they ask for them), and I am going to concentrate on reading TO them a lot more. We are also going to try to scrape together the funds for Rosetta Stone Spanish which we’ll do as a family. The girls are already planning our first Spanish night where we’ll speak only Spanish and eat Mexican food. That’s about it for my lesson-planning. Other than that, we’ll go with the flow and see what is interesting to them. (breath, honey, breath).