You may think you have suddenly become dyslexic and I really meant to say that my house was alone for 10 days because my family went on vacation. So I’ll repeat it again.
My son and I actually took a picture of his closet before he cleaned it. The one great feature that our other closets have that this one didn’t is that when you open them, something might fall on your head. It makes for suspenseful living!
I spent ten days alone in my house.
I am the mother of two children, the wife of a devoted husband, and I am alone.
You’re reading this after the fact, because my husband and I both deeply believe that if we post on social media that I am home alone, a robber will come to take all our things (not that we have much worth taking….ooh, I hope they take the couch!) and all the neighborhood teenagers will come here because someone announced a party at our address on Facebook.
I’m not alone now, but I’m writing this in the past. Got it? OK.
So, I’m alone. What would you do if you were alone? Be very honest. Here’s what I planned to do:
Clean closets.
Yep. I was looking forward to being alone, and what did I want to do? Clean closets.
It sort of makes sense: You see, when you are a neat person living in a house with three people who are… um… less-than-compulsively-neat… you dream of having clean closets. But really you’re always one step behind the people making messes all over your darling house. So, in essence, the most horrifying aspect of your life is that you never get to clean the closets.
Or the freezer, but that’s something else that we won’t even talk about.
But here’s the question: What do you actually end up doing when you’re alone?
Well, if you’re me, you do your work, the stuff you get paid for, because somebody is paying attention to that. (Also, because you think if you make enough money you might get a new couch. But let’s not dwell on illusions.)
Then, what about the rest of that time? Time in which you would be:
Cleaning up after messy people
Arbitrating fights between your children
Shopping for more food because those people never stop eating!
Driving someone, somewhere
Cleaning up after messy people
Actually listening to what your husband is saying, and offering thoughtful responses
Planning what you’re going to do tomorrow so your kid doesn’t drive you crazy when you’re trying to work
Doing the thing that you planned to do tomorrow, because tomorrow always becomes today waaaaaay before you are ready for tomorrow
Et cetera
So that’s a lot of time you’ve freed up, right? You’ve got ten days alone in your house, and darn if you aren’t going to get some closets cleaned.
I could go on, but I will just end with some photos and captions.
This is the flower arrangement I made. Isn’t it pretty?
This is me drinking wine out on our back deck, perusing Facebook and learning such fascinating, important things.
The is a cat I took a photo of.
This is the same cat, different pose, different day.
I know that I told you the last time we went on vacation that the next time you stayed here, our closets would be organized. I’m sorry to say that once again you will have to search high and low for a towel that hasn’t been used to clean up cat barf, a can opener, and the remote that allows you to actually make our Roku box do what it’s supposed to do. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. If you would like to have clean, organized closets the next time you house sit, would you please invite my husband and kids to stay at your house for more than ten days?
Apparently, ten days isn’t enough time in which to realize my dreams.
All parents with adult children say it: Enjoy your kids, because they’ll be gone before you know it.
All parents in the throes of diapers, tantrums, school choices, and the craziness of early teens think it: This will never end.
And then it does.
My older child is 17, and I can assure you that it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. At the same time, it seemed to pass very, very slowly. But there’s been an unexpected beauty as we move into our last school year with two kids at home: College applications.
Now you’re thinking: She’s really lost it. College applications? Beauty? All that stress of having teenagers has gotten to her.
Actually, I’ve found this beauty in just one aspect of college applications: reading my son’s essays. He’s applying to a healthy number of colleges (nowhere near the 30-40 that some students are doing these days), and each one wants essays on slightly different topics. Most of them are predictable—what makes you different? what makes you like other people? what makes you right for our college? But the best essays, my son knows, are the ones that contain very specific and memorable answers.
The process has made someone who is not usually your most reflective kid sit back and look at his experiences. Reading his essays has been illuminating for his parents. For him, writing them has challenged him to think about his education, his interests, his community, and more.
It’s given him a chance to write about the weirdness of Santa Cruz—how many applicants get to write about Chongo, the stuffed gorilla who is the Revivalution Party’s candidate for president?
It’s given him the chance to consider his own shortcomings—why did I resist learning math all that time? When I finally got around to committing myself to it, I found out I liked it.
And it’s given his parents a chance to see the childhood we guided him through from his perspective. I’ve learned what he remembers best from the schools he went to. I learned what he appreciates most about our agreeing to homeschool him starting in sixth grade. I learned how he sees himself as a person, and how he hopes that others will see him.
I know a lot of parents with younger children who cause themselves undue stress worrying about college. Today, I’m here to give you a little taste of how you can also enjoy it. Yes, we’re worrying about whether he’ll get into his top choice. Yes, we’re wondering whether we encouraged him to do enough to prepare. And certainly, we’re worried about how much we’re going to have to pay.
But it’s important to remember: When you’re looking at a rose, you don’t have to spend all the time focusing on the thorns.
I was sad to see that after the demise of the long-running Home Education Magazine, the publisher chose to take down the entire site, and with it the archive of years of articles that they published. I wrote for HEM for only the last two years, but I loved being able to contribute to an important voice in homeschooling. Since these articles are no longer available online, I am re-publishing mine here on my blog.
In the time that I’ve been homeschooling, major progress has been made by scientists studying how we think and learn. What we thought we knew about learning ten, twenty, or thirty years ago is being turned on its head in study after study showing how our brains actually do tasks.
Homeschoolers can stay ahead of the curve by applying our knowledge of learning well before schools catch up.
Mainstream American education has hardly reacted to the new data that is coming out daily, still attempting to force children to learn in a way that never really suited anyone, though we all suffered through it. But that’s no reason why we homeschoolers can’t look at the research and take stock of how they work with our own children.
Your physical brain
Modern imaging technology has encouraged an explosion in brain research. We used to have to figure out how the brain worked by observing people, recording their actions, and dissecting the brains of the deceased. Modern imaging allows scientists to watch brains learning, growing, and changing in real time, and much of what they have learned shows that educational theory lingers in the dark ages.
We used to think that the brain had relatively isolated areas for different functions; now we see that although language is centered in one part of the brain and movement in another, those two parts of the brain are interconnected and “help” each other learn.
We used to think that creative people were “right-brained” and technical people were “left-brained.” Imaging shows us that although certain processes make take place more on one side of the brain than the other, complex processes take place throughout the brain. Scans of people in high creative mode—from painting to designing technology—show their brains lighting up in concentrated areas on both sides, not simply glowing on the right side as previously predicted.
Understanding how your child’s brain processes information and emotion can help in how you face homeschooling obstacles.
Educators base teaching theory on the idea that people have different “learning styles” in which they can be categorized as a single type of learner, such as “kinesthetic.” Modern brain research shows us that we all learn through all available senses, and hasn’t been able to validate the learning styles theory at all. In fact, evidence indicates that providing a rich, multi-sensory environment is the best way to go.
We used to believe that teenagers were largely “grown up” both physically and mentally. Brain imaging shows us that in some important ways teens’ brains aren’t “grown up” at all. The last part of the human brain to become fully functional is the prefrontal cortex, where the “executive function” resides. The executive function is what filters input and makes decisions, and isn’t fully developed in most people until the age of twenty-five.
So what does this tell us as homeschoolers? First of all, our goal should never to be to “teach” our children one subject in one way, the way that public school does. Our children are learning and making connections all the time, whether they are doing a math worksheet, playing Minecraft with their friends, or working in the garden. The skills that a child uses to do math, play Minecraft, and garden are not isolated; they overlap in complex ways.
Secondly, we now know that brains that have learned how to do one thing well are better prepared to learn anything else. This deep learning is more important than the topic being learned. As long as our kids are making connections and growing new pathways in their brains, they are creating the structures that will allow them to build on what they’ve learned.
Lastly, we know that just like with athletic ability, the important thing is that children are using and exercising their brains. This is important in different ways at different ages:
Babies and toddlers need tactile experiences. The more babies interact with the physical world and with other humans, the more they learn.
Younger children need to be allowed to explore. Trapping them in the same room every day and restricting them to the same curriculum doesn’t take advantage of their natural inclination to learn through experimentation and exploration.
Research shows that during the early teen years, ages 10 to 13, a large amount of “pruning” happens—brain connections that are not being used are discarded. So the early teens, contrary to common belief, are not just a time of social growth. These children need to be inspired to use their brains optimally at this important time.
Our teens need meaningful work, and at the same time, they need a lot more support than our culture is inclined to give them. Homeschoolers are lucky in that we can foster strong mentoring relationships with our teens. At this time in their lives, teens need to be allowed to “steer the boat,” while knowing that we are there to back them up if their still-forming executive function is not up to the task.
The old model of the human brain told us that people were born with a certain amount of ability, and then as older adults we started to lose that ability. The idea of IQ, that there is a number that can sum up what a brain is capable of, was largely embraced and promoted.
I like this quote: “A brain is a river, not a rock!”
Recent research has turned this old belief on its head; there seems to be very little correlation between the basic building blocks that a person is born with and his or her eventual success in career and life. Research shows that as long as you are “smart enough” to tackle the job you love, what counts are some other factors.
One of those factors is called neuroplasticity. We always knew that children’s brains grew, both physically and in ability. But it turns out that even though brain development does slow down in adults, it doesn’t ever stop. If learning is all about making connections and then building on those connections, neuroplasticity is all about keeping those connections alive and active. The more we work on learning, the more flexible and agile our brains remain, and what we work at learning matters.
“Anything we repeat enough reinforces itself by creating brain connections to support that specific behavior,” writes Dr. Mark Bertin. “Routines built early in childhood neurologically sustain themselves around nutrition, exercise, reading, technology and countless other aspects of life.”
Many parents note that although their children learned quickly and easily before puberty, suddenly their teens find learning “a drag” and seem more intent on social relationships than academics. Part of the problem is due to the fact that our traditional educational approach pretty much shuts off creativity and exploration in the early teens. We don’t expect that our young children will want to learn by sitting quietly, listening, and then regurgitating, but suddenly we do expect this of our teens.
Brain research has shown that as teens’ academic explorations drop off, their neural connection-building also drops, with very real effects on their future achievements. The main thing to keep in mind when your teen wants to retreat from learning is that “use it or lose it” really is true of the brain. Research is showing that using the brain and continuing to grow new neural pathways guards against mental decline later in life.
Cultivating an openness to learning is essential.
Another important factor about your child’s learning is what psychologist Carol Dweck has dubbed “mindset.” In her research, she demonstrates that people with a “growth mindset”—people who believe that they can do something if they work hard enough at it—achieve more than people with a “fixed mindset”—people who believe that they have a set intelligence and ability level.
In your homeschool, keep in mind that constantly praising your children can be detrimental to their learning. “You’re a great artist,” may seem like the nicer thing to say, but “you worked really hard on that painting” will be better for your child’s self-esteem and willingness to tackle more complex projects.
Finally, research into stress and learning has resulted in fascinating new ideas that go against both the achievement-oriented prep school model and the happiness-oriented free school model. It turns out that, as you probably know, stress is bad for your kids. When children’s brains are stressed, their brains go into “flight or flight mode.” Instead of processing the incoming information in their prefrontal cortex, it is sent directly to their reactive “lizard brain,” where it is often lost. That’s why when your child cried while doing fractions yesterday, you find out that today she’s back to where she started, remembering little or nothing she worked on the day before.
On the other hand, the stress-free life turns out also to be detrimental to your child’s eventual academic and career success. It turns out that there is a zone of “optimal stress,” where a student is challenged to stretch beyond his comfort zone into an area where he has the skills to succeed but is not as confident. We see this on the playground all the time: a child resists trying the monkey bars when they are simply unattainable, but one day after seeing a friend do them, she is willing to undergo some “good stress” in order to achieve a new skill.
Learning resources:
“Losing is Good for You” shows how mindset can be changed through overly generous reward systems: http://tinyurl.com/kayszup
“The Brain-Boosting Product You Already Have in your Home” offers some good, practical advice based on neuroplasticity research: http://tinyurl.com/meyuzv4
The old view of brain development and learning saw it as separate from the development of the physical body, but modern research proves that nothing could be further from the truth. Physical health and lifestyle play a huge role in everyone’s brain health, but especially in the development of children’s brains.
The brain loves being worked in a variety of ways—PE is not an elective!
Research shows that children who get ample exercise and time in nature are calmer, more creative, better students, and eventually better at pursuing their goals. Every homeschool (and school, for that matter) should prioritize non-academic activities that support academics. Our kids may think that they are happier playing video games inside, but their bodies need aerobic exercise and nature in order to work at their optimal level.
That’s not to say that video games are all bad. In fact, research is showing that the “gamification” of education can help kids learn. We homeschoolers already knew that kids can learn more about adding and subtracting while playing Monopoly than by doing worksheets, and that’s true of a lot of learning. Video games that offer deep learning opportunities (which doesn’t—sorry, kids—include shooting at birds flying across your screen) can enhance children’s education, when not done to an extreme. Similarly, video games that develop strategy skills and reflexes (yay, now we can shoot birds!) have also been shown to improve academic ability….when not done to the exclusion of other healthy activities.
There is one area where computers are causing learning problems, which homeschoolers should notice because it’s become so prevalent: multitasking. Although modern humans take great pride in their multitasking skills, and modern life requires more and more of it, it turns out that multitasking is detrimental to learning. When deep learning is the goal, distractions need to be kept to a minimum. So although your child says that she can play a game on her iPod while listening to the audiobook, research quite conclusively proves that she’s only listening with half of her brain, and much of what she thinks she’s taking in will get discarded.
Finally, modern brain research is clearly leading us away from old-fashioned ideas of predestination and fate. Human brains are highly malleable and highly individualized. Children who are “bad at math” grow up to become mathematicians. Children who are fascinated with science at the age of six end up as professional artists. And adults who have embarked on one career find success and fulfillment by changing to another mid-stream.
You may be distressed that, for example, your adopted child didn’t get the optimal upbringing for the first two years. Of course, we want all children to get as many opportunities as possible, but your adopted child now has the rest of his life to become the person that he wants to be, regardless of what he missed at first.
You may worry that your autistic or dyslexic child will not have the opportunities you hope she will have. But research is uncovering more and more ways in which “different brains” can even be optimal in some situations. Author Jonathan Mooney speaks about growing up “learning disabled” and then realizing that as an adult, he could offer his “neurodiversity” as an asset. (Check out his Youtube videos to hear his poignant and very amusing story.)
Or you may have a neurologically typical child who doesn’t excel in any area and you worry that he won’t find a calling at all. Research shows that there is no sense in assuming that every child will develop at the same rate. Hopefully, with the gift of time, creative exploration, and a rich environment, your child will find his calling.
The most important thing to understand about educating any child is that your child can’t help but learn. You are there as a coach, guide, mentor, and cheerleader (as long as you don’t say “good job” too often), and it’s up to your child to do the rest.
As homeschoolers, we take on a huge burden: we determine the environment in which our children’s brains develop. The nice thing about modern brain research is that it validates many practices that homeschoolers have been preaching for years: Allow children to develop at their own rate, give them ownership in the learning process, don’t worry about natural variations between different children’s skills, and keep them stimulated and inspired with a rich, varied learning environment.
This is Part 7 of a guest series I wrote in 2012 for Great Potential Press, which published my book, From School to Homeschool. A change on their website made it inaccessible, so I’m republishing here in celebration of National Parenting Gifted Children Week. To read the complete series, click here to start with post #1, “The Role of Parents in Identifying Gifted Children.”
Parenting a gifted child presents unusual challenges. Parenting a gifted child with behavioral differences places new burdens on top of those challenges. Although no one has the one magic ticket to make your life easier, experienced parents of gifted children offer variations on the following advice to help you negotiate the process of raising your wonderful, difficult child.
1. Don’t depend on one theory of parenting.
It’s unusual for a well-loved parenting theory to work without alteration for kids with behavioral differences. Take the parts that work, get rid of the parts that don’t.
2. Keep records.
A parent’s point of view about her child’s behavior can vary widely over only a matter of months. Children tend to coast along for a while then go through rapid periods of change. Parents often find themselves saying, When is this EVER going to end? Then some months later they realize that whatever it was had ended and they hadn’t noticed.
3. Expect regression.
This is totally normal, even for neurotypical kids. It happens in every area of life: potty training, academic learning, sleep habits… Parents of unusual children should try not to be disconcerted by normal regression.
4. Get the help of a good occupational therapist.
The best ones will have some background in issues of giftedness, though the very best will be eager to learn whether or not they have the background. A good occupational therapist will be interested in the whole child.
5. Find a general Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) whose approach works well with your family.
Your LMFT will be able to help you work through ideas and also give you a sense of how unusual your child’s behavior really is. Once parents become sensitized to having an unusual child, they tend to lose perspective. In other words, “usual” kids aren’t perfect, either.
6. Don’t jump on every new theory you see, but then again, don’t discount everything as out of the question.
There is so much more information available to us now than to parents in previous generations. In one way, this is blessing. Parents today have access to advice from a wide variety of sources. But on the other hand, parents can go crazy trying to follow every piece of advice. Your child, and your family, will stay more sane if you take each piece of advice under consideration, but don’t jump on every train that passes.
7. Some simple nutritional changes can make a big difference.
There are a few dietary changes that every parent of a difficult child should try. These changes have been shown to work well with a large number of gifted children, and they are not difficult ones to implement:
– Supplement with Omega-3 oils. They influence brain function, and parents often see an immediate difference in their kids, especially in their ability to maintain stable moods.
– Try to up the protein intake and lower the simple carbohydrate intake. Simple carbs are really bad for kids whose brains are on overdrive. Protein, especially early in the day, gives them something to work on.
– Try to avoid artificial colors and preservatives, especially sodium benzoate. These have been shown to exacerbate problems with kids who tend toward hyperactive behavior.
– Have “hyperactive” children’s ferritin levels checked. Recent studies are showing that kids who have normal general iron levels but very low ferritin (stored iron) levels show ADHD-like behaviors. (See ‘Relationship of Ferritin to Symptom Ratings Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder’, Oner, 2007) Iron supplementation is easy and may show large benefits.
8. Be willing to give your child the support he needs to succeed.
Some parents fall into the trip of letting their children fail because they assume that kids “should” be able to handle what other kids handle. But a gifted child who fails repeatedly because of inadequate support will never learn the joy of succeeding. When possible, set up enough “successful” activities to balance the challenging activities. If the child is in school, work with the teacher to provide positive feedback on progress, no matter how small.
9. When possible, make reasonable accommodations for your child’s differences.
Sometimes parents expect gifted kids to be more resilient than neurotypical kids. But simple accommodations for common problems can help gifted children thrive. For example, many twice-exceptional children have difficulty with handwriting. This translates into the child being unable to express herself in writing. In this case, a reasonable accommodation would be for the child to learn keyboarding or dictate homework to a parent. Handwriting itself can be worked on separately, when it is not interfering with the creative process.
10. Be willing to call him a child with special needs.
This is a big step for many parents of twice-exceptional children to take. Your child does have special needs, even though he also has special talents. And all children deserve to have their needs met so that they can reach their potential.
11. Put on your mask first
Finally, don’t forget that the parents of gifted children need help, too. Find a support group, in person or online. Getting input from other parents who have similar challenges will help you be the best parent you can be.
I just got back from a refreshing and fun homeschooling conference. Homeschooling conferences are their own sort of thing: part conference, part costume party, part mass therapy session. This one was no exception.
During the Q&A part of a talk I gave, one of the moms in the audience told me something like “I feel so reassured by how calm you are.”
I was a bit taken aback.
People have said this about me before, and all I can think is that I must be a really great accidental actress. It’s not like I try to put on a persona or try to broadcast something that’s not true, but calm?
Really?
Calm?
My sister gave me a weird, tingly facial mask for my birthday. Calm. I am calm. As long as I can get those crawling bugs washed off my face Right Now, I am calm!
Like all parents today, I feel like there is way too much coming at me, way too fast. Just a few facts of modern parenting will suffice:
We grew up in a world that seemed like it was going to last forever (or at least “billions and billions of years,” said in a Carl Sagan voice). Our kids are living with global warming and homegrown terrorism.
We grew up with toys that seemed wonderful and sometimes magical, but we knew how they worked. Our kids play with magic of a very different sort every time they turn on a screen.
We grew up in a world where you had a menu to choose from—the TV Guide and the limits of what your town (and the Sears catalogue) had to sell you. Our kids can get everything, nearly everything they can imagine. Instantly, or at least with two-day free shipping.
Our kids don’t just have their own slang for the world we know; they have their own world which didn’t exist when we were kids. The rate of change is fantastic. The rate at which we are acquiring knowledge about ourselves and the natural world seems boundless.
My parents had Dr. Spock to turn to for advice. We’ve got Drs. Galore—not just MDs but PhDs, LMFTs, PsyDs, and PhGs (Philosophers of Google, that is). Everyone is telling us that whatever we’re doing is wrong, and they’ve got all the answers.
Our kids are being diagnosed with disorders that didn’t exist when we were kids. We just used to have weird kids. Now we’ve got Asperger’s replaced with Autistic, Sensory Processing Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Disorder…
We’ve got more disorders than we’ve got orders.
We’ve got public schools, private schools, charter schools, magnet schools, schools of choice, and homeschooling.
Heck, when I was a kid, you just went to school.
And if you’re homeschooling, you’ve got Christian homeschooling, secular homeschooling, eclectic homeschooling, classical homeschooling, unit studies homeschooling, not to mention outschooling and hybrid schooling.
Calm? Am I calm yet?
We parents have too much choice. We have too much input. We have too many people telling us to do too many things. We are both supposed to sign our kids up for Kumon and let them play in the mud. We are both supposed to inspire our kids and teach them to toe the line. We are both supposed to give them strong self-esteem and not praise them too much.
It’s a lot. It’s a very large lot in which we are playing at parenting, never sure we are doing the right thing.
I keep coming back to the word “calm.” If I appear calm, it’s not a charade. It’s not me trying to reassure you that it will be OK.
Calm is just me in the midst of the chaos we call modern life. I know that there’s very little I can do outside of that little space I operate within, so I just do what I can. If I can help one other parent feel self-assured enough to be a slightly better parent, I guess I’ve done my job in the world. If I send my kids out into the chaos with a few tools to use for their survival, even better.
I am calm, because what’s the point of adding to the chaos? We have no idea where this world is going, so we might as well enjoy what we have around us and try to spread a little bit of goodness out from our tiny space.
My older child is 17, and I can assure you that it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. At the same time, it seemed to pass very, very slowly. But there’s been an unexpected beauty as we move into our last school year with two kids at home: College applications.
It’s unusual for a well-loved parenting theory to work without alteration for kids with behavioral differences. Take the parts that work, get rid of the parts that don’t.
There are a few dietary changes that every parent of a difficult child should try. These changes have been shown to work well with a large number of gifted children, and they are not difficult ones to implement:
Sometimes parents expect gifted kids to be more resilient than neurotypical kids. But simple accommodations for common problems can help gifted children thrive. For example, many twice-exceptional children have difficulty with handwriting. This translates into the child being unable to express herself in writing. In this case, a reasonable accommodation would be for the child to learn keyboarding or dictate homework to a parent. Handwriting itself can be worked on separately, when it is not interfering with the creative process.
