The Value of Competition

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.

When I first became a homeschooler, I was surprised by the number of parents I met who were against allowing children to compete in any way. Activities in our public homeschool program were designed as “everyone wins” events. We hardly saw any homeschoolers at our county science fair, despite the fact that it was very welcoming to our kids. Parents were always on the lookout for cooperative games so that their children wouldn’t have to compete with each other.

Other homeschooling families I know also love to enter the science fair.
Other homeschooling families I know also love to enter the science fair.

The rare competitive homeschooler seems to be the exception: often they are homeschoolers specifically because their achievements leave little time for school. A high-level competitive gymnast seems more common amongst homeschoolers than a child who just likes the challenge of competition at any level.

In our family, however, we have an instinctive enthusiasm for competitions. It isn’t that our kids are generally high-achievers; in fact, they don’t necessarily place in competitions they enter. But we all feel the excitement and fulfillment of identifying a target, working toward it, and seeing our work alongside others who share our interests.

Science mania!

The science fair is a good example of a competitive event my children love. It is a huge payoff for project-based learning. Whereas other projects might gather dust on a shelf or become presents for Grandma, the science fair moves from independent exploration, to documenting the work, to sharing with fellow young scientists, and on to speaking with (and hopefully receiving awards from) judges.

My kids enter almost every year; they often win awards, but not always. The big payoff for them, however, is the experience as a whole. As an unschooler, I’ve become a sort of pied piper for the science fair. The first year my child entered, she was the only student in our public homeschool program who was interested. Over the years, I gushed enough about it that we’ve seen a bigger participation level, but nowhere near what I would expect for a well-managed, free, and inspiring educational event.

Shunning competition

So what’s up with avoiding competition? It turns out it’s not just homeschoolers. In “Losing is Good for You,” Ashley Merryman (New York Times) explores the phenomenon of parents shunning competition. She cites sports leagues in which all the children receive trophies, regardless of participation or performance.

“By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies,” Merryman writes. “They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.”

When adults deny obvious differences between children, they send a confusing message. On the one hand, it’s a message of conformance: Don’t try to be different because even if we know you are, we’re going to pretend you’re not. On the other hand, it’s a message about the futility of working hard: Don’t try to improve because Johnny who didn’t even bother to come to practice is going to get the same reward as you.

Starting with the self-esteem movement in the late 1970’s, Americans altered how praise—both verbal and token-based—is given out. We wanted kids to feel good about themselves, so we started to say “good job” when our parents might have said “how could you miss such an easy pitch?” We wanted to celebrate kids who had been traditionally at the bottom, so we phased out games that would point out physical differences, competitions that would point out intellectual differences, and pretty much any situation in which a child might get the message, “you’re a loser.”

Growth mindset

The work of psychologist Carol Dweck has made waves across education in the United States, but when it came out, lots of parents and teachers looked at it and felt like they ought to say, “Well, duh!” It turns out that you can empirically prove that all this mindless cheerleading is bad for kids’ self-esteem. In a very simply designed experiment, Dweck asked kids to solve math puzzles. To half of the kids, the researchers said, “You are so smart!” To the other half, they said, “You worked so hard on that!”

Not surprisingly, the “so smart” kids suddenly had something to protect. They were so smart, and they’d better not let on when they had trouble with something. The “so smart” kids went on to perform miserably on a slightly harder task, whereas the “hard working” kids were pumped up by the researchers’ enthusiasm for their hard work, and they worked even harder and achieved more.

It’s true: in competitions, a few kids win and lots of kids lose. The thing is, in well-run competitions any kid who has a solid foundation of self-respect is not going to be fooled. When my kids and I look at the winners in a competition, we discuss whether we think the judging was fair. More often than not, my kids admit that the winners simply put in more work, had a more original idea, and did a better job of explaining what they did.

Competing for satisfaction

We love Santa Cruz Soccer, which emphasizes cooperation in competition.
We love Santa Cruz Soccer, which emphasizes cooperation in competition.

Recently I read an article about cultivating intrinsic motivation that was making the rounds amongst teachers. I noticed that the author pointed out the value of fair competition.

“Intrinsic motivation can be increased in situations where students gain satisfaction from helping their peers and also in cases where they are able to compare their own performance favorably to that of others,” writes teacher Saga Briggs.

She says “favorably,” but I would broaden that: I think that my kids gain satisfaction just from seeing where they lie in the continuum of human achievement. My daughter still plays soccer, even though she’s never been MVP. She celebrates the achievements of the great hitters on her softball team, pointing out how much they practice. My son sometimes declines to enter a competition that he judges himself unprepared for. It’s not that he has poor self-esteem—it’s that showing his work alongside the work of others who share his passions has given him a good perspective. He knows how hard he’s going to have to work to compete, and when he honestly isn’t willing to do the work, he would rather sit on the sidelines and cheer people who were.

Of course, a child who doesn’t enjoy competition shouldn’t be pushed into it. But by the same token, denying children the right to stand up and proudly declare their achievements does not bolster their self-esteem. Our kids are just as smart as we are….if not smarter. They know when people are putting them on, so if we continue the charade that kids’ achievements are all the same, we’re not doing them any favors. Yes, it’s great to celebrate all children’s abilities, but avoiding competition puts our children into a manufactured world where hard work is not acknowledged and their achievements are just another thing to gather dust up on a high shelf.

References:

Losing is Good for You” by Ashley Merryman

25 Ways to Cultivate Intrinsic Motivation” by Saga Briggs

Goal-setting full circle

In homeschooling and writing, things have a way of intertwining themselves without any sort of prior intent. Here are two topics that I’ve written about before:

Topic #1: learning about goal-setting is of particular importance to teenage homeschoolers. [Read more here.]

Topic #2: Homeschooling changes the adults who do it as much as the kids. [Here, here, here… heck, just read all my posts about homeschooling and you’ll see it’s a theme!]

This summer: The melding of two of my favorite topics.

I decided [why, oh why do I decide these things?] that first of all, I was going to write a book on goal-setting explicitly for homeschooling teens.

Secondly, I decided that I would offer an online class in the fall based on the book. [Read about it here.]

GSLogo

So, what did I inadvertently do? I set myself a goal, and then forced myself to be accountable for it. Paying students are already listed in my classroom, expecting to get their copy of my “book” in October.

I actually do know why I do these things to myself: When I was young, I thought that people “just did” things and how their work got out into the world was a mysterious process that hopefully I’d be swept into at some point.

I am spending more time on music, less time on trying to help every wayward organization function more efficiently.
I am spending more time on music, less time on trying to help every wayward organization function more efficiently.

In other words, I had never noticed that people who get things done actually set goals, figure out the steps to get there, and make themselves accountable in some way for reaching those steps and, hopefully, the final goal. This is not something I’d ever done, not as a child, a teen, a young adult, or even a mother of small children. I apparently thought that whatever life threw at me was what I would get.

But homeschooling (and parenting in general) has a way of getting you to look at yourself and notice things you hadn’t bothered to think about before.

Why didn’t I set goals? Why didn’t I make myself accountable for them? What was stopping me?

I’m not going to psychoanalyze myself (fear of failure? low self-esteem? the alignment of the planets?), but I have noticed a change since I’ve been forced to look more carefully at how I’m raising my children. I’ve started to look at the things I’m doing with a little more of a critical eye. It was a huge step for me just to go through a series of simple questions:

  • Is this activity fulfilling for me?
  • Is it taking up time that I should be using for something else?
  • Is it leading me in any particular direction, or am I just spinning my wheels?
  • Do I have any particular goal here?

Thinking like this got me to making a few changes in my life. I self-published my chapter book, Hanna, Homeschooler, knowing that it wasn’t really suited to a mainstream publisher, anyway. I am spending more time on music and less on trying (futilely) to help every organization I come into contact with work more efficiently.

Full circle

Writing this book on goal-setting is sending me full circle back to what I think is most important about goal-setting: being self-reflective, focusing our attention on what matters, and realizing that “success” is all about feeling like we’ve done our best, and not at all about being declared “successful” by someone else.

I still spend plenty of time on non-goal-oriented activities (never discount the value of a glass of wine with family or friends in helping you reach your goals!), but I feel more focused, less like I’m putting out fires and more like I’m setting fires for myself!

Favorite picture books

In our house, picture books have a very long life. My thirteen-year-old refuses to get rid of her favorites, still!

Here are a few of the most memorable, with some memories to go along with them.

  • Goodnight, Gorilla
    We’re a family of words, so what’s this book of very few words doing on our list? Someone bought it for us. We would never have bought a book with so few words. Our son became obsessed with it. Once our daughter came along, we introduced it to her and she was similarly entranced. I think it’s a combination of things that make this book so wonderful: Excellent illustrations, a bit of naughtiness, lots of tension in the plot even though there are no words. Degen is primarily an illustrator—I just learned that he illustrated the Magic School Bus books, one of my daughter’s favorites, and he also did Jamberry below.
  • The Napping House
    Like so many picture books, the illustrations make this book. Husband/wife team Audrey and Don Wood clearly do what is so hard for us non-illustrating authors: The text doesn’t say anything that the illustrations can’t say better. So the text doesn’t say what a lovely and weird relationship Granny has with her grandchildren. It doesn’t mention how charming and unusual their home is. It doesn’t say what time of day it is or that it’s raining. (There may be errors here; I am doing this all from memory and my children are now 13 and 17!) But the text adds the rhythm, building with a musical crescendo to the end (I won’t add any spoilers here). Beautiful book to look at; wonderful book to read out loud.
  • Eating the Alphabet
    Alphabet books are ubiquitous and largely boring. This one is an exception. Ehlert makes collage illustrations that are endlessly cool to look at. They both look very realistic, and at the same time are clearly not realistic. She chooses a wonderful variety of vegetables to feature here, many that we had to look up and discuss. Both of my kids are [for the most part] good vegetable eaters, and I think part of that is due to celebrating vegetables as fascinating and exciting. (The other part is due to keeping a garden, and cooking well.) When I first typed the title of this book, I mistakenly called it Vegetables A to Z, one of my favorite cookbooks!
  • Where the Wild Things Are
    What can be said about this wonderful book has been said. It’s been a part of my life since I can remember—I just learned that it was published before I was born! I love how it’s both of its time and out of its time. A boy when it was written might just have one monster suit to play in. He didn’t have gadgets and Chinese plastic junk filling his room. He needed his imagination. But the book is also outside of time in that it addresses that fundamental frustration of childhood: lack of control. He can’t control his parents, he can’t choose what to eat for dinner. So he chooses to control the one thing only he has control over: his imagination.
  • In the Night Kitchen
    Also Sendak, perhaps a less-read book than Wild Things. Again, Sendak doesn’t shy away from hard themes. Again, his specific is also our universal. Mickey’s dream is specific to Mickey, and the illustrations are charmingly old-style. But the dream as hyper-reality is real for all kids. And the mix of humor and slighly menacing elements is why children continue to love these books long after they grow up. Sendak doesn’t ever feel the need to explain, so you never quite reach the end of his books.
  • Love You Forever
    I never thought I would put this on a “best of” list. The first time I read it out loud to a child, I was horrified. What an awful book! Its basic plot is this: A mommy loves her baby so much! She loves him even though he unrolls all the toilet paper. She loves him even when he’s an annoying teen. She loves him when he grows up, so much so that she brings a ladder and climbs in his bedroom window. Uh…what was that? She is so attached to her now-grown baby that she’s stalking him? I have to say, I was truly offended at first reading. And maybe second, third, fourth, and fifth! Yes, of course I understood the underlying philosophy of this book. Unconditional love is a wonderful thing. But like all the best children’s books, this one is just plain weird! The funny thing is, my daughter was obsessed with it. She made me read it over and over. She made me sing the song. So it counts as a great book, though just looking at the cover still gives me the willies.
  • Jamberry
    Another great one from Bruce Degen. This book practically screams “summer!” The wordplay is fantastic. Do you ever have days with your kids where some word seems to dominate the day and get attached to everything? Like for some reason “fruit” is said and then along the day you have “shoefruit” and “carfruit” and (ick) “nosefruit”? That’s what this book is like. Lines like “Hatberry, Shoeberry in my Canoeberry” and “Boomberry, Zoomberry, Rockets shoot by” are so fun to say that they become participatory as you read them.
  • Yum Yum Dim Sum
  • My First Book of Sushi
    These two books are from the “World Snacks” series by Amy Sanger. I guess the publisher might say that the idea is to foster interest in unusual foods. However, for our kids, unusual foods were the usual. We still go to the dim sum restaurant which we call the site of our son’s “first meal.” Why? We had been going through all the usual steps to introduce him to single food purees, and he was having none of it. Yech! He’d just spit them out. But one day when he was nine months old we brought him to this restaurant and the smell clearly excited him. He was sitting there in his bucket seat smacking his lips. I asked my husband, “So…how far away is the nearest hospital?” and we just went for it. His first solid meal was dim sum, and there was no going back. I feel like these books celebrate multicultural America better than almost anything. If we eat each other’s foods, we gain a little more understanding of each other.
  • Where are you, Blue Kangaroo?
    Losing things dear to you is a common theme in childhood, and this book playfully helps children normalize that fear. That darn Blue Kangaroo keeps getting away from Lily, till one day she devises a clever way to keep him close. I like that she solves her problem herself, and that Blue Kangaroo himself seems independent. (I’m surprised to see that it’s apparently out of print?)
  • Olivia (series)
    Olivia is a wonderful series of books to read with your strong-minded girl (or a girl you hope to encourage to be strong-minded). Olivia has opinions about everything, she has a big, loud voice, and she loves to accessorize. She’s a girly-girl in a pig’s body who doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Go, Olivia!
  • Tikki Tikki Tembo
    This was a favorite from my childhood. Like Wild Things, it’s both a book of its time and a book for any time. According to Wikipedia, “The book is controversial because it appears to retell a Japanese story and because it does not portray Chinese culture accurately.” I think sometimes people take things a little too seriously! This is clearly not a book of history, but rather a sort of fairy tale/origin story about Chinese names. I never took it literally as a child, and neither did my children, as far as I know! Set in China, with stunning illustrations that I remembered vividly from when I was young, the book follows two brothers, one of whom is named in “ancient Chinese tradition” with a hugely long name (which consequently is very fun and funny for children to say). The book is about how silly parents can be (giving their children such cumbersome long names) and how reasonable they can be (“don’t play on the well”). It’s about the absurdity of being a child who isn’t taken seriously, and it’s about remembering that real actions do have real consequences. Cultural inaccuracy aside, I think it still deserves a place on our bookshelf.
  • Voyage to the Bunny Planet
    Rosemary Wells wrote many great books. We loved this little three-book set both for the concrete images they contain and also the theme. All the kids in these books are having problems. Life is not perfect. But somehow, little things in life can make it all better. A miserable trip to see relatives becomes a voyage to the Bunny Planet. The imagery—moss pillows, the smell of ripe tomatoes, the salt of the sea—are immediate and visceral. Great bed-time reading.
  • Madeline
    This book is like a gift from the past. The incredible drawings. The strange clothing and manners. The almost-stilted, unusual language. It’s a book not associated with our culture at all, yet strangely an indelible part of it.
  • Frederick
    Another one-name character who remains indelible. I love all of Lionni’s books, but this one especially. We have my childhood copy, and when I first read it to my son, I felt like I was revisiting a place I knew well as a child. With so little detail, the illustrations are vividly emotional. And shy, quiet children will feel comforted that Frederick finds his place in his little society of mice.
  • Dr. Seuss
    There’s almost no need to praise Dr. Seuss because it’s all been said. His rhymes are like no one else’s. And like the best children’s books, life in here isn’t all sunshine and roses. The Cat in the Hat is quite menacing. Some of the creatures are unsettling in their strangeness. When will those darn Sneetches ever learn? Children get to experience the full range of life’s pleasures and frustrations in these books, all with amazing rhymes and clever made-up language.
  • DK Books
    If you have kids who love words, you have to go out and get some DK books. These books are deceptively simple. They have a theme, lots of photographs, and words. Often there’s no explanation, no whimsy whatsoever. Just words, words, and more words. Clear, obvious photos (some of them charmingly British, at least in the DK books that were available when my son was small). My kids used these books to make up their own stories. On the food pages, they’d decide what to eat for lunch. On the clothing pages, they’d decide what to wear. And of course, vehicle maniacs in your life need these books. DK loves anything on wheels!

8 Essential Homeschooling Ingredients

I am in the process of writing curriculum to go with my chapter book, Hanna, Homeschooler. (If you’d like to be notified when it’s available, please join my email list.) In the process, I got thinking about what made our early homeschooling years work. Here in no particular order are the ingredients that made our homeschooling recipe sweet, spicy, comforting, complex, and zesty!

#1: LARGE Paper

hannagraduationFor younger children, very LARGE sheets of paper are great! I recommend buying a roll of butcher paper like Hanna has. It can be cut in shorter lengths to serve as a large canvas, or longer pieces to create timelines, maps, full body outlines, and anything else you might think of.

#2: A Digital Camera

Digital cameras saved my homeschooling life! My son was born at the end of the film camera era; my daughter was fully of the digital world. I definitely saw the difference once we didn’t have to pay to take photos. As a homeschooling friend said to me, “the digital camera is your friend.” Take pictures of everything you do and notice during the day. It costs nothing, and in a pinch you can use the pictures for projects.

#3: Marker Set

An enormous set of every color of marker. You can buy such things online for quite cheap, and the array of colors can be very inspiring to children. By the way: don’t leave this out where your kids can access it anytime. Save it somewhere not visible so that when it comes out, it’s special.

#4: Notebooks

Notebooks. Our favorites were homemade using a friend’s spiral binder. We made them for specific purposes, such as “Science Notebook,” “Japanese Notebook,” and even “Sierra Notebook” for when we went to the mountains. Unless your child really needs lines, these should have blank paper and should be bound so they can easily be drawn in under any conditions. (A hardcover book-style binding is rather inconvenient in the woods!)

#5: The Internet

IMG_9846.JPGEven if you don’t want your kids to play on computers, start them early learning that it’s a valuable tool. (Our family had a no-screen policy in our house when our kids were little and continued with a limited-screen policy for a few more years.) “I don’t know–let’s look it up” is the most empowering thing a parent can say to a child. These days it doesn’t take a trip to the library (unless that’s where you get your Internet access). Starting very early, make sure to talk to them about how to decide whether to trust Internet sources.

#6: A Library Card

A great as electronic sources are, kids live in the tactile world. A real book that they can pick up anytime is much more important to have in your house than ten e-books on your tablet. Check out lots of books, even ones they didn’t choose. Unschoolers talk about “strewing”—leaving things around for your kids to discover. If you can go to the library without them, get books on subjects you think they’ll be interested in and “strew” them around the house.

#7: Craft Supplies

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These should be separated into two categories. You should always have craft supplies within reach that your children can access at will. If this means a messier house than you’d like, well, just remember that one day your kids will be teens and you will wish they’d be making messes at home more often! The other batch of supplies should be kept out of reach. These are things you should save for those “I’m bored” moments, or times when you are feeling tired, sad, cranky, or any other emotion that makes you a less-than-stellar homeschooler that day.

#8: Friends

When I started homeschooling my daughter, we were in a crisis. We had invested so much in trying to get school to work for her. We didn’t know a single homeschooler. And because of our daughter’s special needs, we didn’t really have school friends with kids her age, either. Our first few months of homeschooling were pretty darn awful. We sat around being angry at each other and lonely for friends. Finally, we joined a homeschool program to meet people. If you’re more outgoing, you might not need a formal group, but introverted me and my unusual daughter needed this. It changed our lives to be part of a group that offered both structured and unstructured time, and through this group we finally made friends.

Favorite board books

A relative recently had a baby, so I thought I’d go raid our board book collection and give them a few of our favorites. Unfortunately, our remaining board book collection is being protected by a fierce dragon—uh, 13-year-old daughter—who swears that she will never part from them.

“Isn’t he too young for board books, anyway?” she asked.

Well, no. Babies are never too young for board books. Our babies loved being read to from board books. Sitting on Mom or Dad’s lap, looking at fun pictures, hearing them say funny inscrutable things, and—bonus!—chewing on cardboard book edges. What’s not to love?

Board books also lasted well past their recommended age. I won’t say how long ago it was that my 13-year-old grudgingly allowed me to move them from her bookshelves into her closet so she’d have some space on her shelves. Let’s just say she didn’t have any baby teeth left when it happened!

Here are a few of our favorites, including why we loved them:

Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathman

Who can say why this book is so charming? We, a family of words, just loved this book that only has a few. We, a family that gets queasy when visiting zoos, loved this tale of zoo animals running the show. This book is full of sly details in the pictures that kids love to look at. Pre-verbal children react to the fun pictures (and the book edges that are great for teething). Older children like to talk about what’s happening in the pictures that is not in the text.

Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert

OK, I will admit that we didn’t have this in board book form. However, I’m adding it because it would have been great that way and it was one of our all-around favorite books. Ehlert’s incredible collage art is wonderful. She chooses some obvious and some very quirky fruits and vegetables to feature. And for some reason, kids just can’t get enough of alphabet books!

 

Jamberry by Bruce Degen

Somebody gave us Jamberry as a gift. Can’t remember who it was, but I do remember looking at it skeptically and wondering if we’d like it. Did we like it? Oh, yes. Degen’s ridiculous rhymes and unstoppably silly story was so fun to read that we the parents didn’t even get sick of it. (Well, OK, maybe just a little.) And this was one of those books where our kids would finish the sentences for us. Memorizing books, by the way, is a great way for kids to learn to read. Both of our kids became natural, whole-word readers very suddenly, and I think that having memorized books so they could then apply reading rules backwards was part of the reason.

First Book of Sushi by Amy Wilson Sanger

Noticing a theme here? Our kids loved to read about food. Probably that’s partly their parents’ influence, but I think it’s also because food is such a universal theme. Kids are hungry so much of the time that food is extremely important to them. And the lovely thing about Sanger’s books is that they feature non-standard American food. I remember the first time I saw a kid eating sushi—I moved to California in the 80’s from the Midwest and one day sat next to a grandmother and her son who looked to be about four. She asked him what he wanted. “Unagi, Gramma!” he said enthusiastically. A kid eating eel? My world was rocked. My kids’ world was so much different from mine—they were exposed to the love of international food from a very early age. My kids loved to point at the pieces of sushi they wanted, and then we’d pretend to eat them.

Yum Yum Dim Sum by Amy Wilson Sanger

People often ask how we got our kids to be such adventurous eaters. Well, just as a taste of our attitudes, I will tell you that after we read that sometimes babies would reject breastmilk after the mom had ingested unusually stinky food, my husband and I decided that we needed to make sure to eat a lot of unusually stinky food! My first takeout after my son was born was Thai. My son’s first meal was actually dim sum. We were at our favorite restaurant during the period while we were attempting to introduce single solid foods one by one, just like they tell you to. He hated solid food. But there he was, sitting next to us, drooling and smacking his lips at the scent of dim sum. We decided that because we were three minutes’ drive away from the nearest hospital, we’d take the chance. From then on, our babies ate the same thing we did, mushed up or ground up in a baby food grinder we would carry with us. Tangy, spicy, sweet or sour, they loved it all.

DK Board Books

If you are a family that loves words, you have to invest in some DK books. Our kids loved them and we would read them over and over and over. They start from the simple Baby Faces, which babies love, move to the “my first” series like My First Colors, get into words in general such as in My First Wordsthen move into genres such as farm animals (my kids loved this one!), bodies, vehicles, animals, and dinosaurs. The very best DK book we ever had doesn’t seem to exist anymore. It was a non-board book with hundreds of pictures and words in it. My kids just loved to sit and look at the book and make motions and noises to accompany all the words the book portrayed. It wasn’t this book, but something like it on a much larger scale.

I will conclude with one piece of advice: If you decide to buy bathtub books for your child (and I certainly hope you do!), spray them with bleach once a month. You really don’t want to know what starts to grow on there after it’s been read—and teethed on—for as long as ours were.

Enjoy!

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