Category: Parenting

Getting together with the tribe

Posted on by Suki

As my daughter and I were preparing to attend our local homeschooling conference last weekend, she asked a very good question: “Why don’t school families have a fun conference to go to?”

It was a little hard to answer. The immediate quip that came to mind—”because they’re boring?”—wasn’t fair to school parents, many of whom are fabulously creative and fun just like homeschooling parents. And “because they don’t want to do things with their kids” isn’t fair or accurate either.

The complicated answer, I think, is that it’s harder for school parents to find their tribe. They have friends, of course, and networks of people that they connect with through their work, their creative pursuits, and their families. But few school parents have what homeschoolers have: a tribe that welcomes their whole family.

A tribe is not a group of people who all know each other. A tribe does not have to include only people who like and approve of each other. People in a tribe are not uniformly similar.

weaving
Not actually a photo from the conference because I forgot to take photos! But weaving using t-shirt loops on hula hoops is exactly the sort of thing one does at a homeschooling conference…

But a tribe is an affiliation that somehow transcends daily concerns: people in your tribe are not necessarily people you’d want to have over to dinner, but still, they’re your tribe. People in your tribe may differ quite a bit from you in how they run their lives and make their decisions, but still, they’re your tribe.

Homeschoolers are a tribe by choice, but once we join, we become insanely protective of each other. Dare to write a blog against homeschooling? Expect us to pass it around Facebook and inundate you with tirades about why you’re wrong. Are you a homeschooler needing support? Just get it on your local e-mail group and other homeschoolers will show up at your home, or offer you a space in theirs.

Homeschoolers vary just as widely in their social and political views as other families, yet we are still part of the tribe. The conference we went to doesn’t check your homeschooling credentials at the door—they just open it wide and expect that we’ll all be one big happy family.

And we are. Those of us who homeschool with curriculum and expect our children to meet standards hang at the pool with our dedicated unschoolers who pursue child-led learning. Those of us who homeschool with religious conviction build boxes next to those of us who teach evolution and moral relativism. Those of us who voted for Obama learned about emotional intelligence next to those who voted for Romney or even further right. When you’re a member of a tribe, you don’t have to agree.

So what makes our tribe so tribal?

For one, homeschoolers, though we homeschool by choice, feel like an oppressed minority. Sometimes we need to be around each other so that we can feel something like normal. One of the participants in my From School to Homeschool talk said that she knew that once she started homeschooling, all her neighbors would think she was weird. “You’re a homeschooler now,” I replied. “Welcome to being weird.” In our tribe, we celebrate weird together.

For another, homeschoolers are doing something incredibly difficult. Like salmon swimming against the flow of a mighty river, we look over our shoulders at each other and pant out, “Good job! Keep it up! Don’t listen to that guy who just floated by downstream on his raft!” With a daily flood of pressure to go with the cultural and educational mainstream, we form a pretty fierce bond with each other, even if we don’t agree on the particulars of how we do things.

I’m sorry that school parents don’t really have anything similar to our conference to go to. Yes, they can attend events with their kids, but there is no tribal bond with the other families to draw on. Homeschoolers at our conferences are bound together in an inspiring, creative, energetic mass. It’s a great time when we get together and re-energize ourselves, drawing on the group’s strength to keep swimming against the tide.

Hurrah! for a well-earned week

Posted on by Suki

In homeschooling circles, what I’m about to confess is something on a par with admitting that you are some sort of non-violent felon. Not as bad as a murderer, though perhaps I’d be put in a category with embezzling CEOs, crooked car mechanics, and guys that steal purses from old ladies.

OK, deep breath, here it goes: I confess that I don’t always want to be with my children.

Camp
Not my daughter’s camp, but I couldn’t resist including a photo of Icelandic ponies!

Phew, that was rough, but I’m glad I got it off my chest. When I walk into the homeschooling conference in a little over a week, the crowd may actually part so that no one has direct contact with me. It’s possible that I’ll be kicked off the board of the Discovery Learning Center and my children will be shunned at homeschool park days.

But at least I will feel unburdened. It’s just a risk I have to take.

It’s like this: I adore my kids. I think they’re really cool. In fact, like most parents, I think they’re cooler than any other kids, at least as far as my own personal definition of “cool” goes.

My kids have improved my life in many ways. They got me into thinking about parenting, then education, then homeschooling, then gifted children—in other words, pretty much everything I write about these days. They have made me laugh harder than any other person was ever able to.

They have also made me cry. Parenting is hard, and parenting children off the usual grid is even harder.

These days I don’t cry so much, but I do get frustrated. Days pile on days of aggravation and difficulty, and it can be hard to remember the time my kids made me laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed before. I get grumpy. I say things I shouldn’t say. We do eventually kiss and make up, but life without a break from parenting is just not something that works for me.

I bow down and ask forgiveness of all of you who want to be with your children 24/7, but that’s not me. First off, I want my kids to go to bed so that their father and I can talk to each other. Yeah, it’s true, we might only talk about taxes or Star Trek The Next Generation, but we’re talking TO each other and not past, around, or in spite of any other being.

Secondly, though I love homeschooling my kids, I do want them to learn from other adults. I know that I can’t be their everything. I know that the thing that ends up inspiring them, exciting them to the point that they want to spend their life doing it, may be something that I know nothing about. Heck, it might not even be invented yet.

Finally, and here’s where I really get to the fine point, I love, love, love sleepaway camp. Sleepaway camp has not always been part of our summers. Our son is willing to go camping with other families, and does on occasion, but sleepaway camp is definitely not his thing. But last summer our daughter decided that she simply had to go to a sleepaway horse camp, and begged me to find one.

I’ll admit I was skeptical. First off, I was skeptical I could find one where she would do well, where I wouldn’t get that mid-week call, “So, about your daughter, she’s been having a hard week…” You know, the things professionals say instead of what they want to say, which is something like, “Save us from this kid!”

Secondly, I was skeptical that we could afford such a thing. Is it really worth that much to get rid of your kid for a week?

The answer is unequivocally YES on both counts. We found a camp that not only has wall-to-wall horse riding, but has counselors trained to work with kids with all sorts of special needs. Our daughter is fine there. She loves it, and they don’t have any problem with her eccentricities (or if they do, I don’t hear about it).

We have also found that it is worth the money, whether or not we have to mortgage the farm to get it. A week away from each other resets all of our engines. It gives her time to get away from the three Most Annoying People in the Universe. (Those are not just honorary titles—I have it on good authority that we really are the Most Annoying People in the Universe!) It gives us time to have conversations with our son that would annoy her to no end.

So in other words, a week to reset all our panic buttons is well worth the investment. It’s true, I miss her. I miss her cuddles, because despite sometimes having a prickly personality, she is The World’s Most Cuddly Person. (I am the official giver of that title.) I miss her commiseration when her brother and father go deep into geek talk at the dinner table. I miss her hurricane, the energy that moves through the house and upsets all our expectations.

But this is good for all of us. We all benefit from the downtime so that we can meet the challenge of the coming year with good cheer, remembering what we love about each other in the midst of everything that will try our patience and make us wonder how we can possibly go on.

So despite the risk to my homeschool reputation, here are my three hearty cheers for summer camp.

Hooray! Hooray! Hurrah for our well-earned week apart!

Book review: Searching for Meaning

Posted on by Suki

Searching for Meaning: Idealism, Bright Minds, Disillusionment, and Hope
by James T. Webb
Great Potential Press

Searching for MeaningDr. Webb’s work has been very important in my life. The day I picked up A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children is the day that I started to learn about my children—and myself. This was the first parenting book I’d read that admitted that children are different, that families are different, and that it’s not only OK to be different—it’s OK to acknowledge that you are different. And it’s not only OK, but also necessary, to know who you and your children are if you are going to get on with the business of living fulfilling lives.

Dr. Webb’s work with gifted children necessarily led him to the next step: what happens when gifted children grow up? In common belief, giftedness = high achievement. So a gifted child is only gifted by virtue of his or her high grades, and once school is over, somehow we all become “the same.” Yes, some of us as adults are achievers, but it doesn’t matter whether we were whiz kids in school or dropouts who made it big later in life—giftedness is not supposed to matter anymore.

What Dr. Webb has noticed, however, is that the brain that makes gifted children more excitable, more prone to being misdiagnosed with disorders, highly sensitive, and socially unusual does not disappear with adulthood. It’s that same brain, but more developed, more in control. The girl that screamed when she went into a room with bright lights becomes the woman who wears tinted glasses and has found a way to avoid working in office buildings. The boy who kept being sent to the principal’s office because he couldn’t sit still when he was excited about what he was learning has become the man who paces his office and talks to himself when he’s solving a difficult problem. We didn’t suddenly stop having a different brain because we grew up; we simply learned to shape a world that fit our needs.

But that ability to shape the world has its limits. Yes, the woman who is sensitive to light can wear tinted glasses, but if she’s sensitive to violence it’s hard for her to avoid knowing about the violence in this world. The man who paces his office has control of his part of the project he’s working on, but he doesn’t have control over the exploitation of the workers who make the computers he programs. We figure out a way to cope, but sometimes coping is not enough. When you have a brain that works on overdrive, it’s not easy to turn it off at your convenience.

Searching for Meaning is not an easy book. I have to admit, it’s not a book I would have picked up while browsing in a book store. Disillusionment? Hm, maybe I should go for something lighter. Existential depression? Gotta go, I’m late for an appointment. Admitting that what made me a “smart kid” is still intrinsically part of how I interact with the world? Not likely. But despite the fact that I would have avoided this book—perhaps because I would have avoided it—I really appreciate having read it through to the end.

The book takes an analytical approach to the problem by first dissecting it. What is a gifted child? What is a gifted adult? Webb devotes ample space to questioning what makes us who we are. He then lays out the base that the rest of the book builds on: Our overexcitabilities lead us to be idealists; our idealism leads us to want to change the world; our attempts to make things better will eventually lead us to realize that there are limits to what we can do; facing our limits can sometimes lead us to question what our lives are worth.

Dr. Webb could have made this a gloomy book, indeed. However, by laying the foundation of why so many bright minds find themselves confronting disillusionment and depression, he is then able to build on this understanding to help us climb back into the light. Using the different points of view of a variety of thinkers through the ages, Dr. Webb shows ways that we can view what we’re experiencing through a new lens. He offers new ways of looking at what might seem to be a bleak landscape, and cautions us against coping mechanisms (anger, narcissism, avoidance) that become destructive even as we think we are protecting ourselves.

Finally, Dr. Webb offers us the challenge to view our idealism and sensitivity as an asset, to find coping mechanisms that improve our lives and the lives of others, and to aim for hope, happiness, and contentment in a world that desperately needs more of all three.

If you think it’s uncomfortable admitting that your child is different and has different needs, magnify that 20-fold to admit that about your adult self. Dr. Webb’s current mission is to remind us that our brains — no matter which type we ended up with — still need TLC once we move into our adult lives. Dr. Webb’s mission is to understand the needs of brains we called “gifted,” but this book takes its place in a greater striving to understand all different aspects of humanity now that we have the tools to do so.

We are all different. We do have our own needs. Dr. Webb’s brave book encourages one segment of “special needs adults” to learn more about caring for their singularly overexcitable brains.

My homeschool prodigy

Posted on by Suki

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this.

I’ve been holding something back. It’s just, well, difficult to acknowledge this and feel certain that people won’t think I’m bragging. I mean, it’s one thing to homeschool your children. You already look like Superwoman to all those women out there who have real jobs and get paid and can afford to go out to lunch. They hear that you’re still wearing your pajamas at 10 a.m. and they are so envious that it’s hard for them to be nice to you anymore. And when they find out that you actually get your laundry done occasionally? Then the real jealousy sets in.

But on top of that, when you admit that you have a supergenius prodigy in your household? That you’re the mother of a homeschooling phenom? Well, that can be hard to admit. It’s a show-stopper, like telling a working mom that instead of taking the time to make your own lunch, you just eat the crumbs and slimy bits off your kids’ plates. I mean, you have to be careful not to make your friends too jealous, you know?

But I just can’t hold it in anymore. I am so proud of my little boy, the one I call my little bandit. He’s amazing! He talks, he does math, he steals things, and he proves over and over that he is much smarter than his older brother, who is six.

And here’s the kicker: he’s only two.

Oh, and he’s also my most handsome child. Here is a recent photo:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

I’m sure you can just see the intelligence pouring forth: the distinguished brow, the alert ears, the apathetic expression.

He’s seen it all. You can’t fool this boy.

So perhaps you think I’m exaggerating. He can’t be all that smart. Well, let me tell you a few things:

Most two-year-olds have a limited vocabulary. They get what they want by throwing fits and grabbing.

This child has never, ever grabbed something or thrown a fit. He is a perfect gentleman. He speaks in complete sentences. Now, it’s true that most of his sentences contain only one word, but that’s because he’s a master of brevity. He always gets straight to the point.

Most two-year-olds don’t even know what heat registers are. They walk right by them without a notice.

Look at my brilliant young man. He’s not just sitting on the heat register: he’s guarding it. He knows a secret that even most adults haven’t yet figured out: If you sit by a heat register long enough, occasionally a tasty fish pops out!

Not only that, but he knows how to open up registers. People deny that a two-year-old could do such a thing, so he finds it necessary to prove his abilities over and over. He opens every register in the house and leaves them for us to find, just to remind us of his brilliance.

Another piece of evidence that he is the most intellectually advanced two-year-old on the planet:

He steals reading glasses.

You probably find that ridiculous. Of course he doesn’t steal reading glasses – he can’t know how to read yet! But he does. I bought a four-pack of reading glasses from Costco, and I’m down to one pair. My prodigy has been taking them and hiding them in his secret fort, where he also takes the books that he reads them with. We haven’t figured out which books those are, but we’ll keep looking and I’ll start his reading list on Goodreads soon.

OK, one final proof of his brilliance: do you know any other two-year-olds who can do such insightful self-portraits as this?

catcake.jpg1

 

Imagine the mind that can produce such an image, and in the medium of cake and frosting, no less! He’s a born master of modern art. I’m sure he’s ready to start selling in galleries, if we could only figure out how to preserve his creations so that they wouldn’t get eaten.

So there you have it. My secret is out. I know you’re probably raging with jealousy at this point. You’re going to call me all sorts of nasty names online, and write scathing notes on your friends’ Facebook pages. But I just felt that it was unfair to my precious darling to hide him from the world any longer.

He is a homeschool prodigy, and I am his mother.

I feel so fulfilled, I think I will go eat some chocolate. And then I’ve got to take some time for phone calls. CNN and the Huffington Post will want to know about this, for sure.

Open Source Parenting

Posted on by Suki

My mother remembers driving home from the hospital with my newborn older sister on her lap. She says that she and my dad looked at each other and just started laughing.

“We asked, ‘So what do we do now?’,” she remembers.

In the intervening years, a lot has changed. But the biggest changes have come about because of the Web. There’s no way to overestimate how much this mass, uncontrolled communication has affected our parenting choices.

My mother knew the women she knew largely because their husbands were employed at the same company. She formed lifelong relationships with these women, who were all smart, creative people who had been thrown into a job (stay-at-home-mom) they were largely unprepared for. College-educated, they ended up following their husbands to a small town in the Midwest, raising babies, and seeking out other women to ease the boredom and frustration of being housebound with small children.

My mother was lucky. Fast-forward a generation, when I had my babies there was nothing to throw me in with a group of mothers who had anything in common with me. I tried moms groups and hanging at the park, but nothing seemed to click. Until I started homeschooling and found other parents to bond with, my conversations with other parents were quick and unsatisfying.

So it was on the Web where I first found a conversation that I was eager to join.

I love that when I have a question, I no longer have to find the right book, get the pediatrician on the phone, or find a friend who’d gone through it before in order to get the answer. I love that I don’t get one person’s biased point of view—I can get thousands of people’s biased points of view! And I love supporting other parents who haven’t found what they need in their physical lives.

The voices are sometimes plaintive: “I haven’t found anyone in this new town I can talk to.”

Sometimes they’re angry: “Our physician says our son has ADHD! I totally disagree. What should I do?”

Sometimes they have funny anecdotes to share: “I can’t believe what my kid said to his teacher today.”

And sometimes they just say what I need to hear that day: “You’re doing fine. One bad day isn’t going to ruin your daughter’s life.”

Of course, semi-anonymous communication with strangers doesn’t replace good friendships. But it does ease the urgent need to get support in your local community. You can focus on having real-life friends who are fun to be with, even if they can’t answer your questions about diaper rash.

One of the problems that open source software has is quality control: When anyone can add their own code, things get a little wild. And certainly open source parenting has the same problem. We all have to seek out the parents who speak the same language, both literally and figuratively. Sometimes you might find yourself in the wrong place, and you might not know it until the advice takes a turn for the ridiculous (at least from your point of view). Then off you go again, hunting for like-minded parents whose advice feels right to you.

I’m glad to be part of this pioneering generation of parents who are empowering themselves to become more informed about parenting choices and more thoughtful as a result. I remember the feeling of desperation I would have in the middle of the night, wondering if my son would ever sleep more than 2 hours in a stretch. Nowadays, I can imagine I’d be sitting up in bed, nursing him and doing one-handed Web surfing on my phone. Google search: “How can I get my son to sleep through the night?”

The answers might not work, but at least I’d feel like there were others out there with me, searching together.

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