Schoolless

Limitedlessnessibility

"Time out!" I'd say, and as I walked out of the room, my son or daughter would follow me, with strong, persuasive arguments pouring out of their mouths. Tried as I might, I could never get my children to remain in a time-out. Back when I was still convinced about the efficacy of such methods, I consulted friends who successfully kept their children confined.
"Oh, at first he wouldn't stay. I'd just hold him down the first several times, while he struggled and writhed, but eventually, he learned that I wouldn't give up."
"So, how long would you hold him like that?"
"Oh, at least fifteen minutes."
I didn't last sixty seconds. Half way through the exercise, it dawned on me how ridiculous this was from every point of view. What was my child learning? What was I learning? What would anyone say if they saw us thus engaged?! I'd release the tiger from the cage and let him roar.
This brings me to the question of limits and parental authority. Thanks to Summer, I landed on a site where vigorous discussion about the pros and cons of placing limits on children was being waged. I have to admit that I did not have the patience to read through all 93 comments. But I wasn't really interested in coming down on one side or the other.
Here's why.
First of all, I don't believe that there is such a thing as parenting completely without limits, no matter what any authority says. You may not limit your children's video game playing, or what they eat for breakfast. But by virtue of living together as a family, limits, in some fundamental form, are inevitably placed: on how and when you move around town, when you sleep and wake, what faith you belong to, or what other guiding values you use in your life. We limit our children's access to materials and activities that are beyond their age. We shield them from images and information that are painful or damaging, and which they do not yet have the capacity to understand. We stop them from hurting other living creatures. Limits are imposed constantly by our society and our environment.
Secondly, I am less interested in establishing up front which particular things are off-limits, and which are permitted, than I am in having an ongoing discussion with my family members about what is appropriate at a particular time, and how it fits into with what others might have planned, or even what the weather is like. If it is the first 60 degree sunny day after a drearily long winter, I will place strict limits on video games, and toss everyone outside. This may be an unpopular decision, and I never resort to simply saying "because I said, so, that's why." Recently such a decision occasioned a family discussion that lasted close to an hour, but resulted in everyone being on board for the outing. We don't always have the luxury of time, but whenever possible, we don't enforce, we deliberate.
On the other hand, I have frequently bent previously imposed limits because I saw something really cool happening, or for purely selfish reasons, or because I have a soft heart. Sometimes I witness a moment in my kids' imaginative play that is pure magic, and, although I've made other plans, I put them on the back burner to let the magic continue. Other times, I need to get something done, and having my kids otherwise distracted is a win-win situation. This is no different than letting your toddler watch Teletubbies so that you can take a shower. And, yes, there are times when I am persuaded by the "Bambi eyes" and the fluttering eyelashes.
Perhaps with the exception of the very strongly principled few, who either support or disdain limits, I suspect most of us struggle with them on a daily basis. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. Though, in truth, it is not about winning and losing. If you treat your children as fully vested human beings, I believe you learn that flexibility is more important than limits. My children are not loud and demanding, but they are strong-willed, stubborn, outspoken, and increasingly able to construct a solid, unshakable argument. My job, as I see it, is to help them place their desires against the context of the needs of family and society, and learn when and how to compromise with grace, and when and how to stand up for themselves with conviction.

I have a confession to make...

... I lied.
And I can't keep it a secret, because, you see, I lied to my mom, and my parents, God bless'em, read my blog, so as soon as I post it, the cat is out of the bag.
Mom, who lives in Florida this time of the year, had a small request. She asked me to bring a wreath to my grandparents' grave before Christmas. Being mom, she gave me plenty of notice, and offered gentle reminders whenever we talked.
But you know how it is, right? Things kept coming up.
So the last time we talked, and she asked if I had a chance to do it yet, I... I... well... that's when I lied. In florid detail, I'm afraid. I'm sorry...
Though vile and reprehensible in itself, the act of lying ensured that the task would be done. After all, I couldn't let the lie stand. I had to make the lie false. I would now go and do my duty, and the lie would be eradicated. So what if I made the statement 48 hours before I committed the act. That's NOT lying; that's just looking ahead!
So, I went. Yesterday. Armed with a wreath, a stand, several zip ties, a very thin coat, more like a sweater really, dainty leather gloves, and a clear visual memory of the location of the headstone. It was 17 degrees in Chicago yesterday, with gusts of wind powerful enough to make my minivan dance on the road, and for snow to fall sideways. St. Adalbert's cemetery is an open field many acres wide, sparsely punctuated by stone monuments and now mostly bare trees. The lack of foliage and other greenery, the dense twirling fog of laser-sharp snow flakes, and the ominous howling of the wind made my clear visual memory fade somewhat.
I parked by the water spigot, and gingerly got out of the car with my wreath and other supplies. I headed in the direction of the little tree. There was supposed to be a little tree, you see.
When I arrived at the probable location of the headstone, I discovered to my dismay, that the sunken headstones were caked with a layer of decomposing leaves, now frozen solid, which made identification of the headstones impossible. But their headstone shouldn't be sunken, I thought. Grandma died three decades earlier, but her husband was buried with her only two years ago, and a new headstone was laid. I ducked my head into the wind, as I circled the field in widening spirals, my eyes pointing down, my stiff fingers holding onto the wreath for dear life.
I found myself scanning the ground a good distance from my car, where grave could not possibly have been. I also realized that the wreath was acting like a poorly managed sail, whipping about my thighs, and either impeding my progress, or making it disconcertingly fast. I wanted to yell: MOM!!! Where is the bleeping grave?! But of course I couldn't. Not after I had lied.
So I went to the car to regroup. With the heater on full blast, I stopped shivering after a few minutes, and decided to venture out again. This time I left the wreath behind, and brought a window scraper instead. Someone must have taken pity on me, because in a flash of lucidity, I recalled that my mom said she placed a wreath there in the fall, and remnants of it might still be visible. Why not start my search with graves that had older looking wreaths? I hit pay dirt on the third try. Eagerly scraping the dead leaves away, I slowly uncovered my grandparents' names.

I sat on the frozen ground, holding my coat tight around me, and I cried. Cried from sheer exhaustion and cold, and cried for the memory of my grandparents. The grandparents whom I barely knew. My grandmother, because she emigrated to the US when I was  scarcely old enough to remember, and who died without my ever having seen her again. My grandfather, because he lived out his 28 years without her in a small room tending tomato seedlings, and saying little. A painfully shy, striking old man with pale blue eyes and snow-white hair, who loved gardening, but would never admit to it.   
Tears frozen to my cheeks, I went to retrieve the wreath. I needed something practical and concrete to do to ease the tension of the moment. As I pushed the metal stand into the frozen ground, I realized that those tears were also from relief, that my punishment had not been so great that I would have to admit my sin to my mom.

This is what I really think

Now that I got that off my chest... nearly stepping in a half-chewed Tootsie Roll, I mean.
Why is this blog awards thing so important, I wonder. Bear with me while I figure it out.
My initial response was that it's very out of character, especially for the unschooling types, to be quibbling over awards. After all, we don't heap gratuitous praise on our kids, don't decorate little charts on their walls with gold stars, don't exclaim "good job!" every time they manage to lift their forks to their mouths without dropping a morsel of food on the floor... Why should awards for grown-ups be any different? Why would we want them?
While I am relatively new to homeschool blogging, I have been blogging in other spheres a little longer. One of those spheres is real estate (see sidebar). Real estate, as many of you doubtless know, is an intensely competitive business. Gold stars, ratings, awards, trophies, million-dollar clubs, "top producers" are par for the course. Self-promotion, and even aggrandizement, are common. Self-effacement and modesty are not. One reason blogging is appealing to some realtors (why it was appealing to me, for example), is that it allows you to express the real you, which in real estate (ha, ha!) is very hard to do. The general public sees the smiling face on your business card, "Top Producer" emblazoned on your yard sign, and they think they know all about you. You're just like all the other realtors they've ever met, or heard about, or think they've heard about.

But you are not. And if you have a blog, you can give a glimpse of the person behind the sign. You can show that you have your own subjective and unique views, that may surprise your readers. Some readers may not like to be surprised, but others may find they have more in common with you than they thought was possible. The blog allows the reader to see you not as a type of person (a "realtor"), but as a unique individual, you.

Earlier today, I was talking to my friend and employee about a person she knows who equates "homeschooler" with "right-wing Christian fundamentalist". "Is that what you think?" my friend said to this woman, "That I work for some right-wing Christian fundamentalists?!"
This person, whom I have only met once in passing, thought she knew all about who I was. Not only that, she had already made up her mind what she thought of me. Never mind that she may have heard/had some opinion of me previously, but once she heard "homeschooler", her mind was made up. How did that make me feel? Well, mostly, defensive.
I have been involved in Chicago's homeschool community, specifically through the Northside Unschoolers Group, for nearly a year and a half. While I suspect that Chicago may have some right-wing fundamentalist Christian homeschoolers, I have not met any of them. I have met a larger than expected, fairly diverse group of people, many of whom I have found to be open-minded, intellectually curious, socially liberal, politically engaged, scientifically inclined, informed about current events, concerned for the environment, and, if religious, then pretty private about the whole thing.
How could anyone with half a brain describe this group ad "right-wing Christian fundamentalists"? They couldn't. IF THEY MET THEM. But, most people don't get to meet a lot of homeschoolers. What they know of homeschooling is from snippets they pick up from the media, often second- or third- hand. And the media have not of late been known for their in-depth and insightful analyses of social phenomena. They tend to focus on catchy lines, zero in on a bit of controversy, and draw their conclusions from that. And since both right-wing Christian fundamentalists  and homeschoolers can be seen as somewhat controversial, why not put the two of them together?

The homeschool blog awards debate, has less to do with awards than with identity. Many homeschooling families don't want the term "homeschooling" to be co-opted for the exclusive use of a group whose views they don't share. At it's core, the word "homeschooling" says nothing about the individuals faith, politics, parenting philosophy, familial arrangement or sexual orientation. The only thing these diverse homeschoolers have in common, is that they have decided to see to their children's education at home.
It is up to us to choose whether we let "homeschooling" become a divisive, or a unifying concept.

If you don't know where you're going...

Earlier this summer I was in SanFrancisco for a couple of days. Alone. When I find myself in a new location, particularly if I've flown there, I experience an irrepressible desire to orient myself. And the best way for me to do that is to walk. It's hard for me to lose my way in a city that's laid out on something of a grid, but just to be sure, and to deal with diagonals and curves, I purchased a map. Then I put on my walking shoes, and lost myself in SanFrancisco.

Click on above image to see it in GoogleMaps.

To say that I lost myself is not the same as saying I was lost. I have a sense of direction. I was armed with a map. Having lived in a large city all my life, I also have a sense about places where I should not be. So although at any given moment I may not have been able to give you my exact coordinates, I was free from the deep unease of someone who has completely strayed off course.

If I had planned my very brief trip to SanFrancisco, I would have made sure I saw all the major tourist attractions. I would have done SanFrancisco. I would have seen all the things one is supposed to see when one visits. But I would not have seen the homeless lying prone along Market Street at 6 am as early morning commuters literally stepped over them; taken a tunnel from Union Square to find myself in another world as I emerged directly into Chinatown; watched a man dance with complete abandon for his morning exercise in front of St. Mary's cathedral or seen the Duboce Bike Mural, a spectacular tribute to a bicycle-centered urban life. I would not comprehend how the neighborhoods flow, change and merge into one another, and how people flow, change and merge among them.

I also would not have seen this bumper sticker:

Right about now, you're asking yourself what all this has to do with homeschooling (or maybe you're wondering how I was able to sneak away alone). Well, let me catch my breath from my reverie...

You know the saying "if you don't know where you're going, any road with get you there"? The implication is, of course, that we should always know where we're going. A civilized human being must be equipped with a mission statement, tangible yet audacious goals, realistic plans, and prioritized to-do lists.

But maybe there is value in traveling the unknown, unplanned road, just for the thrill of potential discovery. Or straying from the thoroughfare to look around the corner and see what we might find. Our kids don't have a life agenda. They don't "know where they're going". I'm not sure that this early in the game it's our job to point them in the right direction. Wandering and discovery are a part of childhood. They are part of education.

There really is no reason they shouldn't be part of our lives, too.