Unschool is an intransitive verb

I am not entirely comfortable with the phrase "I unschool my kids."

It's not something I do to them really. It's something they do for themselves, in the supportive environment Frank and I have created and continually adapt to their changing needs. If I say I unschool them, it feels like I am taking credit for their learning and accomplishments. I know this is semantics. But I think using more precise words here can help with the same sort of mental shift as the one from 'teach' to 'learn.'

I often say, "We unschool," on the other hand, referring to the whole family. And we do! Unschooling is about much more than learning, and there is no other word that describes our all-encompassing lifestyle so well.

Nevertheless, the shorthand provided by "unschool" as a transitive verb can be handy, and I once titled a talk "Unschooling teenagers." But I was at least aware of the variety of ways to interpret that title. :-)

Guest house

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

~ Rumi

A note on spanking

I'm cleaning off my computer and found this bit that I wrote about spanking, in response to someone who believes that when kids are not "disciplined," it leads to problems. His argument was that kids heal from the hurt of discipline but flounder without it.

I have done it both ways. I spanked my kids, and then I stopped spanking them and started hugging them instead. ("When in doubt, hug" was my mantra.) I disciplined my kids, and then I stopped disciplining them and started listening to them instead. This little study, conducted in my house, with my own kids as both test subjects and control group, showed all too clearly what the effects of punitive discipline are. In a word, the effects are BAD. My kids when spanked were sadder, angrier, sneaky, defiant, rebellious, and starting to move away from me. As preschoolers! What they are now, at 17 and nearly 16, is happy, open, trusting, and both independent and attached (depending on the moment and the mood).

What unschooling parents do instead of discipline is modeling, coaching, and debriefing. The first speaks for itself; we are kind and polite and playful, so our kids learn to be kind and polite and playful. The second and third involve a gazillion small conversations before, during, and after an event. "Grandma will appreciate it if..." "When people ask for the magic word, they want you to say please." "If you need some quiet time during the party, just let me know." "If you need help getting Jessica to share, let me know." "The reason Billy got upset today was..." "You know what might help next time?" And so on and on and on.

In an intense situation, we simply *act*. For example, if a child goes near the road, we move the child. If a child is unable to cope with whatever is going on, we remove the child--not as punishment, but as a loving partner who is helping her.

What happens when kids are raised with respect and partnership instead of discipline (punishment) and authority is that *kids trust their parents*. They listen to us. They ask for our help. They look to us for cues on how to act. They talk to us about their experiences, hopes, ambitions, frustrations, and worries.

And when they get to be teens, they (and their friends!) still like spending time and talking with their parents. Every moment when our kids were younger where we chose to listen, trust, and respond instead of reacting with harshness or violence has paid off in spades.

So yes, healing is possible. After all, my kids were spanked and they are now well adjusted. But can I say they were unharmed by that time? Absolutely not.

Freedom to learn

I have a problem or six with this quote from Ayn Rand:

"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort."

The entire quote smacks of kids needing something done TO them: teach, develop, equip, train, "has to be taught." It's completely antithetical to how we approach the world. We believe our kids arrived in our lives as complete people. They learn from what they see, do, and experience, just as adults do, but THEY own the process. Our part of it is simply to make their home and lifestyle as kind and fun and resource-rich as we can. What they take from it is completely up to them.

It's that old question about whether there is anything that kids MUST learn. I think the answer is "no," because as soon as you put something on that list, you take away from the kids the unfettered, creative right to determine for themselves what has value in their lives. And learning *that* is the most important learning of all.

Just sing

My elementary school had a well respected choir. The choir director, Miss Brittingham, would hold rehearsals each year, and a select group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders would be chosen as that year's choir. Being in the choir was a Big Deal. Choir members got to be out of class each week for rehearsals, they got to go on field trips to performances, and—best of all—they got to say, "I'm in the choir." I tried out all three years I was eligible and got in once. I was thrilled the year I got in, of course, but what I remember more is the years I didn't. Not making the cut was pretty traumatic. I wasn't good enough.

I took choir classes in middle school and junior high, but the choir directors were uninspiring at best and pompous autocrats at worst. They did not improve my singing ability or my self-esteem, and by the time I got to high school, I was done. I had decided that I was, at best, a mediocre singer and that I should limit myself to singing along with the radio.

(I wasn't really wrong, by the way. I am a mediocre singer: my range is pretty limited, and my ability to sing on key... well, it fluctuates.)

So there I was, going through life as a mediocre singer—or rather, not thinking of myself as a singer at all—crooning rock-n-roll lullabies to my babies, belting out classic rock during my commute, shouting out Christmas carols with daughters and nieces who were quite happy to be off key with me.

And then one day at LIFE is Good 2009, Frank and Jeff and Russ said, "Hey, we're doing 'Gloria' for the talent show, and we need backup chicks."

And just like that, I became a backup singer. I've spent the last year singing. I've performed shows in public. I even sang lead on one song in January and plan to do so again in May. It has been pure, perfectly imperfect fun.

And the really interesting thing is that now, in my 40s, because I am doing it, I am becoming a better singer. I have learned so much about technique and breath control and harmonizing and taking cues from the musicians and my fellow chicks. My range is still limited, but it's enough. And I've discovered that when one is performing live music with a rock-n-roll band, being off key now and then is not the end of the world. Usually nobody notices.

G. K. Chesterton said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." What he could have added is that by doing, you might find "badly" changing to "better and better," and even if you don't, it can be a helluva good time along the way.

Ugh

Teetering

Do you ever feel you're on the brink of figuring out something BIG, if only you had the time and life-quiet to do it?

Magic markers

We make a lot of wishes in my family. Someone's necklace clasp has worked its way to the front? Make a wish as you move it back into place. Going through a tunnel? Hold your breath and make a wish. The clock says 11:11? Make a wish. We toss wishes in fountains, send wishes to stars, blow wishes on birthday candles.

It occurred to me that all these opportunities for wishes make excellent opportunities for bringing more mindfulness into my life. In my meditation class last spring, they encouraged us to come up with markers—regular occurrences in our day that would remind us to pause and be in the moment. They suggested things like brushing our teeth, waiting for an elevator, starting the car, and so on, but I have actually found those types of things to be too routine.

I can borrow some of that wishing time, though. After all, it's time when I am already pausing for a moment to think of something nice.

How to fight

I haven't blogged in so long that I thought I'd go ahead and post this here. I wrote it for Unschooling Partnerships, a new list on Yahoo! Groups where unschooling parents can discuss bringing the principles of unschooling into our marriages or partnerships.

--HOW TO FIGHT--

I grew up in an environment where disagreements were handled loudly. I used to store scathing things to say, and I always got the chance to use them. That is the method of communication I brought into my relationship with Frank.

Well. Let's just say it did not work very well. When I went into a conversation with Frank with either volume or accusations, that was pretty much the end of the conversation. A brick wall is more responsive and communicative than Frank when he feels attacked. I learned this pretty quickly, but I didn't have any other tools, so there was a stretch there where our disagreements were looooooooooooooooooong periods of silence. The tension in the room was all consuming.

By now, we've developed some better tools. These mean, first off, that we have fewer fights. We check in with each other earlier and nip a lot of them in the bud. Disagreements that do get to the angry stage tend to be short-lived because, essentially, we have learned how to fight more effectively.

I'll share some of our tools and habits here and look forward to hearing what
works for you.

Rule #1: Cardio. No, just kidding (although it probably wouldn't hurt). Our prime directive, as it were, is to use "I" statements. I feel, I want, I wish, I am hoping, I am trying to accomplish X. The minute we get into "you do this, you do that," the conversation is in trouble. Accusations beget defense, and we can't connect if we're defended against each other.

Take things one at a time. When our emotions (mine and his) are in a messy stew, we tend to lump disparate complaints into one Big Issue. As soon as we break them back down into their separate selves, we begin to see solutions instead of overwhelm.

Stay on target. I actually learned this from a manager whom I otherwise detested. She would listen very intently to side issues that cropped up, and then firmly direct the conversation back to her goal for the meeting. With us, if we start out talking about issue A and issue B comes up, we try to table issue B for the time being. That way, the main concern of whoever initiated the conversation doesn't get lost, and issue B will still be there whenever we have the time and energy to address it.

Avoid escalation. This is mostly for me. Frank never escalates. When he gets pissed, he clamps his mouth shut so tight I sometimes wonder if he'll ever get it open again. :-) But I react to hurts verbally and quickly, so I have learned over the years to check my reactions. I slow things down. I breathe. I ask for clarification. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" If the answer is yes, I try to respond with puzzlement instead of outrage: "I don't understand why you would say that."

Allow your partner's feelings. Feelings aren't always rational and logical. They aren't always fair. In fact, they often come from "old tapes," as Frank says, that are so emotionally charged that rationality, logic, and fairness are way out of reach. Try to have compassion for the hurt contained in those old tapes, even as you ask your partner to move forward with you.

Don't overreact. For whatever reason, having somebody mad at me sends me into a tailspin. I guess I'm phobic about anger. A week or so ago, Frank was mad at me and I didn't know why and he wasn't ready to talk about it. By the time we did talk about it, I had been through our entire divorce in my head. And this even after I had meditated on it and recognized how I was overreacting! Then of course, it was *nothing*, just a bad mood really, and boy, did I feel silly. Ah, well, learning all the time.

My last one is something about being solution-oriented. I'm having trouble articulating it, because so often our solution is to "go forth and sin no more." Maybe it's more about recognition than solution. It's about always moving out of the disagreement with renewed commitment to be kind, attentive, and responsive.

Other ideas?