All Is Grace

some interesting things happen when you open yourself up to (mostly) uninterrupted time with your kids. time when you’re not nagging them to finish science or hounding them about the math assignment they’ve been putting off, or scolding them for not completing their chores when it’s 8:30 and time to sit down for class. all of a sudden…

…they start talking.

my kids and i have always had relationships that blow my mind. i am so fortunate. they talk to me about everything….pretty much all the time. very rarely do i have to drag things out of them (though Reasa has her moments). i credit this, largely, with the fact that i was around when things bothered them. laughed when they were happy. hugged them when they were sad. apologized to them when i screwed up (which was often. still is.). dealt with issues as they arose rather than stuffing them until a convenient time to deal with them. this does not, in any way, make me some kind of supermom. i have been blessed to not have to send them away from me for 8 or 10 hours a day while they went to school or i worked. when people are in your presence 24/7, you have a couple of options when it comes to dealing with them: 1) ignore them and do what you have to do despite or around them. 2) suck them in.

i chose the latter.

so did they. 

thank God.

no really. thank God.

i know this could not happen with all children. or with all parents. i don’t know why God chose to give me this, but i’m here and i’m grateful. so very.

through all of that closeness and sharing, however, we have had times where it hasn’t looked chipper and lovely around here. the past two years of schooling, specifically. i can blame schooling for this phenomena mostly because it has been the real variable for us. i changed our approach, i mentioned, when the girls reached middle school. had to “crack down” for the sake of “serious schooling.” and with that, though the transition was smooth and minimal at first–even fun, as it was out of the norm–last year started tests and studying and pretty strict scheduling and requirements. you could make the argument that because they will face those kinds of things in their adult life, they should have practice meeting those expectations in their childhood/schooling.

hmm.

i’m going to make the argument that i never lived with a roommate before i set foot in my college dorm–never shared a room other than at camp in my entire 17 years–and i somehow managed to figure out how to do it for 4 years in a row right out of the blue…and then another year before i got married…and then…well, i got married. the transition challenged me to step outside my experience, to do something that made me uncomfortable sometimes, but…i figured it out. and if my kids want to go to college or get a job, and they’ve never had the experience of getting up at the same time every day or being somewhere on time (umm, hello, who doesn’t have to be places on time, even outside of school??), i bet they’ll figure it out. (also, i didn’t say they weren’t going to have to have any kind of schedule whatsoever, but that’s another blog. for another day. yes, i now have a running list.)

the things you want to do, you choose to do. period.

i digress.

Friday morning, “school” started with a long talk at the dining room table with the kids. a discussion about what school looks like right now and what they like about it and what’s not working for them. i gave them a brief glimpse of my  research from throughout the week, talked to them about the premise of homeschooling, mentioned that i thought we might give it a try…we talked about the pros and cons of what we do, what we could do, what it would look like for us…then i had them brainstorm, on paper, some things that interest them right now, and some things they would do if time was never an issue–if assignments were not required.

after the *blank stares,* and a couple of seriously?‘s, Laine went to town. the girl is creativity personified. it’s her whole being. and she’s great with that. of the three kids, she has been the most frustrated by the crack-down on schooling. if she had attended public school her whole life, i know they would have diagnosed her with ADD in kindergarten or first grade, simply because she has so many things going through her head at any given time, getting one thing done to completion without losing her to six other things in the process can be like pounding your head against the wall. sadly (?) …she gets this from me (let’s not talk about how many tabs i have open, conversations going via text, pages with different headings in my notebook (which i call “my mind”) beside me, number of hours i’ve been working on this paragraph,  or projects started in various rooms around the house right now.). and the thing is…to this point…it hasn’t been ok. but…it’s who she is. it’s who i am too. and i had to figure out what to do with it all by myself too.  it took me a lot longer than it will potentially take her if i give her the freedom to figure it out. i don’t want to train this out of her, frankly. she is one of the most creative people i know. that is not a curse. it’s a blessing.

digressing. again.

Bryson’s brainstorm list…he was a little lost. this concept is pretty foreign to him, and i really think it should be. at 11, if he had control over it, he would play Minecraft and Clash of Clans and Battlefield and Modern Warfare and Portal all day long, every day. he would design crazy battle games with his friends on Minecraft servers, watch youtube videos to learn what potions make you do what things, discover new techno artists, make youtube videos of himself being completely silly, and practice at his bow and arrow (darn it, i need to get him a target). his list actually said, “ummmmm…..” 🙂 i let it slide. then he went and took his math test. he really likes math.

Reasa sat with a blank stare on her face through all of this. she started to well up. i asked what was wrong, and she said, “i…i don’t know what to put down. i am so afraid already that i’m getting behind and i’m not going to accomplish what needs to be done before i graduate…i feel like i have so many things i have to put on a list and they’re all required! there isn’t time to figure out what i want.”

and that, friends, is maybe the point.

we started to dissect some of the things she would love to do if she had time. there are so many things in her head. by the end of our conversation, when we fleshed out some of those things into reality, she looked at me and tears started to fill her eyes again. i asked her what was wrong and she said something like, “mom…this sounds…so much better.”

she did wind up writing things. lots and lots and lots of things. she handed me a list on Friday night, probably 11 hours later…it’s long. if she just did the things she put on her list, she would pretty much work weekdays and weekends, summers included, from now until she turns 18, and a lot of it would include what you would consider traditional school work. we spent the weekend talking about how to make this happen realistically. we talked about how to make goals for herself with action steps in between. i spent a lot of time trying to remind her that she’s 14 and…slow down, girl. there’s plenty of time. i’m not sure exactly why she’s panicking (*cough* firstborn *cough*). but you know…without the conversation we had on Friday morning…

…i wouldn’t have known she was.

so, our first day moving towards unschooling…we had lots of conversations. another hour at the dining room table talking about expectations and new goals. another hour after that talking to Reasa about what she should do. encouraging her to just…do. live. be. a few rounds of Uno. time talking with their step-grandpa over lunch. signing up for Kahn Academy. discovering. reading some. building blogs and websites.

talking more.

it kind of felt like a productive Saturday. i’m thinking we could use a couple more of those.

maybe a month of them.