Dana Burdick

Hi All,



I wanted to share one of the bizarre effects unshooling has had on me.
Before I started unschooling with my children, I had never written a poem of
any sort. Ok, maybe they forced me in school to eek out a haiku or two, but
that was the entire extent of it. So..you can understand my amazement when
I came up with the following poems on the fly. I have no clue if they
follow any real poetic structure so I apologize if they grate on anybody's
poetic sensitivities. :-)



Poem 1 was written when we named our cat. Probably a rip off from T.S.
Elliot, but hey, ya' got to start somewheres.



Jenny B. Jangles the Abby cat wakes up slowly.

She stretches - yawns

Then lies back down.



Jenny B. Jangles the Abby cat plays her games.

She dances, she prances,

She wiggles, she pounces.



Jenny B. the day is done,

But your night has just begun.





Poem 2 was written while driving the car when my son took off his shoes.



Stinking socks standing stiffly,

Sadly seeking suds.

.

Smiling socks slowly slipping

Into soap sublime.







-Dana





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

SHERRY LANGEVIN

Dear Dana,

I loved your poems! Especially the 'socks' one . . . put me in mind of my own childs !

Sherry

Dana Burdick <DanaBurdick@...> wrote:


Hi All,



I wanted to share one of the bizarre effects unshooling has had on me.
Before I started unschooling with my children, I had never written a poem of
any sort. Ok, maybe they forced me in school to eek out a haiku or two, but
that was the entire extent of it. So..you can understand my amazement when
I came up with the following poems on the fly. I have no clue if they
follow any real poetic structure so I apologize if they grate on anybody's
poetic sensitivities. :-)



Poem 1 was written when we named our cat. Probably a rip off from T.S.
Elliot, but hey, ya' got to start somewheres.



Jenny B. Jangles the Abby cat wakes up slowly.

She stretches - yawns

Then lies back down.



Jenny B. Jangles the Abby cat plays her games.

She dances, she prances,

She wiggles, she pounces.



Jenny B. the day is done,

But your night has just begun.





Poem 2 was written while driving the car when my son took off his shoes.



Stinking socks standing stiffly,

Sadly seeking suds.

.

Smiling socks slowly slipping

Into soap sublime.







-Dana





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]








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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Rodney and Rebecca Atherton

>I loved your poems! Especially the 'socks' one . . . put me in mind of my
own childs !



Yes, Dana, time to make a web page to display your poems! Maybe the kids
can help design the page. Maybe they will be inspired to write their own
and add them to the web page!



<http://www.geocities.com/rebeccawow.geo> Rebecca

Aim/AOL: Rebeccawow

MSN: wow_academy@...

Yahoo! Messenger: wow_academy

ICQ# 2046718

http://www.geocities.com/rebeccawow.geo

http://www.hometown.aol.com/Rebeccawow

http://www.checin.org (Crossroads Home Educated Children)



Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to
solve. -Roger Lewin







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dana Burdick

Oh yes, I should start a page for the family's poems. My kids' poems are
quite a hoot.



I'll leave you with a brief alliteration by my son. He said this when I was
talking his ear off about some subject he could care less about.



"Mom, Eleven Lips Lectured."

ds 7 years old



I don't know, do you think I should take this personally? :-)



-Dana



_____

From: Rodney and Rebecca Atherton [mailto:rebeccawow@...]
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2005 8:33 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [AlwaysLearning] The oddities of unschooling




>I loved your poems! Especially the 'socks' one . . . put me in mind of my
own childs !



Yes, Dana, time to make a web page to display your poems! Maybe the kids
can help design the page. Maybe they will be inspired to write their own
and add them to the web page!



<http://www.geocities.com/rebeccawow.geo> Rebecca

Aim/AOL: Rebeccawow

MSN: wow_academy@...

Yahoo! Messenger: wow_academy

ICQ# 2046718

http://www.geocities.com/rebeccawow.geo

http://www.hometown.aol.com/Rebeccawow

http://www.checin.org (Crossroads Home Educated Children)



Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to
solve. -Roger Lewin







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]









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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Eric Donato

LOL, that's really funny!! my mind is forming an illustration to go
along with it...

Jules
w/ 3 boys, 9, 6, 4 yrs

On Mar 14, 2005, at 10:00 AM, Dana Burdick wrote:

>
> I'll leave you with a brief alliteration by my son. He said this when
> I was
> talking his ear off about some subject he could care less about.
>
>
>
> "Mom, Eleven Lips Lectured."
>
> ds 7 years old
>
>
>
> I don't know, do you think I should take this personally? :-)
>
>
>
> -Dana
>

[email protected]

In a message dated 3/14/2005 11:33:40 AM Mountain Standard Time,
DanaBurdick@... writes:

"Mom, Eleven Lips Lectured."


I don't know, do you think I should take this personally? :-)






Holly has an irritating habit I think she only does with me, and it's coming
to a head. I'm not figuring out how to get her to stop. If I tell her
something I think is interesting or important to her future (like that rayon is
from wood fibers or something, just some three second trivia thing) whe will
tell me when the last time I told her that, or just "You've said that before."


Yesterday we were in Target, and I said something cloth related (can't
remember, but that's what made me think of rayon, which it wasn't, yesterday) and
she said "You've told me that before."

Sometimes I'll say better to say it twice than never, or "sorry" or "I bet
I'll say it again someday, too," or "WHY DO YOU DO THAT?" or sometimes I just
let it go by. But yesterday I said, "Yeah? Well I'm going to tell you two
more times and then I'm going to die."

It was just a wild new humorous response, but she got big eyes and said
"Then don't tell me anymore." And I said, "But what if I had never told you?"
And we let it drop.

But she has a habit of reciting the past in review as if we need to know.
She'll say "The last time we went to the zoo you brought a water bottle too,"
or "When we rented that movie last time, we ate spaghetti." Thank you
Holly, for that trivia review! So it can be fun or neutral, or it can seem
personal and critical.

Often, with me, when it's Holly, it's personal.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pam Sorooshian

On Mar 14, 2005, at 10:50 AM, SandraDodd@... wrote:

> But she has a habit of reciting the past in review as if we need to
> know.
> She'll say "The last time we went to the zoo you brought a water
> bottle too,"
> or "When we rented that movie last time, we ate spaghetti." Thank
> you
> Holly, for that trivia review! So it can be fun or neutral, or it
> can seem
> personal and critical.

She has a brain that keeps that kind of trivia - such detail - such
connections - and so, really, she's just sharing with you something
that SHE is amazingly good at and most people are not (and she's
NOTICED that).

I'd just keep doing what you're doing - without the "death threat" - by
saying, "Yeah, I probably say it again, too," in the same sort of
neutral way that she gave the info to you in the first place.

She might think it is interesting to you to know how forgetful you are
compared to herself. After all, everything else she's ever done in the
world has been pretty darn fascinating to you, right? Why would she not
think this is interest to you, too? And - remember - she doesn't have
the sense we have of growing older and more forgetful and our concerns
about repeating ourselves and being boring old coots.

My dad was sick and had to swallow a LOT of pills. He was in the
hospital and the nurse was giving him one pill after another. I said,
"Did you know I could swallow all of those at one time? I'm amazingly
good at swallowing large numbers of pills at once."

The NURSE jumped all over me. "He's doing just fine," etc.

HEY - I wasn't dissin' my dad --- I just thought it was something he'd
be interested in, that I had that specific talent that he probably
didn't even know about me.

But the nurse thought it would make him feel old or something - make
him feel worse. She was probably right - I was young and didn't have
any sense of fear of old age or death and so I didn't have enough
empathy to know that this was probably NOT something he needed to know
about me right at that time.

I'm thinking Holly is the same way - it never occurs to her that you
actually feel dissed by her comment that you've told her something
before - it is just information - just a tiny bit interesting - from
her point of view?

Of course, she might be just a little irritated by you repeating
yourself - it means you're human and sometimes kids (especially her
age) don't really feel comfortable being reminded that their parents
are subject to the problems of aging. Scary. So maybe there is that to
it, too, and she's hoping that if she just points out that you're
repeating yourself, you'll stop it.


-pam

Gold Standard

>>But yesterday I said, "Yeah? Well I'm going to tell you two
>>more times and then I'm going to die."<<

What a quick and humorous response Sandra. It takes control to not give a
knee-jerk reaction (I'm still working on this one). Maybe it is part of the
female nature to have this sort of relationship with mother? I don't know, I
just know that I have a very similar kind of communication with my daughter.

My 13 yo daughter seems to roll her eyes at just about everything I say.
I've learned to keep it short and light, but sometimes I just want to
scream, "I SAY THESE THINGS BECAUSE THEY ARE IMPORTANT AND I LOVE YOU AND I
WANT YOU TO HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN LIFE TO BE HAPPY AND SAFE AND I WANT
YOU TO LISTEN!!!" but I don't, at least not in that moment. Breathing deep
and saying something like "it's just on my job description to tell you of
these things" or "did I say that again??? I must really like that one" seems
to get us through.

My relationship with my teenage boys is much different. They don't seem to
react negatively to anything I say. Lol, they're probably quietly ignoring
me.

Yet another difference between the sexes?

Thanks for sharing,
Jacki

[email protected]

In a message dated 3/14/2005 5:06:06 PM Mountain Standard Time,
jacki@... writes:

My relationship with my teenage boys is much different. They don't seem to
react negatively to anything I say. Lol, they're probably quietly ignoring
me.

Yet another difference between the sexes?




------------------

Could be that. She gets along better with her dad than she does with me, in
a way, or maybe I just get more frustrated with her than I do with the boys.
We hang out together a lot, too--more than I did with either of the boys at
that age (probably because I was spending so much time with Holly), so it
might be partly that she's the youngest. And female. And Holly. <g> She's
fun, andI like her, and so I should just expect that wsome percenae of our
hanging-out will be while one or both of us is tired or hungry.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Julie

Hi everyone,

I haven't posted here for ages but I just wanted to say thenks Jacky
for:

My 13 yo daughter seems to roll her eyes at just about everything I
say.
I've learned to keep it short and light, but sometimes I just want to
scream, "I SAY THESE THINGS BECAUSE THEY ARE IMPORTANT AND I LOVE
YOU AND I
WANT YOU TO HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN LIFE TO BE HAPPY AND SAFE
AND I WANT
YOU TO LISTEN!!!" but I don't, at least not in that moment.
Breathing deep
and saying something like "it's just on my job description to tell
you of
these things" or "did I say that again??? I must really like that
one" seems
to get us through.

My question:
I wonder how long this will go on? Does being a 13yo girl make you
lethargic and uncommunicative and how have others got through this?
I have recollections of sharing most of my teenage life with my
mother and don't quite get my 13yo at present.

Cheers,
Julie

[email protected]

In a message dated 3/16/2005 8:25:03 PM Mountain Standard Time,
xtr581602@... writes:

I wonder how long this will go on? Does being a 13yo girl make you
lethargic and uncommunicative and how have others got through this?
I have recollections of sharing most of my teenage life with my
mother and don't quite get my 13yo at present.



===========

I knew from conversations with my husband, Keith, that he had a later
puberty than I did (and a little later than some boys). Of our kids, Kirby and
Holly are more like my family and Marty is a LOT like his dad in tons of ways.
Kirby's puberty was harsh, added to we had moved recently and he doesn't
like change, and he's the oldest and resented the fun attention the younger ones
were getting while he was having his metamorphosis into bigger, hairier,
unfamiliar big-guy. He was hard for anyone to deal with for a while.

Holly's a little volatile sometimes, and short tempered. She's 13.

Marty, at 16, though he has beard hair and height and shoulders and all
that, has just lately gotten the snappish impatience the others got sooner, and I
figure it's because Keith had "it" late (whatever all the hormonal "it" is).

I think it's a natural instinctive separation from parents, and parents do
best to give those kids more respect and more choices and more freedom if they
can manage to do so. Acknowledge that they're old enough to reproduce,
maybe, that in some cultures of the past they would have been marriageable, that
you're glad our culture waits until people are older to launch them out into
parenthood and responsibility for a house or job, and you're glad they're
still around. (If any of that's no good for your family, fine; at least remember
it in your own mind, though.)

When my then-best-friend was moving to California a dozen years ago, we
found ourselves really short-tempered and mean with each other. Little things he
did seemed hugely personal to me, and vice versa, but we've had a policy
always to talk about things like that and not guess. We didn't know, though,
why we were so grouchy.

Turns out it's something that happens with lots of people in such
situations. When friends are going to be separated it causes some anxiety and like
scared dogs biting a person who's trying to help them, they lash out at the
nearest person, not knowing what's causing their pain. If they're mad at each
other, the parting is easier. One is more glad to go and the other says "fine,
good riddance."

I think something like that happens with parents and children, too. And it
happens when the instincts get the first whif (probably physically, at some
level) of the offspring's impending adulthood, and happens some more when they
first start to care more about what someone outside the family things
(mating business) and then when they leave. But if we can see it as natural
separation behaviors, it won't hurt our feelings so much.

I waited until I was in my 30's to have kids, but more people my age (and
lots of my friends were already "doing it." I've held the hand of many people
I knew since we were teens who weren't handling their own teens' reations
well (nor reacting well to them) and I'm sure that's also helped me be calmer
with my own. I've seen the kind of clinging and controlling and insulting NOT
to do. Ifail sometimes, but I move away from the "oops" spot and try to give
the kids more peaceful space for their transformation to occur.

Holly, especially, did NOT want to grow older. She LIKED being young. She
asked me and Keith yesterday why we didn't treat her like she was five
anymore. It was a wistful kind of question.

I think it lasts about a year, with occasional relapses, and is worse if the
parent resists it.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pam Sorooshian

"The Parent-Teen Breakthrough: A Relationship Approach" by Myra
Kirshenbaum

This is the only - the ONLY - parenting book about having teens that
I've ever liked.

I just got a new book - "Unconditional Parenting" by Alfie Kohn.
(Author of the WONDERFUL "Punished by Rewards," among other books.)

It isn't even supposed to be out until March 22nd, but it shipped
early, apparently.

I'll read it over the next week - I have HIGH hopes for it!

-pam

On Mar 16, 2005, at 7:23 PM, Julie wrote:

> My question:
> I wonder how long this will go on? Does being a 13yo girl make you
> lethargic and uncommunicative and how have others got through this?
> I have recollections of sharing most of my teenage life with my
> mother and don't quite get my 13yo at present.

Robyn Coburn

<<<<<I just got a new book - "Unconditional Parenting" by Alfie Kohn.
(Author of the WONDERFUL "Punished by Rewards," among other books.)

It isn't even supposed to be out until March 22nd, but it shipped
early, apparently.

I'll read it over the next week - I have HIGH hopes for it!>>>>>

We will be discussing this "Unconditional Parenting", probably with
references to "Punished by Rewards", beginning July 25th on Always
Unschooled. Come on over if you like!

I just got my copy early too.

Robyn L. Coburn

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.7.2 - Release Date: 3/11/2005

[email protected]

My one best piece of advice for helping everyone get through puberty with
sanity and relationship in good shape is to do everything in your power to help
your adolescent get a job. A real job. Paid is nice, but it isn't the most
important thing. What is important, what can help the adolescent most (and by
extension everyone close to them) is a job with real responsibility. Someplace
they're valued for something they can do, that not everyone can do. A place they
can build mutually dependent relationships with adults outside their family -
where someone is counting on them to be there and do a good job. A job where
they're just one more warm body out of many probably isn't going to be as
valuable.

If you're lucky, a job will present itself. If you're not, get creative, and
network with everyone you know.

(Now I just have to help Patrick find a job.)

Deborah in IL

Gold Standard

Thanks Deborah. I have to think about this one. If the idea of getting a job
doesn't come from my teenagers, are you suggesting that we give them the
idea? I'm not sure I would even suggest it to them. My assumption is that as
they want to do more things that cost money, they will want to make money.
Or if there is a place where they are inclined to work because of their
skills or desires, they will pursue that. I would certainly help them with
that.

The other thought I have is that maybe not every teenager is ready for that
responsibility. My 16 yo son, who is autistic/Asperger's, and has had 3
open-heart surgeries (the last one happened last year and didn't go well,
some long-term neurological effects) is ready for some responsibility this
way, but I am definitely letting him call the shots. He recently said that
he wanted to work at the local multiplex theatre (film-making is his
passion) and I took him there, he filled out the application in his unique
way, and I even called the administration office to let them know a little
about his history. They were very enthusiastic about his application. I
don't know if he can really fulfill the responsibilities, but we'll find
out!

I do understand and believe that teenagers who feel needed and responsible
have a feeling of connectedness to their importance in the world. We have
found ways to do that at home (art, music-making, home care, whatever their
interests) and in the neighborhood (babysitting, animal care) and I can see
how these activities have made them feel important during this time. Maybe
this is the feeling you are referring to that you've seen with your
teenagers have started working out of the home.

The description "a job with real responsibility. Someplace
they're valued for something they can do, that not everyone can do. A place
they
can build mutually dependent relationships with adults outside their
family -
where someone is counting on them to be there and do a good job. A job where
they're just one more warm body out of many probably isn't going to be as
valuable." sounds ideal! I hope we all find that!

Thanks for the thought-provoking!

Jacki

-----Original Message-----
From: DACunefare@... [mailto:DACunefare@...]
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 9:29 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] Re: The oddities of unschooling

My one best piece of advice for helping everyone get through puberty with
sanity and relationship in good shape is to do everything in your power to
help
your adolescent get a job. A real job. Paid is nice, but it isn't the most
important thing. What is important, what can help the adolescent most (and
by
extension everyone close to them) is a job with real responsibility.
Someplace
they're valued for something they can do, that not everyone can do. A place
they
can build mutually dependent relationships with adults outside their
family -
where someone is counting on them to be there and do a good job. A job where
they're just one more warm body out of many probably isn't going to be as
valuable.

If you're lucky, a job will present itself. If you're not, get creative, and
network with everyone you know.

(Now I just have to help Patrick find a job.)

Deborah in IL




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