7 years old thinks he is dumb and can´t learn.
catiamaciel@...
Dear all,
Sandra Dodd
There is no change from 7 to 8 years old. ;-)
Please don’t think that there are things that all 7 year olds do, and other things that all 8 year olds do.
Biology doesn’t count years. Growth and learning aren’t about ages.
-=-When this friends are here, they get along very well but it must be one at a time. If the 2 came over at the same time, he gets frustrated.-=-
That’s easy. You know the answer to that.
-=-I thougth that maybe this lack of interest for the world around him his something that happends with the change from 7 to 8 years old? I would not say he is depressed, on the oposite, he seams happy most of the time but, at the same time, i fear that he is not ok, that he suffers thinking he is not smart, not good enougth and does not express it more often.
-=-
Don’t be the problem. If he seems happy, do more of what helpds him be happy.
-=- He also does not know the hours, the days of the week, the months, does not sign his name and although I know he recognizes the letters, does not show that he knows it. -=-
There are teens and adults who don’t “sign their names.” If you mean he can’t write his name, you’ve also said it’s long and hard to spell. There’s no hurry. Don’t create a hurry.
I don’t know about Portuguese, but in English there are songs for days and months, and the alphabet. If you can find some songs, find them. Put the music on in the car and sing along yourself. He doesn’t need to sing them to internalize them
For birthdays, maybe make a list of the birthdays of people he knows, in the order they appear over the year, and put a chart of them up somewhere. Or make a matching game with those dates—name on one side, birthday on the other. Don’t use it as a reading test—you read the names to him. But you could read a birthday and see if he knows whose it is, and turn the card over and say who it is, if he’s really having a hard time learning such things.
Sandra
Jo Isaac
Why does he need to know those things? If he's not at school, why is it important to him to know the days of the week right now, let alone months? Why does he need to sign his name? He's not writing checks.
My son is 11, most weekdays doesn't know what day it is, because it is of no concern to him. And also does not write (handwrite - he types very fast). He didn't learn to read until he was 9, which is pretty normal (earlyish, in fact) for unschooled kids (and probably schooled kids, too).
Why is it important to know our birthday? Some day it might be - if you need to write your date of birth down, but that's not going to happen to a 7 year old.
==I don't know where this feeling of not being able to learn comes from ==
Maybe because you are pressuring him into trying to do things he isn't ready/doesn't want to do? Like writing his name and remembering his birthday?
==when i was a child, i wanted to learn everything and if someone pointed out i did not know something, i would try to learn it.==
You went to school. He is not you.
==where does the "i'm dumb" comes from? i thougth that was without school, this would not be a problem for him==
You aren't 'without school' though. You (the mom) are still thinking schooly things are important, like writing, like reading, like memorizing the days of the week.
If your son is happy, do more of the things that make him happy. Don't do any of the things (writing, reading, remembering information) that make you both unhappy.
Jo
Corinne Curtis
Six—An Important Year
by
Astrid Sunt
Translated by Anniken Mitchell
The human being goes through one of life’s big transformational processes during his seventh year. It is well known that, from a physiological standpoint, it takes seven years to renew all the cells in the body. That means that the seven- year-old you have in front of you is not the same child from a physical perspective that was carried under his mother’s heart. The child has worked through and renewed his whole organism. The inherited body is outgrown and put aside. We can see this quite clearly in children’s drawings. The pictures often contain houses or a car or a boat with a person in it. Or the theme has a certain border around it. The person in the picture stands on the ground, and the child, so to speak, has moved into his own house and taken fully hold of his own body. Castles, forts, and jagged mountain ranges, together with as occassional less clear or more varied theme predominate his drawings. It is important for the child to express these phases freely through drawing and not have any particular agenda from a pedagogical adult perspective.
It is quite striking how the body’s outer proportions shift during this phase as well: the face becomes longer, the nose grows out, the cheeks are not as round any longer, the change of teeth happens, limbs and fingers are elongated, and the round little belly of the younger child disappears. The gaze is not as lively as before. These outer changes also have clear motor consequences for the child as well. This is often a period during which the children are a little more clumsy. It takes time to master a new body! The milk glass tips over, the chairs tip over, and often anger and frustration are not far behind. The child’s sense of self is a little vulnerable. A harmony that was present in the five-year-old is no longer felt. Some children feel short periods of chaos, but the path to play and enthusiasm is still short as long as the right inspiration is present in the environment.
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Spontaneously the children begin to compare themselves to their friends in the same age group. As five-year-olds they were still the strongest, the cleverest, the toughest, and at least either mommy or daddy was that! Now, as six-year- olds, they are more vulnerable and they are not as comfortable. They look carefully at the friends who can tie a bow or do a cartwheel or draw a horse, or at the friends who are good at finger knitting or kicking a soccer ball, or who understand all the rules about how to play a board game. A sense of melancholy can set in: “I don’t know anything.”
The differences in development are more visible for the child in a homogeneous age group than in a mixed age group. The absence of possibility for joint play with younger children, wherein the six-year-old can stand out more, can lead to a painful sense of self and a place that the child might have to struggle with for a while. Instead, if we have a mixed age group in the kindergarten, the older children have a positive role to play and tasks and privileges that fit their level of development. The older ones are looked up to and also imitated by the younger ones who also benefit in terms of having a relationship to the older children. Children who have not had the experience of playing with older children during the kindergarten years are not as well prepared for later school experience. During the kindergarten years the little ones take joy in and look forward to their turn to be the big ones! So when finally that year arrives—with its puberty sense of vulnerability and instability as well— slowly a new sense of awareness about time and space awakens. The life in kindergarten takes on a certain form—one thing follows another. The recognition of the repeating variations in everyday life and yearly celebrations awakens a sense of joy and a carrying force that now the big six-year-old can master! In a homogeneous age group in the Steiner/Waldorf kindergarten, the pedagogy works much the same way as in a mixed age group. The children’s relationships to each other will vary according to the individual children’s development and personality. The adults will encourage the more resource-strong children to take care of and support the ones who are less developed. (A lot of respect needs to be awarded the teachers who are dealing with these large groups of children.) What happens is that the core group of children that complete the kindergarten years together will fall away whereas in a mixed age group there is a sense of continuity.
The pedagogical principle during the first seven-year period is imitation— the spontaneous copycatting through which the child gains knowledge of the world. These are our tools in the kindergarten, and that is how it needs to be. We can see that the children from five-and-a-half years old slowly turns toward a sense for authority, and they are more open to verbal information sharing. In
reality this is still by imitation and is just the first stadium toward the next life stage, a necessary transition phase which often happens between the seven-year periods in life. For this introductory period, which actually stretches all the way up towards the nine-year-old, we are not going to misuse or prematurely start intellectual teaching but encourage and nurture playful stimuli of wonder and inquisitive attitude.
At the same time this is a period with a careful but visible transition from a “want” existence to a “should” existence. The clothes should hang on the little hooks, the table needs to be cleaned up after the meal time, you need to say thanks for the day, the tasks need to be completed, the flowers should be watered, the little knapsacks packed with lunch, the light needs to turn green before you cross the street, and so on. We are now approaching the seven-year period between seven and fourteen wherein the fundamental pedagogical principle is authority. In this way our pedagogy builds on the real knowledge of the way the human being develops.
There will usually be a period of boredom during the seventh year. “I have nothing to do.” This is often interpreted that now the child is ready for school. The child may want pre-made toys, grow a little more dependent on popular collection objects, and so on. In this phase there is a change in the child’s consciousness. The child has worked through his own inner organs, and according to Steiner the forces that have been used for the transformation of the body are now free and available as forces for memory. Memories for life can be created as a little looking glass into one’s own childhood. The child’s consciousness is now reflecting over many little happenings and over the large questions in life. The child asks a lot of questions and really wants our honest thoughts and feelings in the answers. The child can hold onto a thought, an idea, a play, a plan, over longer periods of time. In this year the children can come to kindergarten with a clear inner picture about what and how the play will happen and what they will make and be able to hold onto and be able to remember. Together the six-year-olds can develop projects that can take place over longer periods of time. They talk among themselves and experience how an idea can grow in a common fantasy world and take physical shape. Cooperation and friendship can grow through free play.
During the first seven-year period, Steiner says, the foundation is built for our courage for life, trust in the feeling that the world is good. In order for the child to thrive, this sense of trust, a sense of clarity, a sense of what is going to happen that day, comes first, and then secondly an experience of being heard and seen and understood and recognized for who she/he is, a sense of being loved.
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On Aug 8, 2017, at 12:17 AM, Jo Isaac joanneisaac@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:== He also does not know the hours, the days of the week, the months, does not sign his name and although I know he recognizes the letters, does not show that he knows it. ==
Why does he need to know those things? If he's not at school, why is it important to him to know the days of the week right now, let alone months? Why does he need to sign his name? He's not writing checks.
My son is 11, most weekdays doesn't know what day it is, because it is of no concern to him. And also does not write (handwrite - he types very fast). He didn't learn to read until he was 9, which is pretty normal (earlyish, in fact) for unschooled kids (and probably schooled kids, too).==Last week we talked about how important it is to know our birthday.==
Why is it important to know our birthday? Some day it might be - if you need to write your date of birth down, but that's not going to happen to a 7 year old.
==I don't know where this feeling of not being able to learn comes from ==
Maybe because you are pressuring him into trying to do things he isn't ready/doesn't want to do? Like writing his name and remembering his birthday?
==when i was a child, i wanted to learn everything and if someone pointed out i did not know something, i would try to learn it.==
You went to school. He is not you.
==where does the "i'm dumb" comes from? i thougth that was without school, this would not be a problem for him==
You aren't 'without school' though. You (the mom) are still thinking schooly things are important, like writing, like reading, like memorizing the days of the week.==I would not say he is depressed, on the oposite, he seams happy most of the time but...==Don't 'but' - the 'but' is dependent on YOUR worries, and that is because you haven't deschooled enough to stop worrying about schooly things like writing and reading.
If your son is happy, do more of the things that make him happy. Don't do any of the things (writing, reading, remembering information) that make you both unhappy.
Jo
semajrak@...
Maybe make a cool clock using something he's interested in as a theme. If he loves Minecraft, make a Minecraft clock and hang it in your kitchen. Laugh about the whimsy of it. You can get clock kits inexpensively online or at craft stores. You could make it out of cardboard.
Similarly, you could put some letters up around the home. Ethan used to have wooden letters spelling his name on his door. We painted them together. Allow the written word to dance around your home in wonderful ways. I've written curious facts (my son loves facts) on windows using washable glass markers. If your son isn't reading yet, don't make him read them. Let him be curious about what you've written, and then share it with him when he shows interest. Read it to him warmly. Talk about whatever comes up from there. I've also left little notes like "I love you" on the mirror in the washroom using soap and water on my finger. When the washroom steamed up from a shower, the note would reveal itself on the mirror. You could use symbols or make funny pictures.
Whatever you do, do it for the joy of it, and the richness that it brings to your lives. Don't turn things into lessons.
Do what you can to relieve your anxiety, because your anxiety about his learning will become a burden to him. Do things that make your days more sparkly. Try to find ways to increase your joy, your support, and your interest in your son and in your days together. In my experience so far, that can be very contagious.
http://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/2017/08/explore-connect.html
Sandra Dodd
I let it through, but I want to remind everyoe that we’re here to discuss unschooling, and Steiner/Waldorf, while interesting, is WAY about school. No matter how fantasy-filled the school is, it’s school.
-=-It is quite striking how the body’s outer proportions shift during this phase as well... The gaze is not as lively as before. …-=-
-=-Spontaneously the children begin to compare themselves to their friends in the same age group. As five-year-olds they were still the strongest, the cleverest, the toughest, and at least either mommy or daddy was that! Now, as six-year- olds, they are more vulnerable and they are not as comfortable. -=-
They have NO control group whatsoever.
They are ONLY talking about school kids, and at six something happens that is NOT “spontaneous.””
When parent has not sufficiently deschooled, she might impose those conditions on her own child. She might become the other classmates, or at least conjure them up in her imagination and compare the way her child ties his shoes with those other six-year-olds she remembers or imagines, and so forth.
That will harm unschooling ever single time.
Someone asked me once what New Mexico looked like. I said the north looked like Colorado, the west looked like Arizona, and the east and south looked like Texas.
For a six year old, he might not look like other six year olds at all. The Steiner teachers are looking at groups of kids, but the glory of unschooling is that if it is done well, the mother can look at her own child directly, lovingly, confidently.
And what six looks like, FOR HIM, for that one child, is the beginning looks like being five, and the end looks like being seven.
It can be interesting and illuminating to read child development, but I would recommend Erickson instead of Steiner, because Steiner was kind of a nut, who created a school without ANY knowledge of child development nor of education, but he ended up helping create a school for children of employees at a cigarette factory, in Germany, in 1919. It continued because there was money in it. “The anthroposophical movement” is woo. It used to be very racist woo, but there’s no money in that (nor approval for charter schools) so it changed.
Please be aware and remember when your source material is for school teachers, and about schoolkids.
Don’t keep one foot in school if you intend to step away from and live life without it.
Sandra
Sandra Dodd
My hands are getting older. :-)
And I’m used to being able to fix typos (on facebook, on webpages, in blog posts).
Corrected, two places:
____________
-=-When a parent has not sufficiently deschooled, she might impose those conditions on her own child. She might become the other classmates, or at least conjure them up in her imagination and compare the way her child ties his shoes with those other six-year-olds she remembers or imagines, and so forth.
That will harm unschooling every single time.-=-
Sorry,
Sandra
Corinne Curtis
On Aug 8, 2017, at 1:28 PM, Sandra Dodd Sandra@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:Typos…
My hands are getting older. :-)
And I’m used to being able to fix typos (on facebook, on webpages, in blog posts).
Corrected, two places:
____________
-=-When a parent has not sufficiently deschooled, she might impose those conditions on her own child. She might become the other classmates, or at least conjure them up in her imagination and compare the way her child ties his shoes with those other six-year-olds she remembers or imagines, and so forth.
That will harm unschooling every single time.-=-
Sorry,
Sandra
Sandra Dodd
This is on the main page at yahoogroups.
NEW MEMBERS: Read at the Group Website link below before posting.
How and why does unschooling work? What kind of parents and parenting
does it take? What will help, and what will hinder?
This is a list for the examination of the philosophy of unschooling
and attentive parenting and a place for sharing examined lives based
on the principles underlying unschooling.
Always Learning will focus on how people learn no matter
where in the world they are, rather than on what's legal in any
particular country or jurisdiction.
This is a moderated group, with trapdoors for the uncooperative. (Not moderated in the advance-approval way, but in the be-nice-to-play way. New members' posts are moderated, and it's good to read several dozen posts before jumping in.)
If you've never read any John Holt, his thoughts and writing are behind unschooling. There is a link on that page, too.
"I can honestly say that I've grown more as a person, parent and unschooler due to the discussions on this list than on any other list I've been on."
Group Website
http://sandradodd.com/lists/alwayslearning
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I will quote one thing from that page, but every member should be familiar with the purpose of the group. It’s something Joyce Fetteroll wrote:
The list is about ideas, not about people.
Think of ideas like balls and the list like a ball court. If someone tosses an idea worth discussing into the court it's going to get batted about. At that point what's going on is no longer about the person who tossed the idea in. It's about the idea and how well and cleanly it's being tossed about. (Unless the tosser keeps jumping in and grabbing the idea ball saying "Mine!")
Joyce
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Also linked at that page:
For new members:
http://sandradodd.com/lists/alwayslearningNEW
About posting:
http://sandradodd.com/lists/alwayslearningPOSTS
(I think that second one goes out on the first of each month.)
Before anyone is approved to the group, there is a letter from Joyce Fetteroll.
Perhaps there’s a link to more information in that letter; I’m not sure.
It might seem to be more information than a group usually has, but this group is nearly 16 years old. The post I’m responding to is #78203
Post #1 was by Deb Lewis, in November 2001. Those posts can be accessed from the main page of the site:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/AlwaysLearning/info
(at the bottom by month)
The group is not as busy as it once was, but nearly ever one of those 78,000+ posts is serious, solid unschooling information. Please help me keep it that way.
Thanks,
Sandra
Sandra Dodd
I’ve responded about the group protocol and policies in another post.
-=- I am curious why you let the post through if you were concerned about its proximity to school. What value did you see in it? -=-
A discussion of how it could help or hinder unschooling. That’s the purpose of the group.
-=- Mainly I have been watching several posts come through and am noticing that parents speak of problems they are experiencing with their thoughts about their children. I feel like there are emotional/development issues that are couched in “unschooling issues”.-=-
Don’t put “unschooling issues” in quotation marks as though they’re not real.
Everything here is going to be discussed as an unschooling issue, or as something that could veer away from, or dilute, or confuse, unschooling.
-=-I brought up Steiner because I felt like he had good thoughts on development of the soul unlike Piaget, Freud, or Erickosn—all who have limited research in the development of their theories. All have some value tho.-=-
You could have brought up the dogma of a church, or a Roman philosopher, or numerology. IF there’s an interesting point to be made, make the point yourself, from your experience as an unschooler. Don’t lay it out as though it’s something unschoolers should know or need to know.
The main difference between Piaget/Freud/Erickson and Steiner is that they were scientific and Steiner was using mysticism to justify an educational philosophy. But it’s an educational philosophy having to do with the creation of a school. And nearly 100 years later there are still schools (though not the same) and it’s still about school. ALL those folks studied, saw, knew of, children in school. NONE of them ever met an unschooler.
There are people in this group whose children didn’t go to school, or only went a short while, and whose children grew up without school, and they know LOTS of things Steiner did not know.
We know things even John Holt never imagined.
-=-So I guess I am having a hard time only thinking in terms of unschooling when it seems like there might be other issues at play.-=-
Think what you want, but post about unschooling here in this discussion. People can find mainstream information, and particular philosophies, in discussions dedicated to those topics.
No one is trapped here, but they come here (and I hope you, too, came here) to discuss unschooling.
-=-My children have always been “unschooled” …-=-
“Unschooled” as in “sort of” or “as they say…” or “so-called” or “alleged” unschooled?
Maybe until you can confidently say it without quotes, it would be better to read but not advise.
-=-...and yet I find value in how Steiner thinks about children sometimes. So not sure what I should and shouldn’t post…..-=-
I hope you will find so much confidence from things in this discussion and in related links that you feel less need for Steiner, or for any school-related ideas.
The other post has links to information about the group.
Sandra
Joyce Fetteroll
It’s interesting how little John Holt is mentioned in unschooling discussions. He named the idea. He did the research that birthed the idea. Yet his name rarely gets mentioned. Some unschoolers might even ask, “Who?”
But in some ways it’s good that John Holt isn’t brought up. We’re not filtering what we see through what John Holt told us to see. We’re looking directly at our kids. We’re asking, “Are they happy? What is troubling them? What do they want? What can I change to help them?”
What gets in the way of so many new unschooling parents is unreasonable expectations. They think kids must learn to read, spell, do math by a certain age, do chores, do what they’re told, not eat more sugar than Mom thinks is right, bathe and sleep when Mom wants … They think unschooling parents have a magical way of getting kids to do those.
Some parent expectations come from how they were parented. Some come from school. Some come from friends and other parents. Some are accepted as truths just because the message is ubiquitous.
For unschooling to flourish, parents need to look directly at their kids. What does *this* child need? What is *this* child reaching for? If a resource helps a parent let go of unreasonable expectations and look directly at their child, then that’s supportive of creating a learning environment. If a resource helps a parent understand their child better, that’s a good thing *if* it removed a barrier to directly looking at their child. It’s not a good thing if it puts a new filter between parent and child. (It’s funny how parents who fear TV see addiction in their children. When they let go of their fear, they see engagement.)
Where does Steiner fall? Maybe for some it’s the first. But the problem is that it’s just as likely, if not more so, to be the second. Which is why it’s not a good unschooling resource. (People can get goofy ideas even from good unschooling resources! ;-) )
Helpful questions for unschooling parents are: What does my child need? What’s getting in my way of seeing what my child needs?
Joyce
Sandra Dodd
-=-Helpful questions for unschooling parents are: What does my child need? What’s getting in my way of seeing what my child needs?-=-
She also had written:
-=-It’s interesting how little John Holt is mentioned in unschooling discussions. He named the idea. He did the research that birthed the idea. Yet his name rarely gets mentioned. Some unschoolers might even ask, “Who?”-=-
20+ years ago, he was mentioned much more. He had only been dead a decade or so, and Growing Without Schooling was still in print. Many of us had younger children.
I mentioned him in those days, anyway.
But as our kids got older, and we expanded and clarified what radical (serious, fulltime) unschooling would be (I, and several of those who were in this group and the groups that led up to this one), we went beyond where John Holt was. And honestly, anyone who ever had a child went beyond where the childless, unmarried, but taught for a short while John Holt was, in parenting. He saw unschooling as a cool version of The Open Classroom that families could do at home. But he visited children, he didn’t live with any.
The best resource new unschoolers have is the experience of those who unschooled thoughtfully, seriously, without giving up or chickening out, who found ways to make their lives joyful and rich and (in best cases) seemingly effortless—for the children and parents as well.
We can’t promise it will happen in every family, but we know it can happen in lots of them. It doesn’t “just happen,” though. It takes some work, and some change.
And those who have been helping others for a long time (many, in this group, have done that) have seen failures, and we recognize warning signs of veering toward a cliff instead of down into the valley where it gets easier. And we recognize the one-foot-in-school posture that keeps unschooling from getting started in the first place.
http://sandradodd.com/help is good for anyone new to this group or to unschooling. It leads out to other sites, and into mine, too.
Sandra