family of six
fundayeveryday
Do you think it is harder to apply radical unschooling principles to a family with four young children (ages 3,6,8,10), compared to a family with less children, because there are more choices to provide per person, more needs to be respected and provided, more personalities into the mix- some that may require much more patience and time to understand and respect, more patience needed among children waiting for a parent's presence or a spouse waiting for another spouse's presence/time, expectations among spouses for their relationship and parenting ideals, more listening
by parents that is spread out among each child- which means someone is
usually waiting for an ear to hear them (and we love to really hear them
not just "oh yeah that's nice" "or eyes to watch them (and we love to
really watch them not just "oh yeah that's nice") or a lap to sit on
(and watch their favorite show or read their favorite book- meanwhile
someone else is waiting their turn), etc, and exploring each persons interest- watching, listening, being equally a part of what each one of them loves?
Thank you,
Kristen
Thank you,
Kristen
Pam Sorooshian
Unschooling seems less difficult than schooling four kids at home, each with their own course of study and assignments, etc.
But, yeah, when you have more kids, you have more logistics to consider between parents and kids. But, on the other hand, they have all those additional interactions between siblings that they wouldn't have with fewer siblings. Those are also part of their learning.
-pam
But, yeah, when you have more kids, you have more logistics to consider between parents and kids. But, on the other hand, they have all those additional interactions between siblings that they wouldn't have with fewer siblings. Those are also part of their learning.
-pam
On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 12:44 PM, fundayeveryday <kristenssrr@...> wrote:Do you think it is harder to apply radical unschooling principles to a family with four young children (ages 3,6,8,10), compared to a family with less children,
Sandra Dodd
-=-Do you think it is harder .... being equally a part of what each one of them loves?-=-
What do you want us to say?
Are you fishing for us to say it can't really be done, so it's okay if you only sort of unschool?
Sandra
fundayeveryday
Really just looking to a list full of 4,000 + people with experience and helpful thoughts to see if there are other families of six with younger children that are able to use the unschooling principles successfully that are talked about here!
Kristen
On Wednesday, December 11, 2013 6:09 PM, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
-=-Do you think it is harder .... being equally a part of what each one of them loves?-=-
What do you want us to
say?
Are you fishing for us to say it can't really be done, so it's okay if you only sort of unschool?
Sandra
Greg and Kirsty Harriman
HI Kristen
we are a family of six and just started more seriously on this
radical unschooling path. We have kids aged 8,6, 4, and 1. ANY form of homeschooling, living
together for us involves significant compromises in all that you have listed
below. It’s the perennial juggle. I am feeling, after trying a few different
approaches that radical unschooling is the only way to homeschool peacefully. It seems a perfect
fit once you can “get it”. I am the first to say here that I haven’t got it. I
hope I can in time.
From: fundayeveryday
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2013 6:44 AM
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] family of six
Do
you think it is harder to apply radical unschooling principles to a family with
four young children (ages 3,6,8,10), compared to a family with less children,
because there are more choices
to provide per person, more needs to be respected and provided, more personalities into the mix- some that
may require much more patience and time to understand and respect, more
patience needed among children waiting
for a parent's presence or a spouse waiting for
another spouse's presence/time, expectations among spouses for their
relationship and parenting ideals, more listening by parents that is spread
out among each child- which means someone is usually waiting for an ear to hear
them (and we love to really hear them not just "oh yeah that's nice" "or eyes to
watch them (and we love to really watch them not just "oh yeah that's nice") or
a lap to sit on (and watch their favorite show or read their favorite book-
meanwhile someone else is waiting their turn), etc, and exploring each persons
interest- watching, listening, being equally a part of what each one of them
loves?
Thank you,
Kristen
Thank you,
Kristen
Sandra Dodd
-=- more personalities into the mix- some that may require much more patience and time to understand and respect-=-
Maybe you're thinking that you should divide your time and patience evenly into four or five or six parts, but that's not the way responding in the moment works.
-=-more patience needed among children waiting for a parent's presence or a spouse waiting for another spouse's presence/time, expectations among spouses for their relationship and parenting ideals, more listening by parents that is spread out among each child- ....-=-
Would school make that better?
If not, and if you want to be home with them, and they ARE each one of four, then they will already have some practice knowing they might need to wait a bit.
Surely you've been listening to them already for many years.
-=-and exploring each persons interest- watching, listening, being equally a part of what each one of them loves?-=-
There's the "equally."
Here's something Schuyler Waynforth wrote a while back, about dividing something "equally."
It's part of a longer piece of writing linked below. The next three paragraphs are Schuyler's words:
There are other arenas in which unschooling preceded scientific understanding of the human condition. In the arena of economic theory, unschooling is quite sophisticated. Not only does it carry at its core the understanding that a good made rare is a good made desirable, buit also understands that how to share something among people is not necessarily to break it into equal portions. In the February 2007 issue of Scientific American there is a review of a paper called “Better Ways to Cut a Cake” that was in the December issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The paper is about how dividing something equally between two people isn’t always about cutting it in half. It is about how the value of different parts of the thing may appeal to the two people in different ways. So, if I baked a carrot cake, Simon would prefer the bits that didn’t have icing on it and would be happy with way less than a half if it were the only bits that I’d remembered not to frost. On unschooling e-mail lists this argument is put forward with great frequency. You don’t have to give your children the same things, or equal amounts of something, you need to give them what they want, help them enjoy the life they want to have and not try and make them be satisfied with those goods that are equally divided between however many you have.
The exciting thing about unschooling though is that it isn’t just the person dividing the cake who gets to make the decisions about how it will be cut. Yesterday we went to a fair with some friends. While we were there Linnaea bought a pair of earrings and a stuffed toy cat. Simon didn’t buy anything. I offered him a bracelet made up of skulls and a couple of other things, but he didn’t feel any need to get something equal to the money that Linnaea spent. Robert Trivers’ probably wouldn’t have predicted that, but unschooling does. Creating a rich and varied life means that there isn’t the neediness, or the poorness of fit that can occur in a life of dividing things equally.
In our lives unschooling has also created a family where how the cake is divided is often about being able to give the best piece to someone else. Both Simon and Linnaea are intensely generous people. They take great joy in sharing their pleasure, their favorite things with others including each other. They have both sacrificed their first choice to the other, without pressure, without even having it mentioned by David or me. On a cold afternoon when we’d been out biking, Simon gave his hot chocolate to Linnaea as it was the kind she preferred. Or when Linnaea let Simon play the new video game first, even though she’d wanted it so, saying that she’d gain so much from watching him play it.
http://sandradodd.com/schuyler/stairs.html
Sandra
Maybe you're thinking that you should divide your time and patience evenly into four or five or six parts, but that's not the way responding in the moment works.
-=-more patience needed among children waiting for a parent's presence or a spouse waiting for another spouse's presence/time, expectations among spouses for their relationship and parenting ideals, more listening by parents that is spread out among each child- ....-=-
Would school make that better?
If not, and if you want to be home with them, and they ARE each one of four, then they will already have some practice knowing they might need to wait a bit.
Surely you've been listening to them already for many years.
-=-and exploring each persons interest- watching, listening, being equally a part of what each one of them loves?-=-
There's the "equally."
Here's something Schuyler Waynforth wrote a while back, about dividing something "equally."
It's part of a longer piece of writing linked below. The next three paragraphs are Schuyler's words:
There are other arenas in which unschooling preceded scientific understanding of the human condition. In the arena of economic theory, unschooling is quite sophisticated. Not only does it carry at its core the understanding that a good made rare is a good made desirable, buit also understands that how to share something among people is not necessarily to break it into equal portions. In the February 2007 issue of Scientific American there is a review of a paper called “Better Ways to Cut a Cake” that was in the December issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The paper is about how dividing something equally between two people isn’t always about cutting it in half. It is about how the value of different parts of the thing may appeal to the two people in different ways. So, if I baked a carrot cake, Simon would prefer the bits that didn’t have icing on it and would be happy with way less than a half if it were the only bits that I’d remembered not to frost. On unschooling e-mail lists this argument is put forward with great frequency. You don’t have to give your children the same things, or equal amounts of something, you need to give them what they want, help them enjoy the life they want to have and not try and make them be satisfied with those goods that are equally divided between however many you have.
The exciting thing about unschooling though is that it isn’t just the person dividing the cake who gets to make the decisions about how it will be cut. Yesterday we went to a fair with some friends. While we were there Linnaea bought a pair of earrings and a stuffed toy cat. Simon didn’t buy anything. I offered him a bracelet made up of skulls and a couple of other things, but he didn’t feel any need to get something equal to the money that Linnaea spent. Robert Trivers’ probably wouldn’t have predicted that, but unschooling does. Creating a rich and varied life means that there isn’t the neediness, or the poorness of fit that can occur in a life of dividing things equally.
In our lives unschooling has also created a family where how the cake is divided is often about being able to give the best piece to someone else. Both Simon and Linnaea are intensely generous people. They take great joy in sharing their pleasure, their favorite things with others including each other. They have both sacrificed their first choice to the other, without pressure, without even having it mentioned by David or me. On a cold afternoon when we’d been out biking, Simon gave his hot chocolate to Linnaea as it was the kind she preferred. Or when Linnaea let Simon play the new video game first, even though she’d wanted it so, saying that she’d gain so much from watching him play it.
http://sandradodd.com/schuyler/stairs.html
Sandra
Meredith Novak
To a very large extent, it depends on what your expectations are. If you expect your older kids to cheerfully pitch in and help out if you no longer require them to do so, unschooling may seem very difficult. If you expect that by being sweeter and nicer you'll never have arguments to settle between kids, unschooling may seem impossible ;) When people live together, there are things to work out. When people living together have different temperaments and different needs, things are more complicated. And they'll be more complicated no matter how you parent - rather than trying to compare your family to other unschooling families, it may be more helpful to consider the differences Within your family. How can you help all your kids have easier, sweeter, fuller lives?
Ali Zeljo
Hi Kristen,
I have four children ages 13, 10, 5, and 3. Back when I just had 2 children, I certainly had more time to devote to each child individually. But I find that there is a flow to the day that almost always happens beautifully where I can move from one child to the next without having children crying for their turn with mommy. There is a hierarchy that happens naturally where the youngest child almost always needs and wants more of my direct attention, and I typically defer to his requests first. At the end of the day, I often wish I could have had more time with my 13 year old or my 10 year old. But they are both happy kids, and right now they are SO occupied with running Minecraft Servers (13year old) and studying prankster videos (10 year old), that they often don't want to even take a break to discuss what they are doing with me when I walk in their rooms to check in. And of course there is an ebb and flow, and I always have more opportunity to interact with them as their focus pulls away a bit. On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 1:44 PM, fundayeveryday <kristenssrr@...> wrote:
Do you think it is harder to apply radical unschooling principles to a family with four young children (ages 3,6,8,10), compared to a family with less children, because there are more choices to provide per person, more needs to be respected and provided, more personalities into the mix- some that may require much more patience and time to understand and respect, more patience needed among children waiting for a parent's presence or a spouse waiting for another spouse's presence/time, expectations among spouses for their relationship and parenting ideals, more listening by parents that is spread out among each child- which means someone is usually waiting for an ear to hear them (and we love to really hear them not just "oh yeah that's nice" "or eyes to watch them (and we love to really watch them not just "oh yeah that's nice") or a lap to sit on (and watch their favorite show or read their favorite book- meanwhile someone else is waiting their turn), etc, and exploring each persons interest- watching, listening, being equally a part of what each one of them loves?
Thank you,
Kristen
Sandra Dodd
Kathy Ward has eight kids and unschooled, years back. Some of her writing is on my site. Her old site disappeared, and she has hoped to put some of that writing back up. Her husband left and things changed for her, and now she's a professor. In her early writings she was a serious Christian, and now she's Buddhist. But still, eight kids. :-)
Lori Odhner has eight kids, and was unschooling for the first many of them, when I met her in Albuquerque, but her husband was a minister and was hired by a church in California that had a small church school (when she had five children) and she ended up working in the school, and then they moved home to Pennsylvania and had twins and a severely autistic boy, and she teaches at the school where they live and the kids who aren't grown are at school. And I might have some of those details a little wrong.
So neither of those eight-kid stories went all the way to "and all eight were unschooled their whole live and the parents are still together", but it wasn't the unschooling, I'm pretty sure, in either case, that caused any upsets. I hope. :-)
Sandra
Lori Odhner has eight kids, and was unschooling for the first many of them, when I met her in Albuquerque, but her husband was a minister and was hired by a church in California that had a small church school (when she had five children) and she ended up working in the school, and then they moved home to Pennsylvania and had twins and a severely autistic boy, and she teaches at the school where they live and the kids who aren't grown are at school. And I might have some of those details a little wrong.
So neither of those eight-kid stories went all the way to "and all eight were unschooled their whole live and the parents are still together", but it wasn't the unschooling, I'm pretty sure, in either case, that caused any upsets. I hope. :-)
Sandra
Joyce Fetteroll
On Dec 11, 2013, at 7:05 PM, fundayeveryday <kristenssrr@...> wrote:
Really just looking to a list full of 4,000 + people with experience and helpful thoughts to see if there are other families of six with younger children that are able to use the unschooling principles successfully that are talked about here!
The more kids an unschooling family has the less time they have to respond to questions about their unschooling ;-)
It's perfectly natural to want reassurance from others that what you want to do is possible. And when a support group says, "Yes, you can!" you get a big happy infusion of confidence and inspiration.
But then what? Will you know how? Confidence is good when the task is simple and you just need to keep at it to figure it out. Like riding a bike.
Did you know there's now a line to get to the peak of Mt. Everest? They aren't there because Edmund Hillary succeeded. In fact Hillary's success caused a lot of people to die! They're there because they found out what allowed him and others to succeed and what caused others to fail.
What helps *anyone* succeed is not others succeeding or lots of "You can do it!"s but being able to dig into what's not working smoothly and then thoughtfully trying out a variety of solutions.
So look at what you wrote not as a list of potentially insurmountable obstacles that will prevent anyone from succeeding. Obstacles are only insurmountable until someone's determined not to let them be obstacles.
Joyce
Karen
>>>>>exploring each persons interest- watching, listening, being equally a part of what each one of them loves?<<<<<I was at a birthday party not too long ago. It was cake time, and the dad asked "Who wants cake?" A chorus of enthusiastic yeses followed. Hidden in those yeses were some clues too. One little girl screamed her yes. She *really* wanted cake. Another child looked at the cake in a way that seemed to be evaluating whether it would be a flavour he really liked. My son said he only wanted a small piece. I didn't actually want any, but I wanted to participate in the celebration, so a very small piece would have been perfect.
After we all sang Happy Birthday, the dad counted heads and cut the cake into that many evenly sized slices. I thought that was a good idea, except the slice I received was a bit too big for me. Ethan's too. The one boy decided he didn't care for that flavour of cake, and barely ate any. The little girl who screamed her yes gobbled hers up and wanted more. She was very unhappy there wasn't more. I offered the rest of mine.
I took what I had learned from observing that dynamic, and at Ethan's birthday recently, when I asked "Who wants cake?" I paid attention to the clues in their responses. One girl had been hovering around the cake since she arrived to our house. I would have had to be blind not to know that she wanted a good sized slice. One boy wasn't sure if he liked chocolate cake. One parent didn't want any.
When the plates were aimed in my direction, I looked at each child and asked "How big? This big?" The responses ranged from "yes, that big", to "a bit more", to "very thin"...and then "a wee bit more". There was some left over to share again later. Those second pieces needed to be much thinner so that everyone got another taste. The girl who had been eyeing the cake since she arrived got to lick the platter. She seemed very satisfied with that. Ethan wanted more too. I told him I would bake another for him the following day. Next year I might make two cakes.
That's just about birthday cakes, but I think it can apply to everyday negotiations as well. Understand what you have to offer. Listen to the clues your children are giving you. Allow those clues to influence how you navigate everyone's needs. It may not always work out perfectly. Someone may be left wanting more. Make it up when you can. Most importantly, show each individual child that you care about what they need, and help them understand and trust that you will do your best to take care of those needs in the context of your full and rich family life.
Karen.
Sandra Dodd
When cutting cakes I've tried to be accommodating of wishes for decorations or edges, for more frosting. My kids, having never wanted more cake than they had, were always happy with any old inside piece.
When we got a cake for one of the Always Learning Live events, I got one bigger than we "needed." Because what I needed was abundance and leftovers. It took way into the next day for the cake to be gone, and that was fine.
When "need" is treated skimpily, it remains an unsatisfied need.
Sandra
When we got a cake for one of the Always Learning Live events, I got one bigger than we "needed." Because what I needed was abundance and leftovers. It took way into the next day for the cake to be gone, and that was fine.
When "need" is treated skimpily, it remains an unsatisfied need.
Sandra
BRIAN POLIKOWSKY
<<<<<When the plates were aimed in my direction, I looked at each child and asked "How big? This big?" The responses ranged from "yes, that big", to "a bit more", to "very thin"...and then "a wee bit more".>>>>
I have to confess that I have never thought about it like Karen did but have always done that when cutting cakes and serving kids.
I guess I was just doing it like I would if I was cutting cake for my girlfriends! I guess I give the kids the same considerations I give the adults.
I have notice many that don;t They don;t stop and consider the kids the same way they would an adult.
I really liked all Karen wrote. Thanks for even more food for thought and being so observant.
Alex Polikowsky
BRIAN POLIKOWSKY
Yes Sandra to all your cake story!
I love to make people happy, specially kids. I remember my grandmother did accommodate everyone's preferences when serving food,
even the kids! That is pretty surprising for her generation!
So I ask people what they like best, kids are people, so I ask them too. Unless I know Gigi likes the brownies with more edges and Daniel likes the center and no edges and I give it to them :)
Alex Polikowsky
So I ask people what they like best, kids are people, so I ask them too. Unless I know Gigi likes the brownies with more edges and Daniel likes the center and no edges and I give it to them :)
Alex Polikowsky