Need Input On How to View Child's (Lack of) Interests in a Positive Way
lmadw@...
I'm fairly new here, but not new to un-schooling, although I think I need some brushing up on how to chill out!
My husband and I are concerned that our 16 y.o. daughter is not showing interest in anything other than visiting with neighbors and 'working' (hanging out) with an adult friend of ours who is a handyman/gardener. The draw for her is not the work (she doesn't even get paid, except a meal here and there) but being away from us and home and getting to talk to lots of people. Her writing and math skills are abysmal; her compassion and social skills are out of this world. She's been diagnosed with ADHD and has all of the classic symptoms. I guess we feel we need someone to help point out any positives amidst all of the negatives we're pounding ourselves with. We worry that she won't ever feel the need to learn what will be needed to make it on her own.
I hope this fits the parameters of what we should be talking about here.
Thank you!
Mitzi
My husband and I are concerned that our 16 y.o. daughter is not showing interest in anything other than visiting with neighbors and 'working' (hanging out) with an adult friend of ours who is a handyman/gardener. The draw for her is not the work (she doesn't even get paid, except a meal here and there) but being away from us and home and getting to talk to lots of people. Her writing and math skills are abysmal; her compassion and social skills are out of this world. She's been diagnosed with ADHD and has all of the classic symptoms. I guess we feel we need someone to help point out any positives amidst all of the negatives we're pounding ourselves with. We worry that she won't ever feel the need to learn what will be needed to make it on her own.
I hope this fits the parameters of what we should be talking about here.
Thank you!
Mitzi
Sandra Dodd
-=-I guess we feel we need someone to help point out any positives amidst all of the negatives we're pounding ourselves with. We worry that she won't ever feel the need to learn what will be needed to make it on her own.-=-
Let us know how long you’ve been unschooling, and we can help better.
If she started as a teen, this might apply:
http://sandradodd.com/later
Sandra
Let us know how long you’ve been unschooling, and we can help better.
If she started as a teen, this might apply:
http://sandradodd.com/later
Sandra
Sarah Thompson
Could you elaborate on what is feeling so negative to you? What I saw in your post was a teen focusing her energy on the things she is passionate about and in the areas where she shines.
Sarah
Sam
Just to offer the perspective that she sounds awesome, how wonderful she has the confidence to go out in the world on her own and work and meet people.
I'd be focussing on the positives rather than the negatives! Support her in her interests and work on your relationship with her, rather than worrying and counting reasons to Not be ok.
Perhaps look at her as an individual person as well, just as herself, with her own unique qualities. rather than looking at a label of ADHD.
Sam
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
On 26 Jan 2017, at 00:33, lmadw@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm fairly new here, but not new to un-schooling, although I think I need some brushing up on how to chill out!
My husband and I are concerned that our 16 y.o. daughter is not showing interest in anything other than visiting with neighbors and 'working' (hanging out) with an adult friend of ours who is a handyman/gardener. The draw for her is not the work (she doesn't even get paid, except a meal here and there) but being away from us and home and getting to talk to lots of people. Her writing and math skills are abysmal; her compassion and social skills are out of this world. She's been diagnosed with ADHD and has all of the classic symptoms. I guess we feel we need someone to help point out any positives amidst all of the negatives we're pounding ourselves with. We worry that she won't ever feel the need to learn what will be needed to make it on her own.
I hope this fits the parameters of what we should be talking about here.
Thank you!
Mitzi
Joyce Fetteroll
*** My husband and I are concerned that our 16 y.o. daughter is not showing interest in anything other than visiting ***
Being social is a big part of the teen years. This is totally typical regardless of whether she is ADHD or not.
While this may not be her life-long interest, it would clearly be valuable in many fields. All the service industries, counseling, charity work, teaching draw on great people skills and most are light on math.
*** We worry that she won't ever feel the need to learn what will be needed to make it on her own. ***
Clearly other skills *aren’t* necessary right now. What is necessary to her current life is social skills and getting along with people. And that’s what she’s focusing on, isn’t she? So why do you fear that when she needs other skills that she’d avoid learning them?
Why *should* she learn what she doesn’t yet need? The foundation of unschooling is learning how to learn. Kids learn what they need as they need it. Through experience they’ve grown the confidence that they can learn what they need and don’t need knowledge before they need it.
Many (schooled) adults are filled with angst when faced with new situations. They feel they need to know a lot before they can try. But unschooled kids know that every new situation involves a period of learning. Throughout their lives every new interest, every new video game has involved a period of using what they know to learn what they need to know. And that’s how they grow the knowledge they need. To them that’s normal and expected.
At 16 your daughter seems on the cusp of adulthood. But that’s school thinking. She’s 6 years away from the age most college graduates get their first job. Think back 6 years. What was your daughter like 6 years ago? She was 10. How far from who she is today did she seem then? Just because your daughter has a body that’s close to adult doesn’t mean her brain doesn’t have 6 more years of profound development.
I posted this about my son Danny’s (though at the time Kathryn's) drawing development over the years. He spent a big huge chunk of his childhood drawing. That would suggest he’d be masterful by 16. Yet his drawings still lacked maturity. (Admittedly he focused on an anime style, but artistically there’s still great room for growth.)
You can see a typical example at the link and a typical example just 4 years later.
https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-so-bad-at-everything/answer/Joyce-Fetteroll
The point is the big difference isn’t from practice. (He was drawing for *hours*.) It’s from huge changes that happen in the brain between 16 and 20.
Your daughter is 16, doing 16 year old things. At 20 and 22 she will be a different person. Just as my son drew like a 16 year old when he was 16. And when he was 20 he drew like a 20 year old. Those 4 years made a big difference.
Joyce
Being social is a big part of the teen years. This is totally typical regardless of whether she is ADHD or not.
While this may not be her life-long interest, it would clearly be valuable in many fields. All the service industries, counseling, charity work, teaching draw on great people skills and most are light on math.
*** We worry that she won't ever feel the need to learn what will be needed to make it on her own. ***
Clearly other skills *aren’t* necessary right now. What is necessary to her current life is social skills and getting along with people. And that’s what she’s focusing on, isn’t she? So why do you fear that when she needs other skills that she’d avoid learning them?
Why *should* she learn what she doesn’t yet need? The foundation of unschooling is learning how to learn. Kids learn what they need as they need it. Through experience they’ve grown the confidence that they can learn what they need and don’t need knowledge before they need it.
Many (schooled) adults are filled with angst when faced with new situations. They feel they need to know a lot before they can try. But unschooled kids know that every new situation involves a period of learning. Throughout their lives every new interest, every new video game has involved a period of using what they know to learn what they need to know. And that’s how they grow the knowledge they need. To them that’s normal and expected.
At 16 your daughter seems on the cusp of adulthood. But that’s school thinking. She’s 6 years away from the age most college graduates get their first job. Think back 6 years. What was your daughter like 6 years ago? She was 10. How far from who she is today did she seem then? Just because your daughter has a body that’s close to adult doesn’t mean her brain doesn’t have 6 more years of profound development.
I posted this about my son Danny’s (though at the time Kathryn's) drawing development over the years. He spent a big huge chunk of his childhood drawing. That would suggest he’d be masterful by 16. Yet his drawings still lacked maturity. (Admittedly he focused on an anime style, but artistically there’s still great room for growth.)
You can see a typical example at the link and a typical example just 4 years later.
https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-so-bad-at-everything/answer/Joyce-Fetteroll
The point is the big difference isn’t from practice. (He was drawing for *hours*.) It’s from huge changes that happen in the brain between 16 and 20.
Your daughter is 16, doing 16 year old things. At 20 and 22 she will be a different person. Just as my son drew like a 16 year old when he was 16. And when he was 20 he drew like a 20 year old. Those 4 years made a big difference.
Joyce
Shannon Stoltz
Some food for thought: Unschooling Teens: “All He/She Wants to Do
Is…
http://www.texasunschoolers.com/2016/unschooling-teens-heshe-wants
Is…
http://www.texasunschoolers.com/2016/unschooling-teens-heshe-wants
lmadw@...
Our move to unschooling came slowly. Both my girls went to public school until they were in 2nd and 3rd grade, respectively. Then we did one year of online public school (ugh) and then for 4 years we created our own 'curriculum'. We're in our second year of unschooling (they're in 9th & 10th 'grade'). So, they did come late to the whole process. Thank you for the link; I'm heading over there to read it.
In response to the person who asked about the negatives... I guess what we see as negative is her lack of wanting to explore new ideas, projects, etc. It's easy for us to feel our younger daughter will be okay - she is constantly researching topics online, asking questions, reading, drawing and painting, caring for her many animals, following current events.
Thanks for the input.
Mitzi
In response to the person who asked about the negatives... I guess what we see as negative is her lack of wanting to explore new ideas, projects, etc. It's easy for us to feel our younger daughter will be okay - she is constantly researching topics online, asking questions, reading, drawing and painting, caring for her many animals, following current events.
Thanks for the input.
Mitzi
robin.bentley@...
It seems to me that you have expectations of what your daughter *should* be doing. You seem to think that projects and research etc. are the only meaningful learning experiences. That's obviously not the case for your eldest.
She had 4 years of school, 4 years of homeschool - maybe she's done with what you think she ought to be doing.
For kids, it can take longer to deschool from homeschooling. At least when kids are in public school, they have home to retreat to. Even if parents don't think they're pressuring their kids when they're homeschooling, there are still expectations and no place for a kid to relax.
I think you have not deschooled enough, either, if you can't see the learning in what she's doing. Learning is everywhere. Learning is in what a person loves.
It would be better to support your daughter in her explorations. If she's like most kids, she knows you are less approving of her than her sister. If you honestly give her your attention, perhaps you'll hear about what she knows and what she's doing. Maybe offer her some gardening tools if she wants to help that friend, or resources about landscaping or insects. But do that with *no expectations* that she will take them.
As an unschooling friend once said to me "Comparisons are odious." See her for her strengths, not her weaknesses. Life's necessary skills can be learned as needed. I did that, myself, 40 years ago. My daughter is doing that now, at 21. She did not care about them at 16.
Robin B.
Sandra Dodd
-=-I think you have not deschooled enough, either, if you can't see the learning in what she's doing. Learning is everywhere. Learning is in what a person loves. -=-
http://sandradodd.com/deschooling
I hope your younger daughter will benefit from your unschooling. The older one will be in her late teens by the time one-month-per-year-of-school goes by. And that would be the estimate for someone who is consciously, actively trying to become a good unschoolers.
Deschooling can’t be bypassed. And at this point it’s not just the years each parent was in school, but add each year the older child ws in school, and then each year of schoolishness at home. You’re probably at least two years from the possibility of truly relaxing into a full understanding of unschooling.
You could start now, though. Beginning deschoolers do better than those who think they don’t need to deschool.
Sandra
http://sandradodd.com/deschooling
I hope your younger daughter will benefit from your unschooling. The older one will be in her late teens by the time one-month-per-year-of-school goes by. And that would be the estimate for someone who is consciously, actively trying to become a good unschoolers.
Deschooling can’t be bypassed. And at this point it’s not just the years each parent was in school, but add each year the older child ws in school, and then each year of schoolishness at home. You’re probably at least two years from the possibility of truly relaxing into a full understanding of unschooling.
You could start now, though. Beginning deschoolers do better than those who think they don’t need to deschool.
Sandra
plaidpanties666@...
<<our 16 y.o. daughter is not showing interest in anything other than visiting with neighbors and 'working' (hanging out) with an adult friend of ours who is a handyman/gardener. The draw for her is not the work (she doesn't even get paid, except a meal here and there) but being away from us and home and getting to talk to lots of people. >>
This sounds like my stepson in his teen years. It was a bit of an adjustment in thinking for me and my partner, because neither of us are really social learners - we're both the sort who jump into the middle of projects and learn that way. But Ray was always social, and especially as a teen that meant he spent a lot of time hanging around people he liked, who were doing things that interested him, and talking. And even though we'd been unschooling for awhile, we needed to kind of check our assumptions about learning. Ray wasn't doing what we did, but he was obviously getting something out of it.
One of the things he was getting out of it was connections - and part of the deschooling I needed to do was realizing I had this old tape in my head saying "don't share your answers" and basically devaluing socializing as both separate from, and less important than learning. I see some of that in the OP - she's talking and Not Working. And it's worth taking a big step back from that and digging into what you really think about how work and productivity relate to things like personal worth.
In the longer run, I was able to see that one thing Ray got out of hanging around while people were working was a sense of a whole process of how people solved problems - not just the details of individual projects, but how other people thought about problem solving and figuring stuff out. And that was pretty cool - it had never occurred to me that I could watch people that way because I tend to just dive in. So I learned something for myself by stepping back and watching him learn.
This sounds like my stepson in his teen years. It was a bit of an adjustment in thinking for me and my partner, because neither of us are really social learners - we're both the sort who jump into the middle of projects and learn that way. But Ray was always social, and especially as a teen that meant he spent a lot of time hanging around people he liked, who were doing things that interested him, and talking. And even though we'd been unschooling for awhile, we needed to kind of check our assumptions about learning. Ray wasn't doing what we did, but he was obviously getting something out of it.
One of the things he was getting out of it was connections - and part of the deschooling I needed to do was realizing I had this old tape in my head saying "don't share your answers" and basically devaluing socializing as both separate from, and less important than learning. I see some of that in the OP - she's talking and Not Working. And it's worth taking a big step back from that and digging into what you really think about how work and productivity relate to things like personal worth.
In the longer run, I was able to see that one thing Ray got out of hanging around while people were working was a sense of a whole process of how people solved problems - not just the details of individual projects, but how other people thought about problem solving and figuring stuff out. And that was pretty cool - it had never occurred to me that I could watch people that way because I tend to just dive in. So I learned something for myself by stepping back and watching him learn.
Sandra Dodd
-=- and basically devaluing socializing as both separate from, and less important than learning-=-
Holly, my youngest, is 25. She had her first job at 15, I think, in a flower shop, and the same year or the next in a clothing/skate-board/snow-boarding shop.
Yesterday she sent me photos of flowers she arranged, where she’s working now.
Holly has had short jobs, mostly, and has spent her money on travel, where she met people, hung out, explored, and talked. For money, over the years, she has done art (business cards, ads—computer graphics which she learned by playing around with KidPix and MySpace and doing things for fun), buying (art, for a shop), has worked in restaurants, breweries, as a janitor, at Walgreen’s (a pharmacy/late-night-convenience store with liquor) and now at a place that’s hard to describe—they do retreats, and serve some meals, she does cave tours, paperwork, bookkeeping, correspondence, reception (phone and in person).
Her only training or certification is that she has a liquor server’s license for New Mexico. She really understands the laws and is hard-nosed about it, so places she has worked have sent her to deal with problem buyers or problem drinkers, because she’s fine with saying, “No, can’t, sorry, the law says…”
I can’t think of things that she did that didn’t contribute to what she knows and does now. And the things she is learning doing this (and sharing houses, or sub-leasing, or renting little houses in little towns) is giving her an interest in what landlords can and could and must do for tenants.
Most of what she knows she has learned from conversations. Most of the jobs she has had came from contacts. The places she stayed when she travelled came from her socializing (or mine).
Sandra
Holly, my youngest, is 25. She had her first job at 15, I think, in a flower shop, and the same year or the next in a clothing/skate-board/snow-boarding shop.
Yesterday she sent me photos of flowers she arranged, where she’s working now.
Holly has had short jobs, mostly, and has spent her money on travel, where she met people, hung out, explored, and talked. For money, over the years, she has done art (business cards, ads—computer graphics which she learned by playing around with KidPix and MySpace and doing things for fun), buying (art, for a shop), has worked in restaurants, breweries, as a janitor, at Walgreen’s (a pharmacy/late-night-convenience store with liquor) and now at a place that’s hard to describe—they do retreats, and serve some meals, she does cave tours, paperwork, bookkeeping, correspondence, reception (phone and in person).
Her only training or certification is that she has a liquor server’s license for New Mexico. She really understands the laws and is hard-nosed about it, so places she has worked have sent her to deal with problem buyers or problem drinkers, because she’s fine with saying, “No, can’t, sorry, the law says…”
I can’t think of things that she did that didn’t contribute to what she knows and does now. And the things she is learning doing this (and sharing houses, or sub-leasing, or renting little houses in little towns) is giving her an interest in what landlords can and could and must do for tenants.
Most of what she knows she has learned from conversations. Most of the jobs she has had came from contacts. The places she stayed when she travelled came from her socializing (or mine).
Sandra