anita_loomis@...

Last night my daughter Yumi (9) was tired and very worried about life. She asked me “Mom, do you think I am learning all the stuff I will need to know when I’m an adult?”  I could tell there was a lot more going on underneath the question, so I walked gently in the conversation.  I said “I see you learning so much all the time.” And mentioned some of the things that she loves to do,  all of which she is really good at.  She kept looking for a yes or a no though, so I told her “Yes, I do think you are learning things that you will use as an adult and that if there is something you find you need you will learn it when you need it.”  She said she did not think so and started to cry and say that all her friends can do stuff that she can’t.  I knew this was about reading, again.

She is not yet reading and is very frustrated by it. I know she will read.  I have read and re-read so much about unschoolers learning to read that I really have no doubt. But she doesn’t feel that way.  In the two unschooling families that we’ve personally known, the children started reading at nine or ten.  She knows this but isn’t feeling like it is happening for her.  And she is right! It isn’t happening for her yet. I have shared with her that people learn to read at all different ages.  I try to keep life sparkly and interesting in ways that don’t rely on reading. She’s amazing at so many things but is comparing herself to friends who are in school or being homeschooled with mom as the teacher. They all read (to some degree or other;).

She said she wants to try going to school.   If she wants to give it a go,  I will learn ways to support her but there are a lot of challenges to it that I think might ultimately make her feel worse about herself than better.  She wants to go to the public school down the street, not an alternative school, not online “learn to read” programs, not homeschool coops.  Chances are pretty good that she will get labeled and interventioned and special needed and individualized education planned.  Many of you know the public school drill. I feel like helping her go to school is not a very loving thing to do. 

If this has come up in your unschooling life, I would appreciate hearing how you approached it or turned it on its head or transformed it into something wonderful.  I feel like if I say “I’ll help you and ...you’ll have to get up early, see a doctor, get shots, use the school bathroom, eat and speak only at certain times, etc.” that it will seem like I am not actually helping her. 

By the way, I am aware that she might wake up this morning, well-rested and have no interest in this idea!  Still I think it will continue to pop up so I am aiming for some pro-active learning on my part.


Thanks,

Anita


Sandra Dodd

-=-Last night my daughter Yumi (9) was tired and very worried about life. She asked me “Mom, do you think I am learning all the stuff I will need to know when I’m an adult?”-=-

I would have said “Nobody does that. No one KNOWS what an adult will need to know.”

Also, these days, if people want to know how to do something, they go to YouTube. I fixed my vacuum cleaner just a couple of weeks ago. :-) I don’t “know how to fix a vacuum cleaner,” and it’s a brand I had never owned, but some guy who DOES know how was kind enough to have videotaped himself explaining it!

And I wouldn’t have needed to know how to read, either.

Just the other day I saw a list of things schools should be teaching, and one was using a checkbook. Really? Using a debit card would be more useful to discuss. The realities of credit cards would be more useful. My kids all have checking accounts, but very rarely “write a check.” Even to deposit checks, they eiter have direct deposit or take a picture of the check and message that over to the bank. Holly has used real paper banking more than her brothers have. But it’s more of an archaic skill than preparation for the future.

There are LOTS of youtube videos on checkwriting, I see. :-)

Stories like those might possibly distract her—about things that people need to know how to do now that teachers don’t even know, and if the teachers went to university to “learn to teach” (which only barely happens anyway), they might have done so as long ago as the 1970s, when there were no home computers, or the 1980s, before there was public internet.

I would keep her distracted and busy instead, even if you need to go to Disneyland (or the equivalent, somewhere).

Some families have had luck with reminders like “How nice to be here when it’s not crowded! If you were in school, we couldn’t do this."

If she goes to school without reading, they will not be kind—not the teachers, and not the kids. The fact that many of the kids can’t read either wouldn’t save her and they would blame homeschooling.

I remember vividly being nine, and about reading classes and lessons. I taught kids who were 12, later, who couldn’t read—barely soundng out words with great difficulty, and very sad about it.

When she does learn to read, though, if she still wants to go to school, that would be different.

It’s unfortunate that school is set up as it is. Kids who can read can “win” that game. And it IS a game set up to have losers, and lots of them. The only way grading works is on a skewed bell curve with as many F's and A’s, but more B’s than D’s. It doesn’t matter if they disguise the grading with other names, letters or numbers, the “high scores” can only have competitive validity if there are low scores.

Make your unschooling more like Disneyland, though. Go out to lunch (not fast food, but sit-down). Go to movies. Maybe eat popcorn before you go, or on the way, so the smell (at that shocking price) won’t be so alluring. I do that every time—popcorn innoculation. Saves tons of money. :-) If she has something to look forward to each night, if her life is bright and sparkly, everything will be better for all of you.

Sandra

Rinelle

>> Last night my daughter Yumi (9) was tired and very worried about life. She asked me “Mom, do you think I am learning all the stuff I will need to know when I’m an adult?”  I could tell there was a lot more going on underneath the question, so I walked gently in the conversation.  I said “I see you learning so much all the time.” And mentioned some of the things that she loves to do,  all of which she is really good at.  She kept looking for a yes or a no though, so I told her “Yes, I do think you are learning things that you will use as an adult and that if there is something you find you need you will learn it when you need it.”  She said she did not think so and started to cry and say that all her friends can do stuff that she can’t.  I knew this was about reading, again. >>

Might be a bit much for a 9 year old, but I’d talk about the fact that the world is going to be different when she’s an adult, and none of us can guess exactly what skills she will need. That the best skill she can have is knowing how to learn what she needs/wants without school. Find some skills you learned as an adult that they either didn’t teach in school, or that they didn’t know would be necessary!

I’d also mention that there are adults out there who don’t know how to read, who didn’t learn in school, and they manage. Show her some ways to do the things she wants to do without reading. My daughter used the voice recognition on her ipad to search a lot before she could type. She will still use it to ask google when she can’t spell a word. (And I think back to being told ‘look it up in the dictionary’ as a child, and remembering wondering how I was supposed to do that when I couldn’t spell it!)

Find audio books, put subtitles on on movies. Show her how an tablet/phone/computer/ereader will read aloud highlighted text if she needs to know it.

And I’d be considering that some of the interest may be about social experiences. My daughter wanted to try school at around 7 because she thought it would be friends playing together all day. If a lot of your daughters friends are at school all day, she may be missing them. I’d be looking for other friends who aren’t at school, and who aren’t talking about school all the time.

Tamara

Sandra Dodd

-=- My daughter used the voice recognition on her ipad to search a lot before she could type. She will still use it to ask google when she can’t spell a word. (And I think back to being told ‘look it up in the dictionary’ as a child, and remembering wondering how I was supposed to do that when I couldn’t spell it!)-=-

When Holly was young she had a little tool like a calculator, but for words.
Now, though, if you have anything like Siri, you can ask “How do you spell…..” and it will speak and show you.

That’s way more fun than “look it up” which used to make lots of kids even more afraid of words and of spelling.

Here’s something short I wrote in 1992, before there was much internet, way before Siri and her cousins. It’s outdated now, which is good! Unschooling must be much easier as tme goes on.

http://sandradodd.com/aradicalthought

Sandra