cherie.gela@...

My 10 year old son likes to climb trees, and play ROBLox video games.  I take him and his twin brother to museum homeschool trips and he always wanders away and says it is boring.  Sometimes he participates in the art classes we sign up for.  I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day.. I don't mind the gaming, I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?

Sandra@...

-=- he always wanders away and says it is boring. -=-

That's communication you shouldn't ignore. 
If his brother likes it better, maybe he could go with one of the other families, and the one who isn't having fun could stay home.

The great thing about writing is that unconscious thoughts can come out and be seen.

-=-  I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day.. I don't mind the gaming,-=-

Apparently you do.  
To use "hunched over his ipad" is to use a phrase you've heard others say.  Maybe someone said, of you, years ago, that you were spending hours hunched over something.  Drawing or books?  Some hobbie?  A computer?

When you use someone else's phrase, it's good to think back and clear out.  It's a good deschooling opportunity.  

http://sandradodd.com/phrases.html has examples of such things.  Up top, there, Deb Lewis used them all in an intro, and they're links, or you can just go through.  "hours hunched over" isn't in there, but it could be.

-=- I honestly can't let him -=-

You're powerless?
Afraid?
Unsure?

You could choose to look at it differently.  Please read about unschooling families' experiences with video games, and the changes in their thinking.  There are many pages.  

Could other readers here tell any specific Roblox stories?  

-=-I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?-=-

He seems to be communicating that he doesn't like group activities, and wants to have more time playing his game(s).  It won't last forever.  Maybe you can figure him out by moving toward where he is instead of trying to pull him away from there, for a while.

Roblox is mentioned here: 
and that page might help.

There are links there to other things about "screentime" concerns, and video games. 

Don't make him feel bad for what he likes.  That's the most important thing.

Sandra




lucy.web

What activities does he like to do on Roblox?  

Roblox encompasses *lots* of different games .... making pizza; navigating obstacle courses; avoiding natural disasters; chasing zombies (those are all my son’s current favourites).   There might be corresponding activities that your son might like to try, such as cooking or paint-balling, perhaps?  Or parkour, or go-karting?    Or one of those places where he can do extreme tree climbing and whizz down zip lines?

He might like to have a go at making his own Roblox game?   He might like to play Roblox with other unschooling kids, who you could perhaps visit at some point?   

It sounds like gaming is his thing, for now, rather than group trips to museums.  I can definitely relate to that :)   Maybe if you used his interest as a starting point then you might find some activities you can all enjoy together?

Lucy

On 28 Sep 2019, at 02:06, cherie.gela@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:

 

My 10 year old son likes to climb trees, and play ROBLox video games.  I take him and his twin brother to museum homeschool trips and he always wanders away and says it is boring.  Sometimes he participates in the art classes we sign up for.  I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day.. I don't mind the gaming, I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?

Sandra@...

-=-help inspire child-=-

This group is set up to help inspire the mom. :-)
Computer use is not just one thing (unless he only plays Roblox).  Below is something an unschooler wrote.
Don't discourage what can lead to things like these.




Roxana Sorooshian wrote: 


I read a lot on a Nook, the nook app on my iphone, and as PDFs or text files on my laptop. Because I'm using a screen to access those books, they get put into the same category as all other "screen" uses but wouldn't if I was reading these books in traditional print format? (I'm reading Anna Karenina right now on my nook, Dracula on my phone app, and some Guy de Maupassant short stories on my laptop.)


I spend a lot of time writing, fiction (nanowrimo though I didn't win this year), papers for grad school, blog posts, conversations with friends—but if I was handwriting these, they wouldn't "count" as screen time.


I play a lot of games, on my phone as well as my laptop, and these use different kinds and levels of brain power—today I had a really long bus ride back to norcal, so I played a lot of short, easy, time management and puzzle games on my phone while listening to an audiobook of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Two REALLY different uses of screens. 


I watch a lot of movies and TV on my laptop and phone, because it's a lot easier than the little TV I share with all my roommates in our communal living room. Today I watched Shakespeare's Henry IV, parts 1 and 2. Then I watched a few episodes of the Food Network's Chopped. Do these get lumped into the same category even as each other—or the same category as writing my paper on Stalinist-era vs. post-Stalinist productions of Hamlet—or as working on the fantasy novel I started for NaNoWriMo—or as playing social games on Facebook or word puzzles with my mom several hours away from me—or Skyping with my best friend who is in the UK this year—or as reading Anna Karenina (and then skyping at the aforementioned friend to complain about it)? 


If I was watching a live production of Henry IV, that would be cultural, artistic, educational. Because it's on a screen, it becomes screen time? (Trust me, if I was lucky enough to get to see this mindblowingly talented cast do the play live, it would be a really expensive ticket. And it would lack the movie-specific elements like cinematography and a beautiful score that only screen-time movies/tv provide.) If I was reading a printed copy of Anna Karenina, Dracula, or The Scarlet Pimpernel, those are considered classics and worth my time—again, educational and cultured. (Although I could just as easily have been reading the Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and a Tad Williams fantasy novel this week.) If I was playing boggle in person with my mom, that's allowed to be fine, bonding time, and fun, but playing the phone app with each other means we can do it on our schedule, over the course of several days, and with half a state between us. And none of these fun and voluntary activities should be lumped in together with the hours I've spent this week working on grad school papers, just because I prefer NOT to write 70+ pages by hand in this day and age (and, wait, I'm not allowed to turn in handwritten papers anyway, cause what professor would possibly want to read that). 


Playing The Sims does not equal watching the newest episode of Scandal does not equal drafting my thesis proposal on the musicals of Sondheim & Prince does not equal relaxing to Bejeweled does not equal reading the blog Feminist Frequency does not equal gleefully searching for news and fan theories on the next season of Sherlock does not equal reading a PDF version of Anna Karenina does not equal doing the social media marketing work I do for a friend's restaurant does not equal researching 18th century English joke books for a play I worked on recently does not equal writing this way, way too long comment. But I do all of those on a screen—even on the same screen, since I use my laptop for all of those things—so they all get called "screen time" and dismissed as a guilty pleasure and a waste of my time at best—at worst, as something actually rotting my brain and doing some kind of damage to me while taking away from time and energy that should be spent doing Real Stuff. Like, I suppose, seeing Shakespeare plays, working, discussing feminism, playing games with my family, reading classic novels, listening to music... 


I have an idea—let's call it all 'eyeball time'. Anything you use your eyes for—reading, painting, visiting a museum or an arboretum or the zoo, playing chess, watching a ballet or opera or play, playing any kind of sport, playing any musical instrument with written sheet music—that's all eyeball time, and it's taking away from time you could and should be spending listening, feeling, tasting, smelling. You're ruining your eyesight staring at the text in that book, or the colors and lines on that painting, or the fish in the aquarium! You only get three hours eyeball time per day, and that's generous. It doesn't matter what you're looking AT, or using your vision for —it's all through the same medium, your eyes, so it's all the same, and it should be limited.


Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few more chapters of the Scarlet Pimpernel, another episode of The Colbert Report, a few more rounds of Scramble With Friends, and several more pages of grad papers to fill my screen time with.

I have it saved at http://sandradodd.com/screentime/roxana.html
A bit more from that day: 
Sandra Dodd: 

And if you go to a play instead of watching a video of a play, you get no facial close-ups, and it takes four or five hours to see, by the time you get dressed, get there, park, wait, get out through the crowd and get home, and THAT is if you live very near the theatre. I grew up in a town 90 miles from live theatre, and going to a play was an all-day or overnight trip.

Roxana Sorooshian: 


About live vs filmed shows-- that, too! Plus the fact that you can't watch and rewatch- and can't view performers who are dead- or see the same actors at radically different ages (in my Shakespeare production class a few weeks ago, we went from a young Olivier in Henry V to a much older Olivier as King Lear...just switching video tapes. If I had the power to do that in live theatre, I would probably be using that power to conquer the world or something instead.)


Michelle Marr

About watching it live or on television...

When my daughter was tiny, I got raked over the coals in an online discussion about television and limits. (My parents had owned an appliance store so I grew up with all of the screen time and gadgets possible -- or what there was in the late 70s early 80s. Except for one stupid rule about "computers aren't for games" and strict bedtimes we didn't have many restrictions. I've never seen screen time as a bogeyman.)  

One mom was insisting that if children couldn't see it in real life they didn't need to see it at all.. That was in response to a comment I'd made about a ballet my daughter had watched on PBS. Not long after that, they had real live ballerinas at the library's weekly storytime. Up close, you could see that their costumes were worn. The few steps they did in the little room at the library weren't that exciting, I'm sure due to the lack of space and the logistics of spinning around in a room full of preschoolers. I know less than nothing about ballet, but I'm guessing it's meant to be seen from the audience with an appropriate stage and lots of room for the dancers to move. What I do know is that my daughter was more excited about the televised performance than what she saw at storytime. (I'm sure a child who'd already been exposed to lots of ballet and wanted to be a dancer would be more excited by the chance to talk to a ballerina and see her costume and shoes up close.) 

Another wek, the library had firefighters who put on all of their gear and the breathing apparatus so that the kids could see and hear it all and ask questions and touch things. That experience was absolutely better in person, although  a fireman on Youtube or television would be better than no fireman at all.   Best would be real life firemen and recordings of firemen....for a kid who's interested in that in the first place. 

Michelle 

Michelle Marr

Is it the museums he doesn't like, or going with the homeschooling group?  Over the years, most of my kids decided that they didn't like homeschooling activities. (To be fair, I don't think we managed to find a group that was a good fit for us and I eventually stopped looking. There's an event my youngest is tentatively interested in, so things may be different for him.) We go to museums and lectures at the library, we just don't do it with groups of homeschoolers. 

Michelle 

====================================

On Saturday, September 28, 2019, 09:39:10 AM PDT, cherie.gela@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:




My 10 year old son likes to climb trees, and play ROBLox video games.  I take him and his twin brother to museum homeschool trips and he always wanders away and says it is boring.  Sometimes he participates in the art classes we sign up for.  I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day.. I don't mind the gaming, I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?
 

taptyper

Is he an introvert?  My kids and I are introverts and can't do many group things because it just wears us out.  They enjoy doing things together.  If they are using their creativity, whatever they are doing, I don't mind.


Bernadette Lynn

My youngest two play on Roblox a lot, very different games. The 16-year-old likes playing competitive games with friends, things involving missions and tactics. The 13-year-old plays mostly roleplay games.

For the older, it's about playing with a group of friends he made through mostly Minecraft and other games. He's developed, over the last few years of gaming, into a good team player, a good team leader, and a good manager. He's recently started running an online D&D game, and his art skills are suddenly blossoming as he creates his own maps, character drawings and animals. He's moving on to making his own games as well, learning to code. He's going to be a great person to work with, one day.

My 13-year-old plays with a group of friends she made through Roblox. They've created their own club and have a Discord server where they chat and plan games and carry on different roleplays. A while ago, last year, she was elected President of their club, winning nearly everyone's vote. That seems to have dropped by the wayside, as the group has evolved, but she's still the person the others look to to mediate, solve problems, and help with personal issues. She's got really good at stepping back and letting other people shape the roleplay story, even when it means taking it is a direction she doesn't like, but she's also good at forward planning and coming up with new ideas. She keeps records sometimes of what they've done, writing down the stories to help them plan, sometimes writing scripts for future use. And recently she's moved on to creating her own characters to draw, creating stories and relationships and making comics with them.

If I'd been trying to 'figure them out' instead of simply helping them do what they enjoyed, back when they were ten, I wouldn't have seen how spending hours on their computers would lead to such great skills in teamwork, collaboration, management, mediation. Those would NOT have been things I was looking for, in a ten-year-old's gaming. But that's the thing about learning - there's always so much more going on, so much more that people CAN learn from anything they do, than we expect there to be. And if we're constantly distracting them with new activities and new things, they don't have time to learn all those extra things.

There are years ahead. Maybe save some of those new experiences for when he's looking to move past his current interest.



Bernadette.


============

On Sat, 28 Sep 2019 at 17:39, cherie.gela@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]> wrote:


My 10 year old son likes to climb trees, and play ROBLox video games.  I take him and his twin brother to museum homeschool trips and he always wanders away and says it is boring.  Sometimes he participates in the art classes we sign up for.  I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day.. I don't mind the gaming, I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?

_,_._,___

Jo Isaac

It sounds to me like your child is already inspired - to play Roblox..so it seems that it is you, the Mom, who needs more deschooling to see how awesome Roblox is. 

==I take him and his twin brother to museum homeschool trips and he always wanders away and says it is boring.  Sometimes he participates in the art classes we sign up for.==

Museum homeschool trips suck. Honestly. It's like going on a school trip to the museum - you can't do anything at your own pace, you need to keep up with the 'pack'. We love the museum, and the zoo, and other stuff, but not with other people - we do it on our own, at our own pace.


Art classes also sound like school. It sounds like your son just doesn't like organized activities right now - my son has, until very recently (he's 13 now), been the same - we just didn't do any organized activities.


==I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day..==

Then get him a gaming computer 🙂 Then he won't be so hunched and it will be easier for him to play better games.

 ==I don't mind the gaming==

Yes, you do - you are trying to tempt him away from it by offering organized schooly excursions.

== I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. ==

He is showing you, in no uncertain terms, he doesn't like organized excursions and schooly classes. So stop offering them for a very good long while.

If your other child likes going, arrange that - he could go with someone else, or someone could stay home with your other child who doesn't like going.



==I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?==

He likes gaming and Roblox - facilitate that. Get him better gaming equipment - a gaming computer, gaming chair, maybe depending on your finances VR headset, etc...perhaps he'd be interested in going to a gaming Con like PAX? Maybe a trip to a cool arcade would be fun too.

Jo

Jo Isaac, PhD

Research~Writing~Photography~Teaching
http://joisaac.wordpress.com

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of cherie.gela@... [AlwaysLearning] <[email protected]>
Sent: 28 September 2019 10:06
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: [AlwaysLearning] help inspire child
 
 

My 10 year old son likes to climb trees, and play ROBLox video games.  I take him and his twin brother to museum homeschool trips and he always wanders away and says it is boring.  Sometimes he participates in the art classes we sign up for.  I honestly can't let him spend 10 hours huntched over on his ipad each day.. I don't mind the gaming, I just keep trying new excursions.. guitar, piano, drums, sports,play, .. he always wanders from the group .. I am trying to find out more activities he would be interested in..I can't figure him out.  Any suggestions?

Monifa

Please say more about how your son likes to climb trees.


Annie Regan

You say he likes to climb trees and play Roblox. I know a lot of parents worry that if their child spends hours and hours a day playing video games, they won't get any exercise. My kids love to play video games, and jump on the trampoline. Because they are confident that they are able to play their games as much as they want to, they aren't reluctant to move away from the games for a short while to do something else. Most days, whether they are on their own or playing together or with friends, they play their games for a while, then go outside and jump on the trampoline for 5 mins or half an hour, then happily come back in and play video games again, then they'll go back outside for a little while again. It can look like they are on the computer/ipad all day, but if I step back and look at what is really happening, they do have spurts of exercise and other activities in between the gaming. If I notice them getting upset with the game or seeming restless or uncomfortable, I will bring them food or a drink, or say 'do you want to jump on the trampoline for a bit'. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they happily pop outside for a while and come back in refreshed and able to move on in their game.

Find out what games he's liking on Roblox, chat to him about them, maybe find other resources (movies, games, puzzles books, whatever he likes) along the same topics of the games that he's playing, and leave them around for him to see, or watch/play/read them yourself and he may or may not join you. And help him find opportunities to climb trees - if you are all out together, find trees that are fun (and legal) to climb. Maybe if you're at the museum, your other son could go in with the group and you and this son could stay outside and climb the trees. Are there trees at your place that he can climb? Help him feel comfortable doing that as something he loves. When he's able to pursue his own interests, even if it seems that he doesn't have many, then he'll be happier and more confidently able to expand into other interests, if and when he's ready. Or he may always have a small set of interests that he delves into deeply, that's the case for some kids.

Annie

Sandra@...

Part of this question is about twins.  I have a twin story, but will post it separately.

Renee Cabatic has twins.  

This week an interview of Renee, by Pam Laricchia, has been published. Computer use, games are discussed, and I think it would be very helpful in this topic.  


It's easy to listen to while doing other things, :-)  

Sandra

Sandra@...

Long ago, there was no unschooling forum anywhere, and about 80 homeschooling families were in a user group—sort of a message board, but looked more like e-mail.  Most were Christian homeschoolers, because in the 1990s, that was a big wave, a movement, in many fundamentalists churches.

One of the moms wanted help keeping her twins together, in their studies.  She said the girl would want to do two of the English assignments in a row, but her twin brother hadn't even finished the first one, and what could she do?

I had taught English in a twin-rich town. :-)
Also, one of the two unschooling families I knew in person had twins—a girl who was quick, verbal, outgoing, and a boy who was slow to language.  I knew them from the time they were two, until they were teens.  I used to babysit them.  My kids played at their house.  Their mom is still a friend of mine.

I asked her why she didn't just let the girl do as much of the English book as she wanted to.  The answer was:
"Because they're twins."

When the topic is learning, and happiness, and peace, and the relationship with the mom. "Because they're twins" isn't a good defense for anything the mom / parents are going to limit or pressure about.

I had a cousin who lived with me and we were in the same grade.  We were always separated, except for band, when it wasn't possible.  There were twins; separated.  School gives siblings and twins an opportunity to shine, or be still, without pressure from or oversight by the other.  Whether that's great or not, there are justifications.

If because of homeschoolingf or unschooling, a twin is pressured to keep up with, or to be responsible for, or get along with, the other all the time, 24 hours a day, that might not be a good thing.  Allowing them to havec some space and differetiation might be the solution to more than one problem, seen or unseen.

That mom with the Christian curriculum started corresponding with me, first by e-mail and then by long paper letters.  Her solution was to use the curriculum VERY loosely, to move toward unschooling, and to stop going to her church. That wasn't what my initial advice was intended for.  I felt really bad, at first, but over a couple of years, things got much more fun at their house, and the kids were still clearly learning and getting along better.

Sandra

Cherie Gela

My son cries that he has no friends ( he does have friends
...) so that is why I try to take him to these activities.. he was a great gymnast, but most the team left to NJ and we tried to commute out of stateand it didnt work out.   So he still loves gymnastics, but he doesnt want to go back without his twin and previous team mates... As for climbing trees, he just likes to climb and sit while everyone is in awe about how high he gets...

Sandra@...

-=-My son cries that he has no friends ( he does have friends...) so that is why I try to take him to these activities.. -=-

Distraction.
Maybe there aren't kids there that appeal to him.  Maybe they all already are "paired up," and have established friends.

That happened with my daughter.  For a few years, she felt she had no friends. Some she had run off by being picky and critical (I didn't say so at the time, but she eventually started to figure out that she needed to be more accepting of differences in tempermanet and priorities).

I think distraction is the best thing.

As to climbing, maybe there are gyms in town with platforms, climbing walls, nets.  Maybe if you live where there are hiking clubs, you could take him hiking (or get someone to take him).

Sandra