No more blame shifting.
I have a good life. An excellent
life. My life is so sadly comical right
now. I won’t begin to tell you why,
because I am trying to overcome this whole complaining a lot problem that I
have. I am here, an imperfect mother to
six children and an even more imperfect wife.
The cherry on my cake is the fact that I homeschool, although that fact
becomes more skewed every year. A
fact? What does homeschool even
mean? I don’t want “to do school” at
home with my kids. Looking back now, I
had a short stint of “doing school just like they do in school” routine. That did not go very well. They should call this process of having your
kids at home (and away, away with other, too, all kinds of people much away)
every day, but not really every day, but most days all of them, all of the
time, they should really call all of this cleaning and feeding kids while you
randomly learn the things that interest you while you feel guilty and then have
whole day sprees of traditional schooling crammed down your kids throats. Those kids, they were having a great time
until I got in the way and keep getting in the way. Yeah, that’s a really long title for what
homeschool really is, but that’s what they should call it... me getting in the way.
My kids are supposed
to be in grades, they are supposed to be measured, if they fall short in a
given area when they leave this house...I guess I get in trouble, I guess they
won’t succeed? Yet all those other areas
that they are thriving in get ignored. Kids
thrive. That’s what they do until people
get in their way, until their environments are forlorn with useless and
unwarranted drama or trauma. They’d also
like to explore all on their own until they accidentally kill themselves, too,
so people must be around to protect and to guide. I get it.
Some of them like to climb the rooftops when mom’s not looking. A little word of wisdom arises, bellows, for
real, to get them down. It’s needful,
that direction and sort of guidance is seriously much needed.
Times tables come hard for one of mine, but there is baking,
and nurturing, crafting, sewing and making and gentleness and cooking and, and,
and things that this child of mine can do.
A natural empathy. Where does all
of this get measured in the world of traditional schooling? How does it fit with society’s great race
toward expansion and progress? We give
kids a free ride into college based on grades, grades, grades in things that we
think can be measured in a lab on a piece of paper, in a book, by a soulless,
wayfaring breed of monotony, what we define as being the only things that can
be considered worthy of being measured.
And who gets to decide this? I am
so not sure. I have things I expect from
my kids. No picking your nose in public
and for pity’s sake don’t run people over.
I have standards, you see. I sent
the eldest in to get a snack on his own with my debit card into the grocery
store and he came back with a bag of cookies.
I snapped. Unfortunately, I didn’t
take that one well. It’s clear to myself
that I have measurements and I should get to decide what those are for my kids
because I know my kids really, really well.
I have been with them 99 percent of their lives they have lived on this
earth. The other one percent were times
in which I ran away for a weekend and then I’d usually have at least one of
them with me. The other part of that
percent were times they were with their dad without me around, other family or
friends. But really, the other 99 or is
it 97, 96 or something, I don’t know, I’ve been with my kids like crazy. I know where all of their birth marks
are. Period. I’m in the know. I know what they like and are like. I know what they hate. I know what kind of underwear they like to
wear.
And who they are shine through to me and everyday things
become a little clearer, but oh, so muddy.
Having kids is a muddy, messy, cause worthy ordeal of wonder. Truly, it is.
So through and in and around all this work, don’t I get to decide how
much control a system, group, establishment or government can yield over my
kids, my family?
Opinion alert*****
The SAT/ACT is dumb.
It just is. My kids are amazing
and not in the way they should be, but in the way that they already are. The sitting all day at school for 12 years
minus Summers and weeks of vacation is even dumber. And the way that kids all around are measured
is just downright the most dumbest. Mostest
dumb. Dumb and dumber, all of it, all of
this. Bad, bad grammar. Incomplete sentences on purpose to prove a
point. Point. Period. Point. I hate all
these green and red squiggly lines underneath my words...microsoft, we have a
love/hate relationship. You get a lower
case.
I’ll never forget a story I read to my kids about Winston
Churchill. Winston was away at a
boarding school and his parents came to visit for an end of the year gathering
to showcase all that the children have learned and also award the peace keeping
do-gooders who followed the curriculum to a “T” without question and without
failure to regurgitate. Churchill not only
missed out on being awarded a scholarly medal but was ratted out about how
awful he did on tests and at his school.
His father was simply livid while his mother showed a bit more sympathy
and enquired as to what had gone wrong.
He whispered to her, “They only asked me what I didn’t know on the
tests, mother, instead of what I do.”
This thought has stuck with me.
If we really gave a test to kids on what they did know it would
be a basis for encouragement, growth and support, so much so that what they had
already learned would be a foundation and a boost towards what they had not yet
learned. Kids will learn everything they
want to learn. I repeat there is nothing
that kids want to learn that will not be learned by them in some way, shape,
form and given enough time.
Some kids are so street smart and have intense resilience despite
their circumstances. Others grow with and also overcome physical restraints. They walk, they
crawl, they stand, they sit, they reach, they reach all around for everything
and anything within their grasp, they can’t wait and nobody told them how. Go ahead, test them all on what they are
knowing, what they have known, what they
have learned thus far, it’s unbelievable what they learn and want to learn all
on their own, given support and encouragement and tools and sheer availability and
nothing can stop any of them. Absolutely
nothing.
