Space Pilots

I am blown away by the brilliance, passion, the tenacity and pure energy that my children show every day. They are a driving force. Their strong will and determination are what help them get up every time they fall down. It keeps them trying again and again. I liken that driving force to a rocket taking off from earth. It has an incredibly huge engine and burns tons of fuel just to get up through the atmosphere. Then, once it reaches space, it doesn't need all that power and energy. Young children's work is disguised as play. They work all day long without caring about how they look or what they will have to show for it. They are immersed in the process, not the outcome. And the way they go about learning seems so mixed up, messy and backwards to an adult. We become concerned about their behavior (noisy, belligerent, bossy, noncompliant) and their performance (lazy, inconsistent, slow, lacking concentration). And every adult I know runs out of patience for a child. We put our adult values on children when it is their job to be learning other things. When they are older, they will be much more concerned how others perceive them and what is their place in society and what they need to learn to pursue their interests. My guess is their strong will and determination, if not snuffed out, will lead them through the first 10 years or so whether they get things right or wrong, no matter how they look while they are doing them. This mother culture that I am in seems so concerned about how naughty their children are as if any mother's own child is so different or so much worse than any other kid. A child will reflect their mother's perception of them. It is a shame that we treat children like they are bad and idiotic. The only 2 differences I can see in children and adults is that children don't have the experience that adults have. And they are experiencing life in fast forward. They are growing up so fast and have so many more crisis moments than we do. It is like squeezing 5 adult years with all the emotional highs and lows into 6 months' time. Children don't always communicate well but many adults don't either. They hate to be talked down to or told what or what not to do. Most adults I know will do the opposite of what they are told to do unless there is an obvious negative consequence. We could all learn to treat each other, young and old, with more dignity and respect. And many adults are the worst role models for showing respect. I don't like to be yelled at or told to be quiet. When my kids do those things to me, I tell them I don't like it and I want them to stop. I don't punish them for it. Instead, I try harder not to yell or tell them to hush. I try harder to show them the respect that I want them to model. I say please and thankyou to my children. They are learning. But it is a long slow process. My hope is that once their rockets have reached space and their driving momentum slows down. They will calmly look around, realizing they are just one important part of this complex society and they will remember to have dignity and respect for all living things. I can't possibly show them that by forcing my will on them or intimidating or manipulating them into compliant "good" children.
I'm raising good space pilots. I don't want them to get out into space on their own in a space ship that they don't know how to run. They might sit there staring at all the buttons too afraid to push anything for fear they will make a mistake. I want them to push every button, pull every knob, figure out how things work in their own way, in whatever way they can understand. Childhood is such a short wild time. It is obvious this is the time, while that fierce energy is still burning, to learn who you are, how your body fits into this world, how the world around you works and changes.

Six Months

We've been homeschooling now (officially) for 6 months. Time goes by in such a totally different way for me now. It's like when you go camping for a few days and you stop looking at your watch and wondering what time it is. The days blend into each other. Life moves in the rhythm of the sun and the seasons. We wake up when we are rested and sleep when we are tired. We eat when we are hungry. The boys turn on the hose or the sprinkler when they are hot while the girls splash in the kiddie pool or in buckets. Every day there is something new to see in our garden. We have time to plan big events like a barbecue for some friends in a couple of weeks, Caleb's birthday party in the beginning of July, and our trip to the Texas hill country for our family reunion in the middle of July.

We have created a haven here at home away from the fast-paced, over-scheduled, hustly-bustly world outside. It is good especially while the kids are so young. I imagine we will be venturing out into the world more and more as they get older. Zane is taking swimming lessons at a city park right now. Caleb's lessons start next week. Zane always surprises me how outgoing he is in a crowd of people -- strangers even. He stayed after class one day and talked to his teacher about some ideas he has. He wanted to have a race. I'm not sure what all he proposed but she listened to him. I am amazed at how much he has learned in this 2 week class. He can swim. He is no longer afraid to go under water. He'll even jump in from the side -- the diving board is still too scarey.

Zane is reading really well now -- I don't know at which grade level he reads. The only reason I would want to know would be to brag to other people about it. He was a beginning reader (reading at a 1st grade level) while he was in first grade last fall. Now he is way beyond that. He has taught himself to read -- at least improved his reading by playing video games and playing on the computer. I read to him every night and he has an extensive vocabulary. His teacher said he was an excellent guesser. He could guess a lot of words by how they start and by the context of the sentence. But he wasn't "reading" the word. Even now he doesn't like to read out loud. But he'll understand what he has read, so I know he can read. If I'm writing or reading something, he'll occasionally look over my shoulder and ask what something means. He doesn't like to make a mistake. He rarely asks what a word is. But he can read some big complicated words and understand their meaning. Reading or guessing doesn't matter if he gets it right. He doesn't like to write and rarely does it. But he has finally started drawing again. He stopped drawing when we pulled him out of school last December. He didn't draw for months. Drawing is something he loves to do and has done every day for a couple of years now. I was hoping he would come back around. I kept telling myself that he was de-schooling. He needed time to process the huge changes we had made. Then one day, about a month ago, he picked up his pencil and his sketch book and now he draws every day again. I feel like we have reached a turning point. Several people have commented about changes they have seen in Zane. He seems calmer, more content, sweeter.