It’s Been a While…I’ve Been Busy Growing Up With My Kids

A quick note: This post was written long before the current COVID-19 crisis, and isn’t meant to relate to anything that’s going on right now regarding the emergency homeschooling (coronaschooling?) that’s become a new reality for many families. I decided to publish it now anyway, because it’s something I’ve been working on for a while and feels important to me as the next step in my journey .

It’s been a year and a half since I’ve posted anything.

There’s been a lot of change happening here, in my family, in my thinking, in our days. It’s been a time of unraveling in some ways, and has felt like chaos some days, at least to me. It’s all the kind of stuff you don’t see on the outside.

You know how sometimes you find that things you felt sure about start to feel less certain? It’s unsettling at first and then it becomes something you can’t ignore. My ideas about how things “should” be in our little homeschooling family started to fall apart. That’s when I realized that, in some ways, I had been valuing my ideals over the individuals in my family and how they wanted and needed to be loved.

That was a painful realization, and it took some time to really understand what was going on. I had to get some therapy as part of that process, I had to dig out some pain from my past, look at my childhood and what I was still carrying around, and then recognize the need to let that stuff go. I had built protections for myself that I didn’t need anymore and now they were in the way. The letting go is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s happening. I’m changing.

There’s joy on the other side of letting go.

Cheating

We cheat our kids when we act as if meaningfulness isn’t as critical to their learning process as it is to our own as adults.

We cheat our kids when we pretend that it’s a lack of discipline or apathy on their part when they don’t engage with our agenda for their education.

We cheat our kids when we don’t invest in ourselves as an example of joyful, engaged learning and growth.

Much of what we have believed about education and learning is upside down.

And just to be clear, I’m not talking about “schooling.” That’s a different subject.

This Is Our Reality: Now What?

This post contains my thoughts on “The Tech Industry’s War on Kids” by Richard Freed, published on Medium.com on March 12, 2018.

Since reading this startling article, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my own use of technology, whether I’m satisfied with it, and what I want to model as an example for my kids.

I see and feel the effects of “persuasive design” in my own life. I reach for my phone in moments of boredom, moments when I want to escape a bit, or out of a habitual sort of “need” that I don’t like to acknowledge. It creeps me out to recognize it, especially after reading the eye-opening tactics and strategies at work in the apps that draw us back with a force that sometimes seems to be overpowering.

My behavior is being modified by machines that are designed by others for that specific purpose. Yes, this is the goal of marketing in general, and we all know that our purchasing behavior is influenced by it. But do we all have an awareness of the vast amounts of time and money being poured into making us feel fulfilled by our clicking in artificial social and game environments engineered to deliver dopamine “hits” at the right times to keep us “hooked”?

People are putting programming and psychology together to manipulate “users” so we (me and you and our kids) spend more time online, doing the things they want us to do, because it makes them a lot of money. This is the reason they care so much about what we do and whether we are using their product as often and as long as possible.

But is it good for us? What is it doing to us in the long run? What parts of life are neglected or underserved as a result? Where would we be putting our attention if not there? What deeper thinking and problem-solving is the world missing out on due to our many digital distractions? What action and service to others? Who and what are the losers in this game of keeping us distracted and consumed? Many possibilities come to my mind. I’m sure some are coming to your mind too.

But, this article isn’t about tech companies’ work in modifying adult behavior with machines, which is bad enough. It’s actually about the way they use knowledge of psychology (and kids’ psychological vulnerabilities) as a weapon against our children.

Do you, if you are a parent or grandparent, know who and what is at work behind the screens that our children are using for hours and hours every day? Do you know they have drug-like power by design? Our children are being robbed of pursuing and attaining real things of value, they are being robbed of childhood, and we don’t fully understand what’s going on. I felt disgusted and angry reading this article. Please read it, and read other information on this topic. Be informed.

People are using psychology to hook our children into feeling the need to spend more and more time on social media and games, for profit and at untold expense. Kids’ use of social media creates previously unheard of anxiety, depression, and suicide at young ages, younger that ever before. Video game addiction steals from our kids in other ways.

The author concludes that there is a need for government involvement. I believe there is a need for parents to educate themselves about what’s really going on and take a stand to work against these problems. What do we want for our children? Are we willing to accept the current situation and trend as normal? What are the future consequences for a world in which a generation of people grew up immersed in the distractions of social media and gaming? I believe we must take personal responsibility for identifying our role in this problem. What is ours to do, given the truth of this situation, the challenges we all face, and the choices we have in front of us?

We, parents, are their closest example. We can influence our children. We can act in counter-cultural ways. We can act with love and tenderness, with care and courage. We must act so we can look them in the eyes: our children, our grandchildren, their generations, and say we did the best we could do. We tried to fix the problems we saw, we acted because we saw the need for action even if others didn’t.

The Abundant Gifts of Love

Yesterday morning, the kids and I went to the gym for our usual Friday “bag class” activities (in which I get to smack a heavy bag around with boxing gloves and do various other cardio and free weight exercises while my 14 year old son keeps a lively bunch of younger kids busy with their own exercises and games) and then we traveled on to the grocery store.

It was Good Friday, and the grocery store was packed with people stocking up for their Easter festivities. We had a small list of items to purchase and it included something I hadn’t written on my grocery list for a long time: eggs. (We reach for a whole-food plant-based diet so I choose not to bring animal products home from the grocery store.)

The Underestimated Power of Quietly Leading by Example

From the outside looking in, the presentation I gave at a local library one Saturday morning was just a tiny little affair with a very small impact. After all, there were only four other people in the room, and one of them was my dad.

The director of the library expressed her concern a day or two before the presentation date, asking if I’d like to reschedule since there was only one person on their sign-up sheet.

But no matter how small the audience would be on that beautiful Saturday morning in September, I had spent months preparing, and the idea of not seeing it through, not showing myself that I could do it, just wasn’t on my radar.

The thing is, I had other reasons for giving that talk. Reasons that weren’t dependent on the number of people in attendance, or even on whether the local homeschooling community considered my talk to be important, interesting, or informative.

Mentoring at the Movies: Cars 3

Last weekend, we decided to splurge and take the family to see Cars 3 in 3-D for some Father’s Day fun. Going out to the movies isn’t something we do frequently, so when we go, it’s a special treat. We got there early, got our 3-D glasses and movie snacks (I may or may not have brought my own turmeric and “nooch” popcorn), and settled in to enjoy the show. And we weren’t disappointed: Cars 3 is a really good movie! Better even than we expected it to be.

But, for me, the best part wasn’t the movie itself, it was the discussion that happened afterwards, in the car on the way home.

Lindbergh’s Gifts to Me

Book and shells arranged by Chloe, photographed by Ian.

I recently read Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. It’s my second time reading the book and my first time doing so as part of a book discussion group, which is a really wonderful experience. True to form, this classic is giving me new insights with each read.

Gift from the Sea documents Lindbergh’s exploration of self in the context of the stages of a life and the relationships and characteristics that define the passage through those stages. Her writing is intensely personal and insightful. She talks about the simple and the ordinary, and conveys meaning that is, for me, profound. Her quest to understand herself and her life as woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, brings understanding to new generations of women who find themselves asking the same questions, feeling the same burdens, and experiencing the same longing to carve out the silence and space to make room for thoughts and dig deeper to understand that which truly matters.

How does your garden grow? (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1 of this post, I used a gardening analogy to begin exploring the idea that our home environment can set the tone for truly great family learning. I spent a lot of time focusing on the importance of our family relationships in that post, comparing loving relationships to the sunlight that gardens need in order to grow and thrive.

In this post, I’d like to share some additional aspects of the home environment, our growing medium, if you like, and focus on some of the details and choices that have helped us support each member of our family more effectively. Please remember: there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Look for the principles behind the details, and disregard the details that don’t seem to fit for you and your family.

And now, back to the gardening analogy…

How does your garden grow? (Part 1 of 2)

Note: This is a long one! But I believe it provides background information that’s necessary for a full understanding of the topic. As more posts are added, less background will be needed, as these first posts can be referenced. (I hope!) Thanks for reading!

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.

You may be familiar with the more modern version of the “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” nursery rhyme. (I’ve used an older version above, just because I like this one best.) People have written about different historical and religious meanings of this nursery rhyme, which you can begin to explore here, if you’re interested.

I’ve included it at the top of this post, however, not for any historical significance or meaning ascribed by others, but because of what it means to me and how it relates to the idea of crafting the environment for learning in our home. You see, I often feel like “Mistress Mary” who is “quite contrary” to our culture’s ideas about schooling and education. Being contrary, however, isn’t the point. It’s just a by-product of the process. The point is that consciously and intentionally creating the environment in our home can be a tremendous aid to the effort of fostering a lifelong love for learning within our children. If the environment we create happens to be contrary to the culture around us, so be it. It can be extraordinarily freeing to examine those things that were previously done out of habit or because “that’s just the way it is” or because “everyone else does it that way” and decide, intentionally, to do something very different because your careful consideration has given you the belief that it is right for your family.

At the end of my last post, I mentioned that in my experience, creating the right home environment helps to create self-responsible learners. Conversely, a less supportive environment and hindering influences can make it quite difficult for children to find the motivation to invest in their learning and discovery. It seems useful to compare the creation of the right environment for self-education with the act of preparing the place where you hope to see a beautiful garden flourishing one day.

It all starts with a vision

Raising self-responsible learners

“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”

—Sir Walter Scott

Note: I do not consider myself an education “expert”. I have my own personal experiences (along with some reading and study), and my comments reflect these experiences. And while I’m certainly not an expert on the topic of education in general, I believe I am an expert on my own family, just as you are on yours. 🙂

Here in our home, we recently returned to our “school year” schedule. (We still take a summer break, just as we did before we discovered the delights of homeschooling and our older child was a public school student.) Our children resumed the daily routines that define ‘school’ for us, and I also returned to a more structured daily routine in order to continue my own education and growth. My husband’s ongoing dedication to his twin missions of building a strong family and building the strength of his vocation enable us to pursue this lifestyle together. (Thank you, hubby! I love you.)

One of our intentional home education goals is to raise self-responsible learners. In this post, I’ll share how we are creating an environment designed to help our children love learning and grow into students who are invested in the idea that their education is their own responsibility. I am suggesting that building self-responsible learners is a valuable goal worth the considerable effort it takes to create this kind of environment. In a future blog post, I’ll do my best to unpack this notion of environment and explain what it means in this context.

In 2011, we chose to opt out of the public school system. And in the current educational environment of common core standards and intense academic testing for even the youngest school students, my perspective may seem radical. I’m aware. I don’t really think of myself or our family as ‘radical’ but I do think we are choosing to live in ways that are counter-cultural. It works for us.