Twinkle Little Star

When Parenting Makes You Feel Like An Idiot (Case #893)

In my life as a "professional," whether it was as a teacher, child life consultant, behavioral specialist, special ed diagnostician--whatever, I sat in numerous meetings with parents who were struggling with some aspect of their child's life, and I gave my "expert opinion" on what they should do about it.

I was an idiot.

I mean, not totally. I was sincere in my attempts to help. My advice was sound, based on everything I could know at the time. I had empathy for the families and tried very hard not to judge. I really wanted to help guide them to a solution, and many times, they told me that I did help them. So, I was not an intentional idiot, but an idiot all the same.

Once, when I was probably 20 or so, I had a practicum teacher who was telling me the story of how she came to adopt her son. And I remember her saying, "Don't think that just because you are a good teacher, you will be a good parent. Teaching skills come in handy, but it is a whole different ballgame." Sure, I thought. Whatever. She was a good mom. What was she talking about?

Its this: You can know all the behavior strategies in the world, have all the instructional skill sets, know educational psychology inside and out, be an expert in child development, and still not be able to pull all that knowledge together 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year while also doing your paying job, the housework, the laundry, the cooking, the finances, the transportation, and (if you are lucky) the social life. Life will break you down. Fatigue, exhaustion, just the never endingness of it will turn all of your best intentions into a crumbling pile of crappy parenting.

So often, after the parents would leave these meetings, we would sit around and judge them. Why didn't they implement the thing we told them to do at the last meeting? Why did they protest so hard about the thing we said they needed to do for their kid? Why did they sit through the whole meeting saying nothing and looking like the only thing on their minds was how fast they could bolt to the nearest drinking establishment. Oh, and their problems, how we commiserated over their problems. They were poor, uneducated, divorced, and provided no structure for the kid. Or they were rich, overeducated and arrogant, divorced, and too rigid with the kid.

Now to be fair to myself, I was always on the parents side much more than the vast majority of my colleagues. I would put my foot down when they would suggest mandatory Ritalin or complete segregation. I would defend the parents often. I would try my best to present myself as perhaps a person who knows a lot of strategies in general, but they were the expert on their kid so we were a team who needed each other to make things work. But I admit not fully understanding some of the resistance, and always in the back of my mind thinking, well if it were MY kid, I could pull this off.

Back then, I thought when I had kids I would be married with (I imagined) a nondisabled partner and we would have just one household to manage instead of two and we would start with just one kid and he would help with exactly 50% of the housework and childrearing and we would both be professionals with modest but comfortable incomes and the white picket fence and yadda all the way. The truth is, no one (or very few people) really ever have that. And if they do, perhaps they struggle with other challenges that impede on them reaching their potential as the perfect parent.

I am having to deal with my own limits. The skills and knowledge and intentions I have in my head and heart are limited by what I can physically and mentally accomplish in any given day. After spending essentially 15 years as a single person, I realize how much of that single life was unproductive, or at least how much time and energy there was to spare. SO GODDAMNED MUCH and so little responsibility it makes me laugh at its absurdity. That whole annoying phrase I used to hear when I worked with families, "Oh, you don't have kids? Well, no offense but you just DON'T know." That used to bug the hell out of me. I cared! I knew! What I didn't experience I could empathize with!

I didn't know. Not really.

Its the day in/day out of it. It has been over a year(??) since I have had a babysitter. I've had a bit of childcare here and there, but usually when I am at meetings for church or otherwise obligated. That whole "me time" shit? None. Zippo. Nada. It is the 24 hour-ness of it. It can make you a bit batty.

My sister and I used to laugh at these stay at home moms who would call their husbands up at work to come rescue them because the kids were driving them nuts or whatever. Although I do still think sometimes people can go overboard in not being able to solve a problem by themselves (a coworker's wife called her husband to fill the kiddie pool up because she couldn't figure out how to do it??? That one was a stretch for me), but I understand it more now. Especially when woman (both outside the home and SAH moms) are working 16 hour days when their husbands are pulling in way less hours, getting paid better for it, and are the only ones considered to be truly "working a real job". Yeah, every once in a while, that husband needs to get his ass home and help out. Every stay at home parent needs and deserves to be rescued now and again.

I need to be rescued. And there is no one. I'm having a mental block (or maybe just physical exhaustion of sorts) about Aaron. Maybe yous all can give me some assvice. A virtual rescue if you will. (Or at least a "there, there" would be nice, too.) Aaron and I have been having an issue for the last couple of months. And I think I may throw him out the window any day now.

Since Aaron has graduated from crib to "big boy bed" which happened around August, he has become a monster of destruction. The weird thing is, he could get in and out of his crib for months before that, and often did, but never did he whirl through my house in tornado fashion as he does now.

When I am in the room, he is a perfectly appropriate, average little kid. Yes, he clutters his toys around as two year olds do, but he plays with his puzzles like kids are supposed to play with puzzles. He builds with his blocks. He colors with his crayons--keeping the marks on the paper a good 95% of the time. He takes one or two books and looks through them or brings them to me. All things you expect from a two year old.

When I am not in the room, even for a few minutes, he destroys things. He pulls all the books out of the shelf, he rips pages, he yanks pictures off the wall. He pulls the pillow cases of the pillows. Tears the toilet paper up and decorates my bathroom with tampons. He takes tubs of blocks and throws them across the room, he throws puzzle pieces out of their puzzles at breakneck speed. He pulls every bit of clothing out of the dresser drawers. He pulls lamps down from the plug-ins and breaks them. He hurls furniture across the room. And god save us all if he gets to the kitchen. He will (within seconds) throw a whole box of crackers all over the couch and stomp on them until tiny crumbs are everywhere. He will take sippy cups half filled with juice and flings them around and becomes his own sprinkler system. You get the idea. He does this every. single. day. Sometimes several times a day.

I am with that kid nearly nonstop. But I have to work on the computer sometimes. I have to play with Naim sometimes. I have to fold the laundry sometimes. I have to pee sometimes. I have to sleep sometimes. I cannot physically watch that kid every waking moment. Now, just to eliminate some of the obvious suggestions, here is what I have tried:

I don't think this is separation anxiety. My guide dog, Mara, was with me 24/7 for the first probably 10 years I had her. Then when her health started declining, she stayed home more and more. She went nuts. She would get into the trash and tear everything up into itty bitty pieces. I don't think this is that. Why? Because I am not barring him from being with me. If he wants to follow me around everywhere, he can. And he purposefully makes sure I am not around. He figured out I could hear him on the baby monitor, so he very quietly unplugged it every morning. When they wake up in the morning, they are free to come into my room and get me. Naim comes in every morning and gets into bed with me and wakes me up. I have seen Aaron come into my room, turn on the light, see that I was sleeping (so he thought) turn off the light, shut the door (which I never shut) and run off on his merry way to destroy things. He looks for opportunities to do this when I'm not available. So I don't think that it is that.

My healthy start teacher suggested that I put things up high and babyproof. I about slapped her. She was trying to help but it was probably exactly the kind of stuff I used to say to parents that was no help and lacked a complete understanding of the situation. You can only put so much stuff up high. Up high now is around 5 feet and above. I have reserved "up high" for all the things that could kill him. Toxins, knives, medication, etc. As for baby proofing, he is at the age where he can figure out a lot of the baby proofing stuff. He knows how to unlock the kitchen cabinet baby proofing thingies. He can climb over the baby gates. Besides, it is just a matter of deciding which kind of mess you want to clean up. If I bar him in his room, it is a laundry/clothing disaster. If I allow him access to downstairs, their room and the bathroom may be spared but it is a kitchen disaster. I have ordered some new baby-proofing things for the kitchen, which may or may not work. But the worst is the kitchen, so if I could eliminate that, that would help significantly. But unless I am going to put him in a padded room, baby-proofing will only go so far.

I've tried tiring him out with activity. In the last week he has gone to the farm twice to pick pumpkins, has gone to two Halloween parties, gone to the gym to take his little gym class and then daycare two or three times, countless trips to the playground and dad's house, lots of arts and crafts and games at home, even a trip to office depot where I let him climb all over the office furniture for a good 45 minutes. It does tire him out and he falls right asleep for nap and bedtime. But I can't tell you how fast he can destroy things. I was in my room this afternoon and I heard them get up. By the time I got up and walked down the hall, he had torn the new growth chart I got them off the wall.

Good ole, natural consequences? I have tried to make him clean up the mess. (Naim usually does most of the helping voluntarily because he thinks cleaning is fun. I almost am going to turn this whole matter over to Naim.) He pouts and refuses to help, so then I have him sit until I finish it. Part of this is my fault. There are times when I don't have the time or the energy to deal with this stuff right away. Some days we just have to get out of the house to catch a bus. Or, I'm just exhausted at the everyday relentlessness of it and I sorta can't deal with it and give up until later. I'm still working on this one. I've talked to him about it out the ass. How it makes me feel, blah blah blah. How it is wasteful. How the more I have to clean the less I have time to play with him. He is too young for much of this. Maybe there is some behavior pattern that I am missing here because I am too close to think objectively. Maybe I am positively reinforcing this with attention or something. If I am, I'm not really seeing it.

Also, to clarify, anyone will tell you that I am not a neat freak. I am not really bothered by the toy clutter. I expect that. And I know that sometimes kids will play rough and things will break. But it is the CONSTANT destroying of things. Some messes you can just let go, but when there is cracker crumbs smashed in the bed or milk all over the floor (if I leave the table for even a second to go get something from the kitchen) you just have to clean it up and deal with it. And when you have a major mess several times a day, it drives you a little--um, a LOT, BATSHIT INSANE.

So, if you are going to tell me that he is a boy and this is what boys do, I don't care. I can't live like this. If he is biologically wired to destroy things, then he needs to learn to control his biological tendencies. I don't do well at all in any circumstances with the "boys will be boys" excuse. I think accepting much of this boys will be boys behavior is a load of crap. I can deal with high energy boys and their trucks and cars and spaceships and need to climb on everything and hang upside down. I cannot deal with wastefulness, needless destruction and totally making my life a living hell.

Aaron is a good kid. He is funny and smart and I love talking to him and listening to his stories and pretending with him and bouncing him around and watching him play. In general, Aaron is a joy to be around. But we have gotten ourselves into a downward spiral. The more he destroys, the more I have to take time out to be away from him and get other work done. The more I am away from him, the more he destroys. The more he destroys, the more I feel like a helpless single mom with no backup that needs to call up, well, somebody's husband at work and have them come home and rescue me.

There is just no one to call.

Someone at least just tell me this is a (very short) phase and that your own son or daughter went through this and moved out of it in less time than it took you to have to check yourself in to a mental hospital.

And for any mom out there who I sat across the table from with my small case of smug professional expert disease and couldn't understand why you couldn't follow my extremely detailed behavior plan consistently 24 hours a day, I apologize. I was an idiot. And I always try very hard to learn from my idiot mistakes. Okay Internets, help me learn from whatever idiot mistake I'm making now.

My energetic (top right)...

...joyful...

...intelligent...

...loving...

...imaginative...

...independent...

...agonizing angelic second-born child.

The Unthinkable

It saddens me beyond words to have learned that one of my readers and sometimes commenter, That Girl, has lost her two-year-old, Jake. Jake had ongoing health issues, but as I understand it, this was quite unexpected. Please keep her in your thoughts and stop by and give her some support.

Jake

Aaron (who is trying my every last friggin' nerve but in a funny way.)

While at Petsmart, after we had visited the fish, birds, cats, dog obedience class, and various rodents:

A: Where are the dinosaurs?

Me: They don't have dinosaurs here.

A: I want to see the dinosaurs!! WHERE ARE THE DINOSAURS!!!!

Me: There are no dinosaurs here, we'll have to wait till we get home and you can play wi--

A: (big, sobbing nasaly whine) Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? Whyyyyyy don't they have any diiiiinosaaaaaauuuuurs?

Me: Because they are extinct. They don't live on earth anymore, they were only alive a long, long time ago.

A: NO! No dinosaurs extiiiiinct! I don't LIIIIIIKE it when dinosaurs extinct! Maaamaaa! Make the dinosaurs not extinct RIGHT NOW!

Me: (desparately count the minutes until naptime.)

For A and (Plea?) Only for A

The rest of you may want to avert your eyes.

No, really...move along, there is nothing to see here.

I acquiesce to the fact that I have lost a bet. But really I couldn't lose, insomuch as the bet I lost was that if I did "The Thing I Really, Really Didn't Want to Do" (hereto forth known as The Thing)--it would not kill me. And I did The Thing, and I appear to still be alive. So, you win. And thus, I must pay up. Publicly...apparently.

So, in accordance to the binding contract of said wager, in Section 5: Paragraph 67, here we go:

uhm-mm.

Whereas my judgment as a 13 year-old was obviously very flawed; and

Whereas I have now been reintroduced ad nauseum to that damned band Duran Duran, a band I have not thought about in 20 odd years; and

Whereas now, because you have so brilliantly enlightened me and I have the advantage of my more mature and savvy judgment on such important matters;

I declare that I was GROSSLY misguided and mistaken in my former statement of record that Simon Le Bon was the hot one; and

I declare that I humbly submit to the lovely A's obviously superior taste and have Come To Jesus to the fact that, of course! John Taylor is the hot one.

In doing so, I must make appropriate reparations for my aforementioned sin of doubting the total lustfulness of said John Taylor. Henceforth, I shall do the following:

1.  Chant myself to sleep each night with the meditation, "Play that fucking bass, John. Play that fucking bass, John. Play that fu--" you get the idea.

2.  Replace my boring ole' standard issue Windows desktop wallpaper with this image:

3.  Set my hearing aids so that they only pick out the bass and filter out the trebling voice of Simon so that I can truly appreciate the genius that is the bass line of "Rio."

4.  Watch the following videos three times a day for the next six months:

• I Do What I Do (Even though it is the most hideous song on the planet, it was John Taylor's only solo hit-surprisingly-so I must respect its worthiness.)

• Some Like it Hot (And this one really hurts because in order to appreciate how good John looks in a hat, I have to sit through some woman orgasmically shaving her armpits and Robert Palmer air humping a statue of a bird while wearing a priest's collar.)

• This Eden Song or whatever it is (Which you insist is wonderful and I just don't get it and never will. )

5.  Lastly, in slightly all seriousness, I will continue to use "Ordinary World," which has become my cheesy summer anthem, as my rubber band around my wrist to snap when I get stuck in a forloop and need reminding to just get on with it. I would have never even listened to this song from a band I haven't thought about in 20 odd years if you hadn't of insisted on jamming them down my throat this ridiculous bet. And kept gently pressuring me to do The Thing that I Really, Really Didn't Want to Do. Thank you for that and for continuing to show up in my life every 5 to 10 years, thank you for helping me figure out how is the best way to remember S, and for showing me a great and inspiring example of how forgiveness is a verb that you have to actively decide to do, it doesn't just come along and fall into your lap by itself via osmosis. Many years ago on a Thursday no less, we had an awful day, and that is what it was, an awful day. We can still remember S while getting on with it. "Ours is just a little sorrowed talk" and you are one of the few people in the world who gets that. So, I'll love John Taylor for you any day. And he does look rather fine in this video, and I want that wacky wedding dress with the lampshade for a veil.

And now finally, to get back at you remember how far we've come, here you go you pseudo raver Duran Duran fanatic (???Contradict, much??? Head. Might. Explode.) I'll leave you with this beautiful memory and hope to see you in 5? years:

"Get the fuck away from me, assholes! I have a yeast infection!"
--The ever congenial Courtney Love
   Lawrence, Kansas, 1995

Neurosis

Update: Problem solved thanks to the (and I mean this entirely platonically) hottie that is D's friend, Jason. Alas! D did the asking for me. That's what he's for, to act as my interface with the outside world. So, now, shelves are upstairs, D has entry to the casa, and I will be spending some time tomorrow organizing and this thing will be done!!

I have a terrible, horrible problem asking for help. It is beyond the beyond. I am so ridiculously independent that I make people uncomfortable sometimes, especially some women. I go to great lengths to be able to do things on my own, even when any normal individual would not ever go to such lengths and thus look upon me as if I'm out of my mind. When I think back to how I packed and moved all of my own crap as well as a ton of D's crap by myself while 7 months pregnant with twins, I am just embarrassed at the stupidity of it. But I must do something wrong. I worked up for weeks to asking the church for help to move, and when I did, I got nothing. No help. No help during D's hospitalizations, no help during my blindness and early pg days. Well, that's not fair because I never really asked for help again after the moving help request was ignored. Every time I ask for help, it seems to turn to disaster. Once I asked a friend if he would drive me to the skating rink a couple times a month if I decided to move into this apartment that was a ways a way from the rink. He agreed (he was going there himself anyway), and then he got all weird about it. After a few weeks, he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. ("I feel like your entire skating career depends on me." he says. Well, yeah. If you call 2 trips a month a career.) I'm really not sure what my problem is. Maybe I do it in such a way that is probably totally off-putting. I bargain with people, offer things in return, negotiate, make sure they have an out and know that if they can't do it, I surely have 18 other resources of which I can call upon. Or, I could just do it myself.

But even if I do it wrong, on some level, I just don't get it. I am willing to help others and I do help others an awful lot. Although often times I am helping others who are admittedly not in a position to help me in return. I'm fine with this, but it gives me less time to help others who could help me in return. I'm willing to work with people's schedules/needs/boundries and try to be really respectful of that. I know that sometimes people may really want to help but because of their own life circumstances or whatever, they can't. I am fine with that, too. I hope that when I ask people for help, they don't feel obligated and feel like they can say no if they can't help. I don't want them to feel like they "have" to help me because I am disabled. I want them to want to help me because I am their friend and they know that I would do whatever I could to help them as well. Because we mutually care about each other.

It is really bad to have this problem while disabled. But I think disability is at least in part, the cause of it. People are REALLY WEIRD about helping you when you are disabled. They don't want to be drug in to what they think will be a nonreciprocating relationship. Or, they go overboard to help you but the price you pay is that they put themselves in the position of being your rescuer and your reason for surviving. I thought I was getting over this until the whole in-law thing happened. I was loosening up about it around them finally, and then suddenly they laid it out for me. They had been resenting putting my dishes in the dishwasher and taking out my trash occasionally while we were all in the hospital or visiting our dying mothers, but they did it because, well...how could I have SURVIVED without them? And then, the gall I had to become pregnant after all they'd done? Well, they weren't going to be raising MY children. It was a complete backfire.

I have this silly situation now where there is no way around my asking for help. I'm ridiculously hyper-stressed about it. The thought of asking for help for this is starting to make me sick to my stomach. I'm being ridiculous. But the fact that there is no way around asking for help here and there is no way to do it myself is literally driving me into anxiety ridden insanity. You know that getting the kid's room together project that I have been whining about all summer that is now going on it's SIXTH GODDAMNED MONTH? It has been a real test of how much I could do with two kids, no car and no muscle. My dad has helped some and D has as well, but I've done most of it myself. So much so that I must have looked like a total ass while trying to get my kids, myself and big, huge items I bought on the bus. I have dragged things up and down my stairs one stair at a time, many times getting down on my butt so I could push things with my huge massive speed-skating man-legs instead of my wimpy arms. I have given huge amounts of stuff to a foster mom because she was willing to come and get it and I knew I couldn't get things mailed myself if I sold them on ebay. (I don't feel bad about giving the stuff to her, I'm glad she has it. But figuring out how to get rid of the kids car seats and other big items by myself with no car literally stressed me out for weeks.)

I'm so close to the end of this stupid project that I can taste the victory. But wouldn't you know it? I have a new glitch that could extend it for even more weeks. Except for the beds, I bought the rest of the kids' new furniture off of an educational supply store auction. I got a lot of really solid furniture for cheap. Yes, it looks like a kindergarten room, but in a cute way. And with things like real student desks and a great laminate table, that will adjust in height as they grow up and are virtually indestructible by small active and messy boys. Compared to buying new furniture from an actual furniture store, I saved thousands of dollars. (I tried to figure out used furniture,  but the logistics of getting to and bringing home furniture was near impossible so it was really out of the question.) I really like the stuff, and the kids like it as well so far.

Anyway, so I had the garage sales and I sold bedroom furniture and I gave stuff away and I rented a carpet cleaner and spent backbreaking hours steam cleaning my carpet and I (well, my dad helped significantly here) painted the kids room and put the beds together and drug desks around the city and got on a first-name basis with the UPS guy who brought new sheets and comforters and everything else. The only thing left was some form of storage. The kids toys and all of their stuff has been strewn about the upstairs for forever now. I have had nothing to store stuff in in their rooms.

Then I got these great Jonti-craft shelves at auction. There are four of them. Two little ones with doors and two big open bookcase style shelves. And they have wheels! And the big ones have Write-n-wipe backs! I am in LOVE with these shelves. They are solid wood and sturdy and have some super strong finish on them where you can even wipe off crayon and paint. They will more than hold all the kids stuff. They can move around and each of the kids can have their own for their own space when they get older and happy, happy, joy, joy.

But you can see where this is going.

Actually, I lucked out. A nice guy from the educational supply store had a huge freight shipment he was going to take to a nearby school. And he said he would drop my stuff to my house as well. Big headache relieved there. And I'm very grateful to him for doing this. The cost to freight it myself would have not been worth it. So, I didn't know how much he was willing to do, but I at least thought he would help bring them into my house. I even had some cash ready to see if I could bribe him tip him for helping me carry them up the stairs, but I knew this might not be workable. So, he comes and tells me he has no time and he says he will put the stuff in my garage. Fine. I say. At least I got it this far. I'll figure out the rest later.

Well, he had my stuff all wrapped up vertically on a pallet. (Is that what you call them? The fork lift platformy things?) This thing was about 8 feet high and the pallet itself, much bigger than the surface area of the shelves, was about 4 feet by four feet. He plopped it in the middle of my garage and left.

So this was over a week ago, and now D can't get into my house, and I can't get out of my house easily with the stroller. I have to take the stroller out the front and down 5 steps. That's not a big deal, but D not being able to come over is a big deal. I do attendant things for him when he comes, not to mention feed him, and he watches the kids for me. I have had no D at my house for over a week. Just me and the kids for that many days alone every evening is driving me a bit batty.

I could back my dad's car out of the garage, but I can't put it back in myself without risking vehicular or bodily harm. Besides the fact that that would piss my dad off. I've taken the top two shelves down, but I still can't move the fucking pallet, even with my huge massive speed-skater man-like legs.

Isn't this a ridiculous predicament? Aren't I being silly?

I HAVE asked a couple of people for help. Both seem to have flaked out on me. I'm not sure why ( or even if they've really flaked out because they don't want to do it or just because they don't realize the "severity" of my fragile sanity about D not being able to get into my house.) They could come through, or not. Can't people just commit? It would be like, 20 minutes of helping me. The things actually ROLL. So, it is only up the steps that I can't do myself. Either say you can do it, or not. Is that so hard? I'm willing to work around schedules, I'm willing to make it a fun day and get beer and pizza or whatever. I'm willing to do it at two in the morning if that is what it takes.

Why is this so hard and why is this driving me batshit crazy?

Because, with this 20 minutes of help and an hour of my own time organizing things, this room project could be done. D could come over and watch the fucking little hyenas darling boys so I could have a moments peace. I could make food and have an actual adult eat it with actual adult dinner conversation. I could get all the miscellaneous toys and crap out of every orifice in the upstairs. And I could actually feel like someone out there cares about me/us enough to want to take 20 minutes to help us. I could MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE!

(All you people who compliment me and tell me how amazing I am, thank you, but you knew I had to crack at some point, didn't you? This might be the some point. I know I'm being irrationally bonkers about stupid shelves.)

So, now, I have my church covenant group on Saturday. There are two big, strong burly men there that may or may not be willing to help me. I have no idea. I'm completely afraid to ask and so probably won't.

Another churchy option is that my director of religious education (who by the way, is the exception to the church rule and has gone out of her way to help me at times) had emailed us to see if we needed any help during D's upcoming surgery in November. (No big deal, he is getting his infusion pump replaced.) Well, no. Not really then. But I could email her and say, thanks...we are fine for the surgery but do you know anyone who would be willing to haul some shit out of my garage and up a flight of stairs? She knows everything about everyone, so she might have a better idea than me about who would be willing/able to help. She is out of town now, so I have a few days to work up my nerve on that one.

Oh! And once I saw on Craigslist a guy who would drive me (not me personally, a female) to Ikea, buy me $200 worth of Ikea junk, deliver it for me and assemble it in exchange for my gratitude. So, how much gratitude do you think I'd have to offer up to get a guy to make a few hefty trips up my stairs? I mean, I'm not saying he has to pay $200 for the shelves or anything.

Still, probably more gratitude than I'm willing to provide. I guess I need to suck it up and get over myself and figure this stupid thing out.

HELP! (There. Did that work?)

Our Pre-Preschool Year and Other Thoughts on Homeschooling

This summer I was busy with several projects, most of which are just about finished up successfully, and the kids and I kind of had a, well, a blah time. Not that it was so bad, but we spent too many days in the house doing nothing or watching TV while I tried to work and get things done in spite of them. There were a lot of days were their needs were all met and stuff, but we could have gotten more out of the day together.

One of the things I wanted to do in these preschool years is to "try on" homeschooling. And so I vowed that in September, the kids and I would get to it. We would, at a two and a half year old level, start "school." It took until about September 15th to get started, but we finally got things off the ground and it is going very well so far.

I am using a curriculum. This has been a bit of a source of controversy in my head. I have read lots of John Holt, and I think there is a whole lotta sense in the whole unschooling practices. And then I know me. This is more about me than the kids at this age. If I "unschooled" in the purest sense of the word, I would go absolutely cuckoo bananas insane. And, especially at this age when the kids day depends so much on how hard I work to make things happen, I'm afraid our days would run together into many more blah days of nothingness. I need a plan. At least some semblance of one. I need goals and schedules. I need expectations and at least a tiny bit of assessment. I need a curriculum. And I need this curriculum to balance out my need for some form of daily structure and accountability and the kids need to be flexible and spontaneous two-year-olds.

I have found this in "Funshine Express." I am really liking this program so far. It is intended for preschools and daycare centers to use with kids from ages 2-5. Each month, I get a kit with materials for three themes. It comes with lesson plans, materials for art projects, visual aids, and book lists. There is the (cringe) letter/number/color/shape of the week/month stuff which I thought I might not use, but turns out---the kids are really getting into the letter of the week stuff. They like these little phonic poems that go with each letter, they repeat them and want them read over and over again. It also has a list of library books for each unit, recipes for easy, fun little snacks, outdoor activities, calender and weather stuff, math games, etc. It is really easy to pick and choose what you want to do and most things can be adapted a bit since my kids are on the younger end of the age range. There are songs and a CD, finger plays, suggestions for 'field trip' activities, it is really quite well rounded. Very traditional preschool, but pretty all inclusive.

Cost depends on how many kids you purchase supplies for. You can pick any number from 2 kids on up in even number increments. So for our 2 kids, it is about $320 for the year (when ordered a year at a time and with an early-bird special coupon). When you consider that I would have to pay approximately $400 a month for the minimum 2 half-days of preschool a week for both kids ($4800 a year, gulp!), then $320 for a year of 5 days a week (or more) of activities, it isn't bad at all. It comes out to about $25 a day per kid for preschool vs .66 cents per day per kid with funshine express. Obviously with preschool you are also getting day care and you can go do other things, but when $25 a day is out of the question anyway, 66 cents is a good trade-off.

I know that there are wonderful, creative moms out there who can come up with exciting things to keep their kids busy everyday without a curriculum, but I'm not one of those moms. I can throw crayons and play-doh at them, but I would not think of making paper mache apples out of newspaper and a water/flour mixture. I can give them a snack of bananas and pretzels, but I would not think of having them make their own "porcupines" out of bananas, peanut butter, pretzel sticks and raisins. These are things that are not hard if someone tells you what to do, but hard to come up with on your own. The kids really get into this stuff.

Also, I have wanted to use the library with them more, but I have trouble actually picking out good books for them. I cannot see well enough to select particular books, and browsing is also difficult. I've asked the librarian for help, but they will maybe give me one or two suggestions. Now, I get a book list every month that I fax to the library. About a week later, I arrange to pick up the books they have selected for me by doing a teacher pull. This month, they picked out 26 really appropriate and on-theme books for me. I could have never done that. Aaron is in heaven. And so am I. Librarians Rock!

Our October Funshine Express Goings-On. The Bulletin board has the calendar, weather, number, shape and letter of the week. By the end of the month it gets all filled up. The stack of books on the right is this month's library haul. The Orange packets are project materials, we've already used some of these up. And the other stuff is various games, visual aids, etc. This isn't even all of what is included.

So, here is kinda what I do: They send the box of goodies about three weeks in advance. I spend sometime the month before prepping and cutting materials and getting an idea of what supplies I need and translating stuff I want into a form I can access. Probably a total of 3 or 4 hours or so advanced monthly prep work. (This would be much less for people who can see.) Then, each week, I look to see what supplies I need for the week. Nothing unusual here. Mostly stuff you have on hand like glue and construction paper, or groceries you would buy anyway. Then each day, I maybe spend 15 minutes deciding what to do and getting stuff ready for it. And then we have "school time."

School time can run anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 or so hours or all day with things spread throughout the day depending on what is going on and the kids' mood. It starts with calendar, weather, a review of the letter/number whatever, and a library book and usually a song or poem. They both really like this. I have to let Naim stand up and run around a bit during this time, but other than that, they both participate and look forward to it. Then what we do varies greatly. Usually there is an art project, or maybe cooking something, or a 'worksheet'. Yes, it does come with basic letter/number coloring worksheets. Naim usually doesn't stand for these, so there is nothing forced here. Aaron likes worksheets and likes for me to go hand-over-hand and trace the letters with him. Basically, after calendar, I pick about three or four activities for them to do and if they do them, great. If not, no big deal. Usually they will at least try everything and if they don't care for it, I don't force them to do it. In general, they like most of the activities so far. We usually try to go outside after that. Sometimes there are activities to do outside like collecting leaves or doing some kind of game. But if not, they just play at the playground or something. This is Oregon, and we are Oregonians, so we go out rain or shine. The weather is hardly ever life-threatening here.

I find that when you have a theme to work around, you can find fifty thousand ways to tie in everyday life into that theme. Where else can we find "B" words? When our theme was forest animals we went to the forest and saw the squirrel, etc. Without this 'backbone' of a curriculum, I'd probably rush through my day without stopping and noticing certain things that we can learn about in those teachable moments. The curriculum helps me catch those and slows me down.

I'm also doing a bit of record keeping and assessment. I am only doing this to get the feel for keeping homeschooling records, which to some extent is required by the state. (And also for my own 'defensive parenting' paranoia.) Funshine comes with a rather basic assessment tool based on head start guidelines, so we will use that probably two or three times this year. It works for our purposes. And then I just jot down a few notes about what they did each day, and I'm done.

"But what about SoocialiZAAAATion?" That is what everybody asks about homeschooling and it is about the least well-thought out question on the planet. Anyway, so I've also built socialization stuff into our days. We go to the gym two days a week. One day, I take one of them swimming with me while the other goes to childcare (where they do stuff with other kids and adults!). The other day, they start out with a thirty minute "gym" class before they go on to childcare. Two days a month, their healthy start teacher comes to see them and they do a lot of socialization role playing and the like. Once a week they are in the church nursery, and once a month they are with my covenant group's kids, and another day a month they are with a girl during my RE committee meetings. Twice a month they go to the children's museum where they take a class in either clay or painting, have story time, and then play in the exhibits. Once a month they hang out at the library. Two to three times a week they are at their dad's house in which they will interact with a myriad of nurses, grandfathers, friends, and UPS drivers or whoever shows up because that place always has a thousand people coming in and out of it. They play with other kids at the playground at least two or three times a week. And hell, I'll even count the couple times a month they spend in the Fred Meyer Playland while we shop for groceries. So, I think they are covered. At two, they probably have a better social life than their mother.

So far, "homeschooling," such that it is at two and a half, is really fun. It is a lot of work, but fun and I have still been able to earn a bit of money on the side (more on that soon). I have a loose idea of what kind of structure I will use as they get older. Of course my plans may all go to hell as what I need in a curriculum is superseded by what they need. Right now we have a good match, I think. But I can see how they will have more and more input into what and how they learn and that will evolve as we go along.

We may get more unschoolish, we may not. Or one kid may and the other may not. Aaron really likes traditional school, but Naim really likes structure, so who knows. I can see myself using a Montessori approach to teaching reading, or whatever works best. (Hey! I'll put the decades long reading debate to rest right here: Phonics vs. Whole language? You need both. DUH!!! Some kids do better with more emphasis on one approach than the other, but all kids need some of both. So, how we teach reading will depend on how they learn it, but it will be an incarnation of both phonics and context/language based activities.) Once the basics of reading are learned, switch to a world history/science framework (a la "The Well-Trained Mind"). Language is something I can easily see myself being able to teach via unschooling, because I know I can teach it on the fly and catch all those teachable moments. I actually can't wait to teach world history via those "Story of the world" books as a spine text. My own world history education was abysmal, as well as the utter and total failure that was my math education.

Math? Not so much. This is where a good match of teacher and student will be important. If my kids were left to me "unschooling" them about math, they'd never learn a thing because my life revolves around avoiding math at all costs. We need a curriculum for math for damned sure. This again will depend on their learning styles, but right now, I'm all excited about Math-U-See. I recently watched the 45-minute demo of Math-U-See and I about cried. I finally learned why in the holy hell jumped up fuck I spent 2+ years suffering immensely through factoring polynomials. Algebra finally made an iota of sense to me. Seriously, I was jumping up and down in my room screaming about how easy it was to understand. The other math possibility is D. D is a math guy. D could definitely unschool math, probably up to vector calculus if he just had enough time with the kids. So, he will definitely be a factor in math, but it is up in the air how much he will be able to do from day to day.

D is also a resource for music. D played violin and a few other instruments for years before his accident. He was all Suzuki-ized. I think we will start the kids on violin. D thinks he could teach them in the beginning with the help of this curriculum, and then if either really develops a propensity and love for it, we would see about getting them a professional teacher. (I'd also like to see them take piano, because it is so foundational as an instrument, but that would be a harder challenge to meet.)

For PE, we would probably do whatever sports they were interested in through parks and rec programs. Many of which incorporate the kids from our neighborhood school. Art is a bit harder because both D and I kinda suck at it. I could do basic elementary art, but there are also art summer camps and stuff if they wanted to go further.

Art and things like foreign language can also be done through the coop. As well as a whole bunch of other stuff like field trips, science stuff, drama, and even clubs like Lego robotics and an ASL club. The coop also provides for the mandatory state testing ( and even SAT prep down the road.) They can learn ASL from me and also through classes from the coop. I'd love for them to get as much Spanish as possible, because this is Oregon and you really do need it. I think I could get them through the early years of Spanish, perhaps with the help of Rosetta Stone or some such. Then there will be religious education through the church, which also has a really good sex ed program as well.

Now, of course, all of this may completely change as they start telling me what they want as far as school goes, but I am extremely fortunate to live in a setting where there are way more (mostly secular) homeschooling and community activities than any kid could ever do. The challenge will definitely be narrowing it down. There are budgetary considerations, but really, nothing in and of itself is that expensive. It will be a matter of prioritizing and scheduling. There are also huge homeschool curriculum books sales and swaps of used stuff for cheap around here. I can see getting by on a, say, $500 a year homeschooling budget, give or take. Much better than a $12K to $20K or more private school tuition.

Public school is still there as an option, but at this stage in my thinking it is like a back-up, back-up, back-up plan like if I had horrible money problems or health problems. Or if the kids just aren't happy with the way things are going at home. It is very important to me that I have public school as a back up (as well as for anyone else who needs it), so you will not be hearing me ditch public school and I will always support it. However, we are having such fun spending time learning together and through the experiences and connections we are making in the homeschooling world, this just really feels like we are on the right path.

ETA: This article just came across my desk. Another one for the homeschooling file for the doubters. Apparently (sigh), even kids with parents that have low educational backgrounds do better than kids in public school. I tell ya, it is all about the individualization of education. It isn't rocket science.

Bonus ETA: A pic of some lasagna strewn, lazy giggly people after dinner.

D tilted back in his chair with silly Naim and Aaron on his lap. They got so messy eating lasagna that I stripped them down. I'm standing on the stairs, if you are wondering about the weird angle.

Early Morning Time Waster

I blame AmFam for sending me on a time-wasting binge this morning. For both she and I, I think that whole nonbiological aspect in our families drew us in. Kinda funny. I did not spend a long time picking good pictures of all of us, maybe later I will go back and see if I can find better ones and try again. But this technology is kinda cool, though...such as it is.

I think what is really proven here, and what everyone tells me, is that neither child looks much like either of us. My sister thinks they were switched at the hospital. (Although D and I recognize the kids as the actual screaming babies that were pulled out of my uterus in the OR.) I think Aaron kind of looks like my dad sometimes, and my sister's baby pictures other times. Naim looks somewhat like his half (donor) brother, and looks more Russian, yet this says he looks more like me than Aaron. Aaron and D have a very similar coloring, they both have that Eastern European olive-ish tone, whereas Naim and I are both white, white, white. I do believe Naim is the whitest kid in America.

All this is to say that we have two kids that look not much like either of us, and neither of us could give a rats ass about that. Besides the novelty factor, I still don't get why some people are so adamantly connected through biology exclusively and seem to value those ties so much more than chosen ties. (i.e. the whole, "I could never love an adopted child as much as a biological one." WTF is UP with that?)

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