Wrestling with my inner control freak

So, writing that post yesterday, and observing with renewed attention George's behavior and attitude today, I realize that I've slipped back into my slave-driver mentality this week. There are so many forces at work (both internal and external) that validate that mentality for me.... And it's so easy to forget who I'm dealing with here--not that being a control-freak-nazi-slave-driver would work particularly well with any kid. But the point is, George is plenty driven. He doesn't need me riding him so hard to make him learn! When I do that, it just burns him out. Listen to your kid, remember? He understands his own needs better than you might think.

When I'm pushing him too hard, it's because I'm noticing that he's slacking off a lot, but when he's slacking off a lot, it's always because he somehow knows he needs it. I'm not talking now about when he'll try to avoid doing something like brushing his teeth and he needs a little push in the general direction of the bathroom sink. I'm talking about when he starts to get an overall lack of enthusiasm for everything, even the things he normally loves. Which I really noticed today, when I was paying particular attention to *him* and not just to my own agenda.

And for cryin' out loud, who says he has to complete advanced 5th-grade math in 3 months? He's not even in 5th grade yet and even if he were, why should he be pressured to finish a whole year in 3 months? Just because I've paid a %$&^load of money for it? That's just dumb. Like forcing yourself to overeat at the buffet or something, because no matter what you want to make sure you get your money's worth. Or making yourself wear really uncomfortable-but-expensive shoes that you bought on a whim, because even if you're making yourself completely miserable, again, you're gonna get your money's worth, come hell or high water. Ha.

I *know* all of this, and yet somehow I can so easily forget it. Especially when I'm in a particularly intense period with my own work. And I guess I'm feeling the pressure with that and also with a baby on the way, like soon I won't have enough time and energy to make sure he's doing his math, so I'd better work hard to make sure he gets as much done as possible, right now. But he has his own needs and his own internal pace. His own comfort level with processing, absorbing, learning. And it absolutely needs to be taken into account. In fact, it really needs to be what guides his education. Any teacher worth her salt should know that!

It can just be hard to quiet the voices inside (and outside) my head--subtle though they may be--that express worry that he won't learn the value or the satisfaction of hard work and discipline, or that I'm letting his mind and talents go to waste or something. Again, it goes right back to the issues in my very first blog post, where I was grappling with the question of whether or not I was pushing him too hard or not enough (guess which one it was). I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I'm having to relearn a lesson that I thought I had already mastered. That just kinda seems to come with the territory of, well, life. On some things, anyway. Two steps forward, one step back....

Homeschooling again...

I initially started this blog to sort through my experiences as a new (or at least, newly full-time) homeschooler, but things had been going so smoothly in 2010 (at least as far as homeschooling!) that I really didn't have much to write about. Well, I do still have a lot to write about unschooling, but, anyway, now a problem has arisen that I do really want to address.

The problem is (surprise): math.

5th-grade math is so tedious! At least, the course George is doing now. The awful part is that they keep drilling him on fractions (improper, equivalent, etc.), and on long division and multiplication, and he's just tearing his hair out with it. His frustration level is so high that he has been crying almost every day with it. I gave him a long break in January, and then another week-long break for the unschooling conference, so although I can tell he could probably use another break, I've not been feeling inclined to give it to him. I have let him skip the last two days, though. The trouble is, the course is so darned expensive. I hate to let days go by without his making progress.

I guess even more than that, though, I hate having him develop an attitude about math. I have been telling him that I, who *loved* math in high school, hate this kind of stuff, too. It's boring, repetitive computation. The math I love is the more conceptual, logical stuff, and I just know he's going to love that, too. I mean, he does love it when he gets to do it. There's just too much emphasis on the computation right now, and it has zapped all the fun out of the rest of it for him.

It's making him miserable. And by extension, it's making me miserable. It's a particularly busy/productive time for me as I try to get as much accomplished as I can before the baby is born. But it's hard to focus on my work when George is crying over his math in the next room! He gets all frustrated and then he makes a minor error and gets the problem wrong, and then that sets him off. I've been sticking to the line of making him push through it, but it's not really working.

And call me a softy, but I don't think math should be torture. I don't think it should be excruciatingly dull. Cleaning the cat box, waiting in a long line, tidying his room, now those things can be tedious or boring. But I want him to love learning!

So, I've been looking into alternatives. I'd been hearing about Life of Fred for quite awhile, and we checked it out of the library. He does like it! The series claims to teach all the math you need to know from fractions through second-year college math or so. But it's hard to believe that it's really sufficient. The books are so short and are also written in a story format. They are very funny. They tell the story of Fred, a 5-yr-old boy who goes to college. All the math is taught in the context of things he comes across in his life. Then there are little tests that you have to pass before you can move on to find out what happens in the next chapter. It's really, really clever, and also teaches little smatterings of philosophy and rhetoric and such along the way. I love it, and George likes it as well, but I am definitely having a hard time believing it's as thorough as it really needs to be.

I also found that after the next couple of levels CTY math goes from EPGY to Thinkwell. And when I went to the Thinkwell website, I saw that the lowest level looks like it covers stuff he's doing right now. And it looks a lot less dry. AND it's a LOT cheaper. Part of why I feel pressured to keep pushing George is how much money this course is costing; even though it is an entire year of math, he's supposed to be able to do it in 3 months, and if he goes over the three months we have to pay more. But with Thinkwell you pay way less and you have an entire year to finish the course. BETTER! If I feel like he needs a break, or to focus on other subjects for awhile, I don't have to sweat it.

So, I'm contemplating having him do the Thinkwell placement test tomorrow, to see what he can place into. If he can place high enough, I won't feel too bad about abandoning the CTY/EPGY class in the middle. (I don't know why I'm reluctant or afraid to abandon the current course for the Life of Fred. But I am.) We can use the unused credit for another CTY course, I believe. (He's expressed an interest in their cryptography course.)

That's my plan, I think. The CTY courses have felt like such a safety net--they were what gave me the confidence to start homeschooling George full-time in the first place. Taking on homeschooling is such an awesome responsibility, and I felt that as long as the basics (math and reading, and eventually science) were being covered by this program for gifted kids run through Johns Hopkins and Stanford, well, then he was clearly getting an outstanding education. But it's not working so well anymore.

And part of what's so wonderful about homeschooling is that you can be completely flexible and tailor the whole thing to what is working for your kid. So maybe it's time to accept that this program has, for now, served its purpose, and it's time to move on.

Yes. I want his learning to be joyful. Challenging *and* fun. I really think it ought to be so, at least most of the time.

So much to write about...

...so little time/energy to write about it! Plus, my unlucky-with-laptops streak has continued, and my newest laptop, the only computer in the house that had been working consistently, has been acting up. Anyway, here, in brief, are some of the things I've been wanting to write about:

1) Went to an unschooling conference and finally actually learned something about what unschooling really is. Found that I am, and am not, an unschooler. Am definitely not a "radical unschooler". I intend to write more about this in a future post.

2) Also at this conference I heard John Taylor Gatto speak, and really loved many of the things he had to say. The main idea he conveyed that I loved was something along the lines of how we prolong childhood artificially in our culture, and by doing so, we actually do our kids a disservice. We should both give them more credit and expect more from them starting much earlier on. I'm not explaining that well at all... (does it sound like I'm all for putting kids to work in sweatshops?!) but it will have to wait for a future post.

3) I've been sick all week with a cough that was so bad I actually went to the emergency room (under the advice of my doctor, lest you think I'm a total hypochondriac!). Everything is fine, big-picture-wise, but it's been quite a week. Hence the lack of energy to write about all these things that have been rattling around in my head....

4) I have been on a song-writing spree. Not so much this week, but in the weeks leading up to it. I kind of have the idea to write about the genesis of some of these songs in here, because I think down the road I'd like to remember the circumstances under which I wrote them. And it's getting to the point where there are enough of them that I'm going to start losing track. I will say that tonight Bob and I set to music some lyrics we wrote some time ago ("Catch a Groove"). Anyway, more later.

5) I have great aspirations to write about all of the above, but am not sure when I'm really going to get to it, since I also have a ton of work to do (especially since I fell far behind this week, being on my deathbed and all), and I'm going to have a BABY in two months and my house is nowhere near ready for his arrival.

Ok, that's it for now. Must sleep!

Rockin' Out

Weird, weird gig last night.

It was at a bar called The Country Pines, kind of out in the boonies. It is a huge place. The owner actually called us a few days ago to say he was thinking of cancelling the gig and closing up the bar for the weekend, because the place had really been empty--January and February were traditionally his worst months, but with the economy the way it is, they've been truly abysmal for him. We had told him we didn't mind playing to an empty house and would rather not cancel, and didn't mind if we didn't make any money (we had an arrangement for payment that was based on what kind of business he did that night, an arrangement that has worked out nicely for us in the past at other places). Besides, we had invited a lot of people, and even though we always invite way more than we get, we were pretty sure that several people were coming.

So the show was to go on.

When we got there, the place was empty. Completely. The owner wasn't even there yet! But he came soon. By the time we were set up and ready to start, several people had in fact shown up, and at one point there were probably 25 people. Which would be a nice little crowd in some of the places we've played in, but as I said, this place is HUGE.

Not that we mind a small crowd--in fact, what they lacked in numbers they more than made up for in enthusiasm. The problem was, the place was so big (and had wood floors and only a bit of wood furniture, and not much on the walls), that it was like singing in an echo chamber.

Have you ever tried to sing in an echo chamber? Well, me neither, but I now feel like I have. When I started singing my first song (Gimme 3 Steps), my voice came bouncing back to me from all over the place, and it was so completely disorienting. I felt like I had nothing to latch onto with the music. It sounded horrible to me, and I couldn't believe people weren't running for the hills, or at least the bathroom, to escape.

Around somewhere during the second verse, I realized that trying to listen to myself wasn't working, and I had to just let go and hope for the best. Focus in on Bob's guitar and try to block out everything else, including myself, and just go for it. Doing this took a great deal of concentration, and was not really conducive to a fun, high-energy performance, however. In fact, it was *quite* stressful.

I wondered if my bandmates were having similar issues, because it seemed like everyone's concentration was just a bit off. We weren't quite clicking. It almost felt as though we were playing underwater, like everything was kind of a struggle and we weren't as honed in on each other as we normally are.

But, we forged onward. And during about my third song, something came over me--the realization that this was our second-to-last gig before we take my "maternity break". It hit me that it will be awhile before I'm doing this regularly again, and I felt really wistful about it! I decided that I was going to milk this experience for all it was worth. That I was going to have a ball, echo chamber or not. Grating vocals or not. Seventh month of pregnancy or not. And you know what? It worked. I had the time of my life up there. I loved it. Loved it. And no one was leaving, so I was thinking maybe it didn't sound as bad as I had been fearing.

There are a few songs that I don't need to play on, that have been serving as built-in breaks for me during the sets. When I came down off the stage a little over halfway through the first set, I thought we actually sounded pretty decent. Though of course I could not hear my own vocals then! But it gave me hope that the whole thing was sounding better than it did up on stage.

By 11:15 or so the crowd had thinned out, and we had agreed in advance with the owner that we would end early if there weren't a lot of people there. I was actually having so much fun I wanted to keep going, but I went with the flow.

I'm not much help packing up the equipment these days, so I left early... but Bob told me that as they were packing up a new group of people came in to hear us play, and were really disappointed that we had ended early! Of course we love it when our friends come out to hear the band, for *sure*... but it also always feels great when people you don't know have heard about you and come to see you.

Even better than that, Bob reported, the bar owner LOVED us. He told Bob that we were the best band he'd heard in awhile, and that he does a lot of catering/private parties, and that we were going to be the number one band he recommends from now on to people who ask him. We were kinda shocked (since we truly did not feel we'd put our best foot forward), and thrilled.

So, one more gig, next week, and then it's at least three months off for me. But I will definitely be back. Definitely!