Gravatar I guess I'll have to put Florida on my list of places to visit.


Gravatar Oh, meeting you and Pam in May sounds so wonderful!

But perhaps like your son, I only like the idea of travel, something to imagine and enjoy that way, not so big on actually going! :D


Gravatar That's so true JJ. And it's something I've thought about and try to remind myself. It's just the couch-sitting that is getting to me. He does so much watching and very little creating. And I know his brain is engaged and I can totally see him going into a field in which all this watching and game playing will end up as valuable research, but it's been over two years and I keep thinking he'll branch out a little. Or take on a project he's super excited about. Obviously, he does that here and there. But I wish he did it more. I do worry about his health in that way, you know. And I wonder if his brain is engaged enough. I've been looking for some information on brain activity while playing video games but so far all I've found are studies related to violence and he doesn't play violent games. I just want to know what the brain is doing while watching TV or playing video games and how it might be different from what it's doing while working with your hands or reading, for example.

Thankfully, I know enough about myself to recognize that when I find myself wanting to change Jerry's habits it usually has more to do with me wanting to change myself than wanting to change him--so I keep my mouth shut. But it is something I worry about. And it's part of the reason I'm constantly looking for things that he'll find interesting--I'm always hoping to find the thing that will get him off the couch! And, it does worry my husband. A lot.

I liked your comment about depth, though. I'd much rather worry about depth than breadth. So that actually helped a lot! I'm going to change my worry focus--well, one of them, anyway.

I think you should make a trip out to Washington for the Life is Good Conference in May. Pam Sorooshian will be there. And so many other wonderful people. And then I can meet you in person and give you a proper thank you for all your help these past two years!


Gravatar Something that's been in the back of my mind, Colleen -- from the beginning you've written about Jerry as if he is much more of a homebody than you are, just naturally.

You're acknowledging how much you love, love, love travel, being on the move and always having the next adventure in the works to plan and anticipate when you're home in between. And you're embracing it, giving yourself permission to enjoy it.

What if Jerry is the same way about a different slower pace, and staying in the same place? If you help him now, he may discover and be able to embrace without guilt, much younger than you did, how his own preferences and rhythms differ from yours and how those differences can make life richer rather than wretched, and they don't make either of you better or worse as an individual.

Learning how to know, love and honor himself as well as his family and friends, and then how to negotiate his own personal golden mean balancing it all happily into the Life that's just right for him -- and only him! -- is the most important life skill of all.

What else is there, really? If that's all he ever gets out of unschooling, isn't it everything?

Take the historian/poet/humorist Sarah Vowell, who was the voice of Violet in The Incredibles:


For Sarah Vowell, nothing beats sitting at home for weeks on end, "reading really dry, boring books on old things and trying to pick out the most interesting, entertaining, illuminating subject matter in them."

Vowell, 33, a humorist and radio commentator for public radio's "This American Life," is sometimes called "the female David Sedaris. . .

*************

Vowell began a night of reading on Sunday at UCSB’s Campbell Hall by describing her connection to the beloved president [Teddy Roosevelt], confessing her childhood desire to be stricken by the asthma Teddy suffered through. When her father told her all Roosevelt could do as a child was stay in bed and read, Vowell knew she had found a kindred spirit.



Gravatar I like that recordkeeping for homeschoolers. Thanks for posting.

Sara


Gravatar Love this post...I hear ya.

I've spent the entire time (almost three years now) we've been homeschooling asking myself the question, "Am I doing enough".

And heck if I knew whether or not I was. I was just trying to engage my child in activities that were either educational, creative or what I thought "could be fun." If I was lucky, all of the above.

But lately, I've been finding myself starting to ask the question, "Am I doing too much?"

Especially now that she's 14, it feels like walking a tightrope.

Too much attention and it feels like I'm smothering her, too little and it feels like I'm neglecting her.

And you know what, in the meantime she's doing her thing, learning what she wants to know and just being herself.

Hmmmm...


Gravatar And here's something else to worry about -- the depth instead of the variety. What if you do succeed in getting him interested in a dozen exciting flavors of activities and interest areas, but each one is only an inch deep?

I think I did that to Favorite Daughter for a few years and she was willing to try everything so I kept piling it on. Geez!

Plus, you guys just wear me out!

I wonder if there's something to be said for the scarity principle here. Learning to compare and contrast value in experience (Jerry learning for himself I mean.)

FavD took classes at a gifted resource center here for a few years, until she was about Jerry's age now. Each term there would be a write-up of all the possible choices and every single one sounded so cool! -- the history of chocolate, how shoes changed civilization, tv production, exotic foreign languages, story-telling, stuff I would have enjoyed too! But you could only choose two for any one term, and your parents had nothing to say about it. Every choice was delicious but they had to be compared and weighed for the very best two, and you weren't guaranteed that the most popular would have room for you.

I think it made the gifted kids in those classes get the absolute most out of everything they did -- even though eventually they all got around to doing everything they wanted, at any given time they were having a peak experience of their own choosing. Does that make sense?


JJ


Gravatar In that video you posted Pam Sorooshian said something that really struck me, it was something like "when I did not know what to do, we just had fun." So I have been trying to use that as a basis when I feel like maybe we are not doing enough. Also, I realized recently that I am interested in so many things and I have been waiting for Ari to share those interests instead of just going for it. Mostly, I want her to have passion about whatever she is doing and enjoy what she is doing. I can model that but I cannot change my passions to be hers or vice versa.




Name:

Email:

URL:

Comment:  ? 

 

Commenting by HaloScan