Everyone knows that homeschoolers manage their children’s behavior with patience, consistency and aplomb, always having the right response at the right time, and leading their children to higher standards of conduct with each and every interaction.
Right.
Now that we’ve dealt with what we are all sure happens in everyone else’s home, let’s get on with the reality of what really does happen in our own homes.
For sure this really resonated with what happens in our family.. there are times when my self directed kids are well.... let's say not so self directed. Ok. let me rephrase that.. they are not so self directed in anything that does not involve the words ' I'm bored" in them.
So, do your kids need a motivational system?
Hard to say, what I do know is that everyone is self-motivated. You just have to find out what the triggers are for each individual child is.
Some kids are really turned on by making money, some by a trip to the park, some by spending one on one time with a parent.. Of course, this also could be one child motivated by all three of these (and more!) at different times.
When we first began our journey in the early '90's and homeschooling was mostly on the radical edge of living, I was really smitten by the thought that kids learn what they need to know, when they need to know it.
The John Holt philosophy of Unschooling, and the entire Growing Without Schooling community felt like the 'right place' for my kids and I to be.
It was a wholistic way to grow your kids. No outer imposed rules of learning, no external bells to tell you when to stop or start a new activity. No grades to impose on young minds letting them feel discouraged by some external forces or encouraged artificially for somebody else's idea of a job well done.
But somewhere along child #1 and #4 and many years later,, I realized that each one of them is so different, and the style of unschooling the way I saw it was not always the best path for them.
Many years have been spent resisting the idea that my ideal world, where a self directed child would blossom because they were given such an open ended opportunity to grow at their own pace, under their own direction, may not work for every child!
Imagine my dismay when my kids told me they wanted to have a curriculum and worksheets.
My two youngest daughters have asked recently, just for those things. I do send them to the internet, to Google, to look up for themselves what would be good for them.. edging them further into the self directed place. But they resist doing this as much as I have resisted granting their wishes of curriculum and worksheets.
But as I write this out now, I realize that them asking for those things IS being a self directed learner. They are trusting themselves to know what is right for them, and recognizing they want to learn certain things, specifics. And their idea of how to get there is very different than mine of being much less formal about the whole thing.
Maybe I am too entrenched in the ideal. Maybe my thoughts that there are so many tools and opportunities now, more in the past 3 years than the 17 years before.. have created too much for them to narrow down for themselves and they need more of my guidance now than ever.
Hmmm... well.. that is the beauty of writing a blog. Is to discover more about ourselves along the way as we do it.
So today, I am going to pull together some resources for my kids, because they have asked.. and in the future writings on this blog.. I will share those resources with you and tell you what we think of them, and how they are going.
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