I think Tuesday was the last sunny + clear day we are going to have for a while. The dahlias -- which have been lingering for some time; and are really super-saturated with unstoppable color, wtf -- fully opened and I brought them in. The garden is a mess, honestly, and if it ever stops raining this month or next, I will get out there and put it to bed. We have a compost tumbler now I can stuff it all into. Mari & the children -- mostly Mari & Garçon -- put it together from a loose prescription from Boys' Life magazine. I spied it while sitting in the same waiting room where I was trying to ignore the bossiness of that bossy Ladies' Home Journal, and also I saw Fille out there, with her protective glasses on, hammering, so boys' life is not really wholly descriptive.
My boy's life is making me old and tired and I am looking to put a stop to all of this endless conflict. If anyone has known me for even an hour, they will know that my son presents me with certain challenges, which have long been driving me absolutely insane, really. Lately, the issue of schoolwork or not schoolwork and will we send him to school to endure the work & realize too late his immense privilege, or does he need more time to absorb the lessons of freedom or blahblahblah, and it has been so stressful for me that even the sweetest pals who are also childless dudes have felt compelled to comment, offering sweet, sincere, all-thumbs advice. So, it has been a lot, recently.
This whole year, really, on top of My Issues, has been hard with him. One of my issues has been trying hard to remember that there are two sides to every story. Also, to salve myself, because if the alternative to just expressing anger at an infuriating child is this kind of shockingly poisonous and manipulative horseshit, it is perfectly ok to just tell them you are angry because they are being rude and you will just catch them on the flip side. Honestly.
That whole conditional love thing made me so angry, so! angry! (Make the clicky on the link if this seems abrupt.) I was thinking of it for weeks, the incongruity & sadism of it, but at the same time how it brought so much of the parenting I see around me into focus, like, whoa. Then we saw Wild Things, which was so remedial, I thought, in its "message" of It is scary to get mad, it is scary to have someone mad at you, there are two sides to every story. But then people all around us were all, Like whoa and it was so cathartic for me and thunderbolt-scary for my children and etc, so dunno.
I was recently reading something I journaled about 4 years ago, so the children were 4 and 6, and they had just been beastly to me for an entire day, in every way 4 and 6 can come up with -- not listening and defying and pushing back and naysaying and tantrums and disobedience and power struggling. It had been a singularly tough day, which had been documented by me for them, all along. I was going to NYC the next day; I would leave in the morning before they woke up. They asked me, at bedtime, while we were all lying in one of their big beds, if I would bring them something from NYC. I told them no.
More than that, I wrote that I told them No, because you have been unkind to me all day long and I am angry and I feel mean and I feel petty and I feel small so that it pleases me to be able to say to you, "No, no I will not bring you anything from NYC." I am happy to say no and even happier that you will be disappointed.
And I read it, in this life, and I thought, "Whoa! I said that to a 4-year-old? Heavy." But, I mean, it was not a surprise that I would say something like that, and reading it I remembered the day very clearly, how wretched they were, though I did not remember such an clear confession of my own weaknesses. But I would much rather model clarity & articulation around actual feelings than hostile, two-faced resentments and control dressed up as cheerleading.
I came across a crazy book in the library last week. An old book, in a plain, one-color hardcover with the title embossed on the spine, which gave it this illusory quality, the antiquity of it, plus the title: Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing. It was like a mirage in the desert, and I was a little surprised to have my hand close over a real book. I need a radical approach to child rearing! Yes!
I am a little sad, wading through this book, to realize that Mari and I are already pretty radical in our childrearing choices, i.e., honestly confessing pettiness and refusal to a preschooler, so maybe there truly is nothing to be done. One weird thing is that this book is 50 years old and people are still pretty much parenting the same way that he is going on against, and Mari and I are still in the 21stc radical. It is silly to think of, but also I realize that the zaniest, most cause-for-comment thing that I do as a mother is let my children call me by my first name. Every time it makes it onto someone’s radar at all, it surprises me, and then to watch it blow out their sensors … it never adds up for me.
The other thing about the book is that he talks about freedom and license in a way I do not understand. I think there might be a language barrier with his 19thc British-English, or maybe I am just being slow. Anyhow, I have surmised that he is using "freedom" as what I am pretty sure we are giving our children, which a lot of people we know are giving their children, but we are not giving them license to run all over us and everyone else, e.g., allowing them to use my Christian name; not being all weird & we-never-inhaled about sex or drugs or bad behavior; honestly confessing pettiness and refusal to a preschooler.
Nonetheless, the book is a little intense & I have to keep stopping and pondering. The problem remains, though, of how to preserve our boundaries and let our son have autonomy and also get him to get his schoolwork done. I think this involves redefining our terms regarding what constitutes schoolwork, as illustrated in this short phone call with Mari.
Femme: I just think, honey, that isn’t the reason we homeschool because we do not believe in the pedagogy of institutional education? So, therefore, is it not unreasonable for us to recreate a classroom in our home?
Mari: No, we aren’t recreating a state classroom at all. Because that would be the bus and the early-waking and the all-day and the M-F attendance. This is different. If he just does his work, then he’s done, two hours, spit-spot.
Femme: Yes, and I agree with you. But it isn’t working, that. Is it? Is it??
Mari: No, I guess not. Oh, I see.
We are not really what can be defined as unschoolers, such as these things can even be defined. We do not think that children can learn everything they need to know about math & chemistry from baking. Perhaps that makes us horribly judgmental and a teensy bit elitist, but we both think that is lazy bullshit. It does the child a disservice to let them go around without being able to catalog & categorize and also without working on the muscles of memory and content-generation.
At the same time, we are having such a hard time with our son, and he already reads & writes way above grade level, plays an instrument, has basic carpentry skills and does math solidly at expectations for the fifth grade, and maybe a little bit beyond. So, what difference does it make if he can take notes by chapter on 3x5 cards? I have no answers. I want answers! I am answer-driven! I have an organized & tidy life, but no more, oh, no. No.
And to be completely and utterly fair to Garçon, who possibly does not deserve it, his contention about taking 3x5 cards notation was having to do with the fact that the book he was starting with was a work of historical fiction. He was insulted + amazed that he was to take notes on fiction. As he lodged the initial complaint, I saw his point, absolutely. I was, in fact, sorry that I had not thought of that when I saw it in the curriculum guide and swapped out some nonfiction book from the same unit. At the same time – welcome to my issues – I just thought to myself, No! God! Can he not just one time do what he is told? Just one goddamn time in his whole life?!
This all reminds me a little bit, I explained to Mari, of the time that Garçon was 13-ish months old and we decided it was time for him to sleep in his own bed. After he was night-weaned. we put a double-sized futon in the room across the hall & began transitioning him. He would go for naps in "his" bed just fine, and he would go to sleep in the beginning of the night without complaint. But when he awakened in the middle of the night is when the trouble started.
We would walk him back to his room, explaining cheerfully that it was time for him to sleep in his big bed, blah, blah, blah, and it would all be fine & we would be right across the hall, and we could all dream of being together, and see you in the morning, etc. My son was not having any of it. So he tantrummed and refused and we went back & forth, gently-determined, no one sleeping, everyone cross.
This went on for a week, and I said to Mari, "Why are we doing this? We sleep in a queen-sized bed, he is a little baby, and are we doing this for a reason? Because I really just want to sleep again." We realized we had no real reason for wanting him to sleep in his own bed & even if we ever did, it now paled in comparison to our real desire for sleeping. So, fine.
So, I cannot actually remember our reasons for homeschooling, but I am pretty sure they did not involve wanting everyone to be resentful about making outlines and using compound sentences just so. It was not so that I could recreate a state's classroom in my home. It was not so that I could relegate my husband to the role of "Principal," not unless I am planning to put on a cheerleader's outfit after dark.
My pal the Israeli has a similarly-determined child living in his house. We spent some time metaphorically whispering & confiding last night and when I told him of the 3x5 disaster, he assured me he says similar things to his kid all the time and then said, conspiratorially, “And I just know while I am doing it that it’s so childish, but I can’t stop myself.” I know! Totally! Let's tell them all about it in a confession! I'm Catholic! Let's go!!
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