Fall to Winter to Spring

When we purchased our little box of a house 18 years ago, I had one child...an infant in a baby carrier. I spent an afternoon in our new front yard planting tulip, crocus and hyacinth bulbs with that little one looking on and jabbering at me as I dug and placed them in the ground in groups under our front window.

Over the years, squirrels have dug some up and eaten them, some have multiplied and some have died, but a few of them have struggled on and continue to come up each spring. The kids though have multiplied...and that first infant has gone on to join the Army National Guard.

Last November, while in the local hardware/garden/feed store with our eldest I asked him to pick out some bulbs of whatever kinds he liked the look of.  That afternoon I handed him a trowel and the paperbag of bulbs and showed him the general area where they could go, to augment the few old ones remaining. He placed them in the ground, occasionally exposing where some of the older bulbs that I planted when he was an infant...and he spread them across the area into spots where they had a greater chance of survival and where we'd know they were new ones. I told him that they would be coming up in the spring and that I'd send him pictures wherever he was so he could see his handiwork. I guess I had an ulterior motive.

This morning I went out to take something to the van and I peeked over at the newly bare ground under the front window and saw this:

Look closely. Kind of in the middle. After a long winter. Snowbanks almost to the eaves in the spot where this little piece of ground is. Snow there only a week ago that was high enough to climb. A few of the bulbs that our young Soldier planted have made an appearance one week before he graduates from Basic Training. I sent this picture to him this morning via snail-mail. Made me smile. Will make him smile too, I think. We've gone from snow-covered, frozen earth to new life and new beginnings. In more ways than one. Many more ways than one. One similarity though. He seems to have had a "high and tight" going on when I planted the first ones as well.

The Talk

No, not THAT talk. Shift gears, people! Seriously, now!

With each of our kids I have had at LEAST one "Talk." The talk is about the fact that learning is HARD work and the work is THEIR responsibility, not mine.
Sometimes...ok, USUALLY, that talk begins with a discovery of shoddy work and I'm angry...and the child is angry. It is what it is. (Some folks have this kind of discussion over other things, but this is my battle.)
"WHY are these exercises blank? WHY did you not do this and WHY pretend that you did?"
I just got to have that discussion with the youngest. Not the first time, but this was the most significant time.

At the start of each "Talk," I usually hear that my child's "output deficit" is my fault...
"You didn't have time when I had a question!"
I will admit, working full-time, that is sometimes (and occasionally often) true. But there is also the fact that they can put a bookmark in it and ask when I'm done what I'm doing. The nature of my work allows this. I will not, however work with a whining child, which can be a drawback for this kiddo sometimes.
The other fact is that often he will tell me "I was waiting for Dad to come home and ask him my question"...and then (variously) "I forgot to ask him" or "Dad didn't have time!" and essentially it becomes someone else's fault..not his.

Then we move to shifting the blame to other siblings. A harder sell.
"THEY are too loud; too distracting; always done when I want to be done too, but I'm not."
"THEY have less work than I do and it's not fair!"
"THEY made it so I couldn't finish and I didn't do it."
Frankly, I'm not buying any of it. Our house is reasonably quiet during the school day and one heck of a lot quieter than a school building! Occasional distractions with the barking dog or people shifting rooms happens, but everyone has the ability to find some quiet space where no one will bother them. The fact that people finish at different times is true. It's the nature of the homeschooling beast. Basically, once the kids have gotten older (around 13-14)and learned the real lessons at hand, they finish school more quickly and are able to go off and do what they really want to do that isn't math, or chemistry or Arabic.

What I drill down for is, "Why did you honestly not do your work?"
And invariably I hear "It was too hard and was taking me too long! I didn't want to do it."
I will say that I try very hard not to overload each day, but I'm also not out to give my kids "free rides" either. Sometimes I might overplan, but 15 years of practice has me pretty good in that department. Some days school takes more time than others, but with that said, the kids can possibly be done by noon or 1 if they don't waste any time. (Not that kids ever waste time, right!? :) )

It comes down to 2 things, really.
1. Schooling...learning...is work. Yep, it's work. School also isn't always a boatload of fun. Sometimes it is, but yes, I said it, it's not always fun and it's not always easy. GOOD!--- Sometimes the thing at hand is hard, unhappy, and time consuming work. Imagine deciding that since laundry and diapers and meals and dishes were work you didn't like, you just weren't going to do them. That'd be a dream, now wouldn't it?--- Now imagine a surgeon opening up a patient and saying, "Gee, looks like that will take me longer than I feel like spending. Let's just close 'er up. "
Consider the hard work that school can be sometimes to be training for real life. It's a fairly safe way to learn the lesson, I think.

2. Learning, particularly by age 12, isn't the "teacher's" responsibility. That responsibility...that ownership...belongs to the learner. You can't force-feed a learner, but rather, the learner must eat the meat and potatoes and peas and cake himself. And yeah, sometimes, the learner is less willing to down the peas (or in my house, it's the potato!)

This is kind of like how I felt/feel about using Excel. I hate the "boxie-ness" of the thing and how I needed to learn a whole set of tools that really mean nothing to me. But in the end, yeah,  it does help me do other things better. It's a nemesis that I had to take on and while it has taken me a while to learn, I can use it fairly well and to my purpose. I've also learned to ask questions and not quit. I'm sure you have your own unpleasantly learned evil!

So, the kids need to own their own learning... and their own success. The success is theirs after all. And inversely, the failure is also their to own. The adage "You get out of something what you put into it" stands. Math can get easier later by putting in more hard work now, but I'm not the one who needs to do that work. HE has to do the work. I (and college professors and bosses et.al.) won't be there forever to hold his hand. He's got to suck it up and get it done...with the work and the time and the effort required. Experience says that with the average mind, practice will make progress. (note that word...PROGRESS! There's no such thing as perfection!) Practicing less of a hard thing has NEVER produced improvement in my experience.

I have confidence that even the 4th child can learn these lessons as the other 3 have. I know this is a developmental point and that I will likely have some other iteration of "the Talk" with him again. I find that some important messages require repetition. But for today, it's onward and upward. Oh, and he just finished some of what he hadn't done. I'll call that good practice. Rinse and repeat!

Making It Come Alive

"In the twinkling of an eye." Alas, I do know why I am so proud!
Our kids did us proud last night in The Merchant of Venice! The Merchant (our curly boy) was dignified and mature. Salarino (Our girl) was well spoken and well delivered. And Gratiano (our curly red) was a main laugh-bringer of the evening. They did a great job and they perform again on Friday night of this week in their main roles, and then on Saturday in their minor roles. 

One of the things that continues to rise to the surface about the kids that take part in this Shakespeare group is that through the process of rehearsals and discussion they so thoroughly comprehend Shakespeare's work...in the original. They work right from the Folger's edition of each script and there are very few cuts and edits to that version. Nothing is dumbed down. Many would say that Shakespeare is inaccessible to kids of today (and to adults too!). Nothing is further from the truth in my experience. 

I remember in High School having Sr. Mary Anderson "perform" -through reading aloud to us--- many of the plays of Shakespeare. I know that several of my classmates found it boring and "hard." I remember thinking that it was interesting and that she was able to bring those plays to life to me, even though it wasn't being performed. -- When I started my study of theater in college, I fell in love with theater in  performance and I am so glad that my kids can take part in "living theater." Theater as it ought to be, if at all possible. Making Shakespeare alive for themselves and in extension, for their audiences is such a wonderful thing! I don't think my kids are necessarily more able to grasp Shakespeare than others. I just think that taking the opportunity has tipped the scales in their favor.

If I said that they are doing Hamlet next year and that they are SO excited about it that they've begun reading it...and one of them has read it through twice since the announcement last week...perhaps that would support my point.
"That it should come to this!" I'm not terribly surprised, but I'm thoroughly pleased.

It's Not a Heart String.

As our children have gotten older, the physical distance between us has grown as they have grown and matured. Children start off in your arms, then they are on the floor at your feet, then across the room on shaky legs, then running across the yard, soon down the street on their bike, away for the weekend at a friend’s house, across the city on the train for a part-time job,  absent for some weeks in another state at camp or on mission, living away for a season at college…and then finally gone off on their own to live the lives we’ve helped them launch upon. This IS what we are working toward, after all, right?

I’ve always heard references to "a mother’s heartstrings" which supposedly tie our hearts to the hearts of our children.  (Which makes me think of apronstrings, but that's a different blogpost.)

The way I have begun to feel about this is perhaps less poetic. I don’t think it’s a heartstring, but rather a heartelastic. Yeah, not as pretty an image, but I didn't promise you pretty.

Imagine those really stiff elastics (or rubber bands, depending on where you are from) that don’t have much give and are really hard to stretch out.  We start off like that as new parents. That doubled piece of rubber can only stretch so far and it doesn’t have much give in it. It’s almost painful to stretch them then, isn’t it? And you're are always prepared for it to zing back and zap you in the head. We’re focused like that, on our babies, wanting them right up next to us. We have trouble not calling to check on them when we leave them the first time with grandma. It’s painful to leave them  for very long, and we always shoot right back to that close proximity because it feels right. I used to call my husband twice when I went out to do groceries at night when our eldest was a newborn. It just HURT to stretch those 5 miles!

As time passes, that elastic slowly stretches and allows a greater distance between us and our children…down the street, across town, away for a period of time. It keeps giving and giving…giving...allowing freedom and space and trust and finally that distance. We use cellphone, email, texting, all the time checking often. Our children are still attached, but the distance grows in how far from us they go and how long they are gone and how long between check-ins.--- 

And finally, the elastic seems to break…they are far removed…college perhaps-- but for us, Basic Combat Training and soon AIT. Really though, what’s happened is that the elastic is now a single strand rather than double…and it’s just longer.  It broke in one spot and is now twice the length. We can still hold one end and our children the other.--- There is a greater flexibility and give to the elastic then. We've given them what we said wanted to give them. Freedom, maturity, wings. In the end, the heartelastic doesn’t have to be stretched to reach from heart to heart, it's simply there providing a gentle tug of assurance that the other end is firmly attached.That's the part about unconditional love. Really, it's a heartelastic.

Kicking It Off With the Bard!

This blog has been a long time in coming. I've thought about it, written entries in my head and alternately thought that I had something to share, nothing to share and no time to do it. Finally though, I figured, why not! Let's enter right in, shall we?

 Right now we are ready for the kids' Shakespeare theater group's production of The Merchant of Venice to have its' first show. Tomorrow night, Cast A will hit the stage with my guys performing in their secondary roles. They have worked for months and days and hours and minutes for this and are ready to roll. I can honestly think of no better way for Shakespeare to be learned and enjoyed than by kids studying it and performing it. It's theater...not meant to be read, but meant to be performed and witnessed. The great thing about this group is that it's not an abridged "kid-version," it's the real deal with very few cuts.

The Company that they perform with is made up of about 40 homeschooled kids from 8-18 and directed and run by parents who do theater with passion and skill. As a mom with a full-time job, my work with the group is minimal, coming in toward the end to do a little hand-sewing as needed, helping with refreshments and clean up. The other moms who are directing, sewing costumes, assistant directing, producing, coaching and more are a fabulous team who have knocked themselves out to get it done. It shows and the kids work shows in their understanding of the script, the performance and theater craft. I can hardly wait for them to get this puppy on the boards. Saturday night our kids will perform their Cast 1 main roles as Antonio, Salerino and Gratiano. Curly Boy is The Merchant of Venice himself...and the "Evil One". His best buddy is Shylock. This will be an interesting performance. Next weekend Cast A will perform on Friday night and Cast 1 will perform on Saturday night. 2 performances for each cast. They will knock'em out and have a blast doing it!

The Bard Lives!