Balancing Academics with the Rest of Life

This is a question from 2007. It came from Kendra the Amazing of Preschoolers and Peace. She wanted me to do an online interview. I agreed and never got back to her. I'm really bad like that. I do apologize, Kendra, but I'd like to answer this particular question now, if I may.

How do you think moms can better maintain a balance between academic excellence and the nurturing of relationships with their children?  Are they mutually exclusive?

This has been very much on my mind in the past few weeks. When Patrick left suddenly for Florida, we had four days to prepare. Usually, I use high school to get my kids ready for school away from home in college. Academically, we do things like learning to write research papers, taking notes from a lecture, managing time, integrating book work with lecture work. They take classes at the community college and I'm right there at their elbows to ease them into it and teach as we go. And, usually, they have completed what I consider to be an academically rich curriculum before they leave. Also, I have learned that 13 to 14-year-old boys are very very hard to motivate. That school year is not so productive. After Michael, I learned not to freak out about it. They catch up when they figure out that they need it. No big deal.

Except when they figure out they need it four days before shipping off to what's supposed to be the "best school in Florida."

I can't tell you the sleep I missed worrying that our program was not going to fly under these conditions.

Our academic program has always been literature intensive. It's also delight-driven within limits. That is, my kids get choices about what to study within a certain parameter. Every once in awhile, I look at something known for its rigor (like The Well Trained Mind in its entirety or Tapestry of Grace or Robinson) and I think about how much I want that kind of excellence. I love school. I'm a total library person. I would have taken any one of those curricula as a child and absolutely loved it. But it doesn't suit my household.

Remember the priority thing? I'm one parent. There is another. He is brilliant. But he's not the bookish sort. He brings the rest of the world into our home. He orchestrates opportunities to pursue athletic excellence. He drives the late shift home from dance. He works late at night and so he likes to hang out and have a big pajama party on our bed in the morning, keeping everyone from the designated chores and school for the hour. He doesn't hesitate to whisk someone away on an airplane for some adventure, regardless of the lessons planned. And sometimes I {silently} question his wisdom.

I definitely worried about it when Patrick left. Hold that thought.

The other area of balance in our house is that of home management and child care. While, I definitely don't delegate it all out while I sit idly by, I definitely do enlist their help while I work alongside them. I don't think it can all get done any other way. While Patrick may have slacked about school when he was 14, he wasn't given the opportunity to give up kitchen duties and he wasn't allowed to be anything but kind to his younger siblings. His cooperation was to crucial to the family mission. He cooked. He cleaned. He gardened. He loved on babies and he might have even braided blond curls on occasion. Hold that thought.

I ordered [insert name of highly structured, very planned, rigorous curriculum] just before I left for Florida to visit Patrick after he'd been in school for about a month. Someone had been throwing up all week. Laundry and disinfecting were in high gear but academics were taking a backseat. In hindsight, I think the anxiety of going to Paddy's "perfect school" and meeting all his teachers and hearing how hard he was having to work to keep up made me grasp for the most intense, well laid out, well credentialed curriculum I could find. I wasn't going to get into the position ever again. When I got home, I was going to make sure we were all about reaching the maximum intellectual heights.

I found Patrick happy and well. Every coach, dorm supervisor, and trainer we talked to commented on how extraordinarily well he could handle the stuff of life. They told us how he is a leader among peers, a natural big brother type. When given three hour's notice before flying internationally, he can get his ducks in a row. His shirts are clean and his belts match his shoes. He knows where his equipment is and he knows how to get it all from Point A to Point B. He manages his money just fine; he gives himself and everyone else haircuts; he organized the bus to Church (and routinely brings a bunch of non-Catholics with him). He's homesick and it's obvious, but he has set about making the most of the real life opportunities in front of him.

Then we went to the school. Every single teacher sought us out to comment on how beautifully he's doing. I looked at the curriculum and saw holes all over the place (much to my chagrin). It's a beautiful building and they are good, well meaning people doing the best they can with a really odd situation. If he were home, frankly, it would be a better designed, better tailored program. But he's not home.

And he left home well prepared in the important places.

He knows where home is and he knows he's supported.

So, all the rowdy mornings, all those "daddy trips," all the baby love, the cooking and laundry--all of it has mattered just as much as academics. We had those things covered so well that it didn't matter that he had four days to prepare to leave.

And the academics? Apparently they were good enough to succeed. His geometry teacher wishes he were better at timed tests. I guess they can work on that.

I came home to that rigorous curriculum. I tried my level best to make it work. It doesn't in my house. The housekeeping suffered as I spent hours with my head in the Teacher's Manual and my kids spent too much time at the table. I used way too much ink printing worksheets. I was a crazed taskmaster, trying desperately to keep even one child from falling behind, since we're all supposed to be in the same place. It wasn't pretty. My first hint that it wasn't going to work was when I couldn't fit it into the CM Organizer. The one created by Simply Charlotte Mason? This new plan was anything but simple. Sure, it came with instructions to winnow to fit, but by the time I read it all to know where I wanted to winnow and then winnowed some more to make it appropriate for Catholic children, then added the stories of the heroes of the Church, it was all too complicated for me.

Serendipity works in my house. It's books that inspire us; it's relationships between the people reading the books and the people in the books. There is an emphasis on writing--my children seem to write before they walk. Baskets of books, art supplies in abundance, time to think and to write.  It's who we are. Yes, if there is a lack of balance, it's because we lean towards relationships. The academics happen and they flourish in an atsmosphere of relationships. Maybe that atmosphere makes up for what might be lacking in intellectual rigor. I'm good with that. I really am.

 ~reposted, with new pictures, from the archives of Autumn 2010.

The Not Really Kindergarten Post

In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.

~Charlotte Mason

I hesitate to call this post "the kindergarten post." There have been lots of notes requesting "The Kindergarten Post." So, if you've been asking, this is it. Sort of. But more accurately, this is the starting to think through "Learning at Home with 3-6-Year-Olds" post.

I had several opportunities to observe and teach in many different settings while in college and right after graduation. The three that I look upon most fondly all had quite a few things in common. One of those things stands out: they considered the "kindergarten year" to be more than one year.

In the two private school settings (each of a different philosophy), children were grouped in "family groupings" and a class was composed of children who were three to six years old. In the public school setting, I taught in a "transitional first grade," a class specifically designed to give children a three year kindergarten and first grade experience. In all three settings, there were very bright children, who were still "technically" kindergartners during their six-year-old year. And in all three settings, children were peaceful. These were three settings that considered the integrated development of the child and weighted social and emotional growth equally or more heavily than academic growth.

Karoline has been talking incessantly about kindergarten.  A couple of months ago she asked her daddy if she is in kindergarten now. He shot me a quizzical look and I nodded. We pay very little attention to "grades" around here. If she wants to say she's in kindergarten, she certainly can. And she is. She's four. In this house, kindergarteners are between three and six years old. {Interestingly, one of the big indicators for first grade readiness in all three of the programs above was the loss of baby teeth, also called the change of teeth. Not sure why I put that there. Couldn't find another place to mention it.}

So, Karoline is officially in kindergarten. And since Sarah Annie will be three in late October. (Can you believe it? Yeah, me neither.) She will soon be in "kindergarten," too. I asked Karoline early last week what she wanted to learn in kindergarten. She was sitting all curled up on the blue chair in the room that has become our craft studio. I was sewing. The reply came quickly, "I want to learn to sew." Well, ok, we can do that. We'll learn together.

I had a hunch. So I did a little experiment.

The next time I asked Karoline what she wanted to learn in kindergarten, I was cooking. She wants to learn to cook.

I began to futher test my theory.

I'm knitting. She wants to "knit better."

I'm dusting. She wants to polish furniture.

I'm doing laundry. She wants to learn to fold socks "the tricky way."

If I'm doing it, she wants to learn to do it. And if it has to do with bringing order and beauty to her environment, all the better. She is sensitive to order and beauty in her world right now. 

And so she shall work alongside me, both of us using our hands. Whether we call it "practical life"  or  "life skills," little ones should be spending lots of time doing meaningful activities with their hands. They should learn to use real tools (whether knitting or sewing or cooking or woodworking or vacuuming dust bunnies) carefully and to return their environments to order every single time. And those environments? 

Those environments, the ones in which peaceful children thrive, are thoughtfully prepared. They don't have to be special child-sized rooms; they just have to be rooms where children are welcomed and considered. They have to be spaces where children come alongside an adult who cares and learns what it is to be a compassionate, empathetic, to respect space and boundaries, to care for the small environment that he shares with his immediate community.

In two of the three environments I mentioned above, the schools strive as much as possible to create "homelike" spaces. There is intentional "family grouping," which means classes of children aged two-and-a-half up to and including age six. Those of us who educate at home already have the underpinnings of the best early childhood school environment. We have a home atmosphere and we have family groupings.

The goal within the environment probably should be clearly defined in our minds, though, even at home, maybe especially at home. We must be intentional, lest the opportunities slip through our fingers. And we must be patient. This is not about barreling through a checklist of academic proficiencies. There is a movement afoot to accelerate through academics. Is he reading yet? Can he work equations? Is his handwriting clear ? What grade is he in?

Those are not the questions of my intentions in the early childhood years. I close my ears to them. Because they are not true to my own sense of what is valuable for our family. When I first started homeschooling, a generation ago now, I was primarily motivated by the opportunity to spend our days learning together as a family.  I had taught in classrooms. Some quite good, some really awful. The idea of  family groupings so appealed to me in college that I did a senior honors project on it. Little did I know back then that the idea would grow organically in my home. We were creating our own family grouping in our own nurturing environment. We wanted to teach them to think creatively, to pursue their passions, to wonder and watch. And Mike and I both firmly believed in providing the time. Time. The desire to homeschool grew out of a life-changing experience. I talked at length in this old piece on preschool about what cancer taught me about time and young children. Really, none of this will make much sense unless you read that. 

Our primary goal in this home, with these children, is not academic excellence. It is time. 

Our primary goal is living a life of faith wholeheartedly together as a family. Our primary goal is to give them time for intimate relationships--with God, with nature, with art, with literature, with science, with us. This is what we have chosen. It is what is right for our family--for this husband and wife and the children God has given them.

Please don't misunderstand. I think academic excellence is a worthy endeavor. I just don't think my children need to get a leg up on algebra in the second grade at the expense of time in relationship to other significant people. Instead of the academic questions above, the questions framed in our home are, "Is he managing his time well?" "Does he listen to his siblings when they talk or just barrel over them?" "Is he orderly?" "Does he respect boundaries?" "Does he ask thoughtful questions?" "Is his speech sprinkled liberally with familiar references to God?" "Can he still himself and listen and watch with ears and eyes wide with wonder?" "Does he care?"

I believe that if I can work towards the affirmative in those questions in the early years, the academic success will come. And it will come with social, emotional and spiritual peace. 

Can he read? It matters not just yet. And if he can, well, then, good for him. Let him read--just don't cram stories down his throat with endless required booklists and a hurry-up demeanor.

Can he wonder? Is he curious? Do we have time to just sit and watch and ponder aloud together? We will read to him, yes, and that sense of story will serve him well when it is time to learn to read. But even more importantly, just now, that world of books will pique his curiosity. He will be motivated to learn. He will care that he can find in books what he wants to know.

I live in the most highly educated corner of the country, according to some studies. The pressure on children to excel academically is real and palpable. From very young ages, some local children are carted from one "opportunity" to the next by intellectually eager parents, all with the primary intention to assure admission to the finest universities. How they will be presented on a college application is buzzing in the minds of children before they even enter grade school. It's all about getting in--even in preschool. It's all about proving oneself smarter and more accomplished. It's all about getting ahead of the other guy, jostling for position, one-upping academically. 

I'm not anti-competition. Ahem. I think we can all agree that my kids compete. And I totally think we should nurture gifts. The real world is full of competition. But I'm adamantly opposed to sacrificing innocence and wonder and childhood joy to the grown-up agenda of beating out the other guy. I'm opposed to sacrificing family life to the building of a child's academic curriculum vitae. A child has an opportunity to be a child just once.  I don't think we should squander childhood by thrusting children into the competitive marketplace too soon.

My friend and college study buddy, Jan, was here last week and we were reminiscing about former students. There was a little boy who was in one of the 3-6 programs mentioned above when he was pre-school age. He was my student. And he was incredibly bright. Brilliant. His parents were academics and it was clear that the priority for his education was to be the smartest. Blessed with abundant natural intelligence, he was very, very, very smart. But he couldn't remember to replace his coat on the hook after time outdoors. He never played with the other children. He rarely would look me in the eye when he spoke. 

He left the 3-6 program to begin official kindergarten in another school. Coincidentally, he was in Jan's first kindergarten class. He was younger than most of the other children and she still remembers that he asked her if they were going to study plate tectonics. His intellectual achievement had so outpaced his social and emotional growth that he was seriously out of balance. Her major goal for him that year was to get him to play without awkwardness and to carry on conversations with his peers. 

There is a healing, a growing, a creating that happens in a child's play and in meaningful work done with his hands alongside a nurturing adult. They can catch up if they fall behind in math. I'm not sure you can ever restore to a child what is lost if they are not allowed the innocence of non-competitive, wholehearted play. If they miss out on plenty of unplanned time in a thoughtful environment. If they are too busy for large quantities of time with adults who love him unconditionally. If no one safeguards freedom within limits to learn about himself first. I'm not sure a child ever recovers from intense academic pressure that can lead them to think that their value is directly correlated to their proven, measurable academic conquests. There is so much more to the education of a child. There is a weaving of the social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual that comes of plenty of time with quality materials, working with their hands, absorbing the good from a nurturing environment. There is a value unmatched in an imagination fed by quiet wonder.

Unhurried childhood is a window of opportunity and it is much, much more valuable and much, much smaller that many people recognize. It's irreplaceable. So we don't skip it.

Gosh, I've gone on for a long time and still not gotten to the nitty gritty. I will, in God's time, no doubt. No rushing;-)

Actually, if you're eager to read more right now, there is this series from five years ago (oh my goodness, how cute was Katie when she was three?!):

It's a wonderful thing!

The Art Box

Language Arts for Little Ones

Number Fun

Leading Little Ones to the Good Shepherd

Practical Life

Oh, and then there is that matter of more than four years worth of books and such for the 3-6 bunch, all organized alphabetically over at Along the Alphabet Path. More suggestions for warm activities and stories at home than anyone would ever need:-)

Be back in a bit with more on what life with little ones is like in the heart of my home these days.

~~reposted from the archives

The First Day Never Goes as Planned

I've been homeschooling something like 18 years, give or take a year because I'm too lazy to do the math. And, I promise you, in this house, the first day of a new term never goes as planned. After all these years, though, it always goes predictably.

I can predict that it's going to be a bit rocky.

It begins with me arising early, super early, because I am eager to have everything just so. The environment is readied--I've spent hours getting everything just so. I'm very visual and I find a certain peace in the order and the color. All good.

Then, I awaken the children, earlier than usual, because I want them to be eager to begin also. The details from there vary from year to year, but they go something like this:  Despite great provisioning just days before, we don't have eggs for breakfast. Littlest Darling has a runny nose, a fever, and a croupy cough and she doesn't want me to leave her to go to the store. Two little girls mourn the absence of the neighbor's child who slips in and out of our family life. She is going to "real school" today and will join us at 2:30. There is a bit of envy over lunchboxes and school shoes. Little boys are not so little any more and not so eager to be awakened, either. Everyone wants eggs for breakfast.

We begin determinedly, my enthusiasm ebbing a bit as my lofty plans meet reality. I remember a morning over a decade ago when I had such awesome things planned, such an elaborate environment readied, and three little boys responded ... well, they didn't. I'm not even sure they noticed, but they certainly weren't impressed. Those were days before blogs, before the temptation to leave my disappointing crew in our dining room-turned-learning room and go look again at the beautiful pictures of other women's learning spaces (here's where I am resisting the urge to link like crazy--y'all can find them;-) and to download page after page of other people's plans. No, I didn't leave my regular, ordinary, unimpressed boys in my regular, ordinary home and head off to the computer to escape to some sort of blog perfection. I called my husband and I cried. He didn't get it. Well, he got that I was crying, but he didn't get that I thought those things that were so important to me would inspire the boys. And on that day, I learned it's not about me. It's about them.

Flash forward a dozen or so years. Now, the plans grate up against reality on the first day and I'm not surprised. I know this day is the day I test drive my philosophical underpinnings and see how it all works in real life. And when that beautiful basket with the multi-colored gems is gleefully dumped all over the wood floor and the wee one with the big eyes and runny nose delights in the sound so she does it again, I remember.

They haven't been clicking around Pinterest.

They haven't been trading stories on Facebook.

They haven't been reading wonderful, inspiring books about family rhythm and prepared environments.

They haven't been planning curriculum all summer. 

They are why I am doing this at all.

They are the same today as they were last week. We have to meet in the middle. I have to look realistically on all my ponderings and plans and adjust them according to the real life I live here. With them. I have to recognize where I haven't left margin. Where I didn't consider.

Room.

Room for stopping to wipe noses and to swish toilets. Room for cooking and eating and cleaning up afterwards. Room to be alone, each of us in our own spaces, to think and dream and create.  Room for balance.

Reading and running free. Staying on task and stopping to notice and wonder. Pencil to paper and needle to fabric. Still at the table with close up tasks and quick on their feet with a ball beneath them. Discussing what I planned and pondering things I never would have considered. Planning with diligence and moving away from the plans.

The first day is always a little off balance. These days, I plan for that, too. This is as it should be. The grace of the plans that just don't work sheds glorious light on the beauty of educating at home, together. I can adjust the plan. I can allow them to force me to consider each one of them individually and to see where my notions meet their needs and where they fail. When I see that the first day is their day, I begin to understand that the first day might just be the day when I learn the most.

I learn that I can't do this on my own strength. I am reminded that I must see the child, each child, and meet him where he is. I learn anew that this isn't school at home. It's a lifestyle of learning that requires an incredible amount of sacrifice and even more grace. 

 

It's just the first day. It didn't go according to plan. But that was actually part of the plan.  I embrace the rough spots, the weak places, the small failures,  knowing that He is teaching me; He is begging me to show my children that I can be taught.

Oh, I can!  Show me, God. Show me your holy will.  How does it all fit together? How do we all grow together? What is Your plan for this family? Grant me the grace and the humility to set aside my plan for your better one.

-from the archives

Lord, Hear Our Prayer

The internet is a formidable force for bringing the comfort and consolation and hope of the Lord to all of us. It can be an incredibily powerful medium for community. There is an unfathomable resource for prayer here. We have on the 'net the privilege of praying for people and of being witness to the miracles brought forth when fervent, faith-filled people pray for one another.

Let's be that community of hope and faith for one another.

How about this idea? What if I pop in here every weekend, share Sunday's gospel and talk a wee bit about how we can live it and pray it in our homes? And then you tell me how we can pray for you that week? Deal?

{And please, do return and let us know how prayer is bearing fruit.}

Gospel 

John 6:41-51

The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said,
"I am the bread that came down from heaven,"
and they said,
"Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?
Do we not know his father and mother?
Then how can he say,
'I have come down from heaven?'"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"Stop murmuring among yourselves.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
and I will raise him on the last day.
It is written in the prophets:
They shall all be taught by God.
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."

Think

I desire to unite Myself to human souls. Know, My daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul.

But souls do not even pay any attention to Me; they leave Me to Myself and busy themselves with other things…They treat Me as a dead object.

Now you shall consider My love in the Blessed Sacrament. Here, I am entirely yours, soul, body and divinity, as your Bridegroom. You know what love demands: one thing only, reciprocity.” – Jesus to St. Faustina

Pray

Sweet Jesus, I don't want to be the soul who ignores you. I want to be the soul who is ever mindful that you are Mercy itself. I want to be the soul who stops for a moment in the midst of whatever trial I face, no matter how big or small, and whispers

"Please help me"

and

"Thank you."

--Just a moment to receive your grace and so be a blessing to the world you have given me.

Act

Still yourself. Don't be too busy with other things. Don't miss the moments when Christ comes to you. When a child asks again for drink of water (or juice or milk), remember Jesus said that you could see Him that child. And when you pull pajamas on a naked body? He's there. Don't hurry. Don't be too busy. Don't miss the moments when Christ is all yours in unexpected, yet very ordinary, days.

7 Habits in the iGeneration

Do you ever consider the legacy you are leaving? I admit, I do. Probably, I think about it too much. I think that's a longterm effect of cancer survival (we're never sure when the cancer caused by the chemo is going to pop up) and I think it's related to having baby girls after 40. When they are my age, what will they know of me? What can I leave for them that will encourage them when I am not able to do that? It might be a middle-age thing to think about legacy.

Honestly, though, I've been thinking it since I was 24. Cancer thing, definitely. Shortly before I was diagnosed, an influential book hit the bestseller's list. Stephen Covey was writing compellingly about living intentionally and leaving a meaningful legacy. I was earnestly seeking father figures in my twenties and this guy fit the bill. 

Stephen Covey died a few weeks ago. I cried. I was surprised by my reaction, but it reminded me just how much he influenced me way back when. I took the book from the shelf, dusted it off, and wrote about it here.