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Socialization

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The older that my kids get, the less that I am worried about “socialization”. I went to a mix of public and private schools. My dh was homeschooled up until 7th grade and then went to private school. I never even considered homeschooling before my children were born, because I thought that the way that I was raised was the best way. Meeting my husband definitely changed my mind on that one 🙂 Today I was reading some more Charlotte Mason while at the park with my kids, and I really loved this section on children with their peers.

The Society of his Equals too stimulating for a child.“Let us follow the little person to the Kindergarten, where he has the stimulus of classmates of his own age. It certainly is stimulating. For ourselves, no society is so much so as that of a number of persons of our own age and standing; this is the great joy of college life; a wholesome joy for all young people for a limited time. But persons of twenty have, or should have, some command over their inhibitory centres. They should not permit the dissipation of nerve power caused by too much social stimulus; yet even persons of twenty are not always equal to the task of self-management in exciting circumstances. What then, is to be expected of persons of two, three, four, five? That the little person looks rather stolid than otherwise is no guarantee against excitement within. The clash and sparkle of our equals now and then stirs up to health; but for everyday life, the mixed society of elders, juniors and equals, which we get in a family, gives at the same time the most repose and the most room for individual development. We have all wondered at the good sense, reasonableness, fun and resourcefulness shown by a child in his own home as compared with the same child in school life.

I love this.  It is so true.  Why is it that our country has become so fixated on the thought that healthy development can only come by being surrounded by people only your own age?  John Taylor Gatto addresses this in his book, Dumbing Us Down, and I wrote about it once before.

Discovering meaining for yourself as well as discovering satisfying purpose for yourself, is a big part of what education is. How this can be done by locking children away from the world is beyond me.

Yesterday I went to the library and saw the vast number of books in the collection that were devoted to getting kids excited about going to Kindergarten.  It was really really sad.  Kids aren’t made to be taken away and taught by their peers just because they turned 5.  Now that my son is 5, I am feeling more sure about this than ever.

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Obedience – a difficult word

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Today as I was reading in Home Education by Charlotte Mason, I was thinking about how many different parents (including myself) now shy away from the word “obedience”. So many of the less desirable parenting styles have taken it over, and so it is hard to use it and still convey the proper message. I realized that I tend to use other words in place of obedience because of this. The section that I read today really reminded me that it is all in how you use it. I really like how Charlotte Mason approaches it as the child’s responsibility to obey, and not our job to make them obey. This is very much in agreement with grace based discipline 🙂 She has a couple of points that I’d slightly rework, but hey, the text is 100 years old, so I can see how there could be some difficulty communicating.

Charlotte Mason says

It is said that the children of parents who are most strict in exacting obedience often turn out ill; and that orphans and other poor waifs brought up under strict discipline only wait their opportunity to break out into license.

Um yeah, totally true.

Exactly so; because, in these cases, there is no gradual training of the child in the habit of obedience; no gradual enlisting of his will on the side of sweet service and a free-will offering of submission to the highest law: the poor children are simply bullied into submission to the will, that is, the wilfulness, of another; not at all, ‘for it is right‘, only because it is convenient.

I am so glad that she addresses this. The fact is that many of the popular Christian parenting philosophies are all about bullying into submission and forcing the child to do it, not of their own free-will. This can never last. If the child is not choosing it for themselves, then why would they continue doing it when they no longer have to?

There is no need to rate the child, or threaten him, or use any manner of violence, because the parent is invested with the authority which the child intuitively recognises. It is enough to say, ‘Do this,’ in a quiet, authoritative tone, and expect it to be done. The mother often loses her hold over her children because they detect in the tone of her voice that she does not expect them to obey her behests; she does not think enough of her position; has not sufficient confidence in her own authority.

Yes, yes, yes. I find this so true in my own voice. When I am calm and respectful, so are my children. If I am getting flustered or upset, then my kids don’t have a calm role model anymore and they start following in my bad habits. I was sitting around watching moms today while I was at a drop-in Kindergarten for my kids, and I was struck by how true this is. It is true amongst the teachers, the parents, anyone in authority. Those who spoke calmly and were clear of what they expected had no problem with the children following through. Those who seemed to be asking the child a question did not get the same results.

Like I said, I don’t take every word of Charlotte Mason like the Bible. Even still, I think that her beliefs, especially considering how old they are, are very sound and impressive. As I mentioned above, I would choose not to use the word “obey”/”obedience” because of the negative connotations that it now has for so many people, but I also realize that when she wrote this it wasn’t the same problem. She gives me a lot of food for thought though. Most of it is not “new”, but rather a gentle encouragement that I am on the right track. That is so perfect, since that is what we are to do for our children as well 🙂

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Delightful habits

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Ever since my first reading of Charlotte Mason’s works, this was an idea that really stood out to me. Good habits are often viewed as being a chore in our society. Many parents feel guilty if their young children automatically pick up after themselves and decide to let them off of the hook because they view it as being so laborious. Soon those good habits are replaced with bad ones. Either way, you are still dealing with habits.

A while back I wrote about Ms. Mason’s description of habits. I love the way she describes it. It is so easy for me to forget that once a habit is a habit, it is no longer difficult to do. It is harder not to do it. If we allow ourselves or our children to lose good habits, then we are doing more harm than good. We are making it so that it will be that much more difficult to retrain our minds to do the right thing once again – the thing that used to be natural to us. Here is what Ms. Mason says about the ease that comes with habits

For a habit is a delight in itself; poor human nature is conscious of the ease that it is to repeat the doing of anything without effort; and, therefore, the formation of a habit, the gradually lessening of the sense of effort in a given act, is pleasurable.

This is so true, not only for our children, but also for ourselves. As most of you know, I am pregnant.  I have been struggling with keeping up my old habits. Today starts my second trimester (woohoo!) and this week has been the first time that I haven’t felt completely drained, sick, and useless. Now I am having to reform the habits that I had before we moved. Just a few months ago I was able to keep the house meticulous so that people could pop in for a showing at any moment. Since getting out of that habit, it is difficult to even get my house ready for planned guests, and that still isn’t “show worthy” like my house was before. My kids were also into the same habit. They were picking up after themselves. My son would run the sweeper each time before we left the house. My daughter would move all of our shoes. We knew what to do. Now we have will have to put in extra effort just to get back to where we were. I am so sad about this, because we were all so proud of our house and it really wasn’t a chore. It was natural.

Of course, Charlotte Mason discusses this next

This is one of the rocks that mothers sometimes split upon: they lose sight of the fact that a habit, even a good habit, becomes a real pleasure; and when the child has really formed the habit of doing a certain thing, his mother imagines that the effort is as great to him as at first, that it is a virtue in him to go on making this effort, and that he deserves, by way of reward, a little relaxation–she will let him break through the new habit a few times, and then go on again. But it is not going on; it is beginning again, and beginning in the face of obstacles. The ‘little relaxation’ she allowed her child meant the forming of another contrary habit, which must be overcome before the child gets back to where he was before.

And now for the real reason I love Charlotte Mason. She goes into how you form habits, and it is so gentle… so loving… not harsh in any way. I have learned through experience that my whole family functions best if I speak in this way.  I am so happy to see it addressed in a book, especially a book that was written so many years ago.

As CM talks about her example of a mother teaching a child to shut the door behind him when he leaves

For two or three times Johnny remembers; and then, he is off like a shot and half-way downstairs before his mother has time to call him back. She does not cry out, ‘Johnny, come back and shut the door!’ because she knows that a summons of that kind is exasperating to big or little. She goes to the door, and calls pleasantly, ‘Johnny!’ Johnny has forgotten all about the door; he wonders what his mother wants, and, stirred by curiosity, comes back, to find her seated and employed as before. She looks up, glances at the door, and says ‘I said I should try to remind you.’ ‘Oh, I forgot,’ says Johnny, put upon his honour; and he shuts the door that time, and the next, and the next.

No yelling. No freaking out. Just gently reminding the children. In the part above this section, CM shows how the mom introduces the idea of the new habit. It is loving and gentle, and she promises to help the child remember. You are working together, not punishing the child into compliance.

So today I am working on habit training again: first for myself, and then for my children. I need to regain my lost ground, and then my children will follow behind. I can’t expect their habits to be better than mine.  I need to model right behavior once again.

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Book Diet – Day 3 (Weekend)

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Here’s my weekend edition of our book diet 🙂 We’ve read more books than this, but this gives you a good idea. Here’s my thought for the day, courtesy of The Read-Aloud Handbook

NAEP studies reported the more printed materials found in a child’s home, the higher the student’s writing, reading, and math skills. (NAEP 1992 Trends in Academic Progress)

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Our Book Diet – Day 1 (10/25)

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As many of you know, I am working through Trelease’s The Read-Aloud Handbook. It has really inspired me to make sure that I am not just reading to my kids at bedtime, but rather making read-aloud time a big part of our day. I have decided to focus from now until Thanksgiving on making sure that my kids are getting a healthy “diet” of great books. We’ve slacked a lot due to our impending move, and this is something that I don’t want to see fall by the wayside.

Feel free to join me! I’m going to try to post at least 10 books a day that we’ve read. That’s my minimum. My kids would probably read 100, but 10 is a good goal for me, as it is a reasonable amount of my day to spend on reading to them without it being too overwhelming for us right now. 🙂

Yesterday was almost all chapter books (Winnie the Pooh especially), so today is lighter fare 🙂

Today’s picks: (2 of these were read to me by my 4yo…)

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Are we failing our boys?

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A woman on one of my email lists suggested this book, and I am loving it! I’ve already found a lot of things that I want to discuss and ponder.

I am especially interested in his assertion that families in our country, and especially fathers, are doing a disservice to young men and boys by giving them the idea that reading is a “girly” thing to do.

…one place where there is never a shortage of males is in our remedial reading classes, where boys make up more than 70 percent of the enrollment. In American remedial classes, that is. Boys don’t constitute 70 percent of remedial students in many other countries. In Insraeli remedial classes, there are no gender differences. In Finland, England, Nigeria, India, and Germany, the girls outnumber the boys. It can’t be genetics.

I would’ve guessed that India would’ve had that statistic, and I honestly wasn’t too surprised about American boys being behind girls in reading. I’m trying to figure out why I just accept that though. I obviously don’t think it is genetic. Trelease has his own ideas about why this is.  We’ll get to that later though.  Back to the statistics:

According to… research, boys are more likely than girls to repeat a grade or drop out of school, suffer from more learning disabilities, are three times more likely to be enrolled in special-education classes, are more likely to be involved in criminal and delinquent behavior, are less likely to be enrolled in college-prep classes, have lower educational expectations, lower reading and writing scores, read less for pleasure, and do less homework. Even those males who eventually reach college are less likely to graduate than females, largely due to their macho-male behavior while they are there; as Riordan notes, “while in college they spend more time than women exercising, partying, watching TV, or playing video games.”

When it comes to schooling, its been long known that girls were better in the early years, but boys passed them in the later years. This is no longer true.

Thanks to concerted social and academic efforts, girls’ high school and college scores have risen for the past two decades. But during the same period, the boys’ scores have taken a nosedive.

An immediate measure of the downshift among young males in the last decade can be seen in the number of students taking the Advanced Placement exams. AP courses allow achieving high school students to gain college credit while still in high school… The girls’ rate of AP courses has shown a steady climb, while the boys rate has taken two dips and allowed a wide margin to grow between the sexes.

In 1970, males outnumbered females in college enrollment by a ratio of 59 to 41. By 2000, that ratio had been reversed to 57 to 42 in favor of women. Granted, the women’s movement raised the bar for female achievement in the classroom, but what’s been going on with the guys?

I was thinking about the women’s movement as I was reading this section. I’d love to see an egalitarian movement take hold for men where they could be encouraged to be smart and excel without a bunch of machismo and chest beating. That’d be nice.

So now Trelease talks about his theory on what is happening, and it has a lot to do with a larger emphasis on sports (24-hour channels, etc) for men and a deeper encouragement (or at least modeling) that focuses on engaging athletics rather than academics. Regardless of education level, the average was the same for families: fathers read only 15% of the time, mothers 76%, and others 9%.

The right call for fathers is to be involved intellectually as well as athletically with a child. If a child must wait until junior high or middle school before encountering a male in the act of reading, the idea that reading is for girls will already have taken deep root in his mind. We have to short-circuit that dangerous thinking and convince American males that it is not only possible but preferable for fathers to be athletically and intellectually involved in their children’s lives. A father can play catch in the backyard after dinner and, on the same night, read to the child for fifteen minutes. He can take him to the basketball game on Friday night and the library on Saturday morning.

My dh is wonderful at this. He reads with the kids all the time, and they also see him reading. I feel so very thankful. There are some days when he reads to my kids and I don’t ::ducking my head::. And its not that I’m not a reader (obviously!), but that is something that dh makes sure ALWAYS happens at bedtime. I’m saddened to hear how rare this is 🙁

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