Designed To Learn...

I really started to struggle with Corazon not wanting to "do" much. She is my one who will draw into herself and "escape" reality by doing only what is comfortable to her. She has been sleeping lately. A lot. She will often sleep till noon or later. Then shortly after getting up, she will zone out in front of the computer until bedtime. If we go anywhere, the ipod and ear buds immediately come out. It has been irritating me, I won't lie. She has such a beautiful soul and so much to offer, but I feel like she is just biding her time, hoping she can go to school next year. Not making any effort to be part of her own life.

Tough.

So last night I reached out to my online (awesome) group of Christian radical unschoolers. I laid it all out there. My fears and my thoughts. Not easy to admit, but I knew I needed help with MY attitude. The gals there were helping me work through things, asking questions and talking. And then one posted this....

I just think how difficult it would be to assimilate all that she has to.  Displaced at three, years of neglect, then displaced again, but this time to a place with different smells, different sounds, different tastes, with different faces, and different voices.  Then add that she has not had the exposure to many things we take for granted for typical learning.  It would be hard for an adult to adjust.  She must feel like she is drowning or something at times. 

Even if she spent the next 5 years sitting in front of the tv most of the time, she would be pulling in sights and sounds and words and ideas and building upon other sights and sounds and words and ideas.  She would be learning.  But you know, she has other people around her who have interests and conversations and activities that she will be pulling information from as well.  Over time she will see and and hear things that will pique her interest and she will probably want to say something, do something, go some place and that will add to all the other stuff she has been building upon. 

We are designed to learn, and learn we will.  How we go about doing so will look a bit different than some, and hugely different than others.  It is all good.  Different is good.  She is just a tiny baby in her new home.  Soon she will be a toddler, and then an adolescent and soon she will be a young adult, and then continue to mature in her adulthood.  The age and stage may not match up to what might have been if she had been born into your family, or if she had joined you at age 3.  She will grow, she will mature, she will learn, she will stretch and become stronger, and braver, and more involved.

Wow.

Just wow. 

THAT was exactly what I needed to hear. EXACTLY.

I love this girl so very, very much.

And as a PS-after I got off FB and went back to just BE with my daughter, she pulled up Minecraft on the Kindle. Apparently she has been silently watching her brothers play. And she played. And played. And played. Then she asked me if she could help me bake for a party tonight. 

Touche. 

Thank-you God for helping us find a way that builds a safety net for my kids, even when I doubt. 

Especially when I doubt.

Molded....

I've been watching silently as something miraculous begins to slowly unfold in my home.

As our delight-directed journey expands into new territories, I am seeing the kids attach more deeply to us as parents. The two now are wedded in my head and in my heart. I am absolutely not saying this is not possible with other ways of schooling, I am just saying that for us the mix has been the biggest blessing.

Our radical life of learning means that I am intimately involved in my kids lives. Not in an intrusive "do this" sort of way, but in a "watch me mom" way that little kids have. Just as a small child says "watch me mom" a million times a day, through self-directed learning, I have those moments all day every day.

My kids, no longer needing to fit into my mold, are welcoming me into the lives they are molding.

We talk, we explore, we live life full-force with each child, and they are allowing us to attach. We are beginning a beautiful dance together as a family. The changes in all the dynamics are so very good. My kids feel valuable as people and it is showing.

Their hearts are healing.

Ramblings...

There are a lot of moments I feel pretty good about unschooling. Where I think, hey, this is some good stuff.

But...

I am realizing the moments that I feel ok about things are the moments where I can quantify my kids" learning. Where I can mark off that box and say, "today they did math" or "today they looked up states after looking at the globe",

What I don't feel good about yet, and what I really struggle with, are the moments where they aren't "doing anything". The moments where they are wandering around aimlessly. Or just sitting at the table doing nothing and bored. The moments where they follow me around ceaselessly.

I find myself irritated with them, telling them to "go find something to do."

Yeah. :/

Not cool.

I am afraid that I convey to them that they are not "ok" and learning unless I can see something visible. This is not what I want. Not at all.

For me personally, unschooling is much harder than homeschooling. It means that relationship absolutely positively comes first. That my own issues with being an introvert who shies away from deep intimacy, are vomited up all over the place.

I have to learn to do this so that my kids will be ok doing this.

I have to learn to be in their world. I have to learn to be honest about my own shortcomings. I have to stop projecting my own fears onto them. I have to stop and just be with them. I have to learn to say yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Unschooling is so natural.

Unschooling is so difficult.

My kids need this.

But sometimes I think I need it more.

I thank God for my son who refused to play by the rules and instead forced us onto this path. 

Real...

I have been thinking a lot lately about what creating a learning environment within the context of unschooling looks like to me. Its interesting to me how all my unschooling posts are pretty much about the logistics and semantics of unschooling. About applying it to our lives, instead of how my kids are doing with unschooling. I think its because unschooling is so new to me that I feel like I am still very much wrestling with how this looks for my life. :) I realize its a phase and that some day I'll be on the other side of the spectrum as "just" an unschooler living life, but I am learning to embrace exactly where I'm at.

Whew!

That took a turn I didn't anticipate! Lol!

What has been on my mind is creating a real world in my home for my kids. I am slowly and surely replacing the cheap version of toys with real items. I don't know. I just feel that things would be so much more exciting if they were able to touch and use and play with real items. Real musical instruments, not toy versions. Real colored pencils, acrylic paints, linseed oil, color pastels, not the cheap Crayola versions. ;) Baking for real in our real kitchen. Buying games not for their "educational value", but to match them with my kids' interests. Strategy, fun, humor, word games, etc. Real tools, a hammer, a saw, nails, and some duct tape. Great books. Fun books. Books on CD. DVD's I know my kids will love. Xbox games they'll love. Downloading apps on my Kindle that are challenges for my kid who is crazy good with computer games, and fun apps for my little one who gets so easily frustrated. 

Exploring life WITH them. Giving them tools and being excited to see these kids blossom. Walking with them and guiding them. Valuing them and their opinions. Being available. Answering and or researching the one million questions they ask.

Saying yes, that sounds like fun. Saying sure when they say mom look!

It is a different life to be sure, but it is one we are on the path to fully embracing. And this replacement of "fake" with "real" is just the first step. :)

(RockyGirl..should have been radically unschooled her whole life...and still she benefited greatly from the little bit she DID do at home. Oh, and Cat. Lol!)

AHA!!!

I had a bit of an "aha" moment the other day.

I have a kid's place app downloaded on my Kindle, where the kids can easily play games without overloading my Kindle. I have many, many educational games on the site, as well as a few such as Minecraft, Temple Run, Minions, etc.

However...

No matter which kid had the Kindle, the educational games were completely ignored. Every. Single. Time.

Enter my "aha" moment. :)

Why on earth WOULD they choose to play the educational games?!? I wouldn't! They scream of "being taught" and are all about mastering things that are needed for SCHOOL.

AHA!!!!!! (And duh)

So, I went into my kindle and started unloading things. All those educational apps?? Gone. Good-bye. See ya.

In their place? I loaded Chess, a Sound Effects app (lol!), a White Board, a couple of Board Games, a Stopwatch, an app about the lunar cycles, a real time map, a weather app, etc. I mean really, how fun!!!!! I also added in some apps I had on my cloud. An Old Time Radio app, a Word Search, a couple of channels, and we're good to go!

Now THAT ought to be FUN!!!!

We are one week in to my unschooling experiment. BeastyBoy and MissesHerMama continue to attack life full-force, soaking up things as rapidly as they can. I also see them beginning to find their own limits. RockyGirl was raised much like this, and she is radically in tune with herself for being only 17.

Corazon however, is struggling. She has been told who to be and what to do for so long (at her orphanage) that it has killed the spark in her. She is one angry and sullen kiddo. She feels like she "not being taught". I can see that for her, unschooling has been too big of a change. My goal for today is talk over with her HOW she would like to learn. I will honor it no matter what she chooses. I am hoping that by helping her guide her own learning, she will gradually see that she definitely can learn herself. So for her, for now, we go with a delight-directed style of learning.

Honoring my kiddos. That's what this is all about. Teaching them that they are valuable people with desires and God-given talents.

What a beautiful way to live. :)

(Chance of snow today...can I just have the glorious days of summer back? :))

Unschooling and Attachment....

Saturdays are often an emotional trigger for me. I've noticed that it on Saturday that I'm highly likely to text a friend that I am "not doing well." I battle depression pretty much every Saturday.

Why?

Because all four younger kids are home here with me. Mr.Mechanic triggers me the most. He has such poor self-esteem, that he spends a good part of the day angry at me. Everything I ask him to do is perceived as a battle on his part. It is difficult and my anxiety kicks into overload. Hubby often takes Mr.Mechanic to work with him, but that also leads to toxic behavior.

Yesterday the sun was shining and I desperately wanted to try meld these kids as siblings. There is almost constant bullying from BeastyBoy to Mr.Mechanic, and in turn, from Mr.Mechanic to MissesHerMama. But unless we address this head on by putting them together, we will remain fractured as a family.

The boys asked to go to a local skate park. We had not done this, and a big part of my unschooling has been to actively seek out activities exactly like this. So after some play time out in the sun, we took off for the skate park.

Mr.Mechanic...wow...the poor kid is willing to do ANYTHING to gain the approval of ANYONE. :( Finally it was just our family left at the park. We had some good discussions on friendship and how to appropriately answer when someone asks you to do something you don't want to. It was a good teaching moment. I tempered a few fires between the kids, and we just figured out how to play together.

MissesHerMama had a great idea for a game, and all of us got in on the action. We all had the giggles, and even Mr.Mechanic was able to take his turn without becoming angry.

At one point I turned around and I saw these four amazing kids looking back at me and I was just swept away. No matter what, I love them, and I will fight for them. The daily troubles can so easily drag me under, and I purposely froze this moment in my heart to hold on too.

Lots of laughter and love. A pop on the way home. Children each wanting to sit near me as we warmed up. Talking. A spontaneous hug from BeastyBoy, just because. Hugs and kisses.

Today I glimpsed redemption.

It is a marvelous gift.

Hmmm.....

I probably spend more time deciding what to write here, than actually writing. The issue I have with that, is that at any given time, I have a million thoughts swirling in my head, wanting to be put to paper.

So...

What if instead of trying to write the "perfect" blog post, I keep this more as a diary. A written journal of my rambling thoughts at any given time? Unfiltered and unedited?

Hmmm.....

I think for November, I'll try it. Just letting my thoughts spill out and going wherever they take me. :) A diary of sorts.

This oughta be interesting.

The Path....

When two of my older girls were homeschooling, we tried unschooling for a time. I had read everything I could get my hands on. At that time, there were a lot of Radical Unschoolers but almost no Christian unschoolers that were writing. I thought at that time I understood what unschooling was. I told the girls to find something they were interested in and to research it. Hahaha! Needless to say, that stint with unschooling didn't last very long. Even though I was clueless (but trying), my girls did actually gain some important knowledge about themselves, and they remember that time with fondness. A little chaos but also we all learned a bit.

This time when I began to consider venturing into unschooling, I again read everything I could. But this time I looked on facebook. I read books. I checked scripture. I rabiit-trailed all over to blogs by Christians that saw this as a valuable and godly way of life. I asked questions regarding adoption and unschooling. How would this work with kids that were battling attachment issues? For kids that need structure and face huge thoughts of failure and shame, would unschooling make them feel rejected? In short, would this work for me and my kids?

We are learning. It is not exactly what I thought it would look like, but little by little, we are slowly figuring out how this works for us.

I still struggle with them "not doing anything". I wonder most days if learning is happening. I think one will require more guidance on the journey for now.

I am also learning to distance myself from the unschoolers who say "you must", or "if you unschool you can't do xyz". This HAS to be our journey and it HAS to fit us. It's not an easy path so far but I am determined to use this path to watch my children learn, as well as to help heal them.

Extraordinary....

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin

And We're Off....

Today as each of my kids woke up, I asked them what they wanted to do (don't worry, I won't be asking them this forever, just wanted them to realize today was going to be something new and wonderful :)). They were all a little taken aback, and all pretty excited too.

Actually they were giddy. :)

MissesHerMama is always the first up and rolling. She did timed multiplication on the computer for "fun". She loves racing a timer in math and trying to beat her last score. :) As she's doing it, she says to me, "did you know that if you take an odd number times 5 it always ends with a 5?"

Uh...what?!? 0_o

So I did it in my head and sure enough! I asked her, "and what if its an even number?". Without missing a beat, she says, "it ends in a 0."

Wow.

Ok then!

I said to her, "gosh girl! You are pretty darn good at math!". She was just beaming. Then she asked if she could learn about Alaska. I had no idea she had any interest in Alaska. She rabbit-trailed on over to learning about Anchorage ("boring"), the Iditarod ("awesome mom!") And the Alaskan Aurora Borealis ("wow mom, look mom!!!"). She went on to google Guatemala and loved looking through all the pictures she found! She did some math in her math book and played some. She loves this unschooling. :)

Corazon and Beasty Boy woke while MissesHerMama was flipping through pictures of Guatemala. Beasty Boy taught MissesHerMama all about the volcanoes in Guatemala and they all 3 talked about the Quetzal, the national bird. They looked at pictures of Tikal and the ancient ruins.

Beasty Boy asked to do his Tornado unit study so I let him. He rabbit-trailed all over the internet watching tornado videos and waterspout videos and "snownado" videos. It was pretty cool to see. Beasty Boy was never told once to "get back to his work" or "focus on what you're doing." He looked up definitions in the dictionary and copied some Bible passages. He's getting pretty good at looking things up on the online dictionary! His reading is moving along very rapidly.

After going outside for awhile, he went in and worked on his drawing. The kid is incredibly talented! He was trying out color blending. Impressive stuff.

After all that he decided to watch an anime show he found. The voices are in Chinese. He said to me, "mom, this is a good way to learn Chinese."

Again...mind blown.

And Corazon...

She has the hardest time right now with unschooling, and yet...today she did some math in her workbook and worked on her lapbook. She looked up music online and helped me cook. Being in the kitchen with me is by far her favorite thing right now. She's picking up math, reading, and basic chemistry. :) She loves reading the recipe and she loves to be by me! She is watching the BBC series "Merlin" and is learning a whole heck of a lot about Medieval history and such.

Alll this makes me wonder, why did I ever question this? Why did I see school as the only thing of value? Why did I see my kids as "behind" when in reality they just needed someone to walk alongside as they became their own amazing people. I see their self-confidence just exploding. They are amazing.

The bonus for me as a mom who is always, always working on my kids' attachment is that their hearts are seeing that I see them and because I see them, they are feeling valuable and worthy. No small task for kiddos that deeply grieve the losses they have had.

For me, it's a win-win lifestyle. I hope and pray I can remember this all on the days when I feel discouraged.

 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 

1Cor. 15:58

Unschooling Day 1....

Yesterday was our first day of officially unschooling. After much thought and prayer, I am giving this a trial run until Christmas. This wasn't an easy decision for me and I'm not sure I'm totally on board yet. :)

I was a kid who LOVED school. Loved it! I loved learning all sorts of new things. So I tend to glamorize school in my head. I tend to block out the fact that I hated the social pressure, I didn't understand math, science was incredibly hard and confusing for me, etc. What I did love, was history, and art, and English, and drama. Those classes came easily for me.

Something occurred to me last night as I was turning this whole unschooling thing over and over in my brain. It wasn't so much the classes that I loved, it was the other. The reading, the writing about what I read, going home and finding more and more books on subjects that interested me. Drawing in my room. Creating.

Hm.....

So in reality, my biggest so called "school loves" were the things I did ON MY OWN.

Eye-opener.

Seriously wow.

And I thought about all those things I didn't like in school. I realized that those things never interested me, but that in my adult life, I've used some of them.  I used them after I learned about them on my own! I took Chemistry in High School and only passed because two guys helped me through. When I became a nurse, I had to take Chemistry again. Strange thing, but this time round I completely got it. I needed it for the point I was at in my life, and what was previously useless became currently useful.  I am still learning every day. My passions cycle in and out.

What it boils down to is, I. Love. Learning. I truly do. I love to fill my head up with  knowledge of things I have taught myself.

So.....

Why am I asking my kids to do anything different than what I do every single day?

What if I just let them and let them find topics that are interesting to them?

Am I ok with that????

I don't know. It's hard for me. But I definitely see the wisdom and value in it. It's pretty much a leap of faith.

Beasty Boy will love it. MissesHerMama, maybe will be confuesed a little. Corazon will be completely lost. At first. But I do think they can all take ownership of their learning.

It's ME that needs to revamp my thinking and get out of their way. ;)

(On that note, isn't this an interesting map?? My latest desire is to learn about Native American medicinal healing. When I was a little girl, the Native American culture was something more than fascinating to me. I absorbed anything I could get my hands on. Now that desire has come back full force. Unschooling?)