Independence vs. “parental proximity” (a false dichotomy)

Since publishing this post about feeling possibly called to homeschool and yet potentially not being able to, I’ve received some emails from those of you who find yourselves in a similar situation.  My heart goes out to all of you, and this post is for you… to encourage you, comfort you while your convictions are questioned, and (if you want) to give you ideas of what to share with the people in your lives that, well, may simply think you are crazy. ;)

The general consensus amongst those of us in this situation seems to be that, hidden behind the ever popular “socialization” worries (which can be pretty easily refuted), is this idea that we really just don’t want our children to become independent… we are anxious, hovering mothers, who can’t “let go” of our babies. 

This frustrates me to no end because if all the people in my life truly knew what an introvert I am, and how much I value time to myself as well as peace and quiet, they might have an idea of just how hard it is for me to do what I am convinced is best for my child.  I am a very selfish, self-centered person, and it is a daily struggle, battle even, to do what I see as my vocation, and do it well. I am convinced, however, that joy and peace are found in doing what I feel is right instead of simply what I feel like doing.  The first path is based on thoughtful discernment, and the second is the one really based on emotion.

Sometimes our feelings about the education of our children do come out sounding emotional… due to an overwhelming sense that something just isn’t right, and the inability (on my part anyway) to spit out logical information in a detached way, without using that terrifying phrase, “I feel”.  I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to be detached emotionally from any topic that affects a member of my family… but I don’t necessarily see that as a weakness, just as part of who I am… if mothers weren’t the heart of their families, after all, where would the world be?  It doesn’t mean that everything we say and believe, while having an emotional component, should be completely disregarded as emotional drivel.  (I have to say I’m blessed to have a husband who listens to me {when I finally spell things out for him instead of hoping he can read my mind} and isn’t disrespectful in the least, but I know that isn’t the case with everyone’s husband or extended family members.)

It’s hard to be in a place where your motherly intuition is telling you what your child is and isn’t ready for, which style of education might be best for them, and which lifestyle might be best for your family; and yet to be misunderstood and not taken seriously by those around you who tend to see you as a hindrance to your child’s growth instead of seeing you as an advocate for the healthy growth of each individual child.  Personally, I think much of this stems from a general misunderstanding and lack of respect for the importance of motherhood in society today .  But that is another (very opinionated) post for another time. 

I like the encouragement David Guterson gives in his book, Family Matters: Why Home Schooling Makes Sense, as he comments on the affects school has on the parent/child relationship: 

“[The intuitive sense of parents that something isn’t right] is part of the growing alienation they feel from their children, who gradually become estranged from them as they become ever more deeply immersed in the universe of their school peers – an alienation parents erroneously conclude is a ‘natural’ part of their children’s growing up, a necessary prerequisite to their independent adulthood.  This distance, though, is far from natural, and the dismay parents feel about it ought not to be repressed.” (emphasis mine)

I recently came across a book titled, The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling, by Rachel Gathercole.  In it she discusses this idea of “parental proximity” and why it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, it might be a good thing! Perhaps our current culture doesn’t understand because it views the family unit itself in a rather poor light.  I want to share some of what I’ve read with you, as I found it very encouraging and interesting. 

So enough blathering from me.  I will simply share a few quotes with you…

Rachel Gathercole quotes many homeschoolers – parents and children – in her book.  I think this quote from a homeschooling parent about peer dependence is a good one to start with… Independence from parents at too early of an age doesn’t necessarily lead to independence, but simply to dependence of another sort:

“… I believe the decay of family unity is at the heart of many of the social problems our culture is facing today.  Our culture is in a hurry to rush [little children] off to school, where they are placed in a room full of ten to twenty other little children with only one or two teachers.  Then parents are shocked and horrified when these same children, years later, have become completely peer dependent and cannot identify with their own family.  But peer dependence is the natural outcome of [this type of] education because a child has a real and intense need for relationship.  When that need for relationship cannot be met by an adult (a teacher who is working with many students), then the child will turn to the only other available person, the peer in the classroom.  Consequently, a child comes to value the opinions of his school-age peers more than those of his family… Our children are starving for meaningful relationships and will engage in all kinds of unhealthy activities and behaviors to fulfill that innate need for intimacy.  What a tragedy that we have divided the family for the sake of ‘education.’  Strong family relationships and unity are at the heart of healthy communities – the latter cannot exist in the absence of the former.” – Amy, homeschooling mother of three, upstate New York.

 

“School socialization, ultimately, is really just training for a school environment.  Family and community-based socialization, on the other hand, is preparation for family and community living (in other words, for real life).” – Gathercole, p. 178

 

Regarding independence Gathercole writes:

“The idea that early and abundant independence from parents is desirable may be part of an overall societal pressure on kids and parents toward early, forced independence… More and more research is showing, and parents are discovering, that strong attachment bonds between child and parents, not forced independence, creates happy children and healthy socialization. 

The idea that the kids need freedom from their parents at a young age seems based on the premise that parents are a ‘crutch,’ to be cast aside as soon as physically possible.  However, many homeschoolers believe that children need their parents directly available to them for much more of their childhoods than conventional schooling allows.  They want to teach their children what they consider to be healthy social skills, rather than send them to learn whatever skills they might happen to learn from their peers.  And they want themselves and their children to experience the closer family relationships that homeschooling seems to encourage.”

and

“First [children] must watch their parents model years and years of good decision-making, and they must observe their parents making the careful decisions that they believe are in the child’s (and whole family’s) best interests.  In this way the child can learn firstly, that he is worthy of taking care of and should thus take care of himself, and secondly, that just as his parents make decisions with the whole family’s best interests in mind, so, too, can and should he make decisions that take into account both his best interests and the best interests of others.  The family is the perfect, naturally-designed situation for learning these things.”

and

“… As kids do reach an age when they can handle and need greater independence, homeschool parents – who have already spent a great deal of time with their kids – are generally very willing to give them a healthily increasing amount of freedom and independence.”

Healthy independence just happens when it naturally should happen.  It does not need to be rushed into or forced.

She also writes this:

“Of course, children do need to be exposed to serious and meaningful things, and this can happen while children feel completely safe, carefree, and not under pressure to rely on their own social savvy before they are prepared to.  Childhood is a time in life when a person can be free and observe, take in, and learn about the world while living under the blanket of safety of parents who are in control and protect them.  Indeed, this may arguably be the very reason children have parents at all.”

And one last quote from another homeschooling mom:

“We all want our children to be able to face life challenges, peer pressure, and all the evils of the world with strength and integrity.  They have a much better shot at this if they have the time and support to develop and grow first.  Children cannot make wise choices until they have the perspective and information about themselves and what’s in front of them.  When they are young, they are mostly influenced by their environment.  It takes time for them to be able to understand an issue to be able to make judgments about it and to act in their own best interest and in the interest of others.

At each age there are things they can handle with wisdom and things they cannot.  Our schools inundate children with things they are not equipped to handle.  I want my children to experience age-appropriate amounts of challenge and difficult choice-making.  I want to help them think it through.  I want to control, to some extent, the amount of exposure they face to the challenges of peer-dominated cultural influences, because I believe that our country is assuming that children should be rushed to grow up, and it is hurting them.  They are toughening up to it but at a personal cost.  And that will cost us all.” – Janice, homeschooling mother of two, Durham, NC

 

The entire book is well worth reading, by the way, and I hope the little bit I’ve shared here motivates some of you to read it for yourself.  You can find it here.  It would be an excellent resource to hand to someone who has honest questions about the socialization of homeschooled children.

Have a beautiful day with your beautiful children!
Nicole :)

Kindergarten Blues

We are looking into registering M for kindergarten this fall at the private school associated with our church.

I can not stop crying.

A little word of advice to any husbands out there:  If your wife is very, very pregnant, and her first child is also getting ready to start kindergarten – this might be too much for her, especially if she is unsure that this is in his best interests.  Don’t send her out to get info, tour schools, or sign registration papers on her own.  She just might not be able to force herself to do it.  Regardless of how much you might think you are on the same page, there is no guarantee that a mama in this situation is not going to just flip to another page or switch to an entirely different book altogether.  And if she’s pregnant, don’t expect to get many coherent thoughts out of her when she’s in the middle of crying.  She might be the most practical, articulate, logical-thinking woman on the planet, but when you’re talking about taking her heart of our her chest and handing it over to someone else, you are not likely to get the most objective of responses.

I’m just sayin’.

So.  I’m not sure what I want the point of this post to be… maybe it’s just an opportunity to vent (code for: ramble on and on while I indulge in self-pity and defensiveness), or an attempt to think things through on virtual paper so I sound a bit more coherent than the usual “wah, wah, sob, sob… my baby!” that I’ve been doing of late.  If you can stick with me, your comments are welcome!

First of all, I believe with all my heart, that parents have a very serious God-given responsibility when it comes to the education of their children.  It is such a serious responsibility that they need to take time to figure out what their own thoughts, beliefs, and philosophy of education are, and then diligently seek out the best way of giving their child this sort of education.  It’s more than just saying, “Well, he’s six years old now, time to go to school!” and then sending him off.  It’s more than basing the decision of where to send him on something as simple as “do they have half-day or whole-day kindergarten?” or “do the start and end times work for our family and transportation?”.  These things might be important, but really, they shouldn’t be the whole basis of decision. If we are going to be held accountable for the education of a child’s mind, heart, and soul – and we are, I believe – then we’d better be pretty darn serious about the details of it.

(I am talking here, of course, about parents who have a choice in educating their children… unfortunately so many parents do not.  Thankfully we find ourselves in a current situation where we are able to choose to send M to a private school, public school, or home school.  I know the fact that we have a choice is a blessing in itself, but there’s still a responsibility to make the best choice possible.)

So, if and when we have thoughtfully (and prayerfully) made the huge decision to delegate this responsibility of educating our children to someone else, it’s our right to know what that someone else is going to be teaching them, the style of teaching, and various other things. 

I was disappointed to learn that the particular school we are looking at uses computers and other screen technology, quite often, to “teach” 5 and 6 year olds.  I just don’t see how this is the best way for children of such a young age to learn.  Why is everyone impressed with technology in schools?  Does it help the child learn to think or is it simply glorified worksheets and busy-work?  Isn’t it likely that most small children will become so enamoured with the computer itself that the actual learning of the material will take a back seat?  And shouldn’t children be doing more hands-on learning activities anyway? Any technology they learn now will most likely be obsolete by the time they need to prepare for a job.  I just don’t get it, especially given the damage (yes, damage) that this sort of impersonal education can do to someone of such a tender age. 

I’m a big believer in intuition and instinct… and intuitively I have a problem with government telling my family that we must now send our child away for several hours a day for the next 13 years in order to educate him.  (By the way, I’m not crazy for thinking this way – there were many parental protests when schooling first became compulsory in Massachusetts in 1852.  Little by little those voices were ignored and quieted and now society simply sees this as the "way things are”, but compulsory schooling and our current system of schooling in institutions is a pretty recent development.)  Let me be clear – I am pro-learning!  Learning is what childhood is all about.  Learning takes guidance and direction by someone… but ideally that guidance and direction is geared towards the individual child – his abilities, needs, interests, etc.   Individuality – the dignity of each person’s uniqueness – is highly disregarded in today’s society and nowhere more so than in schools where children are lumped together and taught the same thing at the same age - things decided by people who do not even know them.  Teachers do their best to get to know the children and help them learn, but there are so many handicaps blocking their way that it’s difficult for even the best teacher to achieve this for each and every student.

Anyway, back to government being involved… I was happy to learn that our potential school has developed and uses its own curriculum… and then disheartened to learn that this coming year they are switching over to state standard curriculum and will be doing state standardized testing as well.  My heart sunk at this news.  And the person hosting our tour wasn’t able to give me the names of any of the curriculum that will be used (it’s weird, apparently, that a parent might want such precise details of what their child will be learning).  Perhaps the teachers themselves would be able to give me more information, but I’m not sure we’ll have the opportunity to be in touch with them about this before making a decision about registering.

Standardized testing leads so often to “teaching to the test” instead of really focusing on helping each child learn.  I’m not a fan, at all, of such things… or homework or multiple choice questions or a host of other things either, if you really must know. :) 

Learning to think… this is what we need more of today.  Andrew Pudewa makes a beautiful statement in his talk about Freedomship Education (which you can download here), in which he discusses a classical education – developing character, knowledge, and skills - the kind of education men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other great men early in our country’s history had (before compulsory schooling).  Andrew Pudewa says:

“We want to raise children who know how to think, and who have the knowledge, the wisdom, the character, and the skills to be able to speak the truth in a world of liars during a time of crisis.”

(This is a great talk to listen to, by the way… he also talks about the history of compulsory education, it’s real purpose [which is not teaching our children to think on their own], the problems with standardized testing, multiple choice tests, etc.)

So, where does one find a classical education today?  There are one or two schools around that would provide this for M, but they are e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e!  And at least one of them is for older children only.  Thomas Sowell, an advocate of classical education, points out that parents seem to be more qualified and capable of giving their children a good education than professional teachers:

“It is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to homeschool their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student-- which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.

Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having "professional" expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.” – Thomas Sowell, “Amateurs Outdoing Professionals”

Sowell discusses all sorts of educational problems in early elementary schools in the first part of his book, Inside American Education, if you are interested in a good summer read.

So here I am, where I’ve been a million times before, as you long-time readers know – face to face with my admiration of homeschooling.  It comes down to this… wanting peace for my family.  And the idea of homeschooling brings me more peace than any of the other options I’ve considered.  And I’ve considered them very, very hard – praying that God would either give me peace about sending M to school, lessen my desire to homeschool, or just out and out give me information to prove me wrong.  The opposite of all of these things has been happening – I feel less peace about sending M after learning more about this particular school, my desire to homeschool is growing, and all the information I’m finding is making me more and more certain that conventional schooling is not the road to go down for the best education for M.

The heartbreaking part of this is that with current circumstances (my husband has reservations about this, and I do feel he should have the final say so we can be sure we are doing the right thing) I have to be open to the idea that this is not God’s will for our family at this point in time.  But I feel so conflicted about doing something I don’t believe is the best for my son, thereby not being the best mother I can be and am called to be.  What’s a mama to do in a situation like this? 

Here’s the idealistic little picture in my head of a unified education, where learning is not a separate activity, done somewhere else, among other people, but as part of the whole of a child’s life:  a child in a one-on-one setting, with a nurturing grown-up’s arm around his shoulder, teaching him to read, to solve math problems, to love God, to love his neighbor, to learn about the wonders of nature via science, to learn about the creativity in his heart via art lessons, to learn about history, music, chores, being polite, everything under the sun (!)… along with a lot of affection, firm discipline, encouragement, guidance in all things related to mind, heart, and soul, all in a real-world setting of family and community (versus an artificial environment where everyone is the same age and treated as if they are all at the same developmental stage)… a holistic education of the entire individual, by someone whom God has placed in a position to really know and understand and deeply love that particular child – the way He loves that child – as an individual.

And, to me, that sounds like a mother doing the work God has given her by entrusting these little souls to her and her husband. 

I have to wonder if, when God created families, He thought it would be best to take the children away from their families several hours a day in order to educate them – or did He place them in their particular families with the intention that education would, for the most part, happen there?

And it’s an idealistic picture, yes, I know that.  And I’m pregnant and emotional, and not the best at dealing with reality right now – yes, I know that too, which is why I’m thankful to have a more objective husband.  But I’ve been on this road for 5 years now and looking back I can clearly see how this dream has developed and blossomed in my heart and maybe my current state is just an honest admission of what I’ve wanted to believe and say all along.  Barring any major change in our circumstances, having a baby will keep me at home for another 5 years.  I’d love to have both of my chicks nestled under my wing (I’ve had to let too many of them go too soon – maybe that is part of this too?), all of us learning together… and there are some practical and financial advantages as well.  Taking advantage of homeschool groups would be a large part of this too; I have no desire to suffocate my children or prevent them from being part of a larger community.

Am I being too overprotective?  Too controlling?  Hm.  Perhaps.  But I do know that someone is going to be in control.  If M goes to school, the system will be in control of what is being taught; teachers will be in control of whether he is learning as well as how he learns (so often you hear, “teacher wants us to do it this way, not that way, despite the fact that that way might be correct too, which I’d have to say undermines the intelligence and authority of the parent who might be just as correct); other children will be in control of his socialization (social skills should be taught by mature adults and older children, I firmly believe), and their actions and words will control, at least in part, how his personality develops – monitoring may be done by an adult, but the real learning of social skills will be taught by his peers.  It seems to me that if someone is going to be in control of these things, and we know someone must be, that someone ought to be the parents.

Some quotes that sum up my feeling about this “overprotective” issue:

“If you were going to grow tomatoes in Canada, you do not take the tomato seed and go outside and stick it in the ground, do you?  No.  What you do is get a little cup, maybe several little cups, and you carefully select and control the soil, control the amount of water, light, and heat it gets.  You don’t do all this, then stick it outside in the back of the pickup truck behind the barn.  You keep it inside on the windowsill or in a greenhouse area and you carefully control all the elements around that little seed as it grows.  You know where it needs to go, but when do you do that?  You do it when the plant is tall enough, the trunk is strong enough, the roots are deep enough, and you know the place where you are going to put it is safe enough, you take that seedling and put it outside where conditions are not under your control anymore.  There are going to be variables, but at least that plant has been prepared adequately to handle those variables.  When it all comes together you get a great plant because you did it all when the roots were deep enough and the stem was strong enough.” – Steve Moitozo – from 10 Myths of Socialization (free audio download)

and

“We are not home educating because we fear the world.  We are not building an impenetrable fortress within which we will shield our children from the onslaught of the enemy.  Rather, our goal as Catholics is to nurture our children, like young plants in a nursery, so that they will stand tall for Christ.” – Kimberly Hahn – Catholic Education: Homeward Bound

There.  Venting done.  For now. ;)

I am simply unsure of where to go from here.  I pray for the strength to trust that all things will work out for the best, despite the possible heartache of.going against my convictions… it’s a tough place to be for this mama.

Nicole