Each of my children are a special type of gift to me, of course, but this note is about Claire. She has always been unique. She is a "love bug". She loves critters of all types and has recently determined to be the world's first cat trainer. It's always been a joy to watch her with her pets. She has inspired more than one note (see Pets or Playthings)
The part I love about homeschooling Claire is that she never ceases to surprise me. She looks off into space as though she's paying me no attention whatsoever, and, yet, when I ask her a question, she goes above and beyond with the answer. She has answers that are simple and profound. Sometimes it's obvious she was paying me no attention, but she doesn't try to fake it. She simply says, "Mom, I really just wasn't paying attention to what you just read. I was thinking about Scrooge McDuck and the Beagle Boys. You know, the Beagle Boys's mom has LOTS of kids." I can't help but admire that kind of flat-out honesty.Yesterday, I was reading to the girls about some animals that are native to North America. One of these animals was the porcupine. Both girls seemed absorbed in what I was saying. I read a phrase that stood out to me. It said that the porcupine's quills are made of hairs that have grown together. I had no idea about this. So I reread this phrase aloud - to make sure that I had understood it. We talked about it briefly - saying how interesting it was. Then we moved on to the rest of the page. At the end of the page, I asked the list of suggested questions. It included the question, "The porcupine's quills are made of ___?" Claire looked at me with a question mark and said, "Pine." These are the moments when I'm not sure what just happened. Had we not just talked at length about this very question?
Last week we spent a series of lessons discussing the word "nocturnal" - as well as different types of nocturnal animals. When I later asked for examples of nocturnal animals, a very confident Claire responded, "Grown-ups."
When discussing the pre-fix "tri" last year, we noted that "tri" means "three", and used examples of tripods and triangles. When I asked her about triplets though, I said, "When a woman has three babies at one time, we call them triplets which starts with 'tri-...'." She said, "Try... to take care of them all?"
The hilarity of these moments does not escape me. I don't want to laugh right at her, but I love to laugh with her. However, I work so hard to get a point across - sometimes too hard - and then, when it's obvious that I haven't gotten it across, I wonder what I've done wrong. These are the moments when I wish I didn't have to be teacher and wish I could be only "mom". As a teacher, my life is a series of checklists. As a mom, it's much more relaxed and fun. I would like little more than to always be able to be fun, but the role of teacher is also one that I take seriously. The constant fear that hangs over this homeschooling mom's head is - losing the opportunity to school my children at home. People are watching my kids to see if they are "normal" socially or if they are "on schedule" with the other children their age academically. I believe my children are more closely critiqued because they are home schoolers. I love my children, and that makes me work hard to give them the education they deserve. People don't necessarily understand this, but I am not trying to be "overprotective" or smothering with the choice to homeschool. I didn't just lose a husband in my divorce. I lost half of my daughters as well. Half of their weekends, birthdays, holidays, and one night a week are spent elsewhere. That, for me, is primarily why I chose to school my children at home. After Sadie and Austin's first year at school, I missed them terribly - feeling as though their teachers and friends knew them better and had more quality time with them than I did. It was a difficult choice to give up "free time" to do housework and other things during the day. But I wanted to put effort into the relationship that I have with them. If we were a "normal" family, I may not have chosen to school at home.
Last year we started to work with Greek and Latin a little bit in a book called "English from the Roots Up". It teaches them words like "photos" and "tropos" and "graphia" in efforts to get them to be able to comprehend English vocabulary words more easily. I have not put heavy emphasis on this, because I don't consider it on par with reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's kind of a linguistic hobby of mine (yes, I speak fluent geek) that I mix in with our regular school. However, yesterday, when I was dictating sentences for Claire to write from her spelling book, I noticed that she was substituting letters on her white board with letters of the Greek alphabet. She was writing the Greek Alpha instead of "A" and Theta instead of "Th". This was done with no prompting from me. I think she just thought it was funny.
These are the things that others will not see when they look at my children. I even sometimes fall into the temptation to critique the education they are getting - but I know that it is out of trying to make sure that I am doing my job right.
Claire has a late, mid-August birthday. She showed no interest whatsoever in learning her letters or numbers or in trying to read even a word until she was 6. (She was also a late bloomer in the potty training area.) This all made me nervous, because we didn't even try to school her (aside from reading books with her) until last fall. However, a year later, she is reading well, writing full sentences with ease, and adding two-digit numbers in her head, often faster than I can. The temptation to compare one child with another is something that all parents face - within their own families and with outside families.
My personal struggle with perfectionism comes out in my teaching style also. I pushed myself in school. I rarely ever got a B, from the time I knew it was possible to receive letter grades at all until the day I graduated. Was I exceptionally bright? I doubt it. I think I was just competitive and perfectionistic. I remain so today. I was valedictorian of my 8th grade class and my 12th grade class. I was set to graduate my Junior year, but my principal told me that he wanted me to mature another year and encouraged me and my parents to keep me in one more year. My senior year I played sports, attended two schools, and worked two jobs at once. I moved out of my parents's house the summer after I graduated and bought my own home. I pushed myself to the point of exhaustion, and I was miserable much of the time. As much as I want my children to strive for personal best, I don't ever want them to dislike school like I did.
It's sometimes hard for me to remember that I was different from most of the kids in my class. An A minus was a personal disappointment for me. Giving my kids the freedom to be average students and just to learn without pressure of perfection has been a difficult adjustment for me. After all, I had no idea what porcupine quills were made of before I read that phrase this week anyway. I was always just glad I wasn't a mother porcupine, because "OUCH"! And until this week, I never wrote a word in Greek. As hard as it is for some people to accept these days, there still are right and wrong answers. 2 + 2 is not whatever I think it might be. However, a wrong answer does not, in any way, change my heart toward my children. I still love them more every day - no matter what. Right academic answers are going to help them as they grow up, and I do want what's best for them, but my personal feelings for my children are unaffected by their academic achievement.
Like most things, this makes my mind turn to my relationship with God. I somehow got the impression growing up that I had to work to please God. That always left me somehow falling short... usually in a lot of ways. I read a book once called A Woman's Strength. It was about an independent, perfectionistic, professional woman who had borne several handicapped sons. One of her sons had more difficulty than the others though. He was unable to communicate or eat and had to be cared for in a full-time care facility. She said that they had brought him home for a holiday, as was their custom, and that he was sitting behind her in his wheelchair as she was washing dishes, stalling before it was time to take him back to the home. As she was washing dishes, she was suddenly overwhelmed with a need to communicate her love for him. She said that she turned to him, knelt by his side, and told him how very much she loved him. She said he responded with nothing. He looked past her, completely incapable of any display of emotion or even acknowledgement that he understood her feelings for him. She said this happened several times in a row until she broke down in tears as she was hoping for some kind of response from her son. At once she was consumed with one thought that she believed was directly from God... that she (or "us" - humanity) was the equivalent of her handicapped child, and that God was the equivalent of her heart for her son. She knew at once that we, like her son - marred by sin and completely changed from the beautiful, relative perfection we were originally created for, are completely incapable of understanding the height, width, depth - the magnitude of his incomprehensible love for us. And, maybe more importantly, that His love for us does not depend on our ability to return it or even to understand it. It depends on nothing more than the fact that we are His. We are His purchase... His choice, and we were - despite the fact that He knew we would be wrong. We would break His heart. We don't have to be smart or right. We don't have to be funny or whitty or lovable. We are just loved by virtue of being His. He never expected us to be anything else. What a sweet truth to "take to the bank". It gives me the freedom I need to enjoy a relationship with my Creator so much more freely.
