Let's Talk Tempo

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Dressing Busy Board
• Transferring
• Cutting

"Stoic observation. Stoic observation. Stoic observation." That's what I kept repeating to myself, mantra-like, as I pulled out our school shelves this morning. It's a little funny that I'm now struggling to rein in my emotions, given that my father (also, eventually, several therapists) used to beseech me to open up and talk about how I felt. I was a pretty phlegmatic kind of kid. My own child seems to feel no compunctions about wearing his heart on his sleeve; the way he carries on at times makes me wonder whether he'll end up being a Shakespearean actor, or the next Pacino or Shatner. Which I suppose is just desserts for me. (Or not. There doesn't always have to be an explanation, you know.) Anyway, I did OK keeping my anxieties about school less apparent today. I didn't do that well with the sitting back and observing, but that was my son's fault, not mine. He likes to talk, a lot. And not monologues, either; he expects full-on back-and-forth, give-and-take conservations. Also, he wanted me to do school with him right from the get-go ("Let's take turns with my yellow board, Mommy!"), so my sit-on-the-sofa-and-watch plan effectively got tossed out the window before my butt even hit the cushions.

But because noninvolvement had at least been my aim, I did do better at not interjecting my two cents every five seconds. When my son stood by the shelves for several minutes, fingering the materials, I didn't say, "What do you want to do? Which activity? Want to try the blocks again? How about the fabric basket? If you want to do the tongs, don't just sit there, eating the crunchy pasta. Bring the activity over to your table. Please." I just waited (stoic observation!), and he eventually left the pasta alone (temporarily satiated, I guess) and grabbed the transferring materials. Later, I got to thinking about pacing. You see, I'm starting to realize that a lot of the turmoil I'm feeling about our homeschool has its roots in my unconscious expectation that our school look/feel like the schools I have taught in and attended. I get anxious because my son isn't doing what he's "supposed to do," I worry that there's not enough structure, I feel frustrated that he doesn't follow my instructions, I crave "ta da!" moments and tangible results (like worksheets I can draw a happy face on and affix to the refrigerator door). And I get really really nervous when there's a lull in the action, when my son pauses for a few minutes, when he looks (emphasis on the word looks) unengaged. Teachers are taught to conduct their classes with a quick tempo; lecture, worksheet, quiz, lecture, worksheet, quiz. Give the kids a few minutes of free time, and they'll get restless and look for ways to misbehave. Untasked kids mean unruly kids. Well, I think that's a pretty pessimistic way to view our youth. Just because they don't look like they're doing anything of note, who's to know what's going on inside their brains. It's actually kind of fun to wait and see what happens after a kid's been sitting there ruminating for awhile. The results are often not only surprising, but ingenious, too. We should change that old saying to, "Idle hands are the mind's workshop."

Now to put all that into effect. It's one thing to sit here and blog about how I'm not going to be a slave to my conditioning; how I'm not going to be a monkey on my son's back during school just because aspects our homeschooling sessions clash with more traditional school methods. Changing the way I behave is another thing entirely. But I'll do my best. I'll keep trying to let go of this instinctual urge to control. And it does work. Today I didn't bug Parker about how he was holding the scissors or about trying to hold the paper himself (as opposed to making me hold it), and he got creative: he balanced the paper so that it would hang over the table's edge and then cut it, unassisted. When I reached out to help him position the paper (not stoic observation, I know), he said, "No, Mommy. I can do it by myself."