It's Friday! The end of another week. I am trying to learn so much from H. This week over dinner one night we had a great talk about math, about how much a ton is and the weight limits on bridges and what they mean. It was wonderful to listen to his thoughts and how much he has thought about these things. Yesterday he called his grandma and pretty much read her the book we have about really big numbers, he just wanted to share them with her. I am really trying to listen to him and his needs and wants before my controlling instincts take over. I try not to control his food too much, but it's true I won't let him eat ice cream for breakfast, or cupcakes, but when I can I let him explore his limits. He has always been a good eater and if given a choice between candy and fruit he always chooses the fruit. I am a candy freak so we have always had candy. Soda, I am not real big on soda, so we don't typically have it around the house. When we go out I let him choose what kind he wants to get. I know I could be less controlling so that he could learn more, but I do tell him why I want to limit certain foods. I am just learning so much now that I have allowed myself to open up to him. It is amazing, when I slip into that teacher mode that we did for the last 2 years, he just disappears. He will do what I ask him to do, but we stop being authentic with each other and the trust disappears. The hardest part for me is that I watch a 16 month old little boy who takes up my time. But who knows maybe even if I didn't watch him, maybe I still wouldn't have the time that I feel I need to spend the time exploring and learning with H. I have so enjoyed the times so far that we have had learning and playing together. If only he just wanted to write down his ideas. I am still asking him to write a journal every evening. I am trying to model writing in a journal for him, and how much I enjoy it, but it is so hard to trust that he will want to do it too. I need to figure out what he would want to say if really given the chance to write something and how he would want to do it, what medium..... Ah well, it's been a really good year so far. I am trying to keep my worrying down to a minimum, because he really is learning, it's just not like in a school.

Here is a picture of H's cupcake creations. He had a cupcake 101 class where he got to make these wonderful goodies. It was last month, but hey at least I am finally getting around to posting a pic. He has another cupcake class in November and the theme is faux food, so those should be a lot of fun!

A/C is awesome. We just barely survived the week-end without air conditioning. Last night I barely slept because I was just too hot. At night it was only getting down to 80 degrees in the house, and that was in the downstairs. But it's all fixed now. I am spoiled by A/C, I remember living without it and going to school with out it, but I just can't do it now.

On a different note. Today H had a nature club class through our learning coop. They made backpacks out of old jeans and went for a hike. They found most of a deer skeleton. H brought home a few bones and we boiled them. whew! stinky, smelled like we were making a really gamey deer stew. Hopefully they will dry out and be great bones to hold onto. I will have to post a pic of them.

today I wasn't believed........ I told another adult something today and I don't feel like they believed what I said. It's happened before, but I have forgotten how much it hurts my feelings and how frustrating it is. It made me feel so small and stupid. I am a pretty smart person, I don't know everything but I am reliable and trustworthy so when someone doesn't believe what I say it really bugs me. I wonder if it's the same way H feels when he tells me something and I am not sure if I believe him or not. I hope I don't do it often to him, so from now on I will be more aware of if I am doing it.

Today we went on a field trip with some other homeschoolers to Cici's pizza. It was fun. All the kids got to make their own pizza, and not a little one but a big pizza and pick what toppings they wanted to put on them. They got to see behind the scenes in the kitchen and the pizza ovens. It was pretty cool. I got a couple of pics of Hunter making pizza. Here's one:

Yesterday I posted about my educational experience so today it's about my sons journey so far.

I pulled my son out of the 1st grade, I pulled him out in October of 1st grade. I saw him going down the path of hating learning, of behavior modification, of completely tuning out just to make it through the school day. It was both scary and eye-opening. I was never able to stay home with him, so from about 10 weeks on he was always in home care or daycare and then school. He loved it until 1st grade. Kindergarten was still fun, even though they had done away with play centers, there was still fun, even if mundane things to do during the day, there was play. Learning to walk in a line and not touch your neighbors was there too and he worked on that but he loved the playing and the being told stories and such. And then 1st grade came........ with silly workbooks, and pages to do everyday. Where you had to sit still and you couldn't talk to anyone even though you were sitting not 2 feet away from at least 3 other children your age. Even when you finished your work you couldn't talk. There was behavior modification to try to keep the classroom in check, my son learned first hand how this works. He lost recess many times, his only chance to get out his need for physicalness with other children he lost because it was so hard to contain it in the classroom. He learned the behavior mod game. It got to the point where he hated school, thought his teacher hated him, didn't want to go to school anymore..... except.... to get a green day behavior-wise so that if he got 3 in a row I would do something special with him or take him to the book store to buy a book or a toy. I admit I played along, did my part of rewarding him for good behavior, all the while worrying what to do. I talked to his teacher and she assured me that she very much enjoyed having him in her classroom. That he was a good child, just was a talker, and often times finished his work early and then would talk and help the other children at his table. Well the teacher didn't want him to help the other children because he might not be showing them the correct way to complete the worksheets, or he might just do their work for them so they could be done with it. So he was always getting in trouble. She told me in her own words that he "was bored" but then offered no remedy to the problem. I was glad that she recognized the problem but I was watching my son turn into little boy who was being hurt and losing his confidence and his love of learning and of being proud of his work. After a few more talks with the teacher and the guidance counselor I just made the move and pulled him out of school.

So then I was schooling him at home. I bought the different books and workbooks and made him do workbooks. I forced him and pushed him. That first year was tough on both of us. But he wanted to be at home. I was so worried about getting him the information he needed and getting the workbook pages finished. It was so stressful!!! for both of us. Then came second grade, I made some changes but still stuck with the workbooks and such, that were so boring and meaningless. Second grade I think was a little bit better, but I still pushed and prodded and got stressed and anxious and made my son that way too. With all my work, I know that he didn't learn all the things I forced him to read and do. He just went through the motions to satisfy me. At the very end of second grade I was ready to quit. I wasn't happy, my son wasn't happy. I was in fact miserable, I realized that I was not enjoying the time I spent with my son. I felt awful. I realized that I could not do this anymore. I wanted to have a meaningful relationship with my son. And since he is my only child and we are together all the time I want us to like each other and have fun. He is growing up so fast, I will miss it if I don't start to enjoy it. I missed so much when he was a baby and toddler back when I had to work to support us.

I did a lot of searching, soul searching and looking for books. I had bought Llewellyn's Teenager Liberation book a while ago, but hadn't yet read it because I figured I had some time since ds is only 8. I am so glad I read it, it made so much sense. It helped me to think about my experiences in school and how awful most of them were. How much information was thrown at me and how little I actually internalized. How little has stayed with me. Learning all that stupid sentence diagramming and grammar rules didn't really teach me how to write, practice did, enjoying writing did, writing because I wanted to write did.

So then I read John Holt's book... I agreed with what he was saying, it made such good sense to me. When I really sat back and just observed I realized that my son is learning all the time. I got really excited, but also really scared. This was totally foreign to me, it seemed like it was going to be a lot of work on my part because I knew my son was going to question it and wait for the old teacher/mom to come back in. I also came to realize that we didn't trust each other. I didn't trust him and he didn't trust me. We both had done or said things that were mean and hurtful and had both gone back on things we said we were going to do. I had a long heart to heart with my son, and let him know that I wanted things to change. That I wanted to be honest with him and I wanted for us to trust each other and just be open and honest, and to hold each other to that with out blaming or guilt. It took a serious change in me. I had to let go of the control that I had held on to so tightly. Although looking at it now I really had no control at all. I had to let go and trust. I had to be honest with myself and with him. It came easier to him that it did to me, but I think it's more natural for him. When we are in sync and being honest and open with each other we have great times. I enjoy playing games with him and answering his many questions, and I know he enjoys having a mom who is involved in what interests him.

We started this school year off great, but after about a week and a half, I started getting panicky and worried that we weren't doing enough. I began trying to control what my son was doing, at first just little things, little exercises I introduced into our day. I thought hey they aren't that much, it's okay, they don't take too much time. But they made me become a teacher, not an interested student, and they made my son become a controlled child again. And sure enough we stopped trusting each other and everything that had been good between us was all ruined. I started to feel awful again and didn't want to be around him and he had no desire to do anything with me. I caught myself and we talked about what had happened and he told me that the little exercises I was making him do, he hated!

It's such a struggle for me to let go, but yet it is so much better when I let go. We get along so much better and support each other and are more willing to hear the other one out.

I remember one day during the first or second week after we began being open and honest with each other. I was having a stressful day, I felt like I was being pulled in too many different directions. I told my ds what I was going through because I was being honest and open and he could of course feel my stress. At one point he just grabbed me and hugged me and said "Mom, it's okay" It was exactly what I needed, I needed someone else to acknowledge my experience and be in that moment with me. And you know what after that I didn't feel nearly as stressed, it was wonderful!

I had many moments like that with ds during those first two weeks. Then like I said I relapsed into the old controlling, I have to teach him things mode, and ruined it. We are still working to get back to where we were.

I have to say that I am still struggling with letting go. I am still worried that he won't get his multiplication facts down like all the other third graders are this year, and I am worried that he won't write enough. I have narrowed it down to those 2 fears, and have told them to him. So together we have problem solved ways to help me deal with my fears! Children are truly so smart and so eager to learn new ways of doing things.

So anyway, in this blog I hope to journal all the things I learn and that we do on this adventure we are doing together!

I have been meaning to start this blog for some time now.... Over the summer I read a book by John Holt called Freedom and Beyond, as well as Grace Llewellyn's Teenage Liberation Book. I loved both of them. They both spoke to me. School was very oppressive for me.

I was a sensitive, shy, somewhat consciencious child and very self-conscious teen-ager. I was always in with the in crowd, but felt an enormous amount of peer pressure. I hated school, I know so many people who love their high school days. I hated them, I couldn't wait to be done with school. I finally made the decision to go to college and hated it as well. I almost dropped out of high school at the end of my freshman year, but my mom and the asst. principal(disciplinarian) talked me out of it. I got into a lot of trouble that year, all the while telling my mom that I didn't want to go to school anymore. At one point she actually took me seriously and asked me how I would make a living not going to high school. I told her that I could go to nursing school, I just needed a GED. So we went to an open house the nursing school had and I think my mom had talked to the counselor ahead of time so the tour that I went on made it look like grueling work. I never fully made the decision to go to nursing school because my mom made it seem like I would be throwing my life away by quitting school and becoming a nurse. She thought that college would give me options, that was her plea. So I decided to stick it out in high school, but I could not go back to the same high school for sophomore year, I needed a break. So I went to an all girls catholic school under the agreement that when I was having a bad day I could stay home or leave school if I needed to. My mom stuck to her side of the bargain, I didn't have too many bad days but if I needed to leave school she would call the office and tell them to let me go. That year was much more peaceful at school, not too many people knew me, so I had to keep up appearances, it was like starting over without anyone knowing my past. They just all figured I was a decent person and showed me respect as long as I showed them respect. It was a college prep school, so I had lots of free time during the day, that helped too. I had time to relax and reflect, away from the bad influences at my old school. Yet as soon as school was out I would go back to the old influences, but at least I wasn't dealing with them all day long. I had some space. I straightened out that year. Did my mum proud.

So then the following year, my Junior year, I was ready to go back to my old school. Most of the bad influences were gone and I immediately seeked out my old, old elementary school friends. They welcomed me, it was good. Not everybody trusted me or welcomed me back, but my old friends did. I had gotten into a lot of trouble freshmen year and hurt some people and they never really wanted me to come back. High school was just hard. I didn't really find myself, I lived off of everyone else, through them. Peer pressure was really hard for me to deal with. I didn't really get involved in anything extra-curricular. That bad freshmen year sort of made me feel less of a person. I forgave the things I did, but was so certain others hadn't that I didn't really get involved. I just wanted out. I wanted to be a grown-up, to be responsible. But I never really figured out my interests or what the heck I enjoyed doing. Grace's book spoke magnitudes to me! I was so self-conscious and so worried about how other people would see me, that I never really tried anything out. I had no self-confidence. If I could have quit high school and been left to my own devices, maybe I could have at least figured out some things that I enjoy and that I am good at. So I had my life back together it seemed. I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and was so scared to grow up, and yet wanted to grow up so darn badly. I took chemistry my Jr. year upon returning to my old high school and loved it. Totally understood it and was applying it in lab! It was so awesome, a light was switched on. My sr. year I took AP Chem, I didn't sit for the exam, but the class was awesome, it was sort of small and everything we did in the classroom we would then take into the lab and do experiments to see the concept in action. It was amazing. I totally got it! So I thought, okay I will study Chemistry in college.

When I got to college I found out that a Chemistry major was required to take up to Calculus 3, but I thought it's okay I will give it a try, maybe it won't be so bad. My first semester of Gen Chem was awful, nothing matched up, what we did in lab had nothing to do with our lecture class. It was awful, all the things that I understood the prior year in AP Chem no longer made sense. It was an awful eye opening experience. I suffered through it. I suffered through Organic chem, and calculus and then gave up and became a biology major.

Looking back over my many years of school there could have been so many opportunities for me that I had no idea about because of compulsory schooling and because I was shy and not sure of myself. I got a complex about math from going to school. I also got a complex about my reading from going to school. I didn't feel like I was good at either, to this day sometimes I freeze up doing math because of my experiences. I did not start reading for pleasure until I was almost 30 years old. I now love to read, can't imagine my life without reading. But that was not the case as a child and teenager and college student. I hated reading, I always felt like I was such a slow reader and would forget what I read because of it. I was pushed by all those basal (or whatever they were called) readers, with the comprehension questions. Stories about people I didn't know, and didn't care about, that were so uninteresting. Uggh, I hated having to do that in second grade.

There's my educational background. Tomorrow I will write about my sons education.

So that being my background..... I pulled my son out of the 1st grade, I pulled him out in October of 1st grade. I saw him going down the path of hating learning, of behavior modification of completely tuning out just to make it through the school day. It was both scary and eye-opening. I was never able to stay home with him, so from about 10 weeks on he was always in home care or daycare and then school. He loved it until 1st grade. Kindergarten was still fun, even though they had done away with centers, there was still fun, even if mundane things to do during the day, there was play. Learning to walk in a line and not touch your neighbors was there too and he worked on that but he loved the playing and the being told stories and such. And then 1st grade came........