May 14, 2008

Home schooling my son was and is for the most part very easy. He is interested in all kinds of aspects of life. One of his first words was "Clock". In fact he used to walk up to strangers as a one year old and point at their watches, screaming, "Clock, clock!" So as you can guess, learning numbers was a non-issue for him. When he was just four years old, he woke up one day saying, "I am going to count to 2,000 today." He proceeded to follow me around the house - into the laundry room, into the kitchen, outside to the garden - counting. He counted all the way up to 1,725, looked at me and said, "I'm tired. I think I'm gonna stop now. I'll do the rest tomorrow." Sure enough, the next day, he went up to 2,000 and then began to count backwards to 0.

My son loves numbers - adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying. He also loves to read. When he was 4 he began to ask about letters and words and sounds and how they all came together - and through just reading to him and answering his questions, my son was reading well at 5 years old. So with that said, I assumed that all my kids would be the same way. I attributed it to home schooling. How wrong was I.

When my daughter, who is now 7, came along, she loved books and loved being read to, but showed no interest in learning how to read. She also showed no interest in numbers whatsoever. She didn't really understand them and just didn't really care to learn. She wanted to spend her whole day drawing, painting, playing with her stuffed animals and pretending to be an animal herself. I began to panic. There were those voices inside of me that said, "You have to prove that home schooling works. You have to teach her how to read. You have to teach her how to add." Those friends around me whose kids were adding and learning how to read in "real school" were constantly asking how I am teaching my daughter how to do the same. I grew up in a high pressure home to succeed and inside of me and all around me, I felt the pressure. And I admit it, I squelched under it - for a while. I pulled out the "Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Lessons" book. I found a phonics program, and a math workbook. I began to do some "traditional" school techniques. I stopped trusting myself and my daughter and I started listening to those inner voices that said, "What she's doing is not good enough." It was then that I stopped myself and realized where those voices were coming from.

Those were the same voices that I heard as a child every time a teacher tried to "teach" me and make me sit in a chair all day and listen, and learn, and keep my mouth shut. All I wanted to do was draw and run and play and spin and create and sing and dance, but that wasn't good enough. Eventually somewhere down the line what I learned and what stuck most in my soul from school is that the folks there must know better than me.