I know it's only been a short time

There has been much thinking going on in my little brain lately about unschooling. Not just thinking... but thinking and tons of reading. Reflecting it all back through what I know about myself, my children, and our lives together. The two little ones are napping and the others have run outside now that the weather has cleared up a bit, so I may have a moment to "think out loud" here on the page.

FWIW, I have "unschooled" for many more months than just this past week since my announcement.

It was more like unschooling by default, however, like Leonie so wonderfully puts it. I have had three sick pregnancies since starting homeschooling, and many months intertwined with post-partum anxiety issues, where I never knew if the day would be a good one or a bad one. So I was not much of the "leader" as far as school work went. I was lucky that we had learning games, workbooks, internet access, etc, available, and they seemed to be learning OK without me. Thanks be to God.

I loved what I have been reading about positive parenting and unschooling from Lissa's blog. I read it and I think, "I want that for my kids." But really, after much thought, what I think I want are HER KIDS because this seems to work with them, LOL! And maybe if I could also turn into her, at least for a few weeks to see how I'm supposed to do this, that would be great too. Of course, I'm joking about that, but what I'm trying to get at is that it seems I'm not keeping my eyes on my own work enough. Just because those things work great for a similar family, doesn't mean that's what I should do - in the same way that I know full blown Seton enrollment isn't for us even though it works very well for friends of our family.

That's not to say I don't want to be a more patient, involved, and positive parent! I sure do! Although I've made great strides in the last 5 years or so, there is still far to go.

I need to keep Heaven as my main goal, for myself and my children. That means we need to grow in the virtues that we lack. Among other things, we especially lack discipline around here, which leads to all sorts of issues. The children also lack the desire to achieve goals (not that this is a sin or anything...but it plays into the trouble we are having). Without wanting to set and/or achieve goals, we can't seem to find the way for unschooling to increase our internal self-control and discipline. This leads to more chaos than I can handle.

I used to think I had an anger problem. Then I realized what is really the problem is a very low tolerance for frustration combined with anxiety issues. Having 5 children doing 5 different "delight directed" activities is enough to have me barking at them and/or trying to hide for the rest of the day. And that is no good for anyone. Yes, maybe that will change in time and we can revisit this, but all my *effort* towards changing it has done not one wit of good, LOL, so I need to work with the ME that I have, not try something like real unschooling (as opposed to "by default") hoping it will somehow change me so that I'm good at dealing with it.

It's funny, the more I stepped back and looked at what Lissa (and others) are really saying in her initial post on how to be a patient parent/unschooler, the more I realized I'm already doing so many of those things -- *and the results are not the same* for me as for them.

Maybe because if you give one of my children an inch she takes a mile and then hits the rest of the family with it until we are all crying uncle. This child has been even more unsettled than usual. Maybe it's the other one who keeps asking for her detailed time charts and workbooks back - who can't stand this nice mommy who wants to collaborate with her, she just wants to be told what to do so she can do it! (This is not just a backlash from a "recent change" to unschooling - remember we have been doing this for much of the last 5 years). Maybe it's guilt over the HUGE increase in screen time my littles are getting because the older ones all chose computer shows/games to learn with and they want to watch more than do anything else.

I don't know what it is. All I know is I have much LESS peace about it than I did a week ago, and that doesn't seem like a good thing. And now the baby is up, so I'm done thinking out loud about it for now! :)

I'm going to go nurse and figure out a way to combine the best of unschooling with the best of scheduled workbook education, LOL. And I'll be smiling and patient while doing so, so there. :-P



(lol, I'm being very good at smiling and patient because my older children are all still asleep or outside!) :)