HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Voluntary

"What want to...? Of course! Sure!" I put my teeth back in my mouth, sat in my chair, and stared.

Andy asked if he could read the bedtime book tonight. He picked a chapter book. He read the entire first chapter, out loud. Himself. Alone. Voluntarily.

My son wants to read a book.

This may seem an odd thing to be jaw-dropping, when your child is ten years old, unless he is requesting to read War and Peace. Here, reading at home has been a never-ending struggle at pulling teeth, for both of my guys. Joey reads very well, and he will gladly read dictionaries all night long, but getting to voluntarily read anything else at home is Mission: Impossible. Andy loves books, but never likes reading them. It takes too much energy. He had a vision problem that stalled his reading with confidence. He is still shaky for ten, and I suspect there may be other issues. The book he picked is a Star Wars chapter book, geared to elementary readers, with large type.

But holy cow, people, he asked to read it. He read the whole first chapter. By himself.

A month ago, asking him to read a book might result in a sobbing, screaming child in a fetal position on the floor. Now he is asking to read a book!

I am so proud of my little squirrel.

Moving On Up

One of the great things I have found about this homeschooling thing? We can go at our own pace. If that's a slower pace, that's fine. If that's a faster pace, that's fine. It doesn't need to be steady- we can speed through the things Andy knows, slow down and take time with things he doesn't. Not feeling the learning love today? We can scrap the whole thing and try something else. As long as he keeps up with math and reading, as Virginia requires we either test those skills at the end of the year or come up with a portfolio, it's all good. We want to spend a lot of time on Colonial America? Why not? We have a lot of resources here for it. He needs more practice in multiplication, but knows his geometry terms pat? Well, let's allocate the time to what we need.

It's amazing.

When we started, I tried him in a fifth grade math workbook, and we had tears, screams, and gnashing of teeth. We scaled back a bit, then noticed we needed some other support. I put him on a computer site and had him work on that for a while to gauge where he was. The answer? End of third grade. Well, OK, then. I went out, got ourselves a fourth grade program, and started there.

As he has calmed down all-around, his math has also picked up. Multiplication remains a sticking point, as he needs to practice it. But once we plowed through and got him doing it correctly, we picked up steam.

We finished the fourth grade book today. I am totally proud of my little guy.

The plan is to focus on the multiplication and on programs such as Prodigy through the holidays, then start on the fifth grade program in January. I'm not expecting him to finish that in three months, but I think we will be fine. I may even work on some mathemagic with him, and help him understand what these skills really do.

Meanwhile, he is working on the Revolution, and reading Johnny Tremain. Oh, and we started earth science with minerals and the Moh's Scale. All in all, I don't think we are doing too badly.

Jamestown

 Jamestown, you lovely, lovely place. I think Andy cemented more learning in one day than we had been tossing at him for two months.

Though it probably helped that we had been talking about colonial life for two months before we went.

It was going to be the last lovely day for a while, so we picked up Grandma and headed down to stomp about Jamestown and see what we could learn from reconstruction. Andy was totally excited about the trip, and had a blast. He got my old phone to take with him to use as a camera, and initially took plenty of pictures- until he got distracted by the boats. Then he was too busy.

He loved the Indian village. They had plenty of folks out in costume (apparently this is a popular time of year for school groups to come), and most were super nice and patient, even as Andy had to pace. He liked taking a good look at the homes. He loves corn grinders, and spent a good deal of time grinding- good heavy work for the arms and joints.

The shelves and compact nature of the homes also interested him. He looked at the storage pots and scaffolded shelving a long time, running from house to house to see the different ways the homes were set up. I think he was getting ideas for his own room...

He liked all of the animal skins, and took a few photos of a wolf skin in one house.


 He was fascinated by the daily activities presented in the village. Along with the grinding, he discovered cooking, pottery, canoe-hollowing, making fishnets, basketry, sewing, and making leather. The hands-on learning approach at the site really held him. He wanted to dig at the canoe, scrape the hair off the deerskin leather, touch the bone sewing tools. He got into the ring of ancestor posts, and noted how each carving was actually unique. He ran in and out of houses, and picked one that was "his", because he liked the way the house was arranged and cozy. He asked questions. Why weren't the needles sharp? What were they made of? How long did it take to make a pot? Did they have guns? Who did the cooking? What were these things in the baskets to be cooked (he didn't recognize dried pumpkin)?

It was amazing.

In our little museum back home, there is a miniature reconstruction of these houses. He likes it, but was really impressed by the ones at Jamestown- full-scale, and varying sizes as family sizes varied. 

 The one he picked for himself was a smaller one, with lots of animal skins and a very warm-looking bed. He tried it out, and said it was totally comfy. He would run around the village, checking things out, then go back to his "home" to check it out some more.

I was thrilled to see him actually show interest in what was around him. Watching him dart about, checking it out, thinking it through, perhaps he has been putting more into that head than we have been giving him credit for. Moving through the world may just help him process all that information.

Next up was the boat dock. Andy was thrilled to be able to go all over the boats, climbing up and down between the decks and even finding other kids to pretend they were adventuring. 

We got to bring out Treasure Island into the discussion as well- these were, after all, the kinds of boats in the book. The Susan Constant was the biggest of the boats at Jamestown- and smaller than the Hispaniola described by Stevenson. 

The folks on the boats were very willing to talk about them, so again, Andy got to ask questions. He also got to listen to answers. In talking with him after we left the boats, I was impressed how much he had heard and retained, even when I thought he was just running about with his new little friends. 

He was interested in the different decks, and that the Susan Constant was four stories- the hold, the lower deck, the crew cabins, and then the upper decks. He bounded between the layers, checking everything out. 

 Of course, the canons were of interest. The boy has a major collection of Nerf artillery. He discovered that canons are heavy and hard to maneuver.

The cabins again held much interest, as they were compact spaces with comfy beds. 

Very comfy beds. 

Then I had to explain that he would likely have to share that bed with his brother, switching off every four hours (one working, one sleeping). He was't too keen about that. 

 The officer's quarters were more to his liking, where the captain has his own cabin, and the officers were given more space to gather. He was allowed to "steer" the ship by pushing and pulling on the rudder- more lovely heavy work, and he did that for a long time.

He also likely the galley. In Treasure Island, the galley is described as a larger space below deck; on the Susan Constant, it's basically a little room with a berth and a brick fireplace for cooking. Pots and pans are stored in ready reach. Some of the other visitors were shocked that there was a brick structure on a boat, and Andy thought some of their reactions were amusing.

The Godspeed had been at a tall ship show in Baltimore, and we got to see it come in and dock. Andy decided he liked the Godspeed best, even though we weren't allowed on it. There is something magical about watching a boat sail in (even when it is cheating and using engines). 

 We then wandered up to Fort James. Andy has been working on a model of a settlement, but we haven't been that successful. The Minecraft model idea that originally started us on this adventure hasn't gone so well. We are now thinking a 3-D model, working with materials and putting it together in a diorama, might be more effective. So it was important to wander about and look at the homes of the Englishmen, and discuss how the spaces were made and used, the furnishings, the set-up of the fort in general. We found the blacksmith, the gardens, the well, the armory.

One of the cool things Jamestown does is it sits armor here and there, and the kids can wear it in the fort. Andy was delighted to try on a breastplate and a helmet. In fact, he checked out all the sets, and found the helmet and plate he felt suited him best- then spent the entire fort time wearing them.

His helmet included a little slot for a plume. He liked that- he felt it made him a fancy officer, not just a foot soldier.

The blacksmith was grinding up clay to make a furnace. Andy, who loves grinding corn, decided grinding clay was pretty good, too, though a little hot when wearing a helmet. The clay was from a previous furnace, and will be used to line the new one.

We found rich people's beds to be comfy, though in the end, he actually preferred the straw mattress on the floor. He said he liked the beds in the boat the best. 

 We found the meeting house, and Andy thought the pulpit was awesome. He clambered up, and began a speech, encouraging his fellow colonists to join him in a fight against unfairness in taxation from England.

He spoke about taxation. He spoke about the Boston Tea Party. He talked about King George being unfair. He talked about how the "British" thought of the colonists as "different", even when the colonists thought of themselves as British citizens.

Not a bad speech by a ten-year-old.


He wasn't as held by the gun room as I thought he would be. I think he was getting tired by the time we arrived, and many of the weapons he had seen at the Renaissance Faire.

He started instead meandering about the settlement, as if on inspection, looking at the details of things- the different guns in the compound, the plants in the gardens, where the woodpile was, the different wells, the cooking fire, the blacksmith, the chickens.

 We have the museum a pass for the day. We will do that another day. You can't take pictures in there, anyway, so not very blog-friendly. Andy had plenty to think about all the same.

Instead, we wandered over to the original Jamestown site, so he could see it was farther out in the bogs.

Then we swung about and ran over to Williamsburg, to pick up some ginger cookies and give him some "coming attractions."


 I remain disappointed that they no longer make the cookies on-site. One of the wonders of Williamsburg was how many things they made, with master craftsmen, right there in Williamsburg. Now they are not only baked elsewhere, they are individually wrapped. Sure, they stay fresher. But the scent of ginger that makes Williamsburg awesome? Gone.

Gone also are the brass-smiths, the candlemakers, the American artists and their crafts. Williamsburg used to be a mark of American quality. Now, it's all crap made in China. I think economics is one of the things Andy and I will be discussing when we do a full Williamsburg day.

 While we were there, they did start a little show-activity, where some of the costumed folks got up and started acting out a call to join the Revolution at Yorktown.  I asked a very tired child if he was ready to go- but no, he wanted to stay and listen. So of course, I let him.

It helped that apparently Williamsburg is all but abandoned on Wednesdays after 4. Seriously. We saw all of a dozen tourist people, and most of those turned out to be there for the little show, which was part of a paid thing. The kids lined up to "join up."

Once the fancy speeches were done, however, so was Andy. We headed for home.

Never fear. We will be back. 

Working out the kinks

Our main challenge with Andy is working through the trauma left from school. Anything that looks like a test results in a huge panic attack and screaming shutdown. If he gets anything wrong, he freaks out. Even the fear of being wrong can trigger total melt. The pressure to be right, all the time, and test test test has totally crushed him.

We need to understand the risk it is to learn out loud, to learn on paper, to leave the proof that we did not know this, and open ourselves to the scorn of any witness. This can be harder with people you want to impress, to be perfect for, to have be proud of you and pleased with you, and think you smart. The shutdown we see is extreme, and we need to find answers.

For math practice, we have found Prodigy. Although we will continue to work through our workbook so I can instruct him, this game is fabulous for practice and clean-up. They have a parent side to see what he has done, where he is doing well and where he is struggling, etc. It works kind of like Pokemon, where you cast spells in little challenge battles, and you have to get the math right for the spells to work. Then you build up money you can spend on cool stuff for your character. Andy is totally hooked.

This week, we are going to experiment with some workbooks to go with our hands-on activities for history and science, wish more short reading passages for him. Getting my kids to read is like getting a stick from a beaver. A mean beaver. With a headache. And he really wants that stick. Keeping it short for now increases the chances of him 1. reading it and 2. not shutting down even looking at it. Joey could read War and Peace if you gave it to him one sentence per page. Andy is a little better. You can give him a paragraph- as long as you don't ask him any questions about it.

Right.

So bright workbooks with short reading passages, covering grade-level material. Let's see if that works for supporting the program. I'll keep you posted.

Taking the Time

Monday is Math Day. Andy has announced he now hates Mondays. We got to my school office, and do our best to get some learning done the old-fashioned way. Math is really the only subject I have tried to do traditionally, because Virginia does expect me to test him at the end of the year, and have him show progress.

Our problem is that he seems to be struggling with math that is already below grade level. I am working on recording the issues, so that if I actually get him near grade level by the end of the grade year, it will be "progress."

Andy's processing issues are pervasive, and they affect his ability to understand many things in what might be seen as a typical way. This makes typical academic tasks harder to do in typical ways. With the added bonus of trauma from school, shutdown is the usual response to Math Monday.

Once again, I plan to cheat.

Andy loves Pokemon. So today, mid-shutdown, I noted how he needs to be able to do basic math to play the game. I started changing the problems to terms of either Pokemon or money. If Pikachu had 150 health, and now he has 81 health, how strong was Tepig's flame charge?

Yeah. I totally cheated.

He seems to be having trouble understanding the numbers. I'm trying to figure out exactly what the issue is, but its like he shuts down and they all go to mush. When we first arrived at my office, and I put up Khan Academy, he did ok... then shut down. I usually wait it out, and let him get himself together, but it wasn't happening. Time was not on our side this round.

Then came the miracle of homeschooling. We turned around, and walked away.

Instead of pushing it, I packed him up and went on to the rest of our day's errands. We got fabric for Halloween costumes (how much fabric did I buy? Hey, this is 40% off... I wonder how much it will be?), helped Grandma clean and take out trash, and took our walk to the corner store (oh, this drink is $1.09, and the candy you want is $1.29, do I have enough money here? How much should I get back in change from this $5?). Then we came back to math, but not on the computer- back to our workbook, where we looked at fractions and decimals, and then started on measuring. I think I'm going to be able to handle measuring. I have plenty of tape measures, I have lots of recipes, we are going to totally rock this.

We just need to take a little time to let him process it.

Caramel Apples

 Today's big project was making caramel apples. Andy has been keen on cooking, and this was something he was dying to make. He discovered caramel apples when we were at the beach, and wanted to make his own.

He had some surprises in store for him, however. He woke up excited to make his apples, but first we had to clean the kitchen. To be honest, my kitchen is pretty filthy, so that took some doing. Then he took a break.

Step two: actually making apples.

"OK, Mom, what do we do?" he asked, slightly bored in tone, because he's, you know, ten.

"I have no idea," I replied. He stared at me, incredulous.
"You have to look it up," I explained. "Hop online and find some instructions."

After he processed this, he managed to get out his iPad and ask how to spell "melting" and "caramel" and found some instructions. Then he read them all the way through, since I insisted we know what we were doing before we started.

Then we got to work.

First, we had to get the sticks into the apples. We found some sticks, cut them in half, and got ready for the Great Apple Stabbing.

He decided to remove the stems himself, with scissors, until I twisted one off in about two seconds.  Then he stabbed those apples.

We had to unwrap a whole bag of caramels for this project. I thought about having him make the caramel- it isn't hard- but in the end, I wanted to focus on the melting, and honestly, one thing at a time. We had some other stuff to do today, and I had a bag of caramels.

I helped with this part, because there were so many.

Next, he melted the caramel. We talked about why the heat wasn't high, and why he had to continuously stir the caramels while they melted- a tough job at first.

We talked about why we added two tablespoons of water to the caramels to melt them.

We discussed why we needed to use parchment paper to put the dipped apples down to harden.

He is a very smart squirrel.

We also talked about why we wash and dry the apples- getting off the dirt from the field and the store (know how many people touch apples in a store? You may not really want to), and then making sure the apple is dry so the caramel will stick. He thought that was interesting.

I was very proud of him, as he did all the melting himself. I help him with the dipping, as it kind of took two people to do- holding the pot, dipping the apple, and spooning caramel requires three hands. He did a great job.

A hour in the fridge later, he had snacks- and i think caramel apples may now be his favorite.

At least, when he makes them himself.

One Little Bean At A Time

When kids are traumatized by school, learning becomes one of those words that makes them shut down. You know your kids has been traumatized when you try to start a lesson and he curls up into a fetal position for an hour before finally relaxing enough to even give it try.

And then rocks it, because Squirrel is Smart.

The fear of failure, of being wrong, of being berated, bullied, and teased that goes into this regular ritual that starts too many of our days is something that makes me just want to cry. I feel like it's my fault for not saving him sooner, for missing the signs, for not being brave enough or strong enough to protect him, fight for him, help him. Education is one of the few things provided directly to my family from the taxes we pay, and I have had to refuse service. I had no idea how bad it was, but this kind of evidence is startling, angering, and devastating.

When I get him to uncurl, he's just fine, although the odd holes in his learning have been a bit of a surprise. I've had to go back and pick up material he should have had- according to the school's own curriculum literature- in first or second grade. He has missing splinters of math, chunks out of basic history, odd lapses in science. As we work through the deschooling, I am also trying to shore up some of these gaps, without being blatant. Math, however, we have to work on directly. It is one of the subjects he will be tested on at the end of the year, so it is important we have that caught up. I signed him up for Khan Academy. We've had to start with Early Math.

In deschooling, we have been shooting a little fast and loose with the science and history side of things. We had a plan, but for now, the important thing is to catch his interest and get him to understand what it means to learn. We need him to calm down and understand we are here to help him, not beat on him. We love him and support him, we are not here to embarrass him or make him feel stupid. We want him to see what we see: how intelligent and capable he is. So when he showed some interest in early American settlements, we ran with it. When he showed interest in gardening, I started in on plants.

It was a little on the rough side. Once we get through the shutdown, we have looked at some websites, and we made some colored-paper picture models of plant parts, starting with cells and seeds. I'm hoping to do seedlings, simple dicots, and trees tomorrow, and finally leaves (before all the fall leaves are gone!), to make a book. He put them together, glued on the labels, and I laminated the results. He wasn't impressed, but we got the first two together.

At the farmer's market, I picked up some lima beans, and decided to give a try at having him look at them. After all, our seed chart was a bean. So I gave him some to look at, and told him to open them up and take a look.

Can I cut them open? Can I break them in half? 

Sure, do what you want, I shrugged, while my head exploded- was he... actually... interested? He took a knife, and carefully cut one in half. He pulled another apart. He squished one, to see what would happen.

I peeled the seedcoat from one, saying, "look, here's the seedcoat, let me take it off and show you..." and he came over to me, and watched. I opened the halves, and there, perfect as I could wish, was the little plant embryo, with a perfect little plumule, hypocotyl, radicle...

"Here, let's look at this under the magnifier, with the chart you made..." I pulled out the chart, laminated and all, and the magnifier stand I got with this very moment in mind- a big one, on three legs. I drank up the flow of "look at this, mom" and "oh cool". And then he set it aside, his attention span done, to look at later "when it dries", to see how it might be different. I fixed him a sandwich for lunch, as if nothing unusual or wonderful had just happened.

As he reached the stairs to go nest in his room with his lunch, he stopped.

"Hey!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Wait a minute! I just learned something! You cheated!"

Yes, I sure did, Little Squirrel. I sure did. 

In the beginning, there was a squirrel.

It was about this time last year that I knew, this wasn't going to work. I was shocked. I was confused. I was dismayed. I was very, very, very angry.

The "not working" was public school. I am a great believer in public school. The structured environment provides a focused framework for education, networking, and community. My kids need a lot of structure. I have one who is autistic. The other... well, he isn't autistic, but he has a lot of issues with processing, self-regulation, and executive functioning, in a web of issues often stashed under the umbrella term "ADHD." Folks, it's real. ADHD is also as varied, scattered, and spectrumed as autism- every child is different. If you know one child with autism, you know one child with autism. If you know one child with ADHD, you know one child with ADHD. Beware of generalizations.

School was not working out for either of my kids, and I had pinned the blame on me. That seems to shock some people. The assumption I have discovered is that people who homeschool usually pin the blame on anyone else. I discovered that blame isn't really what it is about at all. School not working for my kids is just a fact. Why it wasn't working is complicated. I fished around and floundered about, trying to find something I could be doing to make it work. I called meetings. I sent in materials. I invaded classrooms. I stopped invading classrooms trying to give my kids their own space. I tried to take the materials being sent to me and make them work for us, even re-formatting homework sheets myself to make them manageable, spending hours on homework. I stopped doing that and asked for homework to be limited. I gave up doing the homework at all, and just stuck to doing things actually useful for my kids, things they were struggling with. I did a mix of all of the above. I did a lot of other things, stopped doing things, tried to doing things and not doing things, you can see I still feel the judgment, the sense of failure. Public school, that beacon of education and progress, was not working for my family. I felt trapped. Suffocated. Desperate. I couldn't afford private school. I not only work full time, I work several jobs, paying for therapies and home expenses (and financial mistakes of younger days).

Yet the answer, as the year spiraled on, started becoming clearer and clearer. This was Not Working. My kids were not learning; they were stuck in anger, frustration, and as we later discovered, insidious bullying from every angle. They were learning to become bullies themselves, to defend themselves. I felt like putting them on the bus- and for my younger son, dropping him off at the door- was abandoning them to weird perversion of Lord of the Flies. They weren't safe. The adults with them seemed oddly out of touch, deliberately hard for them to access, and blind to what was going on among the students. People with decades of experience working with kids were trying to tell me no bullying was going on in their schools and classrooms. I was left not knowing how much of what I was seeing was from my kid's personalities, and how much was from external forces, and no idea how to help them.




I ended up with two very different answers, just as I have two very different young men who are my sons. I am happy to say, the school finally realized they were not educating my autistic son, and we have him in a wonderful school where is excelling and recovering beautifully. No, its not all sunshine and roses, but I don't think any child's growing up and development is all sunshine and roses. We are going in the right direction, and the stress that was basically driving Joey insane is melting away like snow in spring. We'll take it.




For Andy, we have gone in a different direction. I decided to try teaching him myself over the summer, in experimental "camps." I met with challenges, but nothing unexpected. We are looking at dysgraphia, eye focus issues, possible dyslexia, and of course, ADHD- problems of being able to focus and needing huge amounts of movement to focus and think. What has been unexpected is the reports from other parents of Andy's classmates, and the reports are far more extreme and disturbing than we suspected. My son weathered the catastrophe of his classroom far better than I had appreciated before. I made the decision. We were going to homeschool.

I'm not the kind of person who takes such a decision lightly. I do for Andy as I do for Joey- spending hours researching topics, methods, theories, materials, and resources. I try something out, see if it works, change it if it doesn't. We are in what I would describe as "partial deschooling"- keeping up with subjects we know he needs to underpin his learning (math, being able to read, occupational therapy, basic writing), and being more fluid in topics of science and social studies. Though the progress has been painfully (from my point of view) slow, I can see it. The complete shutdown when "school" or "learning" was involved, which we have been seeing, is letting up, and I am learning more about he learns and how to present and guide access to topics and material. We have had some stumbling and some breakthroughs. My mom has stepped in to help, and her support of our adventure is invaluable- as well as her talent for helping Andy get comfortable with learning and relaxing so he can learn. Finding how to incorporate movement and letting him learn his own way are more challenging than we expected, but we are getting there, together.



So now it's time to share it. We are starting as unexpected homeschoolers, with a ten-year-old ADHD child, and we know we aren't out here alone- yet we know how panicked and alone you can feel when you realize this is the best option for your family. Yes, people are going to tell you that you are nuts.

Just stay focused on your squirrel, and there shall be learning. That's what is important.