Thursday, January 21, 2010

Criticism


I've read half a dozen How To Homeschool books now and all of them have a section devoted to how to deal with criticism.

Interesting, since I've never had a single person criticize my decision. I've had a few people ask pointed questions. I've had people say that they could never do it for a variety of reasons. I've had people politely change the subject with a frown in their eyes. I've had people say that since I was a teacher, I would do it right, unlike X person who homeschools and just lets their kids play all day. But I haven't had a single person say that I shouldn't do it or any variation thereof.

My mother substituted for me this last week since I was down with a bum hip and couldn't walk. She made a lovely plant book with Mi'ita that organizes leaves into palmated, smooth edged, lobed, etc. with a section on seeds. She taught fractions instead of doing our Math U See program. She gave up early on Latin because she doesn't know any, but gamely did the Vietnamese DVD with Mi'ita. She was a godsend. I literally couldn't do a single thing for myself that week and would have died without her. Thank God for mothers. Especially mine.

At the end of our week, we sat down and she asked me if I wanted some frank feedback about homeschooling. My mother was a teacher for 100 years, has won many awards for her teaching including Washington State Science Teacher of the Year, and has raised two children herself. I was very interested in getting some feedback from her.

She wasn't worried about socialization. She could see how much Mi'ita saw her friends with playdates and ballet. She said that mostly at school you are supposed to sit and do your own work and not talk to your friends.

She was a little concerned with how much grammar Mi'ita is learning in her Latin program. She doesn't know the difference between the accusative and the dative noun cases and couldn't see why Mi'ita needed to know these things. I assured her that we are focusing on the vocabulary and not memorizing the grammar. We do read it and try to understand it, but we do not memorize the endings for every noun case, to be sure.

She thought the academics were good, overall. She saw that when you have one kid, you can tailor their education. You choose your own priorities. You decide how long they need to work on a subject and how often they need to review it. You can quickly give feedback and help.

Her one concern was two-sided. She was worried about Mi'ita thinking that she was the center of the universe and that I was devoting myself to her and not doing anything for myself.

What can I say to that? Parenting is very different now than when my mother was a little girl. Then, kids desires were irrelevant. What a kid wanted to do on the weekend was not any concern for the parents. Parents did what they did and the kids would help until not needed and then would "go play."

Even the Obamas now devote the weekend to their children. Michele said that she was a mother first and was not going to miss a single ballet recital.

The education and care of their children is the priority of most of the parents that I know. It's a different world. Yes, Mi'ita thinks that she is important and that her desires should be taken into account. If we override her, she argues her case. My mother wouldn't have done that as a child. I wouldn't have either, I don't think, but it's a different world now.

But I'm listening to my mother, too. It's true that I don't do much "for me." I take a Yoga class a couple times a week. I am thinking about re-training in another field since all my education is in Education and I don't want to be a teacher anymore. But I haven't decided what to retrain in yet, nor is there a college in our little burg that could retrain me.

In the meantime, my daughter needs me, and that's okay with me. For now.

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