On Trust

Lately I’ve been struggling to remember just why we’ve chosen to learn the way we have. More often than I’d like to admit, I’ve been having difficulty articulating for myself and for others why we’ve chosen this path. I feel stumped and fall silent when faced with questions from friends and opposition from some of our extended family. I’ve been at a loss for words and have, in turn, been beginning to doubt myself.

Part of this is simply because of speaking with friends whose children have recently begun regular kindergarten. Hearing about how wonderful it is both for the kids and for my fellow tired mamas had left me wondering about my family’s choice. I was starting to lose sight of what I value.

Yesterday I took my son to the once a week in class portion of our distance learning school. It is not mandatory, but I had thought it would offer my son the opportunity to connect with the same group of homeschooled children each week. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I had decided it would be ‘good for him’.

The first day we had gone, he was bored stiff. I had promised I’d stay the whole time and when he kept saying, rather too loudly I might add, ‘this is boring,’ I could hardly muster enough sincerity to disagree.

It was boring.

In fact it was downright tedious. In the only 3 hours we spent there my son was asked to stand in line repeatedly, to wait repeatedly, to talk and ask questions only at certain times, to draw what the teacher asked them to draw when she asked them to draw it, to sit still and listen to a story she had picked when she wanted them to sit still and listen to that story, to eat when it was apparently time for snack and time for lunch, to line up to go to the bathroom when it was bathroom time, to line up to go outside when it was time to play outside and then to get back in line and go back inside when it was time to go back inside.

There is nothing at all that particularly distinguishes this classroom or this teacher from any other. Like most teachers I imagine, she truly cares about the kids and about her work. Like most teachers no doubt she aims to inspire the kids and to impart a love of learning. But just writing the above description of our time there I realize even more emphatically not only how different this looks from our regular life; but also how profoundly these regulatory directives typical of classroom management so quickly dampen the fires of true creativity and inspiration.

I’m not saying that my son doesn’t have to do things at certain times sometimes. If we have to make it to an activity, a class or to any other engagement then of course there is a time we must leave so as not to be late. This is a matter of respect, a matter of caring for the time of others. But in a classroom environment, however lenient, it is always necessarily more often a matter of child management.

There really is no escaping this fact. And so when yesterday I attempted to take my son to the class for a second time and he refused to step inside I gave in. Or better yet, I listened to what he was trying to tell me. Though he couldn’t articulate his reasons for not wanting to go beyond repeating that he just didn’t want to go, I likewise couldn’t for the life of me find any good reason to make him.

It is always hard to find that fine balance between advocating for something you believe your child will benefit from and letting your child make his own decisions. But after our first day of class I was pretty seriously questioning just what benefit he might derive.

My son is only recently 5 so there are still plenty of decisions he doesn’t get to make all on his own. But whether or not he wants to spend 4 hours a week with a group of kids he doesn’t know and a teacher he’s never met in a classroom is apparently one I am willing to let him make. Had I not spent the day with him there the first day, I wouldn’t have been able to see it from his perspective. I wouldn’t have felt the affront to his individuality and independence so keenly.

As we drove home from class yesterday I still worried a little about what I was doing, about what kind of message I was sending. Old thought patterns derived from the chorus of mainstream parenting discourse haunted me. I could hear the voices of others warning me that at best I was letting him pass up a valuable opportunity and at worst I was teaching him to quit when things were hard or uncomfortable.

But this morning we drew tow trucks and family pictures, we read a book on visiting a lighthouse, we made a knight’s costume out of tinfoil, we researched the sinking of the Titanic and then pinpointed the ship’s route and where it hit the iceberg on the globe.

We played restaurant and made a bow-tie for a fancy waiter’s costume and then took pictures with his camera, we drew shapes on the chalkboard and ‘played school’. We made up an imaginary language and tried to communicate with the aid of hand gestures, we listened to a French music CD, we did a ribbon cutting ceremony and rode an imaginary train, we used our math manipulatives to find different ways of making ten and we weighed glasses with varying amounts of water on our kitchen scale. This quite literally was all before 10:00 a.m.

So what am I teaching my son? What lessons am I really imparting? Am I teaching him to quit when things are tough or am I telling him I trust him and his innate desire to learn and grow the way he needs to? Am I letting him get away with something, or am I giving him the freedom to make choices and in turn to accept the responsibility this entails? Am I letting him boss me around or am I modeling empathy and respect for the feelings of others?

Whatever may be the thoughts of others on these matters today I’m not worried. Today I can see why I’m doing what I’m doing. Today I trust my son and myself. Not all days are like this of course. Some days I will doubt again. Some days I will feel like I’m coming up short when trying to explain to others just why I’m not sending my kids to school. But in the end that’s a heck of a lot better than having to explain to my son why he needs to go to a place where his needs, wants and ideas are drowned out by the politics and policies of classroom management.

I know my son still has a good deal to learn about working with others, about compromise, about selflessness and discipline. That’s ok; he’s five. I believe that in taking his feelings seriously and trying to work with him rather than drawing arbitrary battle lines, that I can model for him what real respect and empathy for others look like in action.

The trick of course is to keep the voices of doubt at bay and to trust in this process. To have faith even on days when I am wholly unable to remember, let alone articulate, just why on earth I’ve chosen this path.