My children are very similar, and very different.
I’m often accused of cloning, which I find amusing now that they are growing up – Big’s hair has darkened and her blue eyes are now brown. Small is still blond and blue eyed, but they are so very obviously brother and sister. Stick their half sibling there as well and she’s very much from the same pod too and given that she’s no blood relation to me it all gets a bit confusing.
Character wise, on first glance they are very different. But they both display a startling level of intensity. For Small that makes him incredibly self-directed, and woe betide the adult that gets in the way. He has a turn of temper that he has absolutely no control over, and while it’s better than a year ago in that he’s more likely to take it out on inanimate objects like doors instead of soft ones like ppl, the force of it still takes me aback.
Big also has a hair trigger temper. Her’s comes out verbally and in attitude though – she’s been practising teenager style strops since she was about 3. I keep assuming she’ll grow out of them, but there’s little sign of it happening yet.
When it comes to learning though, that’s when they really differ. As I’ve blogged before, I was waiting through a long deschooling period and seeing no inclination to get on with anything. If it seemed vaguely educational I would get wails and tantrums – Big has a perfectionist streak that holds her back from trying a lot of the time.
So I imposed some loose structure. A requirement for a certain number of work items each morning, to include basic skills like maths, english and then history, science, languages, whatever. And we got into that routine, and OK, we still had a lot of strops but overall life was calmer.
In the last week, things have changed. Small suddenly started wanting to substitute his interests for the third work. Then for the second work. Maths is non optional – I’m not going to get to the point we’re at with Big where the basic skills are a real struggle. So now he has a geography book, and he’s looked up a variety of countries on wikipedia, printed off maps, drawn or coloured in flags, written bits of language in, learnt about population, area, density. I didn’t know that he could read numbers into the millions, but he can, and another side track took us off into large numbers, learning what comes after million and billion (some of which he’d come across in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Space
Yesterday, for some reason, he dived off into dinosaurs. He’s spent nearly an hour looking them up this morning, and we’ve discussed how ppl know what dinosaurs were like, and which bits we don’t know, and how we know about their behaviour. He was quite agrieved to look up one and be told that it has very unusual teeth and therefore nobody knows what it ate, as they don’t fit the standard herbivore/ carnivore/ omnivore pattern. He’s looked up various other animals as well – came bouncing into the bedroom this morning to tell me that tigers eat crocodiles and boars. And then he looked up boars 🙂
There’s a vague interest in Albert Einstein coming through, and courtesy of Tim buying a 3-in-1 tuner from Lidl this week, his guitar is now out again and he’s working through his lesson book (Progressive Guitar Method for Young Beginners: Book 1
It’s fantastic to watch him taking off like this, and it’s having an unexpected side effect this time around. First of all Big got very upset that Small didn’t have to do the defined three subjects. I pointed out that really all I want to see is them learning, and I don’t particularly mind what they are learning. And if she could come up with something that she wanted to do instead of something I suggested, she was very welcome to do it too. So she stopped stropping, and went off to find her myths and legends book, and spent a gratifying amount of time writing things up in a book for herself. She even went and got her spelling log, used it to write out words she knew she had in there, and put in words she wasn’t sure of.
She’s still doing maths every day, and we’ve agreed on a short amount of handwriting practice every day too. It’s paying off – we looked back to the beginning of her english exercise book and can easily see an improvement in legibility. She’s also starting to pay more attention to how she writes the things she’s writing, so we’re getting fewer spelling mistakes that are just missing letters. She wants to get back to playing the piano too, so we need to clear away the pile of clutter currently surrounding it that’s waiting a trip to the loft for storage.
So, tell me, can you teach autonomy? Is that what is going on here? Is it still autonomy if it’s externally encouraged? Thoughts in the usual place please 🙂
child centred learning. Covers a multitude of fudges round the edges of differing ed phils! You saw the need and filled it.
Dunno, I’m still struggling with this a bit myself, to some extent. There’s a lot that I’d like to introduce and make deals about etc., but then up comes their resistance and that makes me back off and think “Wrong place, wrong time, wrong approach..”
I don’t think I’m willing to work through their resistance to things in case it stops them owning the process and sometimes there’s a pay-off for that, when they find and develop things themselves, which is always lovely, but there’s worry too on my part, doing it that way. I don’t think I’ll ever stop worrying about whether I’m doing too much, or too little by way of input.
Sounds like you’ve got the balance right for yours just now though?
That’s what it is, isn’t it? Balance.
I think.
Probably 😉
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yeah, what Gill said 😀
‘So, tell me, can you teach autonomy? Is that what is going on here? Is it still autonomy if it’s externally encouraged? ‘
dunno, but what you described is very similar to what has happened/is happening at our house too.
I’ve been scared off the word ‘autonomy’ and ‘unschooling’ there are some scary people who are… shall we say passionately devoted to those philsophies out there!
I like ‘learner led’ ‘life long learning’ ‘independent learning/research’
all terms I’m very familiar with due to my librarian back ground…
and judging by myself, and adults I’ve worked with, people fluctuate between styles and methods, even within their own characteristic styles and methods… we’re very much of the mixed approach…
yeah, it’s about balance – what Gill said 😀
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ooo, forgot to add – our kids have a very very strong resemblance – it comes from their father’s side, all the cousins whose fathers are brothers look alike enough to be siblings – it’s rather funny when I have some of them out with my lot – people boggle even more than normal!
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I’m sure that our choices are influenced by those around us. Otherwise, how do you explain those bejewelled frenzies that sweep through groups of Facebook friends! Sometimes those influences are even constructive…
Part of what I’m hoping my children are learning (!) from their home ed lives is self-awareness. I know when I’m following the crowd, I know when I’m doing something for the pat on the head, I know when I’m jumping through a hoop to satisfy someone’s requirements and I know when something is satisfying in and of itself. I think I’ve only learned to reflect on this in my adult life. I suspect that, right through my schooled years, I found it very hard to tease out one motivation from another. I could explain why I think that’s important but I don’t want to blog in your comments box 🙂
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My thinking is that just because an autonomous approach exists doesn’t mean I have to choose it 100%.
For me it is my underlying approach, but I hit a wall last week with my own views on handwriting, so I have started asking for nearly daily copywork, ie copying out a word or two. (I pick a word on a book cover and clearly point out that it is capital this, then lower case all the rest, to encourage it to be accurately copied.)
This is clearly not autonomous, but I am the mum and it’s my decison! The children are both ok about it so far. They saw how much I cared about it and also aren’t worried by the tiny bit I ask them to do. It may only last a couple of weeks, but I hope we will continue with it.
I think that the names of the different approaches are concepts to help us discuss and think about what we are doing, just tools of our trade.
Oops, I see I haven’t answered the question.
My understanding of autonomy is that naturally most children will announce that they want to learn to drive (say) and will jump through the correct hoops in order to pass the test, because they want the result at the end, not because the parents have told them to get their driving licence.
So I think it is being around and seeing the child become interested in something at their own pace.
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I’m very much with Gill on this one, as in that ‘balance’ is a keyword.
Overall I don’t think autonomy can be taught. My personal take is that autonomy is there, inherent in every single individual, and we can experience is, become aware of it. And consequently respect it. Or not.
Apart from balance I find that observation is a keyword. And I mean the kind of observation done from a deep commitment and love for the other person. I hesitate to use the term intuition, because I don’t want to give autonomy a woolly connotation, but I think there’s a lot of that involved in it. In my case, anyway.
When I encounter resistance to things I introduce or suggest, I will always first back off, then observe and reflect. Why did I offer it in the first place? Is the resistance in response to me having my own agenda without due consideration for theirs? Or is the resistance a consequence of something else? Are they being held back by something worth overcoming / discussing / challenging?
It obviously depends on where the child is – in age and development – how to go from there, how to deal with it.
Again and again I find that autonomous learning is not something that is separate from the rest of my life. An autonomous education comes forth from living in respect of autonomy. I don’t think I lead a completely autonomous life, but I do think I am ever aware of the importance of respect for the autonomy of every individual.
Can I be less vague about it? Hardly ;). I am forever questioning myself about it, although in the course of the years I have learned to be not too hard on myself and to trust that, even if I get it completely wrong sometimes, I myself and my children have enough autonomy in us to overcome it.
I have also discovered the biggest enemy of autonomy: Lack of trust.
A subject worth at least a whole separate blogpost and discussion, which I will not start right here and now.
But I’m sure we can all agree that it’s very evident around us at the moment.
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