"No go church!" This has become a common statement on Sunday mornings around here. I really can't say that I blame him. He has to get dressed up and go sit and be quiet and he knows it. Going to church is not optional around here, but I would like to make it as pleasant as possible.
Yesterday I invented a game. This wasn't a game to make my son want to go to church or to trick him into going to church, but rather to help him know that he is understood. I was trying to help him get his socks on for church and he didn't want to put them on. He said "no go church!" So I put the socks on my hands instead and had them talk to each other. The first sock said "It's time to go to church." The second sock said "No go church!" They went back and forth for awhile having a conversation that was typical of me and my son. He thought it was hilarious! For some reason when this was over my son was willing to get his socks on and go to church. I think if I had played this game with the intent to trick him into going to church it would not have worked. It was just a bit of comic relief, I suppose, from an otherwise tense time, and I hope it helped him feel understood.
Now he randomly brings me socks and says "No go church!" He wants me to put on the mini puppet show again and I gladly oblige. The sock who wants to go to church and the sock who doesn't want to go to church both go to church together on the feet of my son, who doesn't want to go to church.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A stupid homeschooling article
I wrote this a long time ago and am just posting it now:
This article bothered me.
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/homeschool4you.htm
The problem I have is that it acts like public school is the default, but you CHOOSE to home school (and at great personal sacrifice). So I made up my own. This is just supposed to be funny- please don't take it too seriously or get upset at me for criticizing schools. Here is my parody of the article at the above link:
Making the decision to send your kids to public school is usually very difficult and not one to be taken lightly. It is a personal decision that I can't make for you, but maybe I can help in the thought process. When making the decision, consider these things:
Time commitment - Public schooling tends to dictate your whole day. It is more than just pick-up and drop off times. Once you pick your kids up, get them a snack, help them with homework, and have dinner your whole day is pretty much shot. Making cinnamon rolls in your pajamas in the morning is limited to a few select days that the school allows you with your child. You cannot go to the zoo, museum, etc, at times when it is not crowded. School dictates wake-up times (no letting kids go by their own schedule) and bed times (so you can get up early for school). And it's not just a commitment of your time. A child who goes to public school from kindergarten through twelfth grade will spend roughly 14,000 hours of his or her childhood in school, not even counting transportation to and from school or any after-school activities. This is a big commitment, and up to you as a parent to decide if this is time well-spent.
Personal sacrifice - The public school mom gets little time with her kids. You don't get to watch them figure out how to do fractions or learn to read for the first time. You don't get the joy of reading a hundred pages of a book together, snuggled on the couch on a rainy afternoon.
Financial strain - Public school is supposed to be free, however a parent will usually need to be around for random days off school and summers, in addition to snow days, sick days, etc. If you are used to two incomes, this may be difficult. Or there is after school care, which is expensive. Also there are camps, sport participation, supplies, and science projects that all cost money, yet you do not get to dictate how that money is spent, so you may not feel that the use of that money is of particular benefit to your child. Additionally, kids at public school may feel pressure to wear certain brands of clothing that are quite expensive. Of course you can always refuse to buy them, but this may cause tension in your relationship with your child or in their relationships with their classmates.
Socialization - You will no longer have any choice about who your children socialize with. They will come home with bad words, bad jokes, inappropriate stories, and knowing the plot of TV shows you don't let them watch (and don't imagine why any parent would). Most of their socialization time will occur largely unsupervised, as one teacher cannot supervise 30 kids at recess very well. So if a child is having trouble sharing or is bullying another, there will not be an adult readily available to help. With all that time away from home, sibling relationships and relationships with parents may suffer. Much of the time your children spend in school they will not be socializing at all, but sitting in class and, if they are allowed to talk at all, they must only say certain things about certain subjects.
Household organization - Kids who go to public school are not as respectful to their parents and may be very resistant to chores. Also you won't be able to make cleaning up as much of a family project, and won't get as much of a chance to teach your kids how to clean and organize.
Both parents in agreement - It is important that both parents agree to send kids to school. It is very difficult if one parent is against it and constantly worried about what the child is learning at school, both as a part of the curriculum and the extraneous lessons in how to treat people.
Is your child willing? - A willing student is always helpful. Ultimately, the decision is the parents to make, but if your child is dead against going to school, you might have a hard time of it.
One year at a time - It isn't a lifetime commitment - most families take one year at a time.
Intimidated by helping kids with homework? Since you didn't pick the curriculum, you may not know much about, say, the life cycle of the fruit fly. The curriculum is completely out of your hands, so you get no say in what your kids learn. Be sure to talk to the teacher if you don't like what your kids are learning, though it may be futile as curriculum requirements are generally not made on a local level.
Are you willing to make the personal and family sacrifices that public schooling requires? If so, give it a year and see how it goes.
This article bothered me.
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/homeschool4you.htm
The problem I have is that it acts like public school is the default, but you CHOOSE to home school (and at great personal sacrifice). So I made up my own. This is just supposed to be funny- please don't take it too seriously or get upset at me for criticizing schools. Here is my parody of the article at the above link:
Making the decision to send your kids to public school is usually very difficult and not one to be taken lightly. It is a personal decision that I can't make for you, but maybe I can help in the thought process. When making the decision, consider these things:
Time commitment - Public schooling tends to dictate your whole day. It is more than just pick-up and drop off times. Once you pick your kids up, get them a snack, help them with homework, and have dinner your whole day is pretty much shot. Making cinnamon rolls in your pajamas in the morning is limited to a few select days that the school allows you with your child. You cannot go to the zoo, museum, etc, at times when it is not crowded. School dictates wake-up times (no letting kids go by their own schedule) and bed times (so you can get up early for school). And it's not just a commitment of your time. A child who goes to public school from kindergarten through twelfth grade will spend roughly 14,000 hours of his or her childhood in school, not even counting transportation to and from school or any after-school activities. This is a big commitment, and up to you as a parent to decide if this is time well-spent.
Personal sacrifice - The public school mom gets little time with her kids. You don't get to watch them figure out how to do fractions or learn to read for the first time. You don't get the joy of reading a hundred pages of a book together, snuggled on the couch on a rainy afternoon.
Financial strain - Public school is supposed to be free, however a parent will usually need to be around for random days off school and summers, in addition to snow days, sick days, etc. If you are used to two incomes, this may be difficult. Or there is after school care, which is expensive. Also there are camps, sport participation, supplies, and science projects that all cost money, yet you do not get to dictate how that money is spent, so you may not feel that the use of that money is of particular benefit to your child. Additionally, kids at public school may feel pressure to wear certain brands of clothing that are quite expensive. Of course you can always refuse to buy them, but this may cause tension in your relationship with your child or in their relationships with their classmates.
Socialization - You will no longer have any choice about who your children socialize with. They will come home with bad words, bad jokes, inappropriate stories, and knowing the plot of TV shows you don't let them watch (and don't imagine why any parent would). Most of their socialization time will occur largely unsupervised, as one teacher cannot supervise 30 kids at recess very well. So if a child is having trouble sharing or is bullying another, there will not be an adult readily available to help. With all that time away from home, sibling relationships and relationships with parents may suffer. Much of the time your children spend in school they will not be socializing at all, but sitting in class and, if they are allowed to talk at all, they must only say certain things about certain subjects.
Household organization - Kids who go to public school are not as respectful to their parents and may be very resistant to chores. Also you won't be able to make cleaning up as much of a family project, and won't get as much of a chance to teach your kids how to clean and organize.
Both parents in agreement - It is important that both parents agree to send kids to school. It is very difficult if one parent is against it and constantly worried about what the child is learning at school, both as a part of the curriculum and the extraneous lessons in how to treat people.
Is your child willing? - A willing student is always helpful. Ultimately, the decision is the parents to make, but if your child is dead against going to school, you might have a hard time of it.
One year at a time - It isn't a lifetime commitment - most families take one year at a time.
Intimidated by helping kids with homework? Since you didn't pick the curriculum, you may not know much about, say, the life cycle of the fruit fly. The curriculum is completely out of your hands, so you get no say in what your kids learn. Be sure to talk to the teacher if you don't like what your kids are learning, though it may be futile as curriculum requirements are generally not made on a local level.
Are you willing to make the personal and family sacrifices that public schooling requires? If so, give it a year and see how it goes.
The short attention span myth
Dave Ramsey says if you spread a lie loud enough, long enough, and often enough, eventually it becomes accepted as truth. I was going to call this post the short attention span lie, but that sounded a bit harsh and I don't think it's actually intended that way, so we'll stick with myth.
I hear all the time that children have short attention spans. I can't be the first person who has figured out that this is completely false. In fact, I as the parent am the one with the short attention span. I am the one who is ready to leave the park first, who gets tired of feeding grass to horses after 30 stalks or so, who doesn't want to read the dinosaur book "one more time". I have to make myself wait patiently for an hour while my son sits inside the cab of a currently unused excavator or wait by the river while my kids throw 217 rocks in, one at a time, for forty-five minutes. And the next time we go out they want to do it again. There is nothing short about my kids' attention span.
What children seem to lack is the ability to be extrinsically motivated to pay attention for an extended period of time to something that is not inherently interesting. That is, most kids I know will engage in an activity that a trusted adult suggests or chooses for a period of time to see what it is like. If it does not capture their attention, if it is not exciting to them, they will not be motivated to "sit still" and "pay attention" to please an adult, to avoid calling attention to themselves, or even for the hope of reward or the fear of punishment.
As a child my husband escaped the diagnosis of A.D.D. because he was able to pay attention to things that were intereresting to him. He found school boring, but this is not a disorder. It is a sign of a mind at work.
Kids pay attention to what is interesting to them. They are capable of sitting still for long periods of time to watch a caterpillar crawl on a leaf but not to listen to an adult talk about caterpillars. Their brains must be made this way for a reason. What is interesting to children helps them learn the best. The period of childhood is so short and so important for learning that kids are hard-wired to engage in activities that help them learn best, which are activities of their own choosing and that they can control. They are also likely to be activities that are real. The younger the child, the more real the activities need to be.
I am not sure why someone decided to say that kids have short attention span or why so many others choose to believe it. It seems to me to have something to do with the kinds of developmentally-inappropriate learning that is expected in almost all schools. In schools children are separated from the real world and expected to learn through models and symbols, which are generally not as educational or as interesting as the real thing. They are also expected to learn the same things at the same time as not only the children in their class, but increasingly in a time of standardized curriculum, children all across the country. If a child or group of children becomes interested in oceans and fish, but that is not in the curriculum for that grade, the teacher cannot teach it. Instead the children must wait until it is in the curriculum and then they have to learn it, whether they are interested in learning it anymore or not. It is the trial period during which a child is willing to engage in an activity in order to find out if it is interesting that is short, not the attention span itself.
So instead of saying that children have short attention spans, I believe it is more accurate to say that people (not just children) have trouble paying attention to things that they do not find interesting. As we get older we find ways to force ourselves to pay attention and extrinsic motivation becomes more meaningful (if you do not pay attention to what is said in a work meeting about some policy changes, you risk doing it wrong and possibly losing your job). Being able to force ourselves to pay attention to something that is not inherently interesting is a great skill to have, and one that children will develop in time. But while they are little, the more they can choose their own activities and the more we let them do, the less we come up against what seems to be a short attention span.
I hear all the time that children have short attention spans. I can't be the first person who has figured out that this is completely false. In fact, I as the parent am the one with the short attention span. I am the one who is ready to leave the park first, who gets tired of feeding grass to horses after 30 stalks or so, who doesn't want to read the dinosaur book "one more time". I have to make myself wait patiently for an hour while my son sits inside the cab of a currently unused excavator or wait by the river while my kids throw 217 rocks in, one at a time, for forty-five minutes. And the next time we go out they want to do it again. There is nothing short about my kids' attention span.
What children seem to lack is the ability to be extrinsically motivated to pay attention for an extended period of time to something that is not inherently interesting. That is, most kids I know will engage in an activity that a trusted adult suggests or chooses for a period of time to see what it is like. If it does not capture their attention, if it is not exciting to them, they will not be motivated to "sit still" and "pay attention" to please an adult, to avoid calling attention to themselves, or even for the hope of reward or the fear of punishment.
As a child my husband escaped the diagnosis of A.D.D. because he was able to pay attention to things that were intereresting to him. He found school boring, but this is not a disorder. It is a sign of a mind at work.
Kids pay attention to what is interesting to them. They are capable of sitting still for long periods of time to watch a caterpillar crawl on a leaf but not to listen to an adult talk about caterpillars. Their brains must be made this way for a reason. What is interesting to children helps them learn the best. The period of childhood is so short and so important for learning that kids are hard-wired to engage in activities that help them learn best, which are activities of their own choosing and that they can control. They are also likely to be activities that are real. The younger the child, the more real the activities need to be.
I am not sure why someone decided to say that kids have short attention span or why so many others choose to believe it. It seems to me to have something to do with the kinds of developmentally-inappropriate learning that is expected in almost all schools. In schools children are separated from the real world and expected to learn through models and symbols, which are generally not as educational or as interesting as the real thing. They are also expected to learn the same things at the same time as not only the children in their class, but increasingly in a time of standardized curriculum, children all across the country. If a child or group of children becomes interested in oceans and fish, but that is not in the curriculum for that grade, the teacher cannot teach it. Instead the children must wait until it is in the curriculum and then they have to learn it, whether they are interested in learning it anymore or not. It is the trial period during which a child is willing to engage in an activity in order to find out if it is interesting that is short, not the attention span itself.
So instead of saying that children have short attention spans, I believe it is more accurate to say that people (not just children) have trouble paying attention to things that they do not find interesting. As we get older we find ways to force ourselves to pay attention and extrinsic motivation becomes more meaningful (if you do not pay attention to what is said in a work meeting about some policy changes, you risk doing it wrong and possibly losing your job). Being able to force ourselves to pay attention to something that is not inherently interesting is a great skill to have, and one that children will develop in time. But while they are little, the more they can choose their own activities and the more we let them do, the less we come up against what seems to be a short attention span.
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