Chez Noah

True to character, Noah wanted a birthday celebration that was "family only". Fine. But he wanted to do something memorable too. So we decided upon a formal restaurant meal -- at home. With the parents waiting on the children. Very fun!

We moved a table into the living room and covered it with our best (read: only) tablecloth. We added napkins and full place-settings for four. The kids arrived and were given menus. They had a choice of drinks (un-margaritas, unbeer, apple cider or milk) and appetizers (they ordered both choices). There were choices of main dish and side salad, and red or white no-alcohol wine with dinner. Followed by the obligatory cake for dessert, with optional ice cream and caramel syrup, and gift-opening.

We all had a blast. Chuck played the maître d', I was the cook, and Fiona was loud and demanding, to choruses of laughter from the rest of us. The kids drank their "wine" and ate their meals until they thought they would burst, and tipped their chairs and talked with their mouths full and dribbled lasagna all over their chins and Chuck and I said things like "would the young lady like some assistance finding her napkin?"

I think we'll all remember this birthday.

Birdwatching

Fiona was the only one who wanted to come to the GRUBS garden with me this afternoon to do a bit of digging. I wanted to make some progress back-filling the marsh-garden-in-progress. She watched, and dug, and scrabbled around a bit, got hot, sat in the shade, came back, got bored and asked to go home.

"Yeah, okay," I said. "In a few minutes."

I finished levelling out the rim where the liner lies. Then I looked over at the sunflowers. They're immense, and gone to seed, and the birds were having a heyday plucking the seeds out.

"Hey Fiona," I said, sitting down on the picnic bench a couple of metres from the nearest sunflower, "look at the birds having a feast."

She came over and slid up onto my lap. We sat there, entranced, for half an hour or so. We whispered to each other, noticing the chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches lining up on a series of perches and taking turns. The nuthatches were "bossier". The chickadees were "crazier." They went back into the forest for a few minutes and had "a bird party" with lots of calling back and forth. We listened to the competing calls of the two species. We noticed differences in their flight patterns and in how they attacked the sunflower seed heads. We speculated about where they were putting all the seeds. We tried to count the birds. We just sat together and tried to notice everything we could.

"I like doing this," Fiona whispered. "This is my favourite thing. I want to stay here forever."

Well, we didn't. Eventually we decided it was time to go home. But it was an absolutely magical half hour for both of us.

Knitting a learning curve

Sophie started knitting this week. Almost a year ago she learned a basic knit stitch and was keen for a week or two, but never really developed the skill and stamina to find it gratifying to continue. This week she decided, on her own, that she wanted to do a practice project just a few stitches wide, so I cast on 10 for her and she set to work. By the end of three days of on and off work, she had a narrow "scarf" done in stocking stitch that was a wonderful illustration of a learning curve. The first thirty rows are wild, with dropped and picked up stitches and mis-turns of the project. The next thirty rows seemed better. The next thirty were not really much better, but this was the stage at which she was figuring out how to correct her own mistakes... and the last fifty rows were beautiful! What an object lesson in persistence and practice and gradual improvement!

I have to add a recommendation for Melanie Falick's Kids Knitting while I'm at it. This is the ultimate knitting book for beginners of all ages, with beautiful illustrations, sensible varied projects, excellent instructions and wonderful knitting-related ideas and projects like felting, finger-knitting, making wooden needles, adding embellishments and the like. Sophie has moved onto a hand-puppet project now.

Structure and confidence

Sometimes you know things but you just need a nudge. I know Noah has difficulty creating structure and consistency for himself. I know loses confidence very easily when he falls short of his own expectations -- expectations that can only be reached with some consistent application to the task. And I know that when his confidence ebbs, his motivation bottoms out in ways that begin to affect all areas of his life. When his confidence level is down he tends to sink deeper and deeper into a whole of self-blame and lassitude. He feels stupid and useless and stupid and useless people don't suddenly decide they are going to master arithmetic with fractions. He needs someone to say "you can do this, and I am going to stick with you and make sure that you prove it to yourself."

Nudges from mom are not always welcomed, nor do they come naturally to this mom. However, this fall Noah and I had to work together to come up with some sort of plan for his self-designed homeschool program and in a fit of optimism he said "Yeah, I'd like to get ahead in math. I'd like to work at math almost every day." The nudge was coming from the opportunity the SelfDesign program offered him to create some structure. We looked at where he was at (he's done almost no math in the last three years, moving at glacial speed through Singapore Primary 3) and he decided he'd like to finish Primary 5 this academic year. All fine and good while we're driving in the minivan en route to vacation. I wasn't sure how it would pan out when we got home and he actually had to do the work.

But here we are a couple of weeks later and he's not only begun level 4, but he's a day away from finishing the first workbook (4A part 1, which is nominally "a quarter of a school-year's work"). Not only is this great progress, but he's developing great confidence and pride in where his efforts are getting him. We're monitoring the pace and comparing it with his goal and he's carefully making sure he's "ahead of schedule".

He's eager in other areas too. I see the enthusiasm and confidence beginning to grow over into music, language arts, science and the rest. He's ten in a few hours. It's a great place to be on the cusp of two digits, riding a wave of confidence and accomplishment. Happy birthday, Noah. Let's both of us remember how gentle structure -- nudged into your life by external circumstances, thoughtfully considered and willingly undertaken -- helps you learn and feel good about yourself.

Nursing and Allegro

On the SuzukiChat List a year or so ago someone posted about nursing a toddler who was predisposed to hum Suzuki's "Allegro" whilst nursing. A similar post had been made three or four years before. Having had a similar experience with both Sophie and Fiona, I commented that the group of moms who have nursed to the humming of "Allegro" by a nursling was a very special and exclusive club.

Now I'm the parent to a nursling who not only hums Allegro while nursing, but hums Faure, Debussy and Chopin piano pieces as well as Book 5 viola repertoire. But I wonder if I'm a member of the most exclusive club of all -- the club of moms who are nursing children who can play Allegro on their violins.

Fiona is now simultaneously working on playing D-string Twinkles (in preparation for Allegretto and Perpetual Motion in D), on clean finger-hops and string-crossings in "Song of the Wind", on a 4th-finger exercise, on nice staccato tone in the first phrase of "Perpetual Motion", on the phrases and up-bow starts in "O Come, Little Children", on saving bow on the half-notes in Long, Long Ago, and on the A-major arpeggio that opens "May Song." Along with flat bow-hair and a relaxed "banana thumb" in the left hand. Her appetite for picky detail work is insatiable -- tonight she chose to do thirteen repetitions of each of the five exercises we decided to do. While I've never seen anything like this, and have been forced to turn much of my teacher training on its ear to cope with Fiona, I'd hesitate to call her musically gifted ... because she works so hard (and with such easy-going pleasure) at what she does. Still, there's no doubt she's frighteningly unique, and has earned me a place in an exclusive club that doesn't even exist.

I keep waiting for the bubble to burst. So far it just keeps growing. I keep waiting for her interest in breastfeeding to wane. So far she's holding steady. Good heavens, what a child!

Siblings and ownership

Lately I've been thinking a bit about our family approach to the ownership of the "stuff" the kids have and how it plays out in their relationships with each other. I didn't set out with a particular policy in mind, but I have four kids with a fair bit of "stuff" accumulated over the years, almost no sole ownership, and almost no sibling rivalry. I can't help but wonder if these things are related. Thinking back to my own childhood ... most stuff was shared, and my three siblings and I got along pretty well overall.

I also think it's important to understand that young kids' conceptualization of ownership is a very different thing from ours. For a young child, having control of something in one's own hands means owning it. I think that when we ask kids to "lend" or "share yours with her" they are really thinking "it'll be hers for a while and then it'll be mine again." And in our family, I guess we've really not got fussy debunking that fluid sense of ownership. The kids grew into children who just accepted that ascribing sole ownership, within the context of the family, wasn't really something to get one's knickers in a knot over. I've found that my kids do not use possession or ownership as a pawn in situations of rivalry -- I never hear them claiming "no, it's mine and you can't have it!" I might hear "no, I want it right now and you can't have it!" The important difference between these two is that the latter de-escalates as soon as the emotions abate because no one has claimed eternal control over the object. In the former, even once the emotions have calmed, the child still assumes the object falls under his or her control, to things could flare up again at any point. Over the years, in playgrounds and parks, on playdates and out and about, I have heard so many children using the fact of their ownership of something as a weapon against other children. It doesn't seem to happen in our family, thank goodness.

My kids have special things that they treasure, things that they refer to as "mine." These are generally things that have special meaning to each child rather than things that have value in general to all. With the many shared items of value that our family owns I prefer to encourage in the kids the value of responsible custodianship (caring for something well while it is in your possession) rather than the value of pride in ownership.

As I write this I realize that while I didn't set out with a particular policy in mind, the fact that I put more value on custodianship than on ownership has been a guiding principle.

My kids each get their own allowance. For the past three years they've chosen to pool almost all of their allowance to make joint purchases together. I guess that speaks highly of their comfort with our family tendency towards joint, rather than sole, ownership.

Fiona's violin week

Fiona's had an amazing week on violin and she knows it. Last week at about this time she was showing an interest in teaching herself some of the upcoming Suzuki repertoire. I attempted to redirect her into non-Suzuki pieces, since the Suzuki repertoire is usually approached with very specific teaching goals in mind and with specific sorts of emphasis. I wanted her to leave that music to be taught "properly" later. Instead I suggested she teach herself "Mary Had a Little Lamb." She rose to the challenge. It took her only a couple of days of persistent trying to get the whole thing worked out.

But far from distracting her from the Suzuki repertoire, this success gave her an appetite for sounding out more and more pieces by ear, and of course the pieces she knows and loves best are the Suzuki pieces. And so the next day she devoured "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." And the next day it was "Song of the Wind." And the following day, "May Song," "Allegro," "Long, Long Ago" and the first part of "Perpetual Motion."

She has no difficulty getting the endings right. There's always a "long tail" on the first phrase of "Long, Long Ago" and a "short tail" on the second phrase. She never gets the wrong number of note repetitions in the off-kilter descending scale passage in "Song of the Wind." She already knew about the bow retakes in "Allegro" and did them without any direction. It's not like she's been watching and hearing endless daily repetitions of these pieces -- her siblings are working on Book 4+ repertoire. [Confession: I can't remember the last time we played the Book 1 CD.]

She plays a lot. Lately she's been taking her violin out two or three times a day, and not always just for ten minutes. Sometimes she's at her music for up to an hour! While she loves playing through new stuff best of all, she's also content to do some picky focused work on technical issues. She thinks hard about the things I ask her to focus on (eg. 4th finger placement, a relaxed left thumb, using a particular part of the bow for certain notes or placing her fingers on the string on their inside corners). If she makes a mistake or an awful sound, she laughs and says "Oops! I'd better try again" rather than getting angry, frustrated or mortified and shutting down. She loves getting guidance and input and loves the time she spends doing hard work on the violin.

Her appetite for violin is gluttonous and I worry about her burning out. I come home from 5 hours at work and she meets me at the door: "Yay! Now we can do violin!" I have to offer her a treat before bedtime so that she will stop practising. She seems so driven and focused that it almost doesn't seem right in a 3-year-old. So yesterday I started gently encouraging her into some off-instrument music learning that is more playful. I got out some of the beginning music theory materials I'd made up a few years ago. She took to them instantly. She's building "snakes" out of musical alphabet letter-names, and clapping and saying simple rhythmic patterns built from groups of eighth-notes and sixteenth-notes. She's making scale and arpeggio patterns with the note letter-names, and enthusiastically reading off "takataka ti-ti TA takataka."

What an amazing little sponge she is. The joy that radiates about her while she is engaged in music learning is amazing to behold. With the other kids I've seen veiled evidence of such joy at regular intervals but I've never seen it as unselfconciously oozing out of a child's pores as it is with Fiona these days.

Alcodoggy

Why is most high school science so dry and uninteresting? Why do students lose interest in science? Why is science achievement in North America (in the US especially) so poor? Even when the courses are rigorous, why do students retain so little and feel such scant excitement?

Well, first, I'm not sure that most higher level science requires as much mathematics as is commonly assumed. I think that especially in nations where mathematics achievement is relatively poor, taking a mathematical approach to middle- and high-school science is not such a great strategy. The approach seems to be to mention a concept, teach the higher mathematical model that formalizes it, and then to attempt to consolidate the learning of the concepts by providing kill & drill paper-and-pencil practice with the formulae.

I'm thinking of my Grade 10 Chemistry course which focused chiefly on molar equations, balancing valences, and calculations based on Boyle's Law. I did well in it, as I'm good at math and logic, but for the majority of my classmates the math acted as an obstacle to the understanding of chemistry. I assumed that was the way it had to be. I went on to study chemistry at university and found the subject very interesting at that level. I assumed that the slog through high school level stuff was just the necessary prerequisite learning.

But then recently, Noah (9) has asked me to put together a chemistry "program" of sorts, as he has developed rather an interest in the subject. We started with "The Mystery of the Periodic Table" by Benjamin Wiker, an entertaining narrative about the history of chemistry and of the discovery of the elements. From there we went on to explore conceptualizations of atoms and to study of the Bohr atomic model and how it informs our understanding of chemical bonding. Larry Gonick's "Cartoon Guide to Chemistry" has provided some ancillary information and entertainment. Then we got our hands on a semi-space-filling molecular model kit and had an amazing time building molecules of all sorts (ethanol looks like a puppy dog!). From there the concept of valences was naturally explored. And then we watched a set of four lectures from a college course entitled "The Joy of Science", intended for non-science majors, which explores chemistry history and concepts in a fair bit of depth, and to a chemistry curriculum for youngsters (Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry I) which again puts concepts ahead of higher math, exploring all the basic chemistry concepts from subatomic particles to covalent bonding to polarity, pH and various reactions, polymerization, basic techniques for chemical analysis, and on to biochemistry, the form and function of DNA and DNA polymerase, etc.. He's learning some of the stuff that I only got into at the university level and, like me, finding it thrilling. But the difference is that he hasn't had to spend hours calculating the number of moles of CO2 contained in a balloon that expands by 3.2 L when heated by 14 degrees C at atmospheric pressure to get to the interesting stuff. Why shouldn't all children get to build ethanol doggies? Why does this nifty pastime have to wait until after the mastery of Boyle's Law arithmetic?

I think that if science was taught by people who really loved it as a subject area, who were passionate about the effective and inspiring teaching of it, who loved the concepts and the theory and the beauty of cogent unifying theories, rather than who simply have somewhat of an aptitude for the mechanics of it, we would get science teaching that excited students at all levels rather than filtering out those without the tolerance for big doses of the mathematical mechanics. One of the things that struck me when reading Liping Ma's wonderful book "Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics" was how passionate Asian elementary school mathematics teachers were about their subject matter and pedagogy -- how it is standard practice for them to meet regularly to share teaching strategies, to garner advice on conceptual challenges particular students were facing, to trade tricks, to share their passion and experience with other teachers. Can you imagine a Canadian public school teacher saying to his colleagues "hey, let's meet once a week to talk about how we're doing at teaching math to our students and to trade ideas"? The sort of teacher who would suggest that here would be exceptionally passionate and considered an oddball -- yet the practice is de rigeur in China.

Here in the west, we seem to think that a systematic science education should start with the smallest, most tedious details, and build gradually outwards and upwards to the more interesting and more elegant parts. In fact, scientific exploration tends to proceed in exactly the opposite manner, starting with observations about interesting stuff, and only gradually finding its way into the kernel of fundamental mathematical relationships. Why should we expect our 12-year-olds to maintain their interest any other way?

I think that in North America there is too much focus on rigor at the expense of passion. Teachers' creativity and passion are discouraged by the top-down approach to curriculum design and by systemic problems that disempower teachers. And that focus on rigor at the expense of creativity and passion trickles directly down to students. I'm really happy that my own kids are free of all that.

Our New Baby

On Day 4 of the Suzuki Valhalla Institute, the pianos arrived at the school for the following week's piano summer school. They come on loan from a piano store, but are all on sale while here. Two of them were nice used baby grands with nice sticker prices, further discounted and with free delivery. Out of the blue, my mom came up to me and said "I think you need one of those grands." Not only that, but she offered to pay for it!

For years I'd been trying to get advice on when a student would need a grand. My mom has a good friend who is a Suzuki piano teacher who has significant success at convincing the parents of her 4yo beginners to purchase baby grands at the outset, who believes that all students should have the best instrument their family can possibly afford -- even if that means a second mortgage. At the other extreme, several of the piano teachers I talked to sighed and shrugged and said "I'm just happy when I can get parents to upgrade from an electronic keyboard to an acoustic instrument." Some teachers suggested that students working at a Royal Conservatory of Music Grade 9 or 10 level (Erin is a solid Grade 9 now) should be on a grand, but when asked for their reasoning, they said that because RCM exams at that level are done on grands, students should be practicing on the same. Since Erin has no interest in doing RCM examinations, that reasoning doesn't really apply to us.

I realize now that throughout all my research, I was looking for someone to give me a good push to go out and buy a grand. Thanks for the nudge, mom!

There were a few little issues. First, of all families, ours probably could afford to buy one outright. Eventually we agreed to go halves with my mom, and she would take her gift out of our inheritance :-).

Secondly, where the heck would such a beast go? Our house is already too small! But six months ago I had given away the couch in the "computer room" (family room), looking for more floor space and a reallocation and redefinition of function and space, a project that was still on "pending" status. Together with Chuck, I thought things through and realized that with the upright gone from the living room, that room could finally take on its intended use as a family gathering space, while the computer room could take on more of a learning / music / creativity function. We would move the TV out of this room (perhaps into the living room, or perhaps to the tiny basement room that is my teaching studio) creating more useable space and more storage space. And we decided to remove the three cubby desks that are so cute and fun and useful in theory, but have mostly served a clutter-collecting function for the past five years.

Finally, the really fun issue was "the Yamaha, or the Kawai?" We had lots of help with that one, since Erin's piano teacher, our piano tuner, and the two advanced piano faculty from the summer school whom we've known for a number of years were all in town, and in contact with both pianos throughout the following week. The Yamaha had a lovely bright sound, but had some global mechanical quirks, a lot more cosmetic dings, and would have required the purchase of a humidifier given the wide temperature and humidity fluctuations in our wood-heated home in the winter. It also cost a little more. The Kawai wasn't totally free of mechanical issues, but these appeared to be relatively minor things, and it came with a Dampchaser humidifier/dehumidifier.

So Elmer and Wilf from World of Music delivered it the day after the piano school, took away our nice Klingerman upright, and we christened the 6-foot baby grand Kawai that night with a performance for my mom of the Lento from the Telemann G major Concerto for 2 violas with Erin accompanying Noah and me.

The arrival of the piano has precipitated a number of changes:

• Fiona has declared that she wants to be a piano-ist, and that she is no longer willing to wait until she is six to start learning, and she wants "real lessons from a teacher" and now would be a good time to start.
  
  
• Noah has pulled out some of the books he was working on a year or two ago and is trying to "heal" his piano skills. He may consider lessons after he has completed that process.
  
  
• Sophie is working through some early primers on her own, though making no noises about lessons.
  
  
• Erin has resurrected much of her favourite repertoire and albums she never quite got around to mastering to her satisfaction and to my surprise was very receptive, dare I say even enthusiastic, about the prospect of recording an album of modern impressionistic pieces as a keepsake and gift to friends / extended family. On the hypothetical play list -- Robert Starer's "Colors" suites 1 & 2, Seymour Bernstein's "Birds" and "Birds 2" suites, and Robert Benedict's "Watercolours for Piano" suite.
  
  
• The spot in the living room where the Klingerman once sat has been vacated to reveal a grimy, much scratched and dented wall seriously in need of repainting. We intend to paint this week and then move the bookcases over to that wall ... and then we'll shop for a matching entertainment centre for the stereo and buy a second chair, and repaint the other two walls (the fourth wall is log & brick).
  
  
• The piano music has all been organized and filed in the wall cupboards.
  
  
• Erin has a cubby desk in her little cabin.
  
  
• Horseplay and food are no longer permitted in the computer room.

All good changes. Hurrah for nudges!

Maturity and pseudo-maturity

Someone wrote on a message board about an acquaintance who was banning her newly-5yo from watching "little-kid TV" or playing "little-kid computer games." I think that this parent's approach is indicative of a serious misunderstanding of what maturity is. She wants her daughter to grow and mature, but she's using assumptions about maturity that are very shallow, and is in fact getting the whole thing backwards.

Maturity is about knowing deep down inside who you are and what you stand for, and acting according to those values. Pseudo-maturity is trying to act like people who are older than you. Pseudo-maturity, because it's play-acting one's values and interests, actually interferes with the development of real maturity. If you are trying really hard to act like you're interested in A, B and C, how can you possibly figure out what your real affinities are?

I think that there are many pressures in our culture trying to turn children into adolescents long before their childhoods should be over, and then work to keep them that way long past the time when they should be fledged as adults. Two hundred years ago a thirteen-year-old girl was likely to still play with dolls, and a sixteen-year-old girl might very well be getting married and starting a family of her own. A thirteen-year-old boy might be playing with sticks and balls, while a fifteen-year-old might be going off to war or apprenticing as a cartwright. While I think full fledging into adulthood was often too soon and too brutal in those days, I do think it's important to note that adolescence, or "not-quite-adulthood", was a brief transition from childhood to adulthood, not a way of life.

Nowadays adolescence is a cultural identity of at least 10 (or maybe even more than 20) years of taking your values from the peer group and mass media, of acting as grown up as you can, but without taking any real responsibility, of pushing limits while still wanting to be bailed out if real mistakes are made. Ten to twenty years when you are neither a child nor a parent, neither an adult nor a kid, when "family" does not form the core of your universe. An entire generation of people, from age 8 to 30, are in a state of suspended personal development, trying to "find themselves" and work out who they are and what they ought to be doing with their lives while socially disconnected from their families and those they ought to be taking their values from.

I think it's done some terrible things to western culture, as it's created a massive demographic of people who are concerned primarily with themselves without reference to their inter-relation with family and society. People like the parent described above are out at the leading edge of this phenomenon, not just swept up in it with a sense of vague unease, but helping actively promote it in the lives of their own children. What a shame.

I've always said, half-jokingly, that "we aren't doing adolescence in our family." I've tried to help keep my children children, to help them develop real maturity in a strong sense of self and values before they run the risk of getting swept up by peer culture and losing their bearings. I half-feared that I would have to eat my words, but so far so good. Erin is still interested in playing with Playmobil and being home with her younger siblings, while at the same time she is gradually learning to take on adult-type roles and responsibilities. What she is not doing is pretending to be more grown up than she is by adopting the trappings and outward behaviours of an older group. Hurrah!

SVI 2006

We just finished our main week of music summer school. I'm heavily involved organizationally and had all four of my kids enrolled in the Suzuki Valhalla Institute, a family-based week-long music workshop for Suzuki violinists, violists and cellists in our little town. Last year the program attracted 41 students, this year 69 with a waitlist, so things were busy! Erin had 5 hours, Noah and Sophie 4 and Fiona 3. Each student had (a) a master class where individual instruction was shared between three or four students in turn (b) a group class of 10-18 students playing common repertoire together (c) an Orff / movement / singing / improv class of 10-18 agemates with a wonderful energetic leader and (d) a chamber music ensemble (this last hour omitted for Fiona and the very youngest beginningest kids). In addition each student had a rehearsal and recital performance, two or three group performances and a variety of social and musical evening events. And of course, time for individual practicing. Add in all the organizational stuff and loose ends like faculty social events, custodial work, and hospitality-type tasks for all the out-of-towners and it was an incredibly full week.

Amazing, though!

Noah's first string quartet experience thrilled him. I think he is in love with his coach, a young, creative, fun and very talented cellist of Chinese-Canadian descent who grew up a Suzuki student and also happens to be an accomplished Flamenco dancer.

Erin became a real leader-by-example this week, as the most advanced student. She did a super job of her Beethoven String Quartet 1st violin part, exuding personality and joy in her playing and never ceasing to smile and chatter (this? my kid who would once have met the criteria for Selective Mutism?).

Sophie had to join the older two in being an independent student for most of the week and did a great job of keeping track of the time and her schedule and getting herself to her various classes, to the lunchroom and rehearsals promptly and correctly.

Fiona was stretched in ways I didn't anticipate; for at least a year she's been eagerly joining in on her siblings' lessons and group classes, but I didn't realize how much it was their presence that drew her in. In her own class of 3-to-6-year-olds, without her siblings there, she was much more reticent. She was the youngest but almost the most advanced in her group class, but struggled to leave my lap at times. Still, by the end of the week she had made big gains in group participation, and of course had eagerly performed solos and in larger groups (where her siblings were playing also) as always. She soaked up lots by observing and was cheerful throughout.

Tellingly, the kids spent yesterday checking their watches at intervals and commenting wistfully "I'd be finishing up in Joanne's class right now," or "my quartet would just be starting," and demanding that we make the institute 2 or 3 weeks long next year (ain't gonna happen in my lifetime!). How amazing to come through an exhausting week like that dying for more of the same!

Influence and control

I've been thinking about the relationship between influence and control for a while now. I have a feeling that this must be one of those fundamentals of human relationships, especially between parents and children. Parents and children are of course not equal participants in their relationships. Parents have more experience, more knowledge and more ability to control the world around them. But I think it's simplistic to portray the relationship as being hierarchical. I do not want to be the boss of my children. I want to raise them to be good bosses to themselves.

So I have never wanted to control my children. I've wanted them to learn to be "under control" in that they understand social/behavioural expectations and can control themselves within acceptable limits. I have felt, though, that exerting control over them is not the most effective way to nurture that self-control as I have been very aware in my own personality of the tendency to push against controls exerted from the outside. Neufeld and Maté call this a rousing of "counterwill." It's part of the human drive towards autonomy and independence.

Instead I have tried to create a family environment where I have the ability to influence my children. The medium-term result may be the same (children who do what their parents would like them to do) but the psychological climate, I'm convinced, is different. The bigger the element of control gets, the smaller the amount of influence. The greater the influence, the less control is required.

I feel fortunate that the combination of temperaments, parenting style and homeschooling approach have created a family climate where Chuck and I seem to be able to influence our children where we feel it is important to do so. And as a result we seem to have been able to get away without exerting a great deal of control. This has been rather a necessity with the elder children, as they seem to have counterwill reflexes that are, er, rather easily elicited. I once made the mistake of telling Erin that she ought to, on no uncertain terms, say "sorry" to her brother. It was about 6 years later that I finally heard her express a verbal apology. My kids seem to have been dealt heaping portions of counterwill. For better or for worse. At times I despair about this, but then I realize that I have been forced to relate to them in non-controlling ways and so instead I have managed to nurture my ability to influence them.

As they get older and closer to adulthood it becomes increasingly important to know that even in the absence of any controlling forces they will behave in safe, respectful and ethical ways.

Today I feel quite happy about the fact that I can't really "make" my children do things :-).

Beakman Motor

Noah and I made this little motor the other day after he had impressed me by taking apart the dyno-generator flashlight that had broken, repairing the switch and then described in rudimentary terms how the magnet was creating electricity when the device was shaken. We talked about electromagnets and the reciprocal relationship between generators and motors. Then we hit on the idea of searching the internet for a simple model of a motor. This one fit the bill perfectly, and the amazing thing was that we had all the supplies on hand at home thanks to Chuck's packrat tendencies in the shop. It uses half a metre of magnet wire, a ceramic magnet, a battery, two large paper clips and two metal shelf clips (the type pushed into pre-drilled holes in wooden bookcases with adjustable shelves). Very cool. Instructions here.

Planning Our Learning

For many years in our homeschooling journey I tried to keep my eyes on the horizon ("I want my children to be happy, moral, confident and productive adults when they grow up") and not on the day-to-day stuff ("Plan? We're supposed to plan? I'm too busy [deschooling, folding laundry, wiping noses] to plan!"). But last year the independent school program Erin signed on to forced us to participate in a planning process that I thought would be artificial and pointless.

I was rather surprised to find out that the planning process, and the gentle regimen of revisiting that plan three times a year, was extremely helpful, both to Erin and to me. So helpful, in fact, that it was a big part of why I signed Sophie and Noah up for the same program for 2006/7 -- though I fully intended to go through similar planning with them, whether they were interested in signing on or not.

The crux of this planning is that it is directed by the child (though facilitated to a variable extent by the parent). It starts with a "mind map", which is really just a no-holds-barred "inventory of interest"... a list of things that intrigue my kids, that they're interested in learning a bit, or a bit more, about, or want to continue pursuing. Right now I have lists for each child. Anything they express an interest in goes onto the list. We just started these latest lists last week and they're only just beginning to accumulate ideas. Sophie has taken to the process with enthusiasm. Noah is less forthcoming, although when, in the course of life, he expresses an interest in something and I remind him that it could go on his list he is always agreeable. Fiona's list is all about doing what the older children are doing, this being the grand theme in her life! Erin is quietly, independently, developing her own list.

As the summer progresses, lots (too much!) will get added to those mind-maps, or "learning wish lists". At the end of August, we'll sit down together one-on-one and each child will decide what directions they want to move first. We'll likely set about half of the ideas aside for later. And then we'll investigate resources for the ones we're tackling first.

In December, March and June we'll look back at the original learning plan. We'll discuss what has been accomplished, how things have shifted, where the momentum lies, and decide whether to add or remove items from the learning plan.

I've found, over the past year, that's it's been really helpful to (a) go through that mind-mapping process to come up with ideas and inspiration and (b) to revisit the fluid plan on a periodic basis to decide whether the gaols and plans that were devised a while ago still have relevence even if they've been neglected so far (often they are -- and that re-orienting back to the ideas generated a few months ago has been really invigorating for Erin and me).

Our learning plan is like a beacon. We are not required to stand in its shadow. We are not required to follow a specific path in its vicinity. But starting from that beacon and checking in from time to time on where it is, and deciding based on that whether we are where we want to be, has been helpful.

When I first encountered the SelfDesigning process it seemed very "out there" and contrived. I'm sure my description seems a little the same way. So I'll add a few specifics to attempt to make it a little more concrete and useful.

On Erin's learning plan last year were a combination of tangible goals and whimsical thoughts of possibilities to explore. Lots of the elements of that plan were revisited with a sense of purpose. Although she didn't touch math until after Christmas, it was revisiting her goal of completing her current grade level book that helped spur her (happily!) back to math bookwork. As she had expressed an interest and it was there on the plan we did manage to gradually put more priority on chamber music and she got lots of new experience there. ... and so on. Some adjustments, some re-alignments, some discarding of elements of her plan ... but always upon due consideration, never just because she sorta forgot about something or got busy with something else and didn't bother.

We will see how the process evolves with the other children.

One Hundred Twinkles

Sometime a week or two ago Fiona surpassed the 100-Twinkle mark. She is now a "Twinkler" rather than a "pre-Twinkler" and can play all the variations (even the diabolical off-beat Variation B) and theme with the piano part almost up to tempo.

Last night the kids played their instruments in informal performance for my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt-in-law (visiting from Alberta and Ontario) and my mother. They each played a solo, Noah playing the first movement of the Telemann viola concerto with Erin accompanying on piano. The grand finale was a simple arrangement of "Blue Bells of Scotland" in three parts that the older three have done together before, but I hit on the fact that open string playing of the D and A strings would fit nicely with the harmonies and set Fiona up playing as well. She was thrilled at the idea, and stood cheerfully in playing position for the three or four minutes it took the older kids to get their instruments out and their sheet music ready. She bowed the open strings enthusiastically but musically and it was a very touching moment ... the first quartet performance my kids have done together. Small beginnings.

Fiona is very excited to be an enrolled student at the upcoming local Suzuki institute. Two weeks and counting!

A chemical reaction

Three weeks ago I wrote about some progress I felt I was making with Noah at establishing a positive, optimistic outlook. By taking into account his need to let ideas sit for a while before accepting them, and offering him a bit more one-on-one in things that seem to be uniquely his interests, I felt our relationship with each other and his relationship with his learning were moving in a good direction.

Now I'm wondering if this subtle change was more than the natural waxing and waning of interests and relationships and was perhaps instead the beginning of a whole new chapter in his education. It's starting to feel like he's found his academic self.

It started with Benjamin Wiker's "The Mystery of the Periodic Table", a romp through the history of chemistry targetted at 8-to-12-year-olds. I can't remember why we chose to start reading it aloud, but as is often the case, one of the kids enjoyed the book a bit more than the other. This time it was Noah who was keen. The night Sophie was heading off for a sleepover, I asked if she'd mind if I kept reading ahead with just Noah, and she shrugged and said that was fine. Noah and I delved in together and read a few more chapters, just the two of us. The next day I printed out and laminated a nice copy of the periodic table for Noah "because you like chemistry."

Somewhere amidst those couple of chapters read to him aloud and the presentation of the periodic table, Noah seemed to gain an identity as Someone With an Interest in Chemistry. Chemistry is something Erin has never really explored, so Noah was able to take it on as his thing.

We've done a little bit of kitchen chemistry inspired by Wiker's book, and have talked a lot about covalent bonding, molecular models, the Bohr atom and other various and sundry chemical concepts. I've put a lot of money and energy into gathering resources, because he is keen on them and I really feel like this is an important shift in his educational life. The Teaching Company's Joy of Science lectures on chemistry have been very helpful and surprisingly well-comprehended. We've got "Real Science 4 Kids" Chemistry Level I on order, as well as a nice (though pricey!) molecular model kit. I often find Noah poring over Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Chemistry. To find Noah poring over anything academic is a very novel occurrence. I have just started an "inventory of interests" on the fridge for each child, to help us plan and prioritize learning for the next school year, and Noah instructed me on no uncertain terms to "put chemistry up there on my list".

It's not just chemistry anymore either. In the past couple of weeks, his interest in math has taken off for the first time in ages. He's asked for a cursive handwriting workbook.

The glasses may be the other half of the equation. We knew he was far-sighted, but as he wasn't complaining about eye strain when focusing up close, we hadn't pursued glasses at his 2005 eye appointment. But this year it was apparent that he was struggling with close work. In May I made an appointment for July 4, and over the few weeks before the appointment I mentioned Noah that I thought a lot of his disinterest in reading, music sight-reading and bookwork was probably due to the fact that it was a real bother for him to focus up close. I knew he was keen on the idea of glasses, and also that he was feeling a little down on himself for the fact that he hadn't been reading five novels a week and roaring ahead through math workbooks like his sisters. The eyesight thing, whether a big factor or not, gave him a way of saving face over his lack of academic interest.

He really likes the glasses (which he just wears for reading and other close work) and they seem to have had a very positive effect on his interest in academic work and reading. Perhaps it's a placebo effect, but we'll take whatever we can get. I was happy to see him playing his viola, playing soccer, imagining, thinking, asking questions and having great conversations, but he was beginning to feel inadequate as Sophie's math and writing skills had threatened to overtake his, with Erin's academic ability always so far beyond his that she seemed to reside on another planet.

Noah's reaction to chemistry, his taking ownership of this interest and this learning for himself, has been a wonderful thing for a late-blooming (by m00minfamily standards) academic. And for the late-blooming academic's mother.

Fifty Twinkles

Fiona, who began her diligent daily work on the violin about eight months ago, at age 2, is now a three-year-old Twinkler. First she learned rest position, and where to put her feet in rest position and playing position. She learned to make a bow hold. She learned to hold her cardboard violin on her shoulder. She learned to mimic the four Twinkle Variation rhythms, and to identify them with accuracy. She practiced ear-training exercises and learned about the form of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Then she got a "real" violin and learned to make a nice sound on open strings, mimicking those same rhythms with the appropriate bowstrokes. In February we started training her fingers to tap the strings. In March she learned a little exercise using three fingers on the A-string called the "Monkey Song". In April she began work on the opening part of the Twinkle variations.

Now, in late June, she is Twinkling! She can play all four Twinkle Variations and Twinkle Theme all the way through without help. She is counting her unassisted Twinkle repetitions on a counting frame and has 50 accrued. She practices eagerly, in good cheer, punctuating her practising with hugs and kisses and giggles and happy conversation.

I wrote about Expectations in a previous blog entry. Things continue in very much the same vein. My excitement at the tangible gains she's making have not yet contaminated the process-oriented work she's doing. I never expected her to be working on the violin at this age, so any progress she makes still feels like gravy to me. She is so pleased with herself and is delightedly looking forward to showing her grandmother, her aunt and the other Suzuki teachers in her life what she can now do. She will be enrolled as a pre-Twinkle student at the Suzuki Valhalla Institute this August and is thrilled. After three older children, I seem to finally either (a) have struck it lucky with an eager, easy-going child who loves to please the adults around her or (b) be doing something right!

PUPD

"Periodic Unschoolers' Panic Disorder" (PUPD) is a syndrome which is receiving increasing attention in unschooling circles. Apparent prevalence is on the rise. Some might claim an epidemic has taken hold; more moderate voices claim that the disorder has always been endemic in the unschooling population, but recent media attention and publication of the cluster of symptoms has led to many new diagnoses.

Classic symptoms are difficult to miss. Otherwise sensible unschooling parents start pressuring their creative, autonomous, self-motivated, hands-on learners into producing tidy completed worksheets, or sitting through chapters of world history read aloud. They reach for their credit cards and begin spending money on structured curriculum they'll discard after a miserable week and a half.

The disorder is, by its very definition, episodic. The first episode typically occurs sometime during the child's kindergarten year, although in retrospect sufferers often identify harbinger symptoms such as overzealously directing their preschool children to magnetic letters, worrying over a 3-year-old's excess fondness for matchbox cars and mud, or being concerned about a 4-and-a-half-year-old's continuing tendency to confuse the letters Y and W.

Despite parents' beliefs that they have deschooled themselves, PUPD episodes tend to occur coincident with the public school calendar. Fifty-one per cent of episodes occur during the school year-end months of May through early July when public school parents are feeling confident and proud of their children's tangible progress from one grade year to another. Another 36% of episodes occur between late November and early March, while public school families are receiving report cards, attending holiday concerts and taping weekly spelling lists earnestly to their fridges.

Mean frequency of episodes during the child's elementary years is 9.2 months. The frequency and duration of episodes peaks when children are 7 and 8 and then tends to diminish into the pre-teen and teen years. Protective factors include (i) early age of independent reading (ii) spontaneous interest in math workbooks and (iii) unschooling-supportive grandparents.

Research into treatment for PUPD is in its infancy. Current promising research is pointing a the beneficial role for parental journaling, improvements in parental anxiety with daily family recreation, especially that which takes place outdoors, and on the self-reported benefits of internet support-groups for afflicted parents. One recent study (Hughes, 2005) confirmed that beating one's head against a brick wall is an ineffective strategy by all criteria.

Teamwork

Once in a while homeschooling skeptics raise the issue of teamwork. "Well sure," they'll say, "homeschooled kids learn really well and can follow their interests at their own pace and all that. But I think there's value in the kind of team-based work that happens at school. Kids need to learn to work as part of a team, to give and take a bit, to be good leaders, and to be good followers, to make collaborative decisions and problem-solve together."

Of course, to my mind, this is what families are for. Families are groups of interdependent people who work together, who collaborate, who problem-solve co-operatively, who tackle big jobs as a team, who learn from and with each other. If kids spend the lion's share of their productive hours apart from their families, then of course they'll need to be taught teamwork using artificially-contrived team learning projects. Here teamwork is learned by being part of a family.

And not just family either. Our unschooling has naturally grown to encompass the community around us, and there's plenty of opportunity for meaningful teamwork that inspired the kids and contributes meaningfully to the world around them.

My children are involved in music, and through playing in duos, trios, quartets, and community orchestra, they're involved in teamwork where "pulling one's weight" is absolutely essential, and where leading and following are both incredibly important roles.

My kids volunteer with me from time to time at places like the nursing home or the local community garden where a crew of community volunteers does all the maintenance. There are many jobs to be done and there's lots to be learned. The kids are learning how to offer help and find places where their help is needed and appreciated, without being directed.

We also have the gardening/environmental club where we do everything co-operatively and democratically. We've built a productive organic vegetable garden from scratch and taken on a number of community service and environmental advocacy / education / facilitation projects.

The kids exist on the fringes of a number of volunteer activities that I'm involved in, and often participate in those activities themselves. For instance, I'm involved in organizing music summer school and my kids have sat in on meetings, watching how problem-solving happens, how budgets are fleshed out, and so on. And they've helped the program take shape by working with me on the tasks I've been delegated, whether by talking to someone about the use of a facility or creating an enrichment activity or laminating nametags or analyzing enrollment data and identifying trends.

The kids are also involved in our community soccer league so they get the more traditional sports team experience that way. This year we also participated with a group of families putting together a series of radio documentaries about homeschooling and how it allows families to follow their passions. While each family or pair of families put together one or more shows on their own, we all had to collaborate with each other on technical aspects, intro and outro scripts, theme music, getting oriented to the studio and learning from and with each other about the audio-editing software we were using. Our family did two shows on our own, and one collaborating with another family from the gardening/environmental club. All were aired on the region's co-op radio station, and the series then evolved into a fundraising project for the radio station.

So for my kids, involvement in family life and in our community is giving plenty of opportunity to work as part of a team, with absolutely no need for school-style "teamwork projects".

My Chick-Pea

Lately we've been making a lot of hummus and falafel, so putting dried chick-peas out to soak overnight is a regular occurence here. I've decided that Noah is like a chick pea. He needs to be soaked overnight.

Three weeks ago I had received information about a summer Soccer Camp in Nakusp for kids 9-12. Two hours every morning for five days. Noah is a soccer dynamo, and Erin has improved greatly this year and is very keen on soccer as well, so I presented the possibility to them. Erin was keen. Noah said no outright. Erin got angry at Noah, knowing we wouldn't be driving four kids 75 minutes round-trip five days in a row if only one of them was doing the camp. Noah cried.

A few days later someone mentioned Soccer Camp again and Noah said "Oh yeah, I want to do it!" I asked him where the change of heart had come from. He said "I'd changed my mind by that night. I don't know why."

I thought of the chick-pea analogy. "You know," I said, "We all need to remember that you're a bit like a dried chick-pea, and you just need the chance to soak in an idea for a while before there's any point in asking you how you feel about it. We'd avoid a lot of heartache that way, I think."

I'm sure that whatever facet of his character makes him a chick-pea when it comes to embracing new activities is the same thing that gives him such a tough time with transitions. It's the thing that keeps him sitting at the computer all day, which leads to him later complaining that "we never do anything fun!" It's the same thing that makes him say "Naw..." when I offer almost any activity or project or excursion.

I'm putting some energy lately into building some one-on-one connections with Noah. It takes time and patience and fair warning (and often an overnight soak) but he seems a happier boy for it. I'm reading some non-fiction aloud to him ... chemistry and geography (navigation) and we're exploring those areas together with some projects. We're doing some math together again on a regular basis ... at times I'm not already working with the girls. With phenomenal fortitude and resistence-to-mounting-frustration, he mastered the concept and mechanics of equivalent fractions and reducing fractions to their simplest form in the course of one 45-minute math session. He has a penchant for shutting down completely when he has to work at something, and I kept expecting him to burst into tears when my explanations moved too fast or came from the wrong direction for him. But for some reason he was able to keep himself trying, and gradually it made sense. I think he managed because he and I have a really good relationship right now, and because, as I said, he is a happier boy. He wanted to "get it" and wanted to please me, and felt confident and optimistic enough to push himself until it clicked. We followed up the next night with a card game to review the concepts we'd worked on the previous night, and he was really pleased with how well-learned everything was.

Today the chick pea and I have built a distillation apparatus together. We are distilling fresh clean water out of the mucky soup of sugar, salt, food colouring and coffee grounds we created. This science-related stuff feels to him like his domain, separate from the sorts of things the girls are pursuing, so it's a great place for us to connect, where he can explore his interests without comparing himself to his sisters. I hope we can keep this up.