Excitement in the house today – first snow day of the year!
Shortly after I was married, my husband and I moved to Brazil for six months and shortly after that I got EXTREMELY sick, one of those random sicknesses that nobody quite knew what to do about. I got worse and worse over a few months, had to sleep most of the day, was irritable, tired, grumpy, my hair was all falling out in clumps – it was a mess.
I was finally recommended to Dr. Joao, a Brazilian/non-English-speaking/homeopathic/herbal/iridology/Bach flower remedy/naturopathic doctor, who literally took one look at me and said, “None of your health problems are going to go away until you learn to let go of control.” At which I burst into tears, nodding in consent.
Through my rudimentary Portuguese, drawings, hand gestures, and a variety of Bach flower and homeopathic prescriptions, I was 99% healed within two weeks. A leaf from an Aloe Vera plant was one of my remedies, which I was to open up and rub on my hair and then wash it out right away. After three days of that, my hair stopped falling out. All of my family talk about Dr. Joao with a special reverence for we have never since encountered such a healer.
I was reminded of Dr. Joao this fall and something told me to look up the Bach flower remedies, which are homeopathic remedies that specialize in emotions, for some of my own anger issues that I was having. A brief read through www.bachflower.com led me to pick up Cherry Plum for myself which they describe as: For those who fear losing control of their thoughts and actions and doing things they know are bad for them or which they consider wrong. Teaches trust in one’s spontaneous wisdom and the courage to follow one’s path.
It worked instantly and amazingly well.
Last week we came home from our vacation to a leaking hot water tank, no hot water for several days, phone calls, endless repair men, problems in our attic, requiring us to remove most of our storage items from there, room changing, and recovery from the vacation of too much travel, too much TV, and too much sugar. In other words, STRESS.
Children pick up on our stress and mirror it in various ways. If you want to know how you are feeling, just look at your child – they are your mirror.
My daughter’s frustration peaked from our stress and was so intense that I could not leave her in a room with any other child or she would hurt them somehow. I was quite on the edge of insanity myself, until I remembered again about the Bach Flower remedies and looked through the “Children” section on their website, which had a brilliant diagnosis for her with a remedy called Beech.
Beech: This Essence is for those who are constantly making criticism, intolerant of other people’s shortcoming and unable to make allowances. They are easily irritated by other people’s mannerisms and habits. They are convinced that they are always in the right and everyone else in the wrong. Beech helps you to be more tolerant and to get a sense of compassion for unity with others, such as co-workers, mother-in-law and your noisy neighbor. Beech helps you to see the good in others despite their imperfections.
I have watched the frustration in my daughter melt away like ice cream on hot day with this remedy. It feels like magic and I am intensely grateful.
A few treasures from a winter farmer’s market in Vancouver last week.
We have a huge white board on the side of our fridge which I usually use for our grocery shopping list and reminders of things to do.
The last week, Isabela has started leaving me messages on the board, changing them up a few times a day and adding to the grocery list things like: donuts, candy canes, dried cranberries, and Ritz soccer ball crackers, along with various exclamations points and PLEASE!!!!! written everywhere.
The primary conversation, however, revolved around donuts.
“Donuts,” it read at first, seemingly passive and part of the shopping list. She then changed it to:
“Donuts!” on the bottom right corner, followed by:
“Donuts! Now!” and then:
“Donuts! Now! Or else!” followed by:
“Donuts. Please! Pretty, please!” and then this:
Which was followed by various written explanations and arrows later on, explaining that our house was on the top of the hill, and the person was sliding down the hill on a sled to get to the donut shop on the right hand side.
Just by chance the other day we were walking out of the dentist office, after Isabela had a particularly unpleasant cavity filling, and passed by a donut shop. Well, sugar is not going to prevent the cavities, but I bought them some donuts none the less after a week of donut messages on the white board.
I woke up to this this message yesterday and it made me smile:
That’s Isabela and I holding a cup of hot chocolate at the coffee shop. The stars and moon are out because it’s night time. It’s a little preview of what is to come tonight – a special mother-daughter outing for hot chocolate at night.
I’ve had a sense this last fall that my 8 year old daughter has not been thriving. Academically she is doing very well, she reads at least 3-8 hours a day, depending on how many new books we have from the library, she has figured out on her own how to do most addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in her head, she can bake a cake with her eyes closed; however, there has recently been a lot more foul language, more violence and she triggers into aggression very easily. These are the signs to me that something is amiss and I have been trying to sort it out.
I watched one of Gordon Neufeld’s latest DVD‘s recently called, Making Sense of Aggression, and he described how aggression always stems from thwarted proximity. They are trying to get close to someone or something and cannot, so they get frustrated and they lash out. I can see this so clearly and yet it’s been difficult to find one on one time for one child when there are two others demanding constant attention, but after some consultation last week with some very wise mothers that I know, I realized that it is time to start this ritual on a regular basis now for my children.
So off for hot chocolate we go tonight!
Ok, so technically they’re smoothy mustaches, but same difference, really.
And here is an update of the two baby girls – Fiona recently turned three and her baby cousin, Ruhiyya, who lives downstairs and who is still most affectionately called Baby Muffy, is now seven months old and crawling up a storm.
We have recently found several Smurf books at the library – graphic novel style – that have been published in the last year. Smurfs are apparently making a comeback. These mushrooms look like a good home from them.
I found so many vibrant and unusual mushrooms when I was on Bowen Island. In Spain there is an annual mushroom hunt that everyone partakes of, so everybody knows all the common and latin names of every kind of mushroom that grows. I, unfortunately, do not.
Does anyone know the names of these mushrooms?
If my house were a bathtub
it would always be filled to the brim
with deliciously hot water.
Warm and relaxed,
I would float on my back
and look up at the stars.
My ears would fill with water,
dulling out the sharp sounds.
Calm. Quiet. Silence.
If my house were a bathtub
I would bring in the dirt
just to wash it away.
I would be free from heavy roles and expectations.
The weight of the world on my shoulders
would slip down the drain.
I would be as light as a feather
and as free as a duck -
to float, swim or fly.
I would be free to be me.
Free to be who I am meant to be.
If my house were a bathtub.
********************************
This is the third out of four black and white watercolor paintings that I made as a way to work through my self-proclaimed “host-aholic” issues. The first painting is “Mama Bear”, the second is “If My House Were a Couch”, this is the third and the fourth is, “If My House Were a Campfire.”
I am in love with baths, particularly on the cold, winter nights. They relax me completely and leave me feeling rested and rejuvenated. That is the feeling that I want to have after hosting people in my home, so I thought that a bathtub would be a great metaphor. An no, unfortunately, that is not my bathtub, though one can always dream….
I am a big fan of color saturated photography, in case you hadn’t noticed, especially nature shots that burst out with all the colors of the rainbow like these pink autumn leaves.
This was another one from my hike around Killarney Lake on Bowen Island.
I took over 2000 photos during my afternoon hikes on Bowen Island and have slowly whittled it down to just over 100 of the best ones. I think this one is my favorite.
I was hiking around Killarney Lake and found this partially burned log with bright orange mushrooms growing inside. The blue and purple are the burned parts of the log, the red and brown is the still healthy tree trunk and the green is the moss growing along the side.
I spent four days on Bowen Island a few weeks ago, a small Island of about 3500 people that is filled with artists and about a 20 minute ferry ride away. It was my first trip in eight years without children and my first trip by myself since I was 21 years old and spent the year working, studying and traveling in Mexico.
That year in Mexico I was so confident and adventurous that it seeped from my pours. When I came back from Mexico I met Chris and a year later we were married. A few years after that we started having children and without forewarning, the instant I got pregnant my adventurous spirit vanished into thin air.
Losing a sense of adventurousness is a biological necessity that happens so instinctively to mothers that we hardly realize that it even happened. It is nature’s way of protecting the fragile new life that is growing inside of us. Suddenly we shun anything dangerous, violent or adventurous, even if we formerly loved it, and find ourselves doing ridiculously irrational things like buying and moving into a new, unaffordable house, needing to paint and redecorate the entire house, and stocking up on baby supplies as if we were in war times and about to give birth to quintuplets. It’s amazing that husbands put up with us through it all because pregnancy and nesting make us go crazy.
And so I blame chemistry and biology for my loss of adventurousness over these last eight years.
Last summer Chris and I went for a walk one night and said, “I have something I need to tell you.” Oh, crap. That’s the usual introduction for something bad that he needs to tell me.
“Spit it out,” I said. “Just tell me already, I hate the suspense.”
“I have to go on a long work trip in the fall to Spain.”
And then I laughed. “That’s it? Just a work trip? I thought it was going to be something really bad!”
“But it is really bad,” he said, “I have to be away for two and half weeks.”
We had never been apart for that long and definitely not after having kids. The first year and a half after Fiona was born I sucked up my courage and asked him to not go on any work trips. I knew that I would not survive.
As a side note to all of you amazing single mothers and those mothers whose husbands travel often. Wow. You are amazing. I called up a friend whose husband travels 3 weeks out of the month to ask her, “Just how do you do that? What do you do to survive?”
And she said, “Sometimes it’s easier with the husband away. We love and miss them, but when they are away we can make our own routines and do things how we want to.”
It’s sounds funny, but I actually found it to be quite true. I drastically simplified our life, we had eggs and toast or cereal for several dinners, ate dinner at 4:30pm and got ready for bed at 5:30pm so that I could have enough time for stories and hugs, we didn’t go anywhere or do anything that we didn’t absolutely have to, we spent many hours doing puzzles and board games, and I didn’t clean the house except for the first day after he left when I became an irrationally obsessive house cleaner and then got into a HUGE fight with Isabela that night and realized that I needed to be more playful and forget the cleaning if I was to survive the time.
When Chris first brought up his Spain trip, he suggested that maybe I would like to go away somewhere when he got back, to which I completely irrationally and vehemently rejected. Why did I do that? This is where I blame biology again. I was still nursing Fiona, only a little bit, but enough to have my hormones and brain messed with.
A month later I weaned Fiona and a few weeks after that I suddenly wanted to go away on trip, somewhere by myself, like Chris had previously suggested to me. You see how quickly I was able to become adventurous again, once I was no longer physically connected to a child? I had spent eight and a half years either pregnant or breastfeeding and once that phase of my life finished, a light switch turned back on, or rather, certain hormones got turned off, and suddenly I wanted to be adventurous again. Just like that.
I spent four days on Bowen Island, hoping to sleep in, but of course up with the sun at 6:30am like every other day, running, then painting all morning and hiking with my camera all afternoon. It takes about 10 minutes to drive from one side of Bowen Island to the other, driving a maximum speed of 40 km/hr (25 m/hr), and the whole island is crisscrossed with hundreds of hiking trails and huge nature and ecological reserves.
It was beautiful, peaceful and best of all, it was quiet.
I bought two amazing paintings when I was there, the one above by David Graff who is a gilt artist, meaning he paints on gold leaf bringing incredible luminosity to his work.
And the one below, by Karen Watson.
Twelve years ago, shortly after Chris and I got married, we moved to Brazil to volunteer at an international Baha’i school that my parents had been working at for several years. It was a tough year, as the first year of marriage is for anyone, and the work was hard. The days felt long. My health was terrible. I hated my marriage. I was teaching a class of crazy third graders. I had a lot of dark spots.
My sister was also living and working there and at the end of a terrible day we’d all be sitting around the dinner table and she started a new family tradition to get us out of our melancholic depression: Bright Spots. Everyone had to think of one thing that they were grateful for, a highlight from the day, a *Bright Spot*, and we’d share it with each other. A lot of times the only thing that we could say was, “My bright spot is this dinner tonight.”
We’ve continued the Bright Spots tradition within our own families at dinner time, and recently I’ve also added the addition of Dark Spots to the conversation as a way of bringing up and discussing the difficult times during the day. Mealtimes are a natural time for attachment and connection, in fact, we only feel comfortable eating close to those who we are most attached to.
So here is my Dark Spot for today:
1. In a few days, Chris leaves for Spain for two and half weeks for work. I know. Spain! I don’t mind so much when he goes to Denver or Milwaukee because, who wants to go there? But Spain. Oh, Spain.
And now to my Bright Spot:
1. When Chris comes home from Spain, he is taking the week off to watch the kids and I am going on a four day trip by myself to Bowen Island, a 15 minute ferry ride away. This will be my first time in 8 years that I will be on a trip by myself – without children. I will sleep in every morning, go for a run, take a walk and take pictures, do some paintings and recharge. I am ecstatic.
Today is Canadian Thanksgiving.
What are you thankful for? What is your bright spot?
If my house were a couch
it would beckon those from far and near
to lay down their troubles and their fears
for here was a place of rest.
It would call out like a sparrow’s song,
Come, come. The night is long.
Be a candle and melt in to me.
If my house were a couch
it would be softer than a newborn’s cheek,
sturdier than a woodpecker’s beak
and smell of fresh cedar boughs.
It would never stain nor need a wash
not even from spaghetti sauce.
If my house were a couch
every nook would be a place of rest,
a book would lay upon on my chest
and time would almost stop.
I’d lean back with an iced fruit drink
and ignore the dirty kitchen sink.
My mind would be at peace, I think.
And just imagine, a child’s dream:
my whole house would be a trampoline.
A giggle would come from every bounce.
Laughter would shriek from every pounce.
If my house were a couch.
**********************************************************
This black and white watercolor painting is Number 2 in a series of paintings about hosting people at my home. The first painting was called, Mama Bear. The third and fourth are called, “If My House Were a Bathtub” and “If My House Were a Campfire.”
Just swingin’ in the rain…
Zimbabwean sculpture from Van Dusen Gardens.
I was asked last week, “What is the biggest challenge to homeschooling?”
Well, that’s pretty simple. That would be me. I am the biggest challenge to homeschooling. Me, myself and I.
In the first place, just deciding to do homeschooling was a huge battle against myself. I was looking forward to a time when all the kids would be away for part of the day, taken care of by someone else, so I could work and fill up myself in other ways.
Bit by bit as I pulled the tangles out of that knot I started to see that this time is short. No more that a blink of the eye in my life time. My ancestors live long lives and 20 years out of a life time of 100 years is just a blip on the map. In reality, I only have maybe 10 years left with my oldest daughter before she is finished high school and off on some great world adventure. I realized that if I can truly give her what she needs in these next ten years, she will become a strong, independent, creative, compassionate, loving person. And in these next ten years I can nurture her to become her true self, find her gifts and encourage them and help her to find her path in life.
I worked as a high school teacher before I decided to become a full-time, stay at home mother, mostly for the same reasons that I am describing here, and what I saw in the schools was a swarm of teenagers who were truly lost. They didn’t know themselves or have the courage to be who there were. They didn’t know what they’re own unique gifts and talents were or how to strengthen them. Even if they did know them, they were too afraid to show them. When they got to university they didn’t know what to study and switched majors every year. Those that were focused on a career path leaned heavily on the pressure of their parents. By the time they graduated and started working they realized that they didn’t like the job they had spent the last 4-12 years of university working toward.
I don’t want to my children to be lost.
But, back to me. The other greatest challenge is wondering, Am I doing the right thing? Am I screwing up my children even worse by teaching them at home? Are they falling behind? Am I doing enough with them? Am I doing the right thing with them? Are we using the right curriculum? The right method?
There are so many fears and worries in the beginning – most of them are alleviated by research and by time. Just seeing that yes, in fact, my daughter will learn to read in spite of the teacher’s worries that she was falling behind. No, there is no such thing as falling behind. Every person has their own unique blueprint. Curricula and methods work for some and not for others. I just have be patient and try different things.
I see that my children are thriving in this environment when they were shriveling in school, so I know that it is the right thing. But I still worry sometimes…
I also see that as my two year old approaches the three year old age, things are easier. We can all do similar things together. I have energy and drive to paint and to find bits of time to do my own work. I know that it will get easier and I will have more and more time to do this, even though they are at home with me. We can all work together.
My 3 year old nephew, Will and my almost 3 year old daughter, Fiona.
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackberries baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened our mouths began to sing,
Oh, wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king.
The king was in a bath of berries, counting out his money.
The queen was eating raspberries, sweeter than honey.
The maid was in the garden, washing berries from the clothes,
When down came a blackberry and landed on her nose!
School officially started yesterday for everyone else. We’re starting up our second year of homeschooling, with Diego starting Kingergarten and Isabela in Grade 3.
But really, things don’t change much around here, once “school starts,” and I feel like I’ve walked just won a lottery ticket.
No ridiculously early and stressful mornings, trying to get three kids dressed, fed, lunches made and somewhere, somewhat on time.
No six hour temper tantrums after school.
No ridiculous, time consuming, irrelevant homework.
Instead we read books, learn about interesting things, visit parks and gardens, like the first photo above, where my children spend hours learning the names of plants and taking photos of them. We go hiking, swimming, ice skating and to the farm. We learn through play.
Of course, I do make them do a few things they don’t like, such as get dressed in the morning, brush their teeth, and do a little bit of handwriting or alphabet practice.
But overall, my impression is that learning can in fact be fun.
To market, to market to buy a wallet.
Home again, home again, jiggidy jig.
Good price, good price. Only for you!
Made by hand, made by hand. Will you buy two?
To market, to market to buy a wallet.
Home again, home again, jiggidy jig.
I’m really getting into these black borders behind the photos.
Here’s what I do to get it to look like that.
1. Open up the photo on Photoshop.
2. Open up a new file – make the size a little larger than the original photo (at the top under File).
3. Color the new file black with the Paintbucket Tool (make sure to set the color on the bottom to black).
4. Drag the original photo on top of the black file with the Move Tool.
5. Crop the image so that the black border is even around the photo with the Crop Tool.
6. Save.
Up in the air -
it’s cold up there -
up where the birds fly.
Up in the air -
say a little prayer -
hope that we don’t die.
Up in the air -
good food is rare -
movies, my only ally.
Up in the air -
are we there? Are we there?
Goodbye, cramped seats, goodbye!
Oh, how I love that color.
This is from a monument at the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, one of my favorite photography spots in Vancouver.
Before:
After:
During:
Lunch time.
“Where are Fiona and Will?” I ask after a while.
“I think they went to the front yard,” says Juliet.
UH OH.
“Fiona! Will! Put the paint brushes down! RIGHT NOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Too late.
They painted the house. Painted the hockey sticks. Painted the grass. And then painted each other.
“I love you, Baby Bear,” said Mama Bear with a great big kiss.
“I love you too, Mama Bear,“ said Baby Bear, reaching up on her tippy toes and planting a sloppy wet kiss all over her Mama.
_______________________________
When I was in university, I spent my summers in giant clearcuts in the middle of nowhere planting trees. It was grueling work because we were paid per tree, so the more trees we planted, the more money we made. Some days it snowed and it felt like a thousand knives pounding into my torn fingers each time they entered the frozen earth to plant a tree. Some days it rained and rained and I thought I might catch hypothermia. Other days the sun breathed fire with each breath and the black flies encircled me like a tornado, covering the sky, and hungry like a vampire, they left me dripping in blood.
One day I was out on a piece of land that was particularly isolated, minding my own business, planting away, when I looked up and there in front of me stood a black bear. Bears are common in Canada and the advice that we always hear growing up is to make a lot of noise and they will get scared and leave. So I started to sing at the top of lungs. Wrong thing to do.
The singing piqued the bear’s curiosity. It stood up on it’s hind legs, cocked it’s head, and then came walking closer to me.
By this time my heart was pounding like a drum, I was sweating and panicking, and I dropped my treeplanting bags, backed away as fast as I could, made it behind a giant rock and then sprinted for 15 minutes to GET OUT OF THERE. When I finally caught up with my foreman and told him the story, he looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Oh, man. Nothing cool every happens to me!“
_______________________________
A few months ago, the black bear from my treeplanting days came back to visit me in a dream.
I dreamed that I was holding a huge black garbage bag full of my clothes. I looked up and saw the big black bear coming toward me so I dropped the bag of clothes to distract the bear and then tried to sneak away as quickly as I could. The bear got distracted by the bag for a few seconds – sniffed and pawed it – and then started quickly following me again. I was so scared but I decided to “play dead” to see if the bear would ignore me by curling up on the ground and being really still. The bear came over and sniffed me and then curled up on top of me – squishing me – and didn’t get off.
Right after that I dreamed that I had a huge group of guests over for dinner, but they were rude and I had no food to cook for them. I felt like I had to host them and had a dread of them being there for hours, waiting and waiting for me to give them a fancy dinner. And I had nothing to make it with.
My father, who is a published expert in dream interpretations, told me that the purpose of these dreams is to help me overcome what we have nicknamed in our family as the host-aholic syndrome – that slightly crazy obsession about putting on a good show and taking care of everyone except ourselves in order to be a good host – something we have inherited from a long line of ancestors. He said:
“The first dream is about your own strength and empowerment, whereas the second dream gives you the source of your dis-empowerment. Empowerment is the process of remembering your amazing strengths and then using them for the betterment of the world. The bear in the dream is a symbol of your own fear of people who take away other people’s empowerment.
The goal of the dream is to be empowered by being like a positive strong bear. Bearness resides in the positive past not in the future or present. It is about remembering your strengths and then feeling them inside yourself.
In order to get to the positive memories of the past, you need to overcome the negative memories that squish you and make you play dead.
The answer for overcoming the negative memories lies in the guilt you feel in the second dream. Guilt is the emotion that others put on you so that they can take you in the direction that they want you to go. You end up living their lives instead of your own. When you are a bear, you can take your own path.”
(By the way, he does free dream interpretations on his blog: http://dreamsforpeace.wordpress.com.)
______________________________
I decided to do a series of paintings to help me work through my host-aholic guilt issues and transform them into positive visual affirmations. This is the first painting that I did in this series – a confident, calm, loving Mother Bear. That’s who I want to be.
A few years ago I laid down a travel ban for my family.
“NO MORE TRIPS!“ I decided. “I’M TIRED!“
I was tired. Tired of not sleeping. Tired of being grumpy. Tired of working for weeks on end to get my children back to nap and sleep routines when we came back from trips.
It felt like it would never end, but somehow I survived those 2190 sleepless nights, started sleeping through the night, and then felt like myself again.
So I lifted the travel ban.
We almost went to Venezuela, but that didn’t work out, so at the last minute we decided to go to Cancun, Mexico.
It was our first time at an all-inclusive resort. Before we had kids, we couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever want to go to a place like that. Then we had three children. And we understood.
What we were not expecting was that it would feel like a week-long party – TOO MUCH good food. TOO MANY people. TOO MUCH loud music. TOO MANY late nights. TOO MUCH swimming. TOO MANY sunburns. TOO MANY excesses led to us all get terribly sick when we got home with the flu and colds.
But now that we’re all recovered, two weeks later, I look back at these photos with fond nostalgia.
Thirteen years ago, at a barbecue, Chris and I first met.
Chris had just spent the summer in Africa where he was given a remarkably bad haircut by a barber nicknamed Jack the Ripper who watched a soccer game the entire time he was cutting his hair.
I had spent a year in Mexico with one too many disgusting pick-up lines hurled at my back as I walked through the streets. When I found out that Chris grew up in Venezuela, I immediately dismissed him thinking, “Oh, great. Another slimy Latino man.”
After Mexico I spent the summer in the bush planting trees and when Chris first met me, he immediately dismissed me thinking, “Oh, great. Another dirty hippy.”
We were not off to a good start.
But then fate intervened.
I found out that Chris had nothing to do for a few weeks and that he was staying a few blocks away from where I was moving to. I boldly asked him if he would help me move.
He said, “Sure.”
On the day of the move all of the people who were going to help me called that morning and canceled. Except Chris.
And the rest is history.
13 years later
4380 days together
We’ve just completed our first year of homeschooling and it was a whole lot easier than I thought it would be. Relaxing, in fact. Refreshing. Rejuvinating. If nothing else, just the elimination of the stress, anger, violence and the 4 hour daily meltdowns after school made this whole homeschooling journey worthwhile.
SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING
But it has been so much more than that. It has been enlightening and inspiring to watch my children develop and see their innate gifts blossom. We follow a method of homeschooling called Self-Directed Learning, where I carefully observe my children’s gifts, interests and questions and then I find books, stories, people, experiences or programs to help them to develop those areas. Everyday they ask me questions I cannot answer, so I jot them down in a notebook and then look them up over the next week online or at the library. I have been learning so much and it surprises me how little I remember from my own schooling days and how most of the information I learned was irrelevant and not applicable to daily life.
My children have wanted to learn all about the weather: how to read the weather, predict weather, what the different clouds are called and what they mean, why some clouds rain and others don’t, how the water cycle works. They have wanted to learn about the skin: how it heals us, how many layers of skin we have, how long it takes to heal each layer of skin, the names of each layer of skin. They have wanted to learn about space: planets, stars, solar systems. They have wanted to learn about history, geography, science, math and literacy – and all of their own initiative. Children want to know and understand about the world around them. They crave knowledge.
Sometimes it took me while to figure out exactly what they are asking and what it is they wanted to learn. For example, Isabela asked me several times, “What is this plant made of? How would I make it myself? What is in it?” and later she asked me again, as we were crying together, chopping some particularly juicy onions, “What is this onion skin made of? Why is it different than the onion? How did it get that way?” And finally my brain realized, “Aha! She wants to learn about the elements. She wants to study chemistry!” So we bought an incredible app for the iPad called The Elements: A Visual Exploration.
I swear, if I had learned chemistry this way, I wouldn’t have suffered so terribly and I would have remembered it all effortlessly.
All of the studying I have been doing about brain development and how we learn says than when we are curious about something, and we learn the answers to our questions, we will never forget them. This is why I don’t remember what I learned when I was in school: I was never particularly curious or interested in what I was learning. It was dictated by someone else.
Combined with Self-Directed Learning, we are also following the advice of the Baha’i Writings on education, nothing formal, but simply what I have gleaned from my own study, particularly from a compilation called Baha’i Education. Abdu’l-Baha describes how children should master the art of reading and writing, then study translation, then acquire a basic knowledge of all of the various subjects, and then study in depth according to what each individual’s gifts and inclinations are.
THE YEAR OF READING
So this first year of homeschooling, my goal was to help my daughter master the art of reading and writing. Last year when she was in school, her teacher talked to me several times encouraging me to put her in Summer Reading School. Eight hours a day of reading for a 6 year old just so that she could catch up to her grade level. This is not how our brain develops.
All of the latest research shows that our brain needs rest in order to be able to learn. Except in extremely poor or abusive homes, children come back to school smarter than they left after a long rest during summer vacation. In fact, according to recent research, all it takes for a child to learn how to read is to have one book in their house. We are pre-programmed to crave knowledge and we are smart enough to figure it out all on our own, given the time and space to do it. We each have an internal clock, different from every other person, that tells us when we are ready to learn something. Like an anxious mother, whose baby has not yet learned to crawl, it would be absurd to think about forcing our baby to learn to crawl before she is ready. We are in such a hurry for our children to become adults that we think we can force them to read, like forcing a baby to crawl, before they are ready. But once they are ready, BLING!, a light switch turns on and they charge forward with determination, understanding and JOY.
This truly has been the year of reading for Isabela. I started doing short daily alphabet practice, then phonics and sight words and then short books practice with Isabela from the time she first expressed interest in reading, which was the week she turned six. We continued this once we started homeschooling, but it was still a struggle for her, it did not yet flow easily and naturally. Suddenly, half way through the year, something turned on in her brain and reading became easy. She poured through books and devoured them like a starving bear, fresh from hibernation.
We quickly outgrew and out-read our local library and started to head downtown to the 9 story, 1.5 million books central library. The first time we went there and the elevator doors opened up, the kids looked up with stunned jaws exclaiming, “Wow! WOW! WOW!“
Photo credit: waymarking.com
We go there every week or two and come home with three giant bags filled with books – usually about 70-80 books – and Isabela has usually finished reading them after about 4 days.
Last fall I was having a lot of anxiety about how to read books altogether – every time we would sit down to read, Fiona would get fidgety and screamy, jumping up and down all over me, quite effectively halting the reading time together. I finally realized – sometimes it takes me a while – that the books we were reading were far too advanced for her, mostly novels, and she couldn’t follow along, even if she wanted to. I made a rule that during our morning stories time, only picture books were allowed, and the screaming magically disappeared.
SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE
While Isabela has been mastering the art of reading this year, Diego has been honing in on his spatial intelligence skills. Spatial intelligence is being able to see everything in 3D, as if there is map imprinted in your mind and you are never lost. Many of those with highly developed spatial intelligence go on to become architects, artists, mechanics, engineers, or city planners. The first thing Diego does when he wakes up is go directly to his lego and sit down, for hours on end, building and breaking, building and breaking, reading the ragged instructions over and over again, and building complex lego sets over and over again.
At one point, in the winter, Diego was obsessing over a new Lego set that he wanted. Instead of giving it to him, we printed out the instructions from lego.com for the exact set that he wanted and gave that to him as a present. “Here,” we said, “You can build it now.” And he set to work, for a month straight pouring through all of the lego boxes around the house, looking for the right pieces. And if he couldn’t find them we’d say, “Be flexible. See if you can find another piece that works.” And he would search and build, search and build. Build and rebuild. Break it apart so he could build it again.
After he had conquered those Lego instructions, his mind opened up and he begged us to learn how to play chess. I had never learned, so Chris taught them and a month later, Diego, my five year old, taught me how to play chess. In his tenderhearted way, he did not want me to lose because I was just learning, and four times he could have won the game, but purposely moved in a different direction so that I wouldn’t lose.
Diego is also a highly kinesthetic child. He is happiest when he is sweating, from full speed cardio intensity – exercise makes him giggle. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to give him enough cardio, but he needs it for his brain. He is calm, content and at peace when he has it and grumpy and screaming when he doesn’t. School is a nightmare for the kinesthetic child, who cannot think unless they are moving. Sitting down quietly for 8 hours a day would suck the life right out of him.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY
Having a two year old in the house while homeschooling is a great reminder not to get too serious with anything. That we need to play and have fun. I recently watched one of Gordon Neufeld’s newest videos called “Making Sense of Play,” and it blew my mind to learn that the only way we can develop the prefrontal cortex – the front part of our brain – which governs our ability to do work, mature, control our tempers and hold two conflicting ideas in our brains – is through play. Play is the only way to build this part of a child’s brain.
When Neufeld was working with adolescents in prison, he did brain scans on them and it showed their prefrontal cortex was the size of a four year old. They never matured past four years old. They never had a chance to play.
Fiona reminds us to play. A lot.
Photo credit: My neighbor, Jeff
TIME AND SPACE
Last year when I was contemplating homeschooling, one of the things that I feared the most was a loss of time and space to do my own work: art and writing. In the back of my mind I had always looked forward to a time when all of the children were at school so that I could have the day to work myself. But instead I have a whole new, not-what-I-expected, paradigm-shifting attitude toward my work. I do not need to be away from my children in order to do my work. With the elimination of the behavior stress, I have energy to run and paint everyday. My brain is bursting with creativity and when we have nap time/ quiet time during the day I am excited to do art.
And so, in summary, it’s been a great year.
Let’s see what next year brings.
