Children Don’t Have to Be Coerced To Learn

Frequently when other parents find out I’m homeschooling (because I don’t advertise it) and the topic comes up in conversation (because they ask me questions, not because I’m a homeschooling evangelist), they say things like:

“Oh, I could never do that.”

To which I reply,

“It’s really not as hard as you think.”

You see, I really don’t like sparking people’s defensiveness, and homeschooling, along with homebirthing, is one of those topics that seems to bring out an emotional reactiveness in people. That’s why I don’t tell people either item unless they ask.

But they usually keep talking, again – to defend themselves. And they say things like:

“Little Johnny would just fight me. I tried to teach him once and he just fought with me. He does much better with the teacher.”

I’m not denying what these parents experience. It’s pretty typical kid behavior – they behave better for strangers or other people than they do for us. But the fact that they do kind of tells you that inside, they are afraid. The reason they behave better for strangers is because they don’t know exactly where they stand. With us parents, they are sure of our love for them and therefore they know which boundaries to push and how far to push.

So they push.

But I’m getting off the point here. What I wanted to say is that, in my heart of hearts, what I really want to say to these parents, but I don’t say because again, I don’t want them to get defensive, is this:

When you back off, your kids will stop fighting you about learning. Kids do not have to be coerced to learn.

In fact you cannot STOP them from learning.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

This morning I was resting in bed at about 9:30. I had been awake since 6:30 and had cleaned up after breakfast, had a workout and a shower and was a little sore from yesterday’s workout, and so was sitting on my bed for a bit.

I’m usually a bit tired on Mondays after the busy weekend, and had not begun on any schoolwork with the kids yet. I was thinking of the errands I had to run later, and a coaching client who needed my attention, and how I was going to orchestrate my day .

Sadie joined me for a little snuggling. And I picked up my Crackberry to check messages. During this time I was suddenly struck by what my kids were doing. I even told my Twitter friends about it.

My 7 year old had come to me with a Lego structure he had created. He spends a few hours a day playing Legos. It’s probably his favorite activity. He will quietly come up with complicated Lego structures (not the kind with instructions, stuff he’s envisioned in his mind), usually rockets, airplanes, helicopters… he’s into aircraft and space.

I have no idea how this child makes these creations. I couldn’t recreate them for all the tea in China. And all this “child’s play” (really hate how that expression has come to mean a worthless activity, when we know that play is so very important!) has taught him principles of math – things like percentages and fractions, stuff we have barely begin to cover yet in 2nd grade. But he already understands it.

He came to me to show off his latest thing, a space shuttle complete with rocket boosters that fall away to earth after it takes off, a compartment (with windows all around) for the astronauts, fuel tank, a tether that attaches to the astronauts for their moon walks, etc. He couldn’t get the design quite right and expressed a little frustration (he might spend hours getting it just right), which led into a discussion about Thomas Edison, the biggest fail-er and also holder of 1,638 patents. (That put a smile on his face.)

My oldest had been outside for a nature walk or whatever he was doing, and found a large feather. He came inside and showed me, convinced it belonged to an Archaeopteryx or just maybe, a hawk.

So he grabbed a big book on dinosaurs we had on the bookshelf and started reading it. Dissatisfied with that, he got online and started searching for pictures of Archaeopteryx features to compare his find to.

After he was satisfied, he headed for the couch and picked up his current read, a chapter book about Electricity and Magnetism.

No worries about homeschool science for the day.

And my 5 year old had been “reading” American Girl books to her baby dolls. She kept asking me over and over what the girl’s name was. “Felicity“, I said. She will sit and tell me, her Grandmother, her baby dolls, whoever will listen stories she has made up and “written” in her book. (Looks like a lot of I’s, O’s, S’s and other letters she knows how to write well. Ask her to read her story to you and she will – hope you have the next 20 minutes free!)

Children love to learn and crave to learn. Just as they learn how to breathe after exiting the womb, learn how to breastfeed, learn how to crawl, learn how to walk, learn how to talk, etc.

The longer I go in this homeschooling journey the more convinced I become that my primary job is to create an environment conducive to learning, limit time sucks like Television and video games, be available to answer questions, point them to resources and helpers, set an example of lifelong learning, and then…

Get the Heck Out of the Way

The longer I go in this homeschooling journey, the less I concern myself with someone else’s timetables. I couldn’t care less whether my kids are “keeping up” with their peers in school.

The other day someone sent me a message asking me if I was worried that my kids were keeping up with their schooled peers. He was an older gentleman, and I couldn’t help but ask myself, “I wonder if he’s worried about keeping up with other 60 year olds?”

I don’t mean to sound mean, but there was a misspelling in his message and I chuckled to myself that he wasn’t “keeping up” with me in the spelling department and I’m half his age.

My kids are probably “behind” their peers in some things, and “ahead” of them in others. That doesn’t concern me. Their education is not a race. Besides, how they are educated is almost irrelevant in that conversation because the same phenomenon exists in school.

There is another problem behind this idea that children have to be forced to learn. I think that behind some of that fear is the belief that children are lazy.

I don’t believe that. Just because they don’t always want to do what we want them to do does not make them lazy.

It makes them people with minds of their own.

I’ve seen my kids work very hard, to the point of exhaustion, on something that is important to them.

Right after the dinosaur feather research was done, oldest decided of his own volition that the backyard needed tidying up. So, he rallied the troops (his brother and sister) and with trash bags in hand, headed outside to pick up paper and other trash.

(Am I lazy because I saw no need to clean up the backyard? When I will often stay up until 2 am to work so I can take care of my kids?)

I’ll give you an example of what I mean by backing off and trusting kids to learn.

I’ve mentioned before that my 7 year old struggles with reading. It tires him out completely to read, and he doesn’t seem to enjoy it very much. Unlike my other kids, he never brought me a book and asked me to read it to him.

I can tell this makes other people a bit nervous, but I am not worried about it. I was at one point, though. I have to admit. I’m a big reader and reading is so important to me.

But after seeing his anxiety and stress about it, I realized I was going to make him hate reading if I pushed him. So I backed off.

The last time we went to the library, I showed him where the books were about space, astronomy, astronauts, planes, etc. He picked out several and we took them home. In the past few days, for the first time he has been asking me to read these books to him, and when I finish one, he complains that it was too short.

Today I had him do a little reading and phonics work, and he was not at all resistant about it – probably because I decided to relax. He’ll learn to read well alright, when it’s important to him, and when he realizes that he needs to be able to read well in order to learn the cool stuff he wants to learn (like how to build solar panels, something he’s fascinated by).

And it will happen on his timetable, not mine.

Can you tell I’m reading John Holt again?