The Outer Limits

A few weeks ago, we participated in the Shabbos Project. Originally meant as a Shabbat to encourage your non-observant Jewish acquaintances to give Shabbos a try, it seems to have taken a life of its own and now turned into a communal Shabbos celebration of "We are here. We are keeping it. Yay us!" Ok, I will admit that there is good coming out from the sense of not doing it alone, but it leaves me wondering what is lacking.

Our shul held a communal lunch where members were encouraged to share their "Shabbos at the outer limits" stories. I had one come to mind and was prepared to share it. However, I have waited for a clarification that explained that stories are to be heard by the Rosh Kollel and he will give feedback on how appropriately one acted, given the circumstances.

The stories came pouring in: wine brought over on Shabbos, electronic appliances malfunctioning, fridge lights turning on, naughty babies unplugging essential components threatening to cause major damage, menorah fire... Each participant shared and Rosh Kollel nicely explained what was at stake and how it could have been solved halachically.

I found myself feeling glad that I did not go first, and then unable to share in this format because my story seemed a world away from the concerns being voiced. I also felt that my story was not a halachic shaila, but in some other category.

I am fifteen. I have been to the States for two years, attending a Jewish high school, learning about Judaism and observance. Now, finally, as originally promised, I am given a ticket to go back to Moldova and visit my parents whom I have not seen in those two years. I am excited because I have been very homesick. But I am also very nervous: in these two years I have decided to become observant. My parents can be simply described as atheists. Now, I am going back to post-Soviet Union country in the middle of the nineties. The globalization had not reached that far (yet), so there is no kosher packaged food, no paper goods. There is no Google, internet is in its infancy. And I am going back, determined to keep Shabbat and kashrut among my family that expects me to come back and be the same person that I was when I left two years ago. I am supposed to eat my grandma's cooking. I am supposed to milk those precious two months for every opportunity to be with my parents and do what they do, Shabbos and all its prohibitions getting in the way.

I fought a lot with my parents about shabbos, on kashrut, on beliefs, on observance, on being brainwashed, on tears that this is not what they signed up for. I kashered whatever silverware they had that was all metal. I cleaned all glass/pyrex containers and plates that they had. ( I felt terribly guilty for not toveling those dishes). I became a vegetarian because there was no kosher meat, short of going to the Chabad rabbi with your own live chicken and then plucking it yourself. Besides, it was easier, kashrut-wise, for everything to be dairy and parve. I brought four cans of tuna from the States and those cans were my way to honor Shabbat. The local rabbi told us that the baguette bread could be eaten, so I ate lots of bread, vegetables, pasta, milk and dairy.

I had a list of candle-lighting times, so I knew when to light the candles. I made havdalah based on when I saw three stars. Instead of the elevator, I used the back entrance to the apartment buidling with the stairs. It reeked of urine and worse and was pitch-black for the two flights of stairs.

And I stayed away from the always-booming TV that drew me in. I used the bathroom in the dark because someone always forgot to leave the light on, or turned it off not to waste electricity.

I made kiddush and hamotzi. I spent time with my long-suffering family that was far from the enjoyable shabbat seudah that comes to one's mind. We did not discuss Torah unless I was called upon to defend it, with my total of two years' of learning.

The truth is, nobody would have known whether I kept Shabbat and kashrut when I went back home or not. I sort of wonder whether the assumption was that I WILL NOT keep it and we will all be quiet about it, don't ask, don't tell sort of thing. But I knew that G-d will know, and I wanted to be pure before G-d.

Ironically, that same summer, I had a meeting with a senior rabbi who was in charge of the program that brought Russian Jews to study in America and Israel. I showed disobedience by refusing to be a pawn and to go to a new city that he picked for me to go. I wanted to stay in the same school and with the same community that gave me the fortitude to keep Shabbat by myself halfway across the world at the age of fifteen. He was not pleased, and he was going to punish me by withdrawing the funding to continue going to the same school. I wonder how he will be judged after 120 for abandoning a Shabbat-observant girl in Moldova to fend for herself... I wonder if he also thought that I was not keeping Shabbos.

Looking back, I don't know how I did it. I would not eat nowadays by the level of kashrut that I kept at that point. I don't think I knew enough to keep Shabbat 100%. But given the circumstances, I know that I gave it my best shot.

How could I bring this extreme situation to the judgment of Rosh Kollel? How could I share it publicly when the biggest emergency meant simply finding a non-Jew to turn something on or off, and aah, breathe in the spirit of Shabbat, make a good story about it?

I sometimes wonder why my outer limits always end up so far outside of everyone else's.

A day trip to Chattanooga aquarium

I had all the kids home with me last week. We were talking about different things to do and Chattanooga Aquarium came up. We have been there once, almost four years ago, and I have much fonder memories of it than of our local overpriced and super-commercialized aquarium.

So this morning I woke up (after the baby has been sleeping through the night for the past week) and when one of the boys asked whether we can drive to Chattanooga today, I said: "Why not?" And just like that, we had breakfast, packed up lunch and a diaper bag, and set out. By "we" I mean myself and five kids. My husband had to work. I joked with him how I really need to go to farmer's market and Costco this week, but I much rather drive to an aquarium two hours away that go through the store with my crew.

On the way there, we finished listening to "The Dragon Rider" by Cornelia Funke. We started on the way to and from the homeschool conference, but since we have to intersperse music for the younger kids, books on CDs take a while. 3 yo's new favorite CD is Frog Trouble by Sandra Boynton, another library find. At least Sandra Boynton CDs are not annoying when played frequently, something that I can't say about Raffi or Wiggles.

I brought an umbrella stroller for the baby, a backpack cooler with lunch for 12 yo to carry, and a diaper bag. When we got to Chattanooga, we had lunch first and then entered the first building of the aquarium. I kept on thinking about the gorilla incident and the angry chorus how animals should not be displayed. And then I saw how much my younger kids, 6 yo and 3 yo, who have not been to the zoo in the past year, or any other place with animal exposure, picked up from seeing live birds, fish, and mammals. How can one teach a 3 yo to be brave enough to plunge his hand into cold water and pet a stingray? How can I give my daughter the experience of discovery that stingray feels like jello and she can reach in and touch it? How can they learn what a butterfly walking across one's face feels like? How else my 3 yo will discover excitedly that penguins "fly" underwater? That he can use two fingers to feel the scales of a cornsnake?

We had a great time. Nobody ran off, nobody got lost, nobody cried. 3 yo even didn't have any accidents, and the baby stayed awake and relatively happy the whole time. And I kept thinking: this is what a good homeschooling day feels like. This is what I love doing with my wild and crazy bunch: drive them to a cool place, get all excited about it, see them get all excited, and watch as they ask each other about what they liked the most. 

Before we headed back, the kids asked about Ben and Jerry's corner store right next to the parking garage. I said that I will take a look at their prices. When you have five kids, getting everyone a scoop gets expensive very quickly, not to mention that we already spent money on gas and parking and admission (technically membership since I am planning to get there again). When I ducked into the store ( more accurately, as we spilled into the store) and I saw their prices, I felt ready to leave. Enter 12 yo, the rationalist: "If I split a cup with my brother, and sister splits a cup with 3 yo and you get a small cup for yourself, it is much cheaper than getting everyone a scoop". "Yes, we all all ready to share". Ok then, The older boys ordered their cup, but 3 yo, spoiled by getting his own (free) baby cone at local Bruster's was not inclined to share. So he dropped on the floor, kicking and screaming that he wants his own. The beauty of having so many kids is that it is no longer mortifying. I knew that either he will stop yelling soon and chooses to share, or he will continue yelling and I will take him outside the store without ice cream. Knowing this child, I was betting on the first. Sorry, patrons, but I had to pay for our treat. By the time I paid, he calmed down and chose to sit next to his sister.

We finished our scoops, got in the car, and drove back home.

May I be known as a mom with a messy house and without groceries, but the one who took her kids places that generated happiness.

It's all in your head

We went shoe shopping in Walmart yesterday. We really needed to go to Costco to buy shmura matzah, but Costco was closed, so we ended up in Walmart. 11 yo needed shabbos shoes, 9 yo needed sandals, 6 yo needed shabbos shoes and sandals, and 3 yo needed sandals, too. While there I decided to stop by the food aisles and stock up on  Pesach ingredients, such as salt, sugar and baking soda. We passed the coffee and tea aisle and I grabbed instant coffee and a box of Bigelow tea. There I saw a box of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea with chamomile. Since 9 yo likes tea (more the process of making tea and adding sugar and vanilla to it), I asked him whether he would like me to get for him some of this tea. I personally hate chamomile, so this is not something that I would be drinking. He said, yes, he would like it. We checked out.


This morning, while everyone was rushing and getting breakfast and getting underfoot, 9 yo took a long time to emerge from the bedroom. He resents Mondays like grownups do; and I am tired of being cheery about it. Once he got his breakfast, he asked about making his tea. I distractedly said yes. He said, as he was brewing it, that he might need another cup later on to calm down again. I was too busy trying to feed the baby, wipe snot off allergy-suffering 3 yo, and get some food into my system to pay much attention to what he was doing.

After breakfast, he davened and calmly prepares his chumash, same chumash that he threw a major fit over on Friday. He wrote down the words, politely asked me to help him with shorashim and asked to indicate which parts of speech he should be looking up. He did his chumash very smoothly and pleasantly. At the end he remarked how the tea is working and making him calm, almost sleepy.

I bit my tongue.

In the movie "Dumbo" the baby elephant cannot believe that he can fly unless he is holding onto a lucky feather. The feather is just a prop, but Dumbo does not believe in himself without an external crutch. Today, the tea was the crutch. The magical effect wore off right before lunch, when the violin lesson was cancelled and I asked boys to do some schoolwork on their own while I took a phone call. He had to do some math which required application of division. He knew how to do it, but he decided that they are asking him to do something else, something that he does not know how to do. Luckily, 11 yo stepped in and helped him, step-by-step. 9 yo rewarded his brother with a second cup of Sleepytime tea.


I don't want to knock the calming effects of chamomile, but I doubt that they are that pronounced. I also don't know how long the magic will keep on working. Please G-d, let it last at least the whole week.

2 year old goes to camp

2 yo is going to a backyard camp. This camp is run by a woman who has a playgroup in her house during the year for 2 year olds. I don't know how many years of experience she has, but she is a seasoned teacher, highly recommended in our neighborhood.

The first day of camp I did not do a good drop off. I scheduled to drop off 2 yo last, after his siblings, but, by that point, the baby was screaming hysterically, wanting to nurse, and I was running late. So I marched my little boy into a noisy room full of kids, dragging his bag of diapers and his backpack with lunch. The Morah (teacher) asked me the usual questions: what do you call him? And does he know any kids in the room? I quickly glanced around, did not see any familiar faces, told her that I have a crying baby waiting, and ran. Not a very good introduction to the new place, I am afraid, especially since we have not been to the house before.

When it was time to pick him up, I came on time, hoping to smooth out whatever did not go right in the morning. The Morah told me that he napped, and he did great. Then she asked me: does he go to school anywhere? I said: no. (She knows I homeschool). She expressed surprise and started telling me how he listened, was very comfortable, and played with the other kids. I said that he is with his older siblings all day long, playing and interacting, so he is used to it.

I did not make much of this, except for thanking G-d for an easy transition. I also chalked up some of this to flattery.

Yesterday, again, the Morah asked me whether I am sure he is not in any program. "He is such a sweet kid, so happy, so easy, just lies down for his nap without crying, talks, plays." I chuckled: does she think that I am hiding some great socialization program from her? Then I assured her that he is home with me, but we do get together with other homeschoolers and he does go to babysitting in shul on Shabbos.

I thought about it. This woman has seen many 2 year olds, and my child is not the easiest toddler on the block. I guess, when she gets 2 year olds who have not been to "school", they have hard time separating from their mothers or interacting with children who are not part of their family, so she expected a similar situation with my son. Also, there is this image of homeschool kids being isolated in their home, unhappy and unsocialized. I wonder whether we broke another stereotype here.

How did we get here? How is this child able to go into this intense situation, which could be anxiety-provoking, yet he is fine and happy?

Part of it is the personality. He is an outgoing boy, who is not shy or reserved, but he is not an exuberant extrovert. Part of it is the birth order: when you are the fourth, you are used to having many loud people around you. You have to speak up your mind to get things. You are used to running with the pack. Part of it is homeschooling, and hanging for many hours with kids of all different ages. We go to different places and I am not always on his tail, closely supervising every single step. Other mothers have watched my kid, brought him to me, gave him snacks, so he is used to having different people take care of his needs.

And part of it is parenting. Being the fourth child, 2 yo gets a good mix of parents who are too tired to micromanage, yet who know that an extra hug, or pick up, or snuggle will not spoil a child. He is secure asking for comfort, so he can go into the world and explore.

To be honest, I have a huge moral conflict with sending out a 2 year old to camp (or to school) for such a long day and for so many weeks. There is a part of me which strongly feels that the reason I have a happy, secure child is due to him being at home, close to his mommy, and that is where he belongs. Now I am upsetting this delicate balance. Now I will have to adjust to the reality that I cannot provide him with what he enjoys, like water play or messy projects, without turning into a disaster manager, losing my cool, and yelling. Yes, I have to accept the reality that I am THAT parent, that mom who is sending out her 2 year old because it is just too hard for me.

On the plus side, it is only for a year. I keep telling myself that we are taking life on year at a time, and we can always stop, assess, and change our circumstances as necessary.

teaching responsibility and other lessons

My oldest is a dreamer.
He is distracted.
Disorganized.
Scatter-brained.
Loses things.
Creative and cannot be bothered to clean up.

By this point, either you are nodding your head in agreement, or shaking it in frustration. I used to think that this is a reflection of my lack of organization, or poor parenting skills. When he was in kindergarden, I was told how he was the only kid whose lunchbox was not in his cubby, and neither was his backpack. His jacket was on the floor instead of being hung up.

I thought that by homeschooling him I will be able to fix this character flaw. I will be on top of him, I will make him clean up, he will suffer the consequences, and we will get this straightened out. That was good five years ago. The rest of the kids are pretty good about putting their things away, and being responsible, but this child is still stubbornly refusing to be molded into an obedient citizen of our household.

The boys take taekwondo, which comes with a pristine white uniform. Before they received their uniforms, they were given a speech on its proper treatment. It is their responsibility, and they are supposed to keep track of it and keep it clean. The boys are also teaching a taekwondo class at our homeschool coop. For the class, they change into their uniforms, and then change back into regular clothes. 8 yo packs his up in a plastic bag. Now imagine what a child-who-cannot-be-bothered does with his... I'm lucky if he rolls it up and tucks it under his arm as he rushes out.

This Wednesday, I had a particularly hard time getting kids out the door. When I got to the van and had to negotiate with the three older kids how sticks/magic wands are not allowed inside, while simultaneously attempting to buckle up 2 yo, I noticed 10 yo's uniform by his feet, with his muddy shoes planted right on top. I pointed this out, more like yelled at him yet again.

When we got to the park, and the boys saw their friends, all bets were off. They did change into their uniforms to teach the class, and then changed back afterwards. 8 yo was very upset about what was going on during class (kids not listening, his brother not sticking to the script that they wrote beforehand, being stuck trying to teach younger kids while the older one showed off his forms to the older ones), yet he changed, placed his uniform into a plastic bag, and asked me to unlock the van to put it inside. 10 yo dropped his on the ground, and went into the woods with his friends. I did not pick it up for him.

When it was time for me to leave the park, I told both boys that all their possessions are their responsibility. They both nodded distractedly, and ran off with their friends.

As I drove home, I was pretty sure that 10 yo just abandoned his uniform and his belt in the park. He did not realize that it was missing till 7:30 that night. Then he wanted to drive back to the park to go looking for it, RIGHT NOW! I said that I have a class to go to (I really did), and that I do not have time to go looking for something that he did not bother to take care of. My husband started getting worried, too: 10 yo was supposed to get tested the following day, and how is he going to test without a uniform? I said that it should concern him more than it concerns us. 10 yo said that if he has no uniform, he does not want to test. I asked him what his plan is from now on: what is he going to do next time he's in class? He started ranting about taekwondo. I said that he can buy himself a new uniform with his allowance money. He said that he just spent it all on Pokemon cards. I asked about his savings, and he said that he had none. I suggested calling the dojang, explaining the situation to his master, and finding out whether he can still test tomorrow.

Then I left for my class.

When I got back, my husband said that 10 yo did call, and was told that he can get a new uniform before the test. They worked it out that my husband will lend him money, and then he will have it withheld from his allowance until the value is paid off.

The next day, I took 10 yo early enough for his testing to get fitted for his uniform. He went into the office, definitely subdued and nervous. Then he came out, beaming: "The Master gave me a new uniform! And he said it is a present! I don't have to pay for it!"

You are one lucky ducky. Just when I thought you will be taught a lesson about responsibility and consequences, you get handed an article as a present. On top of this, even though he lost his belt, and now had a white belt on, he was lined up in his proper placement, instead of in the back, with the white belts. I was starting to wonder whether this unexpected excessive kindness  is undermining the lesson to be learned.

He tested well, and he answered quite a few questions thrown at him. He even got congratulated on his great knowledge. As we were driving back, and I could not hold back and remarked how he lucked out on his free uniform, he said: "Mom, I davened to Hashem, and he answered me. I paid special attention to Shema Koleinu, and Hashem sent me a great day, with a good resolution. Come to think of it, any time that I ask Hashem for special things in Shema Koleinu, he helps me. When I just rush through and don't ask, nothing happens. How does it work?" I said that preparing mentally before davening, and thinking which the good things to request helps one outline the steps necessary to achieve the desirable goals. Of course, one must still ask Hashem for assistance, so that everything goes according to the plan.

10 yo learned a lesson from his taekwondo experience. It might not have been a lesson that I had in mind (and I'm not holding my breath that his distracted ways will change so quickly), but he drew his own conclusions. I also wonder how many lessons I remember due to the kindness of someone who should have been strict with me, instead of having an exact punishment meted out.

some hard choices for next year

This past Sunday was the height of insanity: we attended an open house for one local dayschool, followed by a movie screening for "Class Dismissed". Oh, and it was my daughter's birthday, she turned 5, just the age for kindergarten or for chumash, depending on your perspective.

I have four kids, and I am expecting. I am also drowning. We are told that real drowning is really quiet, you have to watch for signs of it instead of expecting a victim to make a big loud splash and call for help. I feel that I am openly and loudly putting the signs out there that I am drowning, but I guess it appears to be quiet from the side, and a lot of people choose to look the other way.

I am very committed to the ideals of homeschooling. I know what it feels like when it is going smoothly, when kids are learning, when the sense of contentment and satisfaction fills the air. I also know what it feels like when things chafe and grate, and every day starts on a sour note and goes downhill from there. Lately, it's been feeling like drudgery, not unlike the feeling of school. There has been yelling and talking back, tantrums, messes, broken promises, unmet expectations (on both sides), and a whole lot of unhappiness. Some days I feel that we do not have a plan, others I feel overscheduled. And then throw in a newborn of unpredictable temperament into the mix, and you've got yourself a hot mess.

So I have been agonizing over the hardest decision: what to do with the kids for next year? Do I simply send all of them out, to give myself a year to regroup? Do I send out my oldest, to separate him from his impressionable brother, who is slowly coming into his own, in hope that school will give him structure and consequences? Do I send out 8 yo, hoping to alter the dynamic by having the "hardest" child out, and giving him a taste that other kids his age struggle with the same material? Do I send out my daughter, who is eager to go to school? Do I send out my 1 yo, in hopes that his active energy will be managed better outside the home and I will have some peace and quiet? Do I send out some combination of the above? Keep the older boys home while sending out the younger ones? Keep the younger ones home, do workbooks and reading at my daughter's bidding, and give them a chance to play and explore? Send out my oldest and my daughter, while focusing more on 8 yo?

I mull all these over and over in my head, I toss and turn and miss on sleep, yet the solution eludes me. I told the kids that school is a real possibility for next year, and they might not get much say in this decision.

The local, closest dayschool will not take 8 yo, despite incredible strides in his behavior over the past 6 months, since we have not started on medication or therapy. They would take my oldest son and daughter, and I could send 1 yo to a playgroup around the corner, running on the same schedule as a the school. But 10 yo will be in middle school, so drop off and pick up will be different from kindergarten and from 1 yo's playgroup.

The dayschool that held open house this past Sunday is probably off the table. They have the exact same schedule from infants through middle school, so that is a huge convenience factor. However, we attended on a Sunday, and all the kids that we met in the hallways, practicing for a play or basketball, did not wear a kippa. All the teachers and administrators were wearing slacks. They are clearly not marketing to the frum community. While the school is under Orthodox auspices, it is not a place where Judaism seemed to be a way of life. G-d did not enter the picture, but there were sprinklings of "feel-good" Jewish stuff, like random relics. The administrator obviously was more comfortable promoting the secular studies and enrichment over Judaics.

When we moved here, my husband quipped: there are two dayschools here: one does not believe in G-d and the other does not believe in dinosaurs. I hate having to decide between these two options.

A snippet: as my boys were touring the classrooms, they were reading posters on the walls. They wanted to stop and investigate further; the administrator was more interested in showing off "learning environment" and moving on. My oldest caught a math problem and noted how the prices for bananas and oranges in it were deflated. She exclaimed: you must have been to a grocery store to notice this! So I will be substituting real life for this educational fakeness which will supposedly be giving my kids real-life skills like thinking which this administrator insisted needed to be taught precisely through her thinking map program. I am sure it works great for some, and confuses others, but it sure makes administration feel great: we are teaching kids to think!

There is a third Orthodox option here, a Montessori-based Chabad school. It is on two campuses, one for preschool and kindergarten, and the other for elementary. We toured it with 8 yo back in November, as a possibility. They are holding their open house later this week, just for adults. The advantage is that their Judaism is authentic AND warm and fuzzy. The school is smaller, and they will probably take all four kids without too many discussions. The disadvantages are many: different approach to Judaism, which is more of a concern for older boys; weak academic stimulation due to poor resources, and kids are likely to languish without school supporting them or letting us know until they fail some sort of standardized test. Then again, if the goal is just to park kids somewhere not too damaging for a year and regroup, this might be an ideal place.

Now, for "Class Dismissed": I liked the movie. I recommend it for everyone: for those whose kids are in school. for those who are homeschooling, for those who contemplate homeschooling, but would never do it, etc. I think everyone can find something to take away from the movie. It follows a famly with two middle-school daughters, where mom pulls the girls out and chooses to homeschool. They try different approaches, talk to other homeschooling families, question their decision, try charter school, finally settling on an approach which works for them. After we finished, my husband said that he feels strengthened in his resolve to homeschool. I chuckled; I am committed to homeschooling, too, only we have slightly different circumstances. And this is where fantasy rubs against reality.

I am not aiming for school at home. I have dropped many of my expectations. I am ready to follow my children's lead and give them opportunities to pursue what interests them. The problem is, I have four of them already; I do not have a spouse who can routinely take kids with him to work, and I do not have that third parent (the girls' parents are divorced, so the girls spend some time with their father) to give the kids over and get some personal space. In fact, when they interviewed people on the street, the supposedly false assumption about needing three parents struck me as true.

What I do have are four kids withe very different personalities and needs (about to become five). One wants to socialize the whole day through, two want to sit at home and read. One wants an occasional play date, one wants a bunch of friends over for a competitive board game. One wants park non-stop, one wants a pet, one wants high-level science stimulation. Two crave imaginative play. One wants to scale every mountain, explore every rock, climb every tree. One wants Minecraft creativity and online socialization.

And then there is me, who also wants something, most likely a quiet hour here and there, and a nice hot cup of beverage, preferably the one I do not have to prepare myself, or clean up afterwards...

Oh, and then there is my husband. whose poor head is ready to explode as he is looking over dayschool tuition. It's a fact: even as a doctor, he is not making enough for us to be able to pay any of it in full. It is not a matter of being comfortable, or indulging; it's a matter of affordability. He is not making hundreds of thousands of dollars that would offset 50K that it would take to send my kids to school. So we will have to enter the world of explaining what is going on, how we have crazy medical school loans, how we are paying for every little aspect of our life ourselves.

I want homeschooling to work out, but I do not see how to do it successfully on my own. I don't want to send my kids to school and drive ourselves further into debt. But I also need to accept the reality that I cannot afford full-time help or assistant, and nobody in my immediate family will step up and take on that role. I also have to accept that my husband cannot do more educationally for my kids than sporadic learning, nor that he can reliably give me that breathing space. I will have to manage this aspect of my life by myself.

a really big heart

This morning, I ran out to get some scarves from a private showing. It is Sunday, and my husband was planing on taking the older kids to Gem and Mineral Show while I was planing to nap 1 yo and organize the sunroom.

When I came back, steam was coming out of my husband's ears, and 8 yo was crying. My husband asked him to do chumash. He did not expect to do chumash today, so he totally melted down. It took them an hour to torture their way through three pesukim. I was just shaking my head. At some point, I volunteered to take 10 yo and 4 yo to the show, while the learners would sit and finish up. However, they did complete it, had brunch, and left.

I got to the point in the sun room where I emptied out all the messy cubbies, and then 1 yo woke up. So now there is a pile of mess on the floor of the sun room, but the cubbies look nice and neat. The pile is bad enough for the kids to ask: what happened here?

But that is not what I want to focus on.

The car pulls up. The kids pile out. 8 yo comes in, beaming: "Mommy, I got you a gift!" I turn around and see that he is holding a tiny jewelry pouch. Inside are little earrings. "Mommy, these are mystic quartz. You irradiate quartz and you get mystic quartz. Mommy, do you like them? I got them for you for doing all those nice things that you do for us. It's nice to get you a present once in a while to say thank you. Mommy, we're having pizza for dinner? I love pizza, thank you for making it."

He leaves the room, and I am speechless and choked up. I am putting on these little studs. My husbands shakes his head: "Where did you get a kid like that?" Then he tells me how 8 yo got a grab bag of stones for 4 yo since she does not have her own money, and he was considering getting me another set of earrings, but that was outside of his price range. 10 yo was upset; he got nothing because he is saving his money. However, he used golden wire and wrapped it around a black polished stone (8 yo's gift to him as a consolation), and presented me with that pendant.

Before they left for the show, when the kids were outside and out of ear shot, I was complaining bitterly to my husband how I cannot take 8 yo's angry outbursts any more, how his hysterics and dramatics leave me drained; how I feel like a hostage to his emotions. Now I feel like the luckiest mom on the face of this earth: I have a sweet, caring kid. Maybe he will not master chumash, maybe he will not be quick with his numbers, but his heart is so firmly in the right place, that I have a thing or two to learn from him.

hard baby

This last week, I finally said it out loud: my baby is a hard baby! I don't know why it took me so long, but there it is, for all to see. I am not a terrible mother, I just have a tough kid.

Actually, I know why it took me so long: after I had my second boy, after those first two years when he did not sleep through the night despite our best efforts, after running myself crazy, after waiting for him to talk in vain hope that once he can express himself it will get easier, and after telling my husband that I cannot have another kid like this, I might as well face it: 1 yo is most similar in personality to 8 yo.

I probably should be grateful that he does not walk yet, because he will not walk, he will be running. He is pulling off the tablecloth. He is unloading every single cabinet and drawer, for the sheer pleasure of dumping and making noise. He opens the drawers in my childproof kitchen that my daughter never did. (When 8 yo was a baby, we were in a different apartment and I have the whole kitchen gated). He makes a mad dash for the bathroom the second the door opens. He dives off objects, head-first. He takes off on the playground, across cement. He dumps whole buckets of toys. He even tantrums when he cannot get something.

He is 13 months old. He is not even a toddler yet. And he still does not fully sleep through the night. For a while I used to beat myself up about getting up to nurse him, but that beat him yelling and waking up his siblings. Besides, he does not have the same schedule every day, so he does not always get to take all his naps in his crib at the exactly same time. And I do drink coffee, to be functional in the morning. Then I often find myself crashing towards afternoon, so I have some more caffeine. Then the baby does not sleep, so I end up upping my caffeine, to cope. And so it goes.

Actually, I survived college and grad school without drinking any coffee. Having my second boy turned me into a caffeine addict that I am now.

Oh, and I drank all the caffeine I wanted while pregnant and nursing my daughter, but she was sleeping through the night.

I used to say that the baby is at "go with the flow" schedule, but we are hitting a point where he very clearly might not be thriving this way. He is having hard time with Pesach, his favorite foods being Ritz crackers and oatmeal. I have been mixing boiling water into shmura matzo meal, and then adding yogurt and smoothie to that. He has not been thrilled with the rest of the food, either. I sort of do not remember others having such issues. Then there is my 8 yo, rigidly telling me how much he is not enjoying Pesach, his lack of morning bagel, and all those additions to davening and benching.

Here I am, looking squarely at another potentially difficult child. I wish I could "nip it in the bud", apply some magical formula, consult with the experts, and not go down that rabbit hole. I wish this one was obedient, or a listener. Instead, I have a headstrong kid, who already wants to be like his older siblings, and who clearly knows what he wants and does not want and is not shy about it.

I can spend the time hiding under the blankets, closing my eyes, pretending that this is not happening. I can spend the time bemoaning and pitying myself for having all these difficult to control kids.What I can do is embrace my child's personality rather than spend time molding him into somebody else.

small stuff vs. big stuff

Hashem, hatati.
I have sinned.

I got complacent. I forgot all the good things that happen to me. I focus too much on the bad. And I focus too much on the small stuff.

When my father was sick, when I was undergoing my treatment, when every day was a crazy roller coaster, I yearned for normalcy. I wanted small problems, small stuff, like teething children and which dress to wear to a wedding rather than, should I be jumping on the next plane or what to do about really expensive medication that I forgot to refrigerate after it got delivered on second day of Yom Tov. I wanted the problems that every one around me sweating, and I wanted to yell: wake up people, this is small stuff!

Time passed, things have changed, and, slowly things settled in. Now I fret about intake forms for possible PT for 1 yo and how 9 yo is slacking in his schoolwork. But the intensity stayed. What should be viewed as small problems all of a sudden get blown up on the scale of large, full-blown disaster.

This morning, Hashem had a personal message for me: wake up! You are fretting your life away!
A Chabad rebbitzin passed away. She was just a few years older than me. Eight children are left behind without their mother. The community is reeling. And I am shaking.

This is big stuff. All the other daily struggles are small. That PT form? It will get sorted out. 9 yo will not spend his whole entire life as he is now. But a sudden passing of a mother, a devastation wrought on that family, orphaned children: this is the big stuff.

Do I want to spend my energy on being upset about small things? Do I choose to live my life being unhappy, as if there is a later, happier time just beyond horizon, or will I make changes to make my life fulfilling NOW? Do I want to spend my days snapping at the kids because I am overwhelmed? And what if it will be me tomorrow? What will my kids remember? "Yeah, she was a good mom, but always stressed" (or some not-so-flattering version of this). The kids will not remember highlights, they will remember everyday moments. If those are overtaken with frustration and impatience and misery, then what am I doing here? Why am I living as if I will go on like this forever?

It is a very Chassidic concept to be always happy. Incidentally, 9 yo watched a TED talk about hackschooling and happiness today. He said that he agrees that everyone should be happy, only he viewed it that it is all right for a teen to say that, but not for a grown-up. I guess he is not exactly surrounded with positive thinkers here. I am also not so sure whether I have it in me to be always happy. I am not a naturally happy-go-lucky person. That american plastered smile does not come naturally.

What I can do is stop sweating small stuff, because, ultimately, if you spend all your time sweating small stuff, there will be no space to sweat the big stuff.

crying boys

I have been reading a few different things on anxiety. One thing that I saw repeated and that really spoke to me was the fact that tears of anxiety release stress hormone cortisol, as in, if you are anxious, your body is getting ready to "fight or flight", you are awash in cortisol and tears help you release it. (Don't ask me how getting teary-eyes and blurred vision help you deal with danger from an evolutionary perspective, but a good cry clearly can be therapeutic).

7 yo is very emotional and is easily moved to tears. In fact, just about on any given day, he finds something or other to cry about. Those tears just come, sometimes as a part of a fit, sometimes as a part of feeling helpless. One of the anxiety books recommended sitting down with an anxious child, especially a boy, and having a talk about the value of a good cry. It was encouraging parents to teach their child to release those tears. The premise is that it is not socially acceptable for boys to be anxious, and on top of that, it is not socially acceptable for boys to cry. So if you have an anxious boy, not only he is anxious about some original cause, but he is anxious in addition about those involuntary tears and how he will be perceived by others as being weak and emotional.

It seems to me that 7 yo is normalizing himself by openly displaying an abnormal behavior of expressing his feelings and crying easily... When he is calm, he can easily and spontaneously state how he feels and what bothers him. Maybe he is the normal one and we are all emotionally-repressed crazy people.

on my father's 5th yortzait

Another year has passed. Now my father missed meeting three of his grandchildren: two of mine and one of my sister's. He was supposed to be the involved grandparent, the one interested in spending time with his grand kids, tinkering around with them, asking them those goofy math problems that I always attempted to do and then brushed off. He was supposed to be the one who could get excited about things that excited me, or, at least, listen patiently. He was no angel, my father, but he was what a father was supposed to be: a kind man, a man who admitted his mistakes, someone who cared and someone who would do a lot of silly and hard things to show that he cared. He did not complain, and he did not demand. He was soft, somewhere in his core; but he was soft in just a way that I needed him to be.

He knew that life in Russia was not for likes of him. He liked the law-abiding society, instead of constant bribes and contact seeking. He wanted to stand on his own merit. He could have gone to Israel, have his life there, be a brainiac among brainiacs. He was not a goody-two-shoes, a perfect student, a teacher's pet. But he knew that whatever he needed to learn, he would master, and then have it at his fingertips to use. He was not stuck in past, nor fearful of the future.

My best years of relationship with him were during college years, when I was in the dorm in Manhattan and he was in Toronto, working, and living alone. I would get on the phone with him and share about my day, and the classes I was taking. I minored in math, and there were many different subjects. No matter which class I was in, I could tell him the current topic and he could help me with the problem sets. He knew his stuff. I am scared whether I still have enough math base to take my kids through middle school. But, more importantly than actual knowledge of the subject, he was there to listen to me.

I ended up with an emergency surgery while in college. He hopped on a bus and came over. He paced with me in the hospital, made jokes, and then told me of my loopy, morphine-drenched answers which I forgot. He knew it will make a good story one day, and I still smile when I think of the whole situation. He sat in the lobby of my dorm, taking apart and reassembling my computer, improving it. One of the guards came to investigate, and we were laughing: oh, he thought we were constructing a bomb! (This was before 9/11, so it was funny). When he met my future husband, he took right away to calling him by his Hebrew name, instead of his Russian one, just as he was introduced. My guy liked it tremendously, and so did I.

My oldest with my father

If it wasn't for awful Hep C... how different everything could have been! There are years and years worth of conversations: to treat, not to treat, too late to treat, no options, liver transplant, who will be the donor, whose responsibility to find the donor, go to China, they are a dime a dozen, so who cares if it's a little fishy, come on, it's your father! I wished in those years that I could problem solve and just do it myself, be the donor. But I could not, having the same virus. I was also watching with horror, as my father's condition deteriorated: this is going to be me, in twenty to thirty years. These issues are going to be my issues.

All the crazy things I did at that time: prowling chatrooms and message boards, talking online to random strangers who were interested in offering pieces of their livers, for a good price, of course. Talking to some crazy missionaries in Africa, who were part of this organ donor movement. Posting on all sorts of lists, sending out e-mails, asking and searching: are you the right blood type? Could you do a mitzvah? Would you consider davening for my father? Would you help out financially? Calling bikur cholim in Toronto, asking them to visit and to assist with rides, and being told that it is hard to find a male who can do a visit. Then convincing my non-observant parents that a visit from a total stranger would be good for them. We are still waiting for that visitor...

In all this craziness, it was me who figured out that my mother, being a type O, was a universal donor and could serve as a liver donor to my father. Meanwhile, I got my news that my liver was starting to get affected by Hep C. Same Hep C, same strain. My father saved my life. The family lore goes like this: when I was born two months' premature, the hospital did not exactly have a survival plan for such babies. So my parents were advised to take me home, heat the room as an incubator, and just try their best. I landed in the hospital at the tender age of 18 days. Somebody called for a blood transfusion. My father had the same blood type. They quickly reeled him in, bled him, and poured it into me. Blood, the elixir of life. Walking on knife's edge, it is also the toxic brew of whichever viruses happened to be there. Hep C was in that blood. Hep C was not discovered till later, and screening for it did not commence till even later than that. With that gift of life, I got a much more sinister gift. If there will be a vaccine for Hep C, I would take it in a heartbeat.

I started Hep C treatment as soon as my second son was weaned. I was determined to give it a good shot, because I would not make my kids go through what I was going through with my father. Considering my virus's genotype, I was told that 48 week treatment of Peg Intron plus ribavirin had a 50% chance of succeeding. The treatment is being described as having chemo, for 11 months, and without the sympathy reserved to cancer patients. The side effects were brutal: I lost 10 pounds in a few weeks. All you diet people, get some ribavirin and pound yourself into skinniness. You will look slim. You will also have no energy and constant nausea. You will also spend a chuck of your day laying on a couch, too tired to move. My blood counts plummeted, so I had to inject myself with more meds. I do not mutilate myself, and I hated the pain that came with each shot, and the new wave of sickness. Brain fog, loss of mental acuity (to me, a PhD candidate, former math minor, thinking "I will always have my smarts", literally losing my mind was cruelly painful). Insomnia requiring Ambien. Severe depression hit, so severe, that I had to be on medication and in therapy. All this for a 50% chance to beat the beast. I fretted whether my kids will remember me as the mommy who just laid on the couch for a year. They did not, but my second boy  spent a lot of time cuddling with me.

post first transplant

Two months into my treatment, my parents went for the transplant. I came for Rosh HaShana, three weeks later. My mother was home already, my father was supposed to be home, but something came up, and he was not released. I snuck my boys into the hospital lounge, so he could see them. I wore a mask since I was sniffling, and I did not want him to catch my cold. We paced the ward's floor, talking about treatments and quality of life. He was concerned about his friend with cancer. He did not look good, but he was optimistic, making plans.

That first liver, my mother's liver, was rejected by his body. He needed a second transplant, this time cadaveric. I flew in a few months later to visit. I found him in hospital bed, reading about Windows Vista, which just came out. I went to the gift shop and bought a chess/checkers set. I knew better than to play chess against him, so we settled on checkers. He beat me. I accompanied him to the exercise room. He surprised the nurse by asking for a slightly heavier load, to keep in shape. He somehow radiated this simple calm.

Around the time that I finally got word that my killer treatment is working, and all this sledgehammering that I am doing to my body and brain is not in vain, he deteriorated badly. One winter day, I got a frantic call from my sister: come now, this is it, his blood pressure crashed, they can't stabilize him. We threw kids in the car and went. I was still waiting on my citizenship, so I was not even sure whether Canada will let me in, without the proper papers, whether we will get turned around at the border. We made it, and I went up. They stabilized him in ICU, but he was unconscious, intubated, there, and not there.

He pulled through. My husband had to fly out the same night (they do not like to give residents emergency time off). I drove back with the kids a few days later, with my sister in tow. At the end of the month, my father got the second transplant.

It sort of worked. He became conscious, he started moving, started talking and walking. I flew in again, just for a day. (It was hard to place the kids; were it not for all my good New York friends, I would not have been able to go at all). I also managed to mix up my antidepressant with Ambien during that week, so I literally sleepwalked. I remember just bits and pieces: not enough time together, not enough privacy, getting him a hot chocolate from Tim Horton's, watching him struggle to stand up and walk with a walker. What I do remember clearly is him making plans to come and visit me in New York. He was aware of his condition, he knew full well what is going on. But he also knew what he had to do, and this was part of his duty, desire, and no darn freaking transplant or inability to stand unassisted was going to get in the way.

The last time I saw him was Thanksgiving. I finished my treatment and two weeks later we moved to Houston. The summer was busy with setting up a new life in a new place. I was offered a job on the spot to teach science, and my kids went to school just for the hours I was teaching. Meanwhile, this second transplant was not it, either. The virus reinfected the new liver, and there was nothing else to do. My father did come home. When I booked Thanksgiving tickets, it was not a nice visit with the family, it was a good bye. I knew it. I was bringing my kids, in vain hope that they would remember what their grandfather looked like. I made the most out of that visit: let's go out to eat! Let's go to the mall! Let's make a big shabbos meal! No cheer could pierce the new cloak of despair. When I saw that look of resignation on my father's face, I knew that he gave up.

Thanksgiving visit

Darn Hepatitis! It won! I beat my dragon,but my father lost his battle to his. He pulled through just at a year's mark, technically making his second transplant a statistical success. And my father loved those little technicalities.

When he passed away, it came as a shock to people in Houston. They did not know him, they did not know of him, and they did not know of my treatment. I felt like someone making an impolite mess, and apologizing profusely. Sitting shivah, visitors filing in, not knowing what to say. The usual questions: was it sudden? Was he sick? Oh, for how long? Do you have any family? Oh, a sister. Is she single? Well, this is not the time, but, afterward, please contact me, I might have someone for her...

The bottom fell out, Months passed and I did not notice. I got up, took care of the kids, taught, and yet I cannot recall a single moment of huge chunks of time. It was not intense grief, more just fog. I had distinct feelings that first year, moments, when I looked at the world through his eyes, not mine. Sobbing over a song from a record that he brought home many years ago. Feeling emptiness. Intense regret that my children will nor remember him, will not know him. Looking for signs of him in my kids. Saying kaddish when I made it to shul, and being upset when nobody on men's side would lead in mourner's kaddish, so the congregation skipped it.

It's been five years. We moved, yet again. My daughter can identify my father from the picture on our mantle. My baby is named after him. The older boys do not talk about him, as 9 yo told me that it is too sad. For a while, he was worried that he could also have that bad virus and die. I do not push. I am virus-free, and officially cured. But for the rest of my life I cannot be a blood donor. I am slowly starting to make plans to live past sixty, the age of my father's death. And I am planning to hold my kids, tell them I love them and I am proud of them, and let them go.

why more sturcture?

Deep down, I hate surprises (ask the people who were unsuccessful in throwing a surprise baby shower for me when I was pregnant with my oldest; I was dead set to go to IKEA that Sunday and they basically had to sit me down to keep me from being absent). So having a plan is semi-essential to my being. My oldest is the same way; he always likes to know what's going on. 7 yo will quite often ask what's planned, too. With chagim, and a different schedule every day, and baby waking up at all hours, it was becoming a  mayhem. My friend likens a good messy unschooling day to a great party. I like my parties slightly less rambunctious, where guests clean up after themselves...

One of my biggest concerns with our unschooling period was what to do with 9 yo, as he clearly needed more structure to get anything done. He is brimming with ideas, but he is very disorganized, so he is having hard time getting anything done unless it is put down in writing somewhere and then reinforced. We had many a night when just as I was tucking him in, the regret of all the things he wanted to get done but did not get to came out.

On my end of things, I am very lucky to be guided by a few veteran homeschooling moms. One of the threads that resonated with me is that it is easy to unschool and then it is just as easy to see where there are gaps. Then you are willing to enforce those areas. I have kept up chumash with the boys over the summer, so we never unschooled that. I have decided that math is vital, so that was also part of the schedule since August. I saw that 7 yo had hard time writing, so Printing Power joined the list of daily exercises. Finally, as we were getting further in chumash, I saw a need to work on more grammar, so we picked up Lashon HaTorah. 9 yo was so lost after not doing it for 6 months! We were in the middle of a unit of tense-changing vav, and he did not have those verb conjugations down. However, after a week of working on it ( and printing out a basic conjugation chart), he is much more comfortable. 7 yo knew his prefixes well, now we are working on those suffixes.

Finally, Rosetta Stone was my offer to the boys, and they both took it up, for now. I am worried about conversational Hebrew. I was kind of hoping for getting some exposure to native speakers in a casual setting ( a Hebrew-speaking babysitter, perhaps?), but it did not happen.

Now, on coming full circle, 7 yo asked me today to pick up history and science. While on the surface this is a request for even more structured learning, it is also a child-led inquiry. In this regard, that little unschooling experiment was a success: when they are interested and ready to learn it, they will ask for it.

money, money, money...

We just started a new semester of classes at the coop. 9 yo is signed up for Project-Based Learning class, where he would get guidance to pursue whatever project he chooses and then he would share it with the group. The teacher e-mailed me a short questionnaire for 9 yo to fill out, to learn a bit about him. I printed it out and passed it on to him. He was done pretty quickly and I decided to go over it with him.


The first question was: What is the coolest thing in your house? His answer: money.
Next question: What is the coolest thing you had seen in a friend's house? His answer: Nintendo DS 3D.

I was very upset by these. We are comfortable financially, but not exuberantly wealthy. We do not spend our free time shopping or fantasizing about owning things. We eat out once a month and have not taken any vacations since last November. I am the kind of person who much rather get things for free or as a bargain than pay full price. When we moved to Houston, we went for almost a year without a couch, and almost two  years with one car. We are definitely not keeping up with the Joneses. I had a tzedakah guy shake his head in surprise at our house, not meeting his expectations. Yet my son thinks that the coolest thing we have is money.

We have too many books (my fault) and too many toys. Both my mother and my MIL are in a competition of who will get the kids the next great thing. Right now, 9 yo is obsessed with getting a Nintendo DS. He spent quite a bit of time online comparing prices, looking at options, checking out accessories. At some point he had almost enough allowance and gift money to buy one, but he impulsively spent it here and there and abandoned his dream. I did not mind, I thought this is teaching him fiscal responsibility. By the way, his weekly allowance is $2.25, with a tenth going to tzedakah. When we are talking about such small sums, I do not care what he does with them. As of late, he got quite a bit of gift money, and he revived the DS dream. He spent hours calculating how many weeks of allowance plus recycling it would take him to buy it. He remembered to include sales tax and tried figuring it out, first on his own, and then with some assistance from me. I did not mind this; there is a budgeting lesson in there, not to mention some math. There is working towards a goal. There is delayed gratification and anticipation.

Then my mother decided to be very nice and generous, and is sending him the rest of the sum to get that Nintendo. He became very happy; I became upset. He was getting a lucky break, which nullified all the positive lessons of saving patiently. After a day, his happiness dissolved, as is evidenced by the fact that getting a Nintendo DS is now not as cool as 3D DS he saw in someone's house. And the DS is not even ordered yet! I think he was getting more happiness from browsing and fantasizing about DS than he will get from the actual thing. I mean, if he really needed it, I would have gotten it for him already. And who needs a handheld game?

I spoke to him about how his answer on the questionnaire was not showing what he was like, and he, being honest said that he WISHED he was different and did not want to play computer games all day and not think about money, but that is the true answer.

Is this an age-appropriate fixation? Will it pass? Are your kids thinking about money?

child-led learning

Yesterday's biology lesson:

Target was selling bug vacuum for a song, so I could not resist and got it. The boys were enamored with it and caught four spiders, identified them (I did not check, if they say it's a wolf spider, so be it) and placed them in the same observation chamber. Then, over the course of the day, they watched one of the spiders kill off the others and spin a web around them. I got detailed oral reports of their observations.

Today's writing/spelling:

I downloaded 4 Pics 1 Word onto my phone, and the kids gathered round. They were all clamoring with suggestions, and all took turns entering in the words that they guessed, including 3 yo. She guessed "pink" and knew what all the letters looked like, so she helped out. My refusenik writer, 7 yo, did not count this as writing, or spelling, just as having a turn at a game.

Oh, and the baby decided to skip the whole rolling over from stomach-to-back thing and work on sitting instead. He also despises all baby food mush and prefers something he can hold on to and control, like bread sticks and broccoli stalks.

G-d, give me patience not to jump in too soon with my grand agendas. Let me guide these kids on the paths that interest them and not the paths that they HAVE to take.

back to school?

Today we did so much, that it is possible to say we started the school year.

By the time I got up, 9 yo was dressed and davened. He took out recycling as an extra chore, for a fee. He is still getting the logistics of it, but I am glad that he is doing it. The rest of the kids had breakfast and got dressed. I did chumash with 9 yo first. We finished Breishit, and he was happy. He remembered Rashis from yesterday, but did not ask any questions on frankly bizarre pesukim at the very end of Breishit. He finished the family tree of Adam and asked, when are we going to Six Flags for a siyum? Hearing this, 7 yo got upset. I showed him that we were on 12th pasuk of Lech Lecha, and had to finish the perek at 20th. I asked him, how many more pesukim do we have? He used fingers and toes to figure out that it's 8. He is also getting the idea of gemmatria. Once he saw the amount, he wanted to do extra, so today we reviewed and did the last pasuk of the first aliyah. She asked about the word sheni written in his workbook, and I explained what that meant. I had to remind him about sh'va na and nach as he was reading.

9 yo started mishnayot this week with a local rabbi. They started on Succah, we'll see how it goes. We are aiming for three times a week for the next month. He is reading nicely, and tonight when I reviewed it with him, translating quite well, too. He explained a few things to me.

Yesterday we went to a sand workshop with homeschool co-op. There they asked everyone to make a name tag.  I called up the boys to make their own. 9 yo took care of it, while 7 yo hesitated in writing his own name. 3 yo looked up at me and said that she cannot write her name, and I assured her that I will write it for her. 7 yo could not complete the task until I wrote his name and he copied it with great frustration. I was panicking: the whole idea of unschooling is that when the need arises, the skill is taught, yet here was a clear need, but no desire to learn. Moreover, he definitely should be able to write his name! So while 9 yo was learning mishna, I called 7 yo over and said that I will teach him to write his name, for future use. He asked whether it will include last name (ours is long). I sad, yes. He promptly threw a fit, said he cannot do it, does not need it, I can't make him, etc. He left to his room. I was plenty busy with the other kids, especially since 3 yo wanted help with aleph-bet book and I was holding a fussy baby. Five minutes later he came to show more frustration. I was nervous about disturbing 9 yo and his rebbe. Finally, I told 7 yo that he can either write his name, or any word that he likes; I will write it for him to copy. He asked about when his Handwriting Without Tears will arrive (he asked for it the other week, only he was crying and called it Handwriting With Tears). He is convinced that it will fix all his troubles with writing. I sad that we can track the package after he writes something, since the book will not be teaching him how tow write his name. Then he said he wants to write something easy, like the word "easy". I jumped on it. He had such hard time forming letters even when the model was right above... I am not so sure whether unschooling writing will work for this kid. Handwriting With Minimal Tears is supposed to arrive tomorrow, we'll see how that goes.

A bit later I showed the boys the math texts I got for the upcoming year, so that they will be familiar with what we'll be using. I ordered Math Mammoth for 9 yo (per his request) and Spectrum Math for 7 yo. I asked 7 yo when we would like to get started on math and he said, tomorrow. A bit later I showed 9 yo all of his math and asked him the same question. He said, never. I said that it is not an appropriate response. He said, fine, I will do some pages today. I sort of sat next to him and sort of held 3 yo on my lap. He was slogging his way through division problems. They were not hard, but I wondered to myself why they would start the text with division as opposed to some review of last year's material, or place value, or some warm-ups. At some point he got frustrated, and his multiplication was shaky, especially of the higher numbers. I ended up writing in some answers for him, he solved the problems in his head. This was taking waaay longer than I anticipated. 3 yo was restless and 7 yo started his song  that nobody pays any attention to him or spends any time with him. I said, you could be doing math and getting attention, if you want. He said that he will open his book and see what's in there. Here is the cool part: he decided to do the first two pages! They were easy, and he did it boom, boom, boom, except when he was asked to spell out 13 and 8. He froze there, and no offers of writing them down and copying worked. Meanwhile, 9 yo finished his math. As we were closing his binder, I noticed that he was in the middle of a paper stack. Then it hit me: instead of doing the first lesson, he did the first lesson of the second workbook! No wonder it was hard, and did not feel like warm-up! The good news is, maybe we do not need to spend so much time on the first section. Math Mammoth is very thorough, which is another way to say "boring"...

In the middle of the day, the kids found pipe cleaners and Styrofoam balls and designed all sorts of things out of them. The balls were poked and produced quite a mess that required vacuuming. The boys fought over who will vacuum it up.

At taekwondo, both boys got their green belts. 9 yo got his gear yesterday, and today was a sparring day, so they got to suit up and fight. During the car ride back, they discussed who got kicked where and whom did they kick. I, personally, could do taekwondo without the sparring part, just the discipline and moves.

Before we left for taekwondo, I made flounder for dinner. When we got home, 9 yo raised a bit of a stink that it's not tilapia, so I put him in charge of making a vegetable to go with dinner. I had to nurse anyway. He chopped up a garden cucumber and then peeled a carrot into strips and mixed it all in a bowl with some Italian dressing. Voila! He felt quite accomplished. The flounder turned out to be a hit despite not being tilapia, not a piece remained.

I am still trying to figure out what makes the boys tick the way they do. When 9 yo was working on that hard math and was getting frustrated with writing stuff down, he told me that as long as he does not need to show any work, he can do anything, "even that thing that Einstein did". I said that in math you cannot just have theory, you need proofs. 9 yo has so much ga'ava ( pride, self-esteem) that he almost always needs to be slightly deflated to reality. 7 yo, on the other hand, has none of that. I need to reassure him that he can do it, he knows it, he is able. I wonder whether 7 yo gets along better with people because no ga'ava gets in the way.

how we do chumash: details

This is how we are doing chumash now:

With 9 yo we are finishing up B'reishit. We have done previously Lech Lecha, Vaeira, Chaii Sarah and Toldot. We sit down on the couch with Chumash Menukad which has Rashi in Rashi's script but also all the nekudot. He chooses whether to review first or to do new pesukim. He reads a pasuk, pausing appropriately, and then translates it. If there are unknown words, I decide whether to tell him or to send him to the dictionary to look them up. If the word has a shoresh that I think he knows, I will help him tease it out. We have done 3 Lashon HaTorah books (we stopped in the middle of 4th last year), and he is quite good at using prefixes and suffixes appropriately. Once he got the translation, depending on the pasuk I might ask him to summarize it in his own words, or wait for him to ask a question on contents or prod him to some inconsistency. Often he asks Rashi's question on the p'shat, which beautifully lends itself to looking things up in Rashi. Lately, however, he has been dreading doing Rashis and complaining about them a lot, so sometimes I will tell him what Rashi says, sometimes I will point out where Rashi has the answer, sometimes I will push him just to read Rashi and translate it myself, and sometimes he has to do both reading and translating. Unfortunately, he has not been engaging with the text as meaningfully as I would like him to and as I know he could. I hope it is a stage and will pass. He does not complain about doing Chumash daily, so that's a big improvement even from a few weeks ago.

We do not write anything down, unless he shows interest. Right now we're doing genealogy, so he is making a family tree of Adam. He is also making a bar graph of how long every  person lived and at which age they had children.

With 7 yo we are doing Bright Beginnings. Every day we do two facing pages which works out to a new pasuk every other day. On the days when we do a new pasuk, he reads word by word the Hebrew side, then the English. I point out shorashim, and he often will tell me if it occurs more than once in a pasuk. Then he does the opposite page, matching shorashim to translations. Then I ask him the meaning of words from a pasuk, out of order, with open book. Then I read the pasuk to him a few times, first with word-for-word translation and then just in Hebrew. Finally, if he's ready, I will cover up the translation and he will read the pasuk in Hebrew and translate. After this, we go online and listen to a baal koreh read from beginning of Lech Lecha while he follows in the workbook, pasuk by pasuk. I manually pause after every pasuk, so he can turn the page and find the right spot.

If it is review day, I ask him to do the matching pages first, then I check them (they are probably too easy, since he's always getting everything right!) and then I ask him to look over the pasuk by himself. Depending on how long the pasuk is and how hard are the words, sometimes he can do it on his own, and sometimes he needs help.

Finally, after we did a chunk of pesukim, I opened up chumash that 9 yo uses and asked him to read from there. He was very nervous, but could do it.

I have different goals for the boys. With 9 yo it is to achieve mastery, with 7 yo it is to achieve confidence. 

worksheets

We are unschooling, right? So why all of a sudden am I sitting at the computer on Amazon, looking up workbooks? Why does my cart have four of them in there? Moreover, why are two of them for my 7 yo, the kid, who time and again, let me know how much he despises workbooks?

A few times a year, I find myself on chinuch.org. It is an excellent website, brimming with ideas and resources. Then I am frantically printing out pages for my kids. The next day, they warily see the pile, eye it, maybe browse it, and we start the fine sport of head-butting over it. Usually, I give it up within a short time, but sometimes it takes me days to get to that point. Sometimes, I file unused pages away, in hope of using them someday, when everyone is older and more mature. Now, my filing cabinet is like a bottomless drawer: no matter how many times I organize it, and see all these great ideas, somehow the time is not right, so they just sit and fester there, making me feel guilty for not doing all these creative and amazing things with my kids.

By now I know that whenever I am feverishly scrolling through chinuch.org, it is just my anxiety talking. I can scroll for a bit, and then step away. I can stay up all night ruminating. I do not need to print. Usually, within a few days, my kids will ask or tell me something demonstrating that somehow they already know the material without the worksheets. The anxiety releases, or switches over to something else. With kids, there are plenty of things to worry about.

But the worksheets utter their siren call. They are cute, and colorful, all the things that were missing in my textbooks as a child. They are bright and appealing. And they teach! I mean, I need to sit and show how they teach. I mean, I have to tell my kids to drop what they are doing so that the worksheets can be pounded into them. I mean, what is the point?

STOP!!!

By now I feel confident that my 7 yo does not need phonics instruction, or a reading book. He reads plenty from the library, both fiction and non-fiction. He reads out loud. He tells me about the books he reads. He asks me to read to him. We definitely do not need workbooks for that.

9 yo does not need geography or history workbook. He might not cover grade-appropriate material, but he reads and discusses plenty. He draws connections, prints out maps, finds causes and effects of historical events.

I got Math Mammoth for 9 yo. All I need is some guide for what 7 yo is supposed to learn in math. So one workbook in math, just one. I would like to continue using Bring Beginnings and Lashon HaTorah for Chumash, so that's already three workbooks, and that is a lot for a workbook-averse kid.

Take a deep breath. Empty the Amazon cart. Save money. More importantly, save sanity, both mine and my child's. Teach each child according to his way.

what it takes to survive

This past Sunday was Yom HaShoa. No, I did not do any special activity with the kids, in fact, I am still struggling how to weave Holocaust into our conversations.

What I saw was this article about an extended family of Ukranian Jews surviving while hiding out in a cave. Their story is atypical in that a whole family was intact. The article addresses what the conditions were like in the cave and the evidence found by an expedition many years later of their amazing survival.

What struck me was the last part of the article where a professional caver answers the questions about his search:

Do you think that people today could survive like the families did?

Modern-day people who sit at a computer all day? I would say no for two reasons. First of all, these were hands-on people. They were carpenters and merchants who had to provide for themselves, especially during the occupation. They also grew up knowing the history of the caves in the area and that ancient people lived in them, so they knew it could be done. Secondly, the Stermer grandmother taught her family not to trust authority. At one point, before they fled to the caves, all Jews were told to meet in town and register. The grandmother decided they were not going to go. The family worried but they obeyed the grandmother. That day, in five separate towns, the Germans rounded up thousands of Jews and many were never seen again—it had been a trap. I think people today often don't give themselves the right to question authority.

If, G-d forbid, something like this was to happen again, are we training our kids to survive?

I am thinking about how my kids spent hours exploring our fairly overgrown backyard. The know every nook and cranny of it, they know what it is like to get their hands dirty, to dig with a shovel, to carry rocks, to tie down bushes to make tents. Moreover, they have been carrying all of these activities by themselves while their peers have been obediently sitting at their desks, keeping their hands and notebooks clean, listening to authority, learning how not to speak out of turn and trust adults no matter what.

Years ago, one of the Christian homeschooling curriculum that I encountered emphasized obedience as a good trait. I asked another parent if this is a midda (a character trait) that we cultivate as Jews. She said, no.   Oh, it would be so easy if these kids just listened and obeyed! We are a stiff-necked people, we are stubborn, we question authority. Yesterday, my oldest went a little rant about whether G-d exists and his proof is that he has been asking for Nintendo DS in Shema Koleinu and never got one. If we were Catholic, I was supposed to bop him on the head and say: "Silly! How dare you question the existence of G-d?" But, being Jewish, I explained how everything around him could not be pure coincidence and there must be a Creator who is in charge of the world.

Why so many Jews perished in Holocaust? Why they listened and trusted the powers in charge? Why they did not lift their heads from Talmud pages and university journals and fought for their lives? We say "never again", but why are we relying on others to ensure our survival instead of cultivating this resilience and stubbornness?

Occupation?

At some point we all have to fill out some forms: name, address, phone number, followed by occupation and employer. Ever since I started staying at home, this question bugged me. The easiest answer--homemaker-- rubs me the wrong way. I immediately picture a shapely lady in a button-down dress with a frilly apron, a duster in one hand and a perfect perm being held up with another.

No, that is definitely not me.

Homeschooler? That sounds like I am the one who is being taught.

Homeschool teacher? A bit too pretentious, and this conjures a blackboard, American flag, and a whopping three kids lined up behind desks.

So who am I? And, more importantly, what do I occupy myself with?

When my oldest was just a few weeks old, my mother came to visit. I was in the midst of graduate school in biology, or, more correctly, in the midst of quitting graduate school. I knew even before I had my baby that being gone for twelve hour stretches was not what I was aspiring to do, even if my research was going well, even if I was a very good student, and even if I could find a way to balance motherhood, lab work, stipend for an income and random babysitters. My mother was very disturbed by this. I remember a conversation where she was pushing me to define myself, sort of in the way that those forms want you to describe yourself in one word. She said that she is a doctor, and my grandfather was a veteran. I, fresh from yet another nursing and diaper change, and a whole new mommy brain, which felt like being stuck in honey after high-flying intellectualism of scientific papers, said that I am a mother. My mother laughed, and said that it's something you do on the side, and the kids grow up and they do not need you and you need to be something else.

Almost nine years into motherhood, I beg to differ. It is easy to dismiss motherhood as yet another pursuit, but it is impossible for it not to redefine you in such fundamental ways, that both of your ears are left ringing. On the other hand, those professions and occupations come and go. My mother became a doctor because of a certain degree of family pressure, and while she found what she likes, I often think about how many other things she could have been pursuing, were she not so rigidly defined by being a doctor. My grandfather was an organizer of veterans from WWII, but, I am sure, he would have been much happier if the war never happened, and there were no veterans to organize. Would his life be incomplete without them?

What am I? I was a foreign student, and that defined me for a bit. I was also a very good student. I was type A, always driven, always organized. I still approach any sort of testing or personal learning that way. But life threw enough curve balls already, that I learned to mellow out, let go, and not always strive for an A when B would be just fine, and NOBODY is grading anyway!

I am a life-long learner; just as I audited physical chemistry in college, so I took a graphic design course, and so I read midwifery books, and so I started my Nach Yomi and so I keep on learning alongside my kids. I am also not shy to try something new, push a different button, move out of my comfort zone.

I have been working on my character traits, because there are six eyes constantly learning from me, especially when I am at my worst. When you are home with your kids all the time, you cannot blame others for the way they are turning out. So personal growth is on my agenda.

I can make a dinner in 15 minutes, if need be. I can get the kids out the door in 15 minutes, too. And I can watch your kid if you give me a 15 minute notice. I can also have a friend over, for tea, for a talk, just to drop in. My house will not be spotless, but whatever needs to be picked up (to my standards) will get done in 15 minutes.

I can read a book to one child while nursing another. I can resolve conflicts, chauffeur, grocery-shop with kids in tow, sneak in math, teach aleph-bet, answer questions about foramen ovale and why is Shaul after Dovid (chasing, that is, not chronologically). I can wipe tushies in the middle of the night, chase away bad dreams and soothe a child back to sleep. I can teach how to ride a bike and fly a kite, how to read and multiply, how to apply for a library card and write an apology letter.

Is there a name for all of this? Moreover, as I am filling out yet another form, is there space for all of this?

Most of this falls into the category of conscious motherhood. Yet I strongly doubt that writing "mother" as occupation, and "being my own boss" as employer is what those forms are after.

What defines you? What occupies you? And how flexible are you willing to be with your self-definition when the circumstances change?

on having fun

It is Sunday, which means laundry day. Nowadays, that means that the boys have to fold their laundry and put it away. They like this experience about as much as pulling teeth. They think it is tedious and annoying. I find it annoying when I end up washing clothes which were barely worn or never worn. Either way, I do laundry once a week, make a pile for each boy of his clothes, and it is his job to fold them and put them away.


To be honest, every Sunday morning there is also a dishwasher to unload, so there are more chores. Some days I do wonder whether this is making for a pretty intense Sunday, but I think it is important to get help from the boys in these chores, especially since it affects them directly.

We were also trying to make it out to the zoo and arrive there by 11 am, when they have a bird show. It is only on weekends, and I normally take kids to the zoo at some point during the week. Additionally, my husband was coming along and even coming in the same car with us, a rare occurrence when he's on call.

So the dishwasher was unloaded before we left, but then we got back and there were two piles of laundry waiting for the boys. 6 yo proceeded to work on his as long as I was warming up his favorite curry cauliflower soup for lunch. 8 yo was not so calm. This pile of laundry was taking away from his fun day and he really did not want to fold it. He sulked, kicked the pillows off the couch and got tattled on by 3 yo. When I asked him to put the pillows back, he said that he's mad and I said to punch something when he's mad. I sent him downstairs to punch a punching bag. He stalked off.

A few minutes later he came up, in better spirits, and proclaimed that since the day started well, he wants it to continue well, so he decided that after he folds his laundry he will take apart the broken DVD player. Then he moved right onto his pile, and finished it quite quickly. After lunch, the boys took out screwdrivers and went to tear that player apart.

I stepped back and watched all of this. The DVD player was designated to be taken apart probably a month ago, and I was wondering to myself whether I should quietly dispose of it or remind the boys of its existence. The laundry situation is the same every week. I did not promise any more "fun" for today (pizza for dinner since it is rosh chodesh). However, 8 yo decided that today started out as a fun day and he made a conscious effort to continue it as a fun day.

The other night, when I was tucking the boys in, 6 yo asked me about making wishes on a wishbone. Before I even replied (Do you think they come true? Isn't G-d in charge? etc.) he told me that he would wish for everything to be fun-fun-fun. 8 yo chimed in that he would wish to find fun in everything he does. I thought that it was cute at the time, but now I see that he took it quite seriously.

How many of us go through life waiting for someone else to make things fun and to make us happy? How many of us do not realize that we are in control of our own happiness?