this one is not a mentch

This past Shabbos, R. Chanoch Teller was a guest speaker in our shul. He gave a class about being a mentch (an admirable person). He started by saying how all parenting classes tell parents to love their children, but that a lot of them do not say that it is much easier to love your children if they are well-behaved and are mentches.

Overall, I agree. It is easier to love a child who is lovable. But what about your child who is not? What if your child is the one who is throwing a major tantrum? What if your child routinely bites/hits/hurts/screams at you and his siblings? What if your child makes you wonder where he came from, because he is not like you and like your other kids?

Before I go further, let me clarify that this is not a parenting issue, that your other kids are being brought up in the exact same way, in the exact same household, but their behavior is more reflective of your expectations, while this one child is off the wall. If all your children are off the wall, then you might need to reexamine your parenting.

You have that one child who is different. The one who melts down over the slightest things, the one who drives you nuts, the one for whom you wish there were parents to call and to complain to, except that you are the parent. What are you supposed to do?

All of a sudden, a chorus of blaming voices materializes. These voices usually find fault in the parent.

• It's your genetics, you must have had undiagnosed (or diagnosed) ADD or some other disorder and now look what you transmitted.
• It's your reluctance to medicate, there must be a nice pill which will magically turn your little monster into a human.
• It's your eagerness to medicate, must be that one of those drugs is causing a side effect, and you are blindly shoving more medicine in.
• If only you would cut out gluten/sugar/carbs/food coloring/dairy, you would see such a difference.
• If you were only stricter and show who is the boss, the child would obey.
• If you only hugged them and held them during tantrums, then they would feel comfortable and not have to express themselves this way.
• If only you would have held off on those vaccines, your child could have been normal.

The list goes on...

I included the items from both sides of the aisle, since I find that both sides scream themselves hoarse over the choices they make or regret making. The overall sense of guilt and wrongdoing starts to envelop the parent, who is coming to grips that this child will not be a conventional child. The parents either are paralyzed by realization that this is not going away, or seek out every single cure in hope that one of them will do the trick.

What happened to embracing differences? What happened to realizing that not everyone is cut out to be mentch by temperament? What happened to accepting the child for who he is, warts and all?

King David
http://www.biblewalks.com/Photos30/DavidHarp8.jpg

David HaMelech was a warrior by temperament. By plain p'shat, same temper which caused him to act fearlessly in battle led him to audaciously seize Batsheva and concoct a cover-up with Uriah. Despite all the whitewashing of the story, David's actions were not in accordance with Hashem's will; he clearly performed an evil deed, and confessed later that he sinned. The larger question is: why is this story recorded, especially since it has to come with so many explanations of how it is not as bad as it sounds? It must be that an important lesson is hidden in there: even a great personality is not always acting as a mentch.

Based on midrashim, David's own family did not think very highly of him. He was odd, he was weird, he was different, he did not seem suited for leadership, and he wrestled bears and lions with his bare hands. Does not sound like a nice yeshiva bochur. His parents probably stayed up at night, whispering and shaking heads, wondering what would become of him. But he was given an opportunity to be a shepherd, stay in the wilderness, play his harp, expend his energy, find what suits him.

Are we giving our difficult children the same opportunity? Are we depriving them of a chance to become the next great leader by constantly squeezing them into a box that is too small? Do all of them have to behave like a mentch all the time? Do we have to point out every time how they do not measure up?

I am guilty of this. I have a child who is not like either my husband or me. Today I wish there were some parents somewhere to call and to complain to about how his behavior is just plain wrong. But now, sitting down, I think how this child is most likely to behave like a mentch in the most unexpected situations: share something, help someone, make someone feel better, tune in to the feelings of others. As I enlarge the box, his finer qualities manage to squeeze in, too, and overshadow the inappropriate behaviors.

I need to find more opportunities for this child to shine.

November 12th

Hubby was on call last night, but he came home for breakfast for an hour. All three kids jumped him, literally. We are big on wrestling time with daddy, and 2 yo does not let him leave the house without kisses. I remember, when we just got married  walking by someone's house in Far Rockaway. The father was just walking up the driveway, and, in the window, there were two girls, jumping on the couch and cheering for daddy. I feel happy that this is the ritual my kids developed on their own. Some days, they will run out on the lawn to greet him.

After breakfast, it was time to change a tire on my van. I planned on walking the kids to nearby McDonald's with some schoolwork, and letting them climb on the play structure till it was time to pick up the car. In the ideal world, my husband would take the car and I could just stay home without hustling everyone out of the house early. In the ideal world, there would be a park nearby where the kids could play. In the ideal world, the local eatery would be kosher, or, at least, not so stereotypically treif. But this is the way the cookie crumbles, and I thought it gives kids a nice motivation to finish their work quickly so they could play. As we walk in and settle down at the table, I hear a voice behind me, saying: Shalom, chaverim! Boker tov! (Hello, friends! Good morning!) So much for coming in undetected... I got myself a coffee, so that we were not just using their facilities without them benefiting.  I also learned that they blast music, which made it hard for boys to concentrate. However, despite all that, they were able to do Lashon HaTorah. 8 yo worked on memorizing his multiplication. 6 yo filled out a page of Lama. Then everyone went outside to play.

The tire was done, and, as I am picking up my car, I bumped into a friend. She told me about story time at the library which was starting soon. When the boys were younger, we used to go all the time. We were also in different cities then. Here, I tried it a few times, but it never worked out well: either the librarian quit, or the new librarian kept mispronouncing words from the books she was reading, or it was a month off, or something else. Besides, it is hard to justify dragging all three kids to an activity which is only meant for one. However, I had some books to return, and I thought that the boys could sit and read in the kids' section while I held 2 yo on my lap. So off we went.

What I completely forgot about was that today was Veteran's Day, so the library was closed. We still got to slide all 40+ books down the book drop and the boys informed all other people in the vicinity that the library is closed.

When we got home, I wrote up the list of what was left to do. It included raking leaves and going to farmer's market, neither of which happened due to the rain and sleeping 2 yo. She took a long time settling in and then a long time waking up. Those naps do not last forever, but I am holding on to them, with both hands and all my sanity.

I have an interesting dichotomy within my boys: one could not give a hoot about neatness of his work, while the other is paralyzed by the thought of getting something wrong. I find that I sound like a cray person, telling one kid to fix this and show me better work, and encouraging the other to write down just about anything, and that it's good enough. I wonder whether it is part of "chanoch l'naar al pi darko", teaching each child according to his disposition. I also wonder whether it will make me crazy. I wonder whether I will have enough patience to be really doing it, and not just paying lip service to the idea.

2 yo has been climbing into 6 yo's bed when I tuck him in, but for the past week, it was bothering him. He pulled on his blanket, tried kicking her off and came up with all different strategies why she should not be in his bed. Depending o the night, I could go along with that, after all, it is his bed and he should be able to make rules about who is welcome there and when. Tonight it happened that I was tucking him in and nobody else was in the room. We said Shema and then he wanted to know where is his sister. I said that she is out, and he sounded that he was expecting her to be in his bed. I thought about how he really wants her there, but on his terms, and now that she was not present, he was missing her.

in defense of unschooling

Part 1.

We got a book through PJ Library in the mail, addressed to 8 yo. It's called Jeremy's Dreidel and talks about a boy who makes a dreidel with braille letters on its sides so his blind father can play it with him. Simultaneously, the book introduces what it's like to be blind and to live with someone who is blind. It highlights how much blind people can do. 8 yo recommended that we read it out loud tonight. At the back, there are directions for making a few different kinds of dreidel, including the Braille one. I noted that Hebrew Shin is not like any letter of English braille. Next thing I know, we are googling Hebrew braille charts. And the next thing after that, I find an article on the development of Hebrew braille, attached here for those who are interested. Now 8 yo wants to read that article, but it is bedtime, so I am printing it out. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Requests for more articles? Writing something in Hebrew Braille? And which category does this learning belong to? History? Language arts? Does it matter?

Part 2.

As I am tucking the boys in, 6 yo says:
-Please do not look under my bed, Mommy!
Now he really got my attention.
-Why? What do you have there?
-You will be mad, so please do not look.
-What is it?
8 yo peeks under:
-It's a book!
-Were you planning on reading in bed?
-Yes, because it is Torah! You never give us a chance to read, and it is Torah, so you have to let me read it!

It was his parsha book, the one he has been reading on Friday. Of course, he read plenty today. He read a chapter of Henry Huggins (good old Beverly Cleary!), he read Magic School Bus in the Time of Dinosaurs, but he felt that he needed to get even more reading time in, and of Torah, too.

This is a kid who did not know his letters early on, had no interest in reading (but loved being read to), and did not develop fluency till fairly recently. I am pretty sure he would not be willing to read out loud: I have to sneak it in by asking him to read the quotes in Magic School Bus. But here he is, sneaking in Torah reading, yet being too honest not to let me know that he's planning on sneaking. We compromised by me putting the book out in the living room, so he can read it first thing tomorrow morning.

awesome Friday

You know those days when you look back and say: this is so enjoyable and I am getting so much satisfaction? Well, today was one of those.

edible aquifer

It did not start exactly on the right foot: 2 yo and 8 yo were duking it out for my lap space on the couch and I do not enjoy mediating fights while it is still dark outside. 8 yo asked for pancakes for breakfast, and I asked him to set the table in return.

Everyone davened, and then I presented the schedule for the day. It was not met with great enthusiasm. 6 yo complained that I did not include Lama or any reading time. 8 yo complained that I did not include Rosetta Stone. I thought I am going easy on everyone since it is the first early Friday. However, 6 yo zoomed through his work and was done by 10 am. In that time he did math, handwriting, spelling and Lashon HaTorah. We still had parsha to do, so I told him to find a parsha reader and go read quietly in his room while 8 yo catches up. The older one was done by 11 am. He did review in math, script, spelling and Lashon HaTorah.

giddy up!

Then we moved on to parsha. Since 8 yo is learning Chayei Sorah in depth, I was quite familiar with the part that we covered so far: Eliezer meeting Rivkah. I was not sure what to do about the rest: cover it in depth? Skip it, so it is new and fresh? Cover it lightly? I decided to focus on a few highlights and keep the rest for more in-depth study. Then we acted out the story by the well. 8 yo wanted to be Eliezer. 6 yo wanted to be a camel, and so did 2 yo. I got to be Rivkah. The boys found saddles and harness for the camels, jewelry for Eliezer to give to Rivkah, a bucket for the well and a gallon jug. They asked me what a nose ring is, and I googled it to show them. We also discussed how much a camel can drink. They filled up the gallon jug with water and tried carrying it around on their shoulders, but nobody lasted too long. I am thankful for indoor plumbing, these kids would make lousy water carriers!

this camel is resting

WE acted out the story till they got to Betuel's house. The boys remarked on how much fun they had, and I made a mental note to do this more often.

Anachronistic prayer of Eliezer

Then we had lunch and for dessert, we made edible aquifers, to show how a well works. I got this idea from this blog. We talked a bit about wells before and we tried making one with clay/soil, sand and rocks, but I saw that the idea was not sticking. We used dyed seltzer for water, ice cubes for the aquifer, ice cream for impermeable layer and cookie crumbs for the soil. The straws were the wells. When 6 yo asked: so the well has to reach the aquifer to get water, I knew that he finally got the concept.

2 yo helped me make the lemon bars, there is chicken soup simmering on the stove, the kids are washed and we are set for Shabbos. I did most of my cooking yesterday, so not scrambling at the last minute adds to today's calmness.

Shabbat Shalom to all!

what does your daughter do all day?

I have two school-age boys and a 2 yo girl. The question I get is, how do you keep 2 yo occupied while you are teaching the boys?

As you can surmise from my posts, I do not spend hours every day just sitting and breathing down the boys' backs as they cover subject by subject. I am present, and I might be more involved in some areas (chumash, kriyah) than in others. Most of the activities are hands-off for me, and I just check the final result, or tell where the corrections are necessary. That gives me more time to attend to 2 yo.

As far as her schedule goes, she gets quite a bit of freedom. She gets dressed when the boys get dressed, eats breakfast with the rest of us, davens after the boys and just hangs around, observing and joining in whatever we are doing. If the boys are sitting at the dining room table, writing, she will do one of her "projects". She knows where I keep the scrap paper, stickers and shapes for gluing. She gets glue and scissors, pencils, crayons, whatever strikes her, brings them over and starts working. Then she will tell me when she is done, and usually wants to display her creation. She is also pretty good about cleaning up after herself.

We had quite a few spills and messes. She cut up things while learning how to use scissors. She made large puddles of glue, but it is all washable. She spilled her shapes and we had to sing clean up song numerous times to get all the shapes back in the bucket. The tables get some of the mess, too, but it is all washable and wipeable. Besides, since I am usually more focused on the boys' work, I am not breathing down her back to be perfect, either.

Working alongside her brothers

Today she chose to do play-do while the boys worked in the morning. She got out the shapes and a small tub, set herself up in the kitchen and had fun time cutting and mushing. Then she put it away and joined the boys at the dining room table. She brought over a lacing kit. I was asked to untangle the strings and then she proceeded to lace a dog while the boys did Lashon HaTorah and math.

Later in the afternoon, she found a papier mache peach and wanted to paint it. Originally I thought it would make a great sukkah decoration, painted and covered in mod podge, but it never happened. Now she pulled out paint, a jar for water and a paint brush and worked on adding different colors to it. When she was all done, she wanted to thumb tack it to the board in the kitchen. I tried explaining how it would not work, but she wanted to display it. I suggested hanging it up in the dining room. She brought me a piece of string and we hung it from a curtain rod.

When she is not involved in these projects, she plays with her dolls, puts them to sleep, changes their diapers, makes strollers out of bins and spreads out blankets for picnics and boats and whichever way her imagination takes her. She got tall enough and strong enough to open the fridge doors, so she can help herself to the snacks I keep in the bottom drawer: squeezy yogurts and regular yogurt cups and string cheese. I leave the bowls of dry cereal on the table ( if someone didn't finish theirs during breakfast) and she would snack from them.

Painting

She comes to sit on my lap occasionally, and to cuddle up. But lately she has been valuing her freedom of roaming more than the comfort she gets.

Someone must be thinking, what about the academics? ( As if all this that she does could not qualify as a full day of schoolwork). Well, she likes when I read books to her. She knows the first two letters in her name and points out that combination whenever we encounter it. She learned the first letters in her brothers' names. I have a bag of magnetic letters which I got when the oldest was one and half. She likes to assemble them on the fridge.

She can count solidly to ten, and more shakily to twenty. She is learning her numbers from pressing them on the microwave pad to cook her morning oatmeal. When she is asked how old she is, she says that she is in "quarters", which means two and three quarters. She also knows that if you have one marshmallow and you need to end up with three ( like your brother), you need two more. And she know what two more looks like!

She knows what we do on Shabbat, and how we get ready for it. She knows that Hebrew books go the other way from the English ones. She has a few favorite Hebrew songs, and she sings them on her own: HaShafan Hakatan, Af Echad, Torah, Hashem is here.

She also still mercifully naps most days ( my boys gave up naps right after turning 2), so we all get a bit of downtime.

So, while I cannot tell you exactly what she does all day, I know that she keeps herself busy. Lately, 6 yo complained how she does not get to do any real schoolwork, and all my talk about how her playing is her schoolwork was not what he wanted to hear. He is not the only one. I just saw an article where a veteran homeschooler explained how all different activities can count as schoolwork. As far as I am concerned, she is doing quite well, whether formally, or informally. She is proof that unschooling works.

constructive destruction

Yesterday I did not have any formal school planned: the kids were coming back from a sleepover at my in-laws, I had an ultrasound scheduled midday, and there was tae kwon do in the afternoon. I figured it is not worth fighting everyone to get those few pages of work filled up, but the kids had other plans. My mother-in-law sent over a few broken electronics, and they were eager to take them apart.

Here they are, sitting on the deck with three screwdrivers, undoing the screws. It is like advanced present unwrapping: you do not know what you are going to get. Yesterday they did not get too far, but it took them a good hour and lots of teamwork and taking turns to get the cover all the toy and to remove the batteries.

Today 6 yo was going to a Marine Mammal day camp for a few hours, run by a fellow homeschooler. This means a ten-year old girl, who is fundraising to go to a camp herself. 8 yo was sulking in the morning: he gets to pack his lunch, he gets to have fun, he gets to do cool things, while I am stuck here on a cold rainy horrible day and nothing good ever happens to me. This attitude gives me a bad rise ( until I pause and realize that there are plenty of times I feel like that too: oh, poor me, why me, why is this all happening to me?) Either way, I was not sure how much more of this moping I could take. Then I mentioned to my husband how today is trash pick up and could he put our old broken TV/VCR combo by the curb? And then I had an idea: I asked 8 yo if he would like to disassemble it instead. That turned everything around; the day went from horrible to great, there was eagerness to get work done, and he got to davening right away.

This is what 8 yo did today: finished Level 1 of Rosetta Stone, did a page of Lashon HaTorah, translated three pesukim in Chumash, learned letter "k" in script and did multiplication in math. Additionally, he drummed for half an hour, stood in line at the polls and helped me in the grocery store. 6 yo did these before his camp even started: a page of a new unit in Lashon HaTorah, HWT and math. All of this was done by 2:30, including lunch.

As soon as 8 was done, he went downstairs, lugged the TV by himself up the stairs, got the screwdrivers and went at it.

There were oohs and aahs when the cathode tube emerged. The boys fond the processor, the speaker and the induction coils in the motor. 8 yo disconnected the gears in the rewind/fast forward mechanism. I showed them the resistors and the capacitors. Everyone was busily occupied for nice long while. I just regretted that I do not know more about electronics to show them around.

Opening the cover

There is a large question on what motivates the kids: star charts, reward boxes, prizes, bribery. Most of these are materialistic rewards and are extrinsic. The parents and the teachers are reduced to the status of dog trainers: if you do this, you get that, and if you do not do this, you lose that. I see how it works, and I see that when you are at your wits' end, this gives you a way out. But can't we expect more from humans than we expect from dogs? Can't we find what makes humans tick, and feed into that?

freeing the cathode tube

playing with induction coils

Right now, taking things apart is that extrinsic motivator. There is a process of discovery, and channeling destruction, and surprise and applying what you know to a new situation. And my gut feeling is, this is what learning is truly supposed to be about. All those pages of work that were done in the morning, that are lying neatly in the boys' binders, they are nothing compared to what they took away from this old broken TV.

Mrs. Lot

I attended a homeschooling webinar this past week and one of the questions was about the science curriculum. Now, those still trigger a small wave of panic in the pit of my stomach: science curriculum? we do not have one! I am brimming with ideas: nature walks, nature journals, leaf categorization, phases of the moon, using light sources to show equinox and eclipses, plant life, the human body... The problem is, I think my kids would much rather read some of their science books, watch a documentary, dig in the dirt and take a picture of a woodpecker on our neighbor's house than do a formal study of anything. 

I attended a homeschooling webinar this past week and one of the questions was about the science curriculum. Now, those still trigger a small wave of panic in the pit of my stomach: science curriculum? we do not have one! I am brimming with ideas: nature walks, nature journals, leaf categorization, phases of the moon, using light sources to show equinox and eclipses, plant life, the human body... The problem is, I think my kids would much rather read some of their science books, watch a documentary, dig in the dirt and take a picture of a woodpecker on our neighbor's house than do a formal study of anything. 

In honor of this week's parsha, Vayeira, I decided to make Mrs. Lot.

Protocol? There was no protocol. Mrs. Lot turned into a pillar of salt, so we were supposed to get a pillar of salt, somehow. I started by filling a pot with a small amount of water. Then I asked boys to add some salt to it and to stir it up. I told them that salt is dissolving and soon we will not see it any more. I explained that salt is made out of sodium and chloride, holding hands, but when it hit s water, they let go and snuggle up with the water molecules instead. I also told them that we cannot add salt indefinitely, eventually, there will not be enough water for sodium and chloride to snuggle up to, so they will choose to hold hands and that will make the solution saturated. The boys took turns adding salt and mixing. I got them to taste it and they declared it to be positively salty. 

Then I asked them: how can we get the salt out? 8 yo said that we could vaporize all the water. I asked them to take a skewer, wrap a piece of yarn around it and tie it. Then I showed them some coarse and fine salt, next to each other. I asked them to compare ( and taste). I explained that coarse salt has larger crystals. I also said that I hope that by dipping the string into coarse salt, we will encourage the growth of larger crystals.

The start things along, I put the pot on the stove. Immediately, 6 yo asked how long it will take. I said, a few minutes till the water starts boiling. They stood there, watching it and counting the seconds. A watched pot does boil! Then we dipped in the string on the skewer. Two things happened: the crystals dissolved and the string started moving around in the boiling bubbles. At this point, it was getting close to Shabbos, and I was not going to let Mrs. Lot take over my stove, so the experiment got moved to the top of the dryer.

This is Mrs. Lot, gently evaporating on the stove

8 yo asked about the white dots on the side of the pot. I asked for his opinion and he correctly guessed that it is salt. I stressed that only water molecules can evaporate, so those are the droplets of salty water, where the water evaporated and the salt was left behind.

Mrs Lot is currently taking up residence on top of the dryer that is running a load of clothes. I am chuckling, remembering my grad school days. I specialized in X-ray crystallography, but, before one can shoot crystals, one has to grow them. Some liked to grow undisturbed, like rock candy, while some liked to be agitated. I hope that the gentle dryer vibrations are encouraging crystal growth.

We do not need science curriculum, not yet. I need to be able to catch my kids when they are interested in science and give them a certain amount of information, on their level, with a hands-on activity of some kind. Overall, the goal is to make science something accessible and enjoyable.