Category: raising children

For Lunch, We Take Big Bites. Then, We Chew…

It’s been a while. It’s 2018 and a cold, snowy, about to get snowier day here in Kamloops. The day so far has been full – reading an engaging book in early morning when all is quiet and making enough mental notes for a good conversation with the boys later on, walking the dog in winter crispness, meeting with Sasha’s teacher to lay out this semester’s intended learning (a group of homeschooling kids meet once a week for various learning activities such as nature excursions, science experiments, art, and of course, playing.) Add a haircut and grocery shopping… then we’re back home for the day’s learning.

Sasha settles on a book about Canadian discoveries, a library book that has them raise their eyebrows in surprise and say ‘Oh, I did not know that…’ or ‘Mom, did you know…’. Past the reading about discoveries comes the part where creativity kicks in and be it Lego, or other materials, various viable or less so inventions come to life. Inspiration is a word that contains a world of hopes, dreams, sweat, frustrations, and sometimes succeeding, but it never ends at that. It’s a word I’d like the boys to make it a constant presence in their lives as they grow up and I’d like the same for myself, to be inspired no matter what.

As we sit for lunch, we chat about an incoming overnight hike to a nearby lake, and I wish I could remember how the conversation slipped from snowy woods, cabins, and the games we’d play in the evening to Martin Luther King. While the boys still munch on their food, I read out loud about his contribution to the world and then we listen to his famous speech ‘I had a dream.’ The timing couldn’t have been more adequate. Our last weeks have been peppered with many conversations about equality, the expectation of some to dominate over others, modern-day slavery, the extent of it compared to the old day, the wrongness of allowing it as an invisible presence in the developed world market, the fact that people are still judging people based on the colour of their skin.

The boys sit and listen; I read some of the words that carry so much weight it’s a wonder (not the positive kind) we do not employ them more intensely in the education process. ‘Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity…’ has me read over twice because it brings so much with it. We live in an age when questionable leaders emerge with the help on internet ‘viral’ spreading of various kinds of information, true or otherwise.

We also live in a world where education is being tweaked to fit within narrow confines dictated by commercialism (presence of cell phones in classrooms has nothing to do with learning no matter how you turn it, no pun intended) and is often commandeered by the fear of imposing any boundaries, even though children’s well-being depends on the adults around them establishing healthy boundaries.

How are we to inspire the young generation to seek knowledge in the interest of preventing ultimately selfish pursuits and avoid ‘conscientious stupidity?’ How are we to inspire them to see that the world they are part of is requires patience to understand, a sense of wonder and determination to develop critical thinking skills that will eventually help create a better social, political, and environmental landscape…

Learning is a beautiful adventure, a constantly evolving path that can have us maintain a balance within ourselves as we grow, no matter our age, and balance with the world we belong to. I wish that by the time the boys are ready to take off flying, they will remember that and keep that as a bookmark of sorts in that book of knowledge they’ll hopefully keep tucked in their backpacks…

One social study – The Thursday bunch of flyers

The Thursday bunch of flyers is the thickest of all. Tony had remarked on that before, during the time he had a paper route. At first, I thought it was just a random occurrence but now I know it is so. Thursday heralds the approaching weekend via flyers and people follow the trail all the way to the mall (or other individual stores) to shop.

A regular Thursday pile of flyers is thick. The Black Friday pile was the thickest I’ve seen so far, but then again, there’s always a next opportunity. After all, any event can be made into a sale event, says the marketing guru team overlooking our ways from where they can see what the masses are attracted to and even if they are not, what they can be persuaded to buy. Overwhelming irresistible visuals, promises of so much (emptiness.)

Hence our homeschool social study. The boys got three flyers each – one from a food store, one from an electronics store and another from an everything retail store. Then came dissection time!

For the food flyer, I made a few categories: wholesome, local/seasonal, environmentally-damaging, misleading, and processed (yes, there is good/necessary processed and bad processed (if you think Cheesies you are on the right track.) For starters.

As expected, it was an eye-opener, not that my eyes are not open enough. Yes, cynicism seeps in from all corners, but such is the nature of the journey. The boys added a letter here and there, L for local, S for seasonal (seasonal where, Mom?) and then we chatted. Have the ‘why’ answered when you chat with children, they said. I did. The local food is scarce in big stores. Plus, it’s winter – what would seasonal offer? Seasonal in areas that are close enough geographically so that the food does not accrue too high a fossil fuel tag, can we add that up? Can one eat healthy with just seasonal/local offers? People did it for a long time. Would that foster better appreciation for food and reduce waste? Perhaps.

We moved on to the electronics flyer and the ‘everything’ store. We perused the images and as we did so I felt many shades of shame for my fellow humans. How many kinds of laptops and cell phones do we need to have available for consumption when we know the high price in human lives and environmental damage that the extraction of precious metals inflicts?

The huge TV screens – how many kinds do we ‘need’? And if the size is so, where can you fit it? Not in a small room, that’s for sure. And that is before you get the rest of the surround system paraphernalia. Bigger is not better, unless it refers to the size of one’s heart, metaphorically speaking of course. How can kids of today learn about it if they see bricks of flyers every week advertising the opposite?

If we are to find a way out of this environmental mess and wasteland we have created over the last century but more so over the last 50 years, we really need to promote ‘small’ and necessity-based living. Leaving room for what matters (how do we determine that?) is a daunting task for today’s youngsters. There is an army (more in fact) of marketing specialists, ad wizards, and app creators ready to add to the shackles that enslave too many the young minds. Sure it cannot be so dark you may say. Take a look around is what I say; it’s not a pretty sight.

Consumerism is out of hand. What’s ironic of course is that many people find themselves buying things they do not need, or they buy because the deal is too good to pass on. There is an avalanche of things and special offers that keeps on tumbling down, and the fast-paced life allows for little, is any breaks to conjure critical thinking and make sound decisions regarding consumption.

Onto the ‘everything store’ flyer. In the toy section there are board games – how refreshing! – featuring Nintendo games and some big brand names. Subliminal messages? Ah, but the message is rather in our faces. Do we mind? I do. Why not leave games as they are? Why not leave toys unbranded and children’s minds unpopulated with logos? It would only benefit them, leaving enough room to observe, question, wonder, choose.

Truly, there is so much to learn from merely observing the paths we travel during just one day of existence. Looking around, reading, pondering, but most of all, questioning. That is what we want our children to grow up into. Critical thinking tools are too precious and necessary to not be passed on. In a world that is bursting at the seams with too much stuff, but where famine and poverty are rampant in so many parts of the world, leaving our children minds open to see and question becomes a moral obligation.

The conversation expanded in many directions. The boys had questions, doubts, answers, and then more questions. I had some of the answers too, but the point is not for me to answer but for us to converse on the topic. Not just on a regular day of homeschooling but on any day. To delve deeper still by looking around and casting glances that do not succumb our minds to the mainstream flow but rather help us question the happenings of today, which ideally will prompt ideas for change. Spring will not be brought about by one flower, it’s been said countless times, but then again, it’s a start.

It’s September. Here we go again.

I feel a bit like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland these days; hurried, forgetting a few things, and just as often following my own steps until I realize I am running in circles. Adequately so, you could say. It’s the beginning of the school year, which means planning, more planning, sorting through books and ideas, sharpening handfuls of pencils and searching for erasers at the bottom of drawers. Jumping knee-deep in phone and in-person chats with our learning consultants, checking multiple mail boxes regularly… A word that does not exist in the summer dictionary other than to accurately describe our evenings spent on the river banks. Regularly showing up there, self-respecting river rats that we are.

We are to transition (in harmony, if possible,) from those long-drawn summer nights when you fill the time laughing, playing, chatting, hiding behind sand castles you build on the river banks so the setting sun won’t find you, so you can keep going forever.

 

The autumn chill started swallowing those bright summer nights, cricket chirps and all, a couple of weeks ago. You see it clearer with each year passing by. Time flies. You know there is no running away from it, but in knowing that, you also learn to hug each day a bit closer and take a deeper breath each morning. You learn to take off your shoes so your feet can dance on the dewy grass, you learn to silence everything for a few precious moments; eyes closed, only bird songs should be allowed to breach the silence.

We will transition then. It’s an adventure, yes, another stage in our growing to know more of the world and place ourselves with grace somewhere in it. Grace, gracefulness, gratefulness… It’s how I find my balance. Brackets of gratefulness opening and closing each day (most days?) and each season, each year. Forgetfulness, forgiveness, learning what being human means, that’s also on our curriculum.

Doubt pinches me, it does. Am I going to know how to do it all? Is our learning adventure good enough to feed their growing, curious minds? The whole picture is dazzling and nauseating at once. I won’t go there. Instead, I go the old way: one day at a time. Yes, many will ask me once again, and again, if the boys get enough socializing (yes, they do) and if this is really learning (yes, it is, just jump into a conversation with them,) and if they are missing out on life of any other kind (no, but ask them?).

So it is then. We will put up our sails and ride the waves. Some will toss us every which way, some will downright maroon us on some forgotten shores from where we will find our way back to where we can see the stars again. And some will lift us all the way up from where we will gaze and see past the limitations. Learning is an adventure; a door that never closes.

Lesson of the Day: Everything is Connected

How do you go from planting French tarragon, tomatoes, and zucchini to the lymphatic system, with some stroke information and type II diabetes facts and implications along the way? Oh, and the perils of climate change when it comes to plants and crops in general.

There is no recipe really, other than keeping the mind open and making connections. Eyes wide open, two boys jumping in with ‘I know the answer, can I say?’ and taking turns becomes a game I moderate and delight in doing so.

How do you then? You spend some time in the garden, tiny as it is, weeding and helping the little seedlings thrive with less competition. You talk about weeds as you do so: why do they grow so well, how do they grow no matter how rainy or dry the season? Resilience comes from?…

Then you talk about soil and thoughts trail back to when we did that first time, looking at pill bugs and earthworms and many other critters we had to imagine as we could not see. Kids do that willingly, which is why they learn so heartfully. They are open to imagining and building on from there.

The next day you talk seeds, fruit that bears them, the mysteries that make them germinate. Both boys are now well aware of the beautiful process that transforms a dormant seed into a plant. They steal each other’s words: you start dicotyledons, move through explaining hypocotyl, the role of the starches and fats the seed stores until the leaves appear (why only till then? What happens as leaves appear and bathe their wee faces in the sunshine? Oh yes, I gave it away… Photosynthesis).

The dance includes now chlorophyll, which is so interestingly similar to hemoglobin. And what do they each do? How? What makes our hemoglobin able to uptake oxygen? Where does that upload take place and where do the red blood cells take that oxygen? And then? Arteries, veins, movement that promotes health, breathing the right way. This is how is done… The boys breathe in and out and we wonder more about how magical the oxygenation process. Muscles that need oxygen, movement again, we need to move more and it less.

Why do strokes happen? Do they have to do with blood? Circulatory issues… Type II diabetes, a terrible and increasing menace. What exactly is that? We talk insulin, pancreas, lifestyle, movement again too, food… we’re back to the garden. Eating what we are best designed to eat. Plants… seeds and seedlings, growing into plants that produce more seeds and the big cycle continues.

‘Mom, I love it how they are all connected! It makes so much sense!’

‘Mom, is this a subject or two?’ It’s many. It’s the way they are connected. Everything is connected.

I take a deep breath. This is homeschooling. I think I’m starting to understand its beauty.

So, About Those Pink Shirts

It’s the day after. February 23, which comes right after the big anti-bullying day, pink T-shirts and all. Back when Tony started school we would purchase them directly from the teacher. Now you can buy them in stores too. Store clerks need to buy them too in some stores. I guess to prevent customer bullying?

It sounds nice and dandy and looks all innocently pink that day, but then when the next day comes… The boys’ T-shirts, because you had to buy one for each as a statement to your anti-bullying stance (I mean theirs,) went in their drawers until the following year when, if they still fit, they’d be worn to affirm their opposition to bullying.

Now here’s the thing: there was no way to make them wear them another time in between anti-bullying days at school because… ‘Mom, it’s pink.’ Right. I did not have a colour-coded childhood, and neither did my boys. They wore colours and some happened to be shades of this or that and that was that. Still, that pink T-shirt was a no-go.

You see, Sasha was already in the pink corner you could say. Because of his long hair (longer than your average boy haircut,) he was called ‘she’ by this one (short-haired) boy in his class. Yeah, dare wear some pink, Sasha, why don’t you. He didn’t. Also, he corrected the boy explaining that he is a boy. The ‘she’ appellation continued. Subtle but undermining when you’re grade 3.

My point is: the pink T-shirts work as long as they’re being backed up by true to form authority stance on bullying. Which on many an occasion does not happen. Many children end up bullied and alone in it. Just recently, two teenage boys from an Edmonton school (yes, the same school), committed suicide. They were Tony’s age and younger. Their deaths brought forth many more complaints from other students who have been bullied over the years, or were while they went to that school. The administration concluded there was no bullying in the school and most likely dressed everyone in pink yesterday. For anti-bullying day.

I see the pink T-shirts as a good initiative, but if you have it but once a year, you’re looking at 364 days of ‘fingers crossed’ in hope that all goes well and bullies dissolve in thin air. They don’t. Moreover, because bullying went from directly belittling and hitting someone (at least you knew where it came from,) to the insidious and seriously harming cyberbullying, the threat is higher than ever nowadays. Children likely need some pink body and mind armour to keep them safe from that kind of threat.

Pink T-shirts alone are simply not enough to protect children against bullying. A strong anti-bullying affirmed position needs to be there all the time or else we will keep on seeing people getting hurt. No one should feel alone while dealing with bullying and yet many do.

I recently chatted with a young man, a neighbourhood high school graduate. He explained the facts: when you enter high school you might make a friend or two if you’re lucky. If you ever get on the bad side of someone popular and get bullied, you better not complain to any teachers. ‘Walls have eyes and ears’ he said; you learn that soon enough. He was happy to be done with that chapter. ‘I wish I could one day say it like it was so enough people will know.’ I could see no need to ask if he had his pink T-shirt on occasionally. It sounded like it would’ve have made a difference anyway. Like a pink band-aid, it would cover the wound but not protect against other injuries or deal with what’s causing them.