bearing blog

The value of that first draft, even if it's the only draft.

Sometimes insight comes from unexpected places.  Let's start.

------

I think I might have figured out the reason why blog posts have been so few and far between in recent months.  It's a confluence of two factors:

(1) Mark has been working at a manufacturing plant closer to home instead of at his office out in the suburbs.  

The proximate effect of this is that he leaves later.  I think he was out the door at 7:48 am this morning, and sometimes he doesn't leave till after eight.  

I didn't marry a morning person.  I suppose I could wonder out loud if he could go away earlier and then come back earlier.  But the truth is that it's rather nice to sit for a while with him and drink the coffee and chat, in the quiet before the children get up.  

(2) Against all odds, and after ten years of homeschooling, I appear to have actually developed the self-discipline to wake the children up in the morning on time.  

That is, about 8:30.   I'm not sure why I managed it this year and not in previous years.  

Perhaps out of necessity:  this particular year, time is tight and priorities are many.  I swore up and down I would allot 90 full minutes to spend one-on-one with my kindergartener each of the three weekdays at home, because I believe in the kindergarten year (or at least, in the learning-to-read year, whenever that is), and gosh darn it if I didn't do it.  It helps that said kindergartener is an unusually sunny and cheerful worker so that those are just about my favorite 90 minutes of the day.   I also have a teenager I want to teach pre-calculus to, and since my 4th- and 6th-graders are getting the short end of the stick as regards face-time, I really must review their work at the end of the day and give them feedback if nothing else.  But I don't mind that too much as it insulates me from direct complaining.

Looking over that, I realize that quite possibly the reason I'm managing to put in the school time I planned is that I actually planned school time that I would personally enjoy instead of wanting to chew my own arm off to escape.

Well, what do you know.  Perhaps I am gradually discovering the secret of self-discipline.

Wait, haven't I discovered this before?  I think maybe it's more like discovering, forgetting, and discovering again.  

+ + +

So, isn't forty-two minutes enough time to write a blog post?  It's enough to write one, but not enough time to drink the coffee that should help me think of something substantive to say before the post.  I have a couple of topics floating around in my mind that I intended to write about "when I can sit down and gather my thoughts."   Here they are:

(1) Hamilton: An American Musical

(2) My twice-yearly post about eating and exercise habits, which is quite overdue; it shows 

(3) Negative internal self-talk (imposter syndrome stuff) and how it relates to homeschooling; the difference between trying to shut the voice up by attempting to do what it tells you you should be doing, and shutting the voice up by creating positive internal self-talk on your own terms

+ + + 

And even as I'm writing that list I notice something:  the list items get longer and more thoughtful as I go.  

Here's the thing about me and blogging, and by the way it was true back when it was "here's the thing about me and my dissertation," too:

 Writing is gathering my thoughts.

 It was only while I was typing out my explanation about the kids getting up at 8:30 that I clued in to the fact that my school days as scheduled, though hectic, are made up this year of kinds of teaching each child that I enjoy, and that it's possibly not a coincidence that this year I've mostly stuck to the plan.  

(My brain is going "WRITE THIS INSIGHT DOWN WHERE YOU WILL REMEMBER IT WHEN YOU PLAN NEXT YEAR."  Okay, okay.  It's on an index card now.  The secret to sticking to your plan is to do your damnedest to plan stuff that you will enjoy.  Harness the power of people doing what they want to do!  Sounds dumb when you write it that way but I have a sneaking suspicion that someone could write a market-economics dissertation on the same subject, if she used longer words.)

I can't prioritize revision; it's first draft or nothing on this blog, this year; but my first drafts aren't without value.  

+ + +

And now I'm eleven minutes late for waking up those kids.  So... here's where I stop.

Update: The crash of the token economy.

I'm having trouble writing these days because a lot of the stuff going on in my head right now is stuff I really ought not put out there, so I'm going through last year's posts looking for things to update.  

One thing that started out giving me high hopes was getting the kids to pull their weight around the house a little more via a token economy.  Here are the posts from that experiment:

• Token economy -- in which I describe my monthly system by which the children lose one popsicle stick each day they don't clean their rooms, and at the end of the month are paid for the remaining popsicle sticks
• Token economy (results) -- in which I report how the first month went
• First expansion of the token-for-chores system:   Laundry -- in which now the children have to do their own laundry once a week
• Job number 3:  Cooking for the family (the first week) -- in which the children begin to earn extra popsicle sticks by making dinner
• The token economy: slowing down?  and adding bathrooms --  in which I notice that compliance is falling off just a bit, and in which the children receive a raise in return for adding a daily bathroom reboot to their tasks
• Token economy:  Little-kid edition -- in which I explain how I use stickers, slightly differently, for the four-year-old's jobs

 

I only had one more set of daily tasks that I was going to spring on them, and then -- after that final set of tasks had become a habit -- I was going to transition out of the token system.  To something.  I wasn't sure what.  Something where I didn't have to handle popsicle sticks every day.  I hadn't made that part of the plan yet.  But the rest of it?  It was all going according to what I'd planned so far.

And then we went to Europe for a month, and came back and dived right into schoolwork --- 

and the whole system fell completely to pieces.

I couldn't believe how easily the routine, built up over five months, fell apart in one month.  And the fault  definitely did not lie entirely with the kids.  It was me too -- I didn't follow up on it.  I let it slide.  I forgot to check their rooms for days at a time.  I sporadically removed popsicle sticks.  The kids didn't leave time in their school day to do their jobs.  We rushed off in the morning to do errands without making sure that the bathrooms were done.  And at the end of the month, we counted up sticks and I had to pay them (because I had said I would) even though I knew darn well that they only had those tokens on the technicality of Mom forgot to make sure we did our jobs.

(Meanwhile, the other thing that fell apart was the baby's infant potty training.  I had been taking him to the toilet about once a day since he was only a few weeks old.  I had him -- at eight months -- sitting on the Baby Bjorn potty and urinating on cue.  We were trucking right along.  And then we went to Europe and used disposable diapers for a month and he forgot everything.  Argh.)

Yeah, I've done some second-guessing about that.  I should have brought the potty with us.  I should have made the kids tidy their rooms in the apartments every day.  Then they'd still have the habit.

On the other hand, we had a nice vacation.  So there's that.

+ + + 

So October didn't work in the sense that the kids didn't do jobs they weren't being asked to do every day, and the children's rooms got messy again.  

It wasn't a complete loss.  They still put their laundry into the wash every week, for example, which is an improvement.  And they still do the daily post-lunch cleanup before going off to have Leave Mom Alone Until Two O'Clock time.  And they still can cook dinner, and so once a week or so one of them will make dinner for me.  And of course they knew how to do everything, so all I have to do is tell them to "do your bathroom jobs," for example, and they can do that.

But the doing-it-every-day-without-my-asking was gone.

I eventually took the popsicle sticks out of their rooms, and they are sitting on the cookbook shelf in my kitchen while I try to figure out what I do next.

+ + +

I talked to Mark about it and he suggested that I consider which parts of the kids' jobs are working well.

"Well, the part that goes the absolute best is the after-lunch cleanup," I mused.  "The 8yo and 11yo squabble a lot, and the 8yo does her level best to dawdle so her brothers do more of the work, but on the whole they get it done well and they get it done quickly.  I think it's because we do it at the same time every day that we're home, and because they know that their break lasts until two o'clock no matter how long it takes them.  

"Also, I'm right there while they are cleaning up -- sometimes I'm helping them, sometimes I'm feeding the baby, sometimes I'm using the computer -- and they know I won't let them go until it's done right.   So they're motivated to get it done, so they can run off and have break time.  Usually they're done by 1:15, and that's with us sitting down to lunch around noon, but sometimes if we finish morning school early and then have lunch early, they're done as early as 12:30."

"Well, maybe you need to schedule times in the day to do all the other jobs," said Mark.  

"And maybe I should motivate them by promising that if they finish the jobs early, there will be break time.  With a hard stop at some clock time -- like the two o'clock end of break and start of afternoon school.  If they don't finish by then there won't be any break."

"I don't know if the kids need a break to be motivated," said Mark, "if we're going to have their allowance hang on it."

I thought of the popsicle sticks, now gathering dust on my shelf.  "I don't know if I can keep track well enough to have their allowance hang on it."

"Figure something out, and if you need help keeping track, tell me what I can do to help and I'll do it."

+ + + 

Later I sat down and thought about the jobs I wanted the kids to do and the break times that are part of our day.    I like do the younger kids' school in two bursts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a long break in the middle of the day.   (My high schooler has a good deal of freedom in setting his own work/break/sleep schedule, since he doesn't really need my help from day to day.)  

We're already using the 2 p.m. start of school as a "hard stop" on break time.  

There's also the morning start, 9:30 or 10 a.m.... maybe I could use that as the end of a "morning break" that they could get if they finished a set of morning chores.

And then, we have lunchtime.  Maybe I could tell them they had to do a small chore before they could come to the table for lunch.  

And then, we have an afternoon snack at three-thirty or so, a little earlier on Wednesdays because dinner has to be earlier because they have to leave for religious ed.  Maybe I could have them do something before they can have snack...

I made a little schedule and showed it to everyone at dinner time.  There was much groaning.

But my teenage son said, "I can do a better job than that, Mom.  You should let me come up with a system."

At first I was reluctant, but then I said.... "OK.  You come up with something."

More on this next time...

The Salesian preventive system, or, how to not punish kids.

My personal parenting/discipline ideal has always been to avoid punishing kids.

I get the impression from other people that the idea alarms them, because it sounds a lot like "avoiding discipline;" perhaps it calls to mind the stories of parents who insist their offspring can do no wrong.  You know, the kind who sue the school when their child is suspended for cheating on a test or something like that.

That's not my point.  By punishment, I mean those arbitrary unpleasantnesses inflicted in return for misbehavior:  the spanking, the grounding, the confiscation. Mrk and I aren't what you'd call permissive parents.  We try to be authoritative, if not authoritarian.  We use the term "obedience" with the kids and are clear about what it means and why it's important.   But (this is our ideal, mind you, not always the way we manage to make it work) we try not to get to the point where we need a "punishment" in the first place.  

We try to let them experience the consequences of their actions, insofar as it isn't dangerous.  

• Didn't pack an extra dress like you were supposed to?  Well, I guess you'll be wet and uncomfortable now that you've run through your friend's sprinkler in your clothes.  
• Refused to eat your lunch at lunchtime?  Ooooops, snack time isn't till 3:30, I guess you can have some of these plain almonds I keep in the car for emergencies.
• Shrieked at each other in the car while we were running errands?  After all that, I (honestly) don't feel anymore like taking you out for lunch, so instead we're going home and having tuna sandwiches.

On the occasion when something truly egregious happens -- such as when one of my kids came to me and admitted that a long string of perfect scores on math assignments had been faked -- consequences are meted out rather than merely allowed to happen; but we really try to have it make sense.  In the case of the spurious perfect scores, since I had no way to know whether the child understood the material, the child was assigned double math lessons for as many days as the lessons had been faked, each day doing the regularly scheduled lesson and at the same time re-doing one of the lessons from before.  That plus a long conversation about honesty.  And dangerous misuse of a tool around here is very likely to result in revocation of privileges to use said tool until competency and proper respect for risk is demonstrated; that's just common sense, not a punishment.  

It was difficult for us to figure out when our first was very young, but we hit our stride eventually, and he grew out of the normal frustrations of toddlerhood into an earnest child and now a delightful teenager, and that has given us a lot of confidence as we continue to bring him up, him and the four that have followed.  It's true that I yell more than I wish I did, and lose my temper.  It's an ideal I fail to measure up to.  But I still strive for that "no-punishment" ideal.

+ + + 

I notice, however, that this isn't language I tend to hear from my fellow Catholic parents much.  Indeed, at more than one parish I've seethed while listening to a priest (including in the homily at my daughter's baptism) cheerfully recommend vigorously and frequently spanking small children.  

I think this is an American Catholic phenomenon, borne of being caught between a decadent permissive culture and an army of evangelical Protestants -- in many ways, serious American Catholics are constantly playing "keeping up with the Bob Joneses," and so, for better or for worse, we have been inculturated with what I personally see as a break-the-child's-sinful-will, thou-shalt-honor-us-because-of-the-ten-commandments sort of  attitude toward child discipline.  

The exceptions are the super-crunchy attachment parenting Catholics.  Am I one of those?  Sort of; as a young parent, AP wasn't good enough for me and if you were foolish enough to ask me about it I would talk your ear off about how I was into "CC" parenting, which stands for "continuum concept," which, well, some other time....    

I did have plenty of role models for the way that I felt was right for me to parent my kids, but I lacked Catholic ones.   And that's why I was so excited when I first learned about the educational philosophy of St. John Bosco.  AKA "Don" Bosco (1815-1888) because that's what you call a diocesan priest in Italy.   Here's Wikipedia on him, for some background:

At that time the city of Turin had a population of 117,000 inhabitants. It reflected the effects of industrialization and urbanization: numerous poor families lived in the slums of the city, having come from the countryside in search of a better life. In visiting the prisons Don Bosco was disturbed to see so many boys from 12 to 18 years of age. He was determined to find a means to prevent them ending up here. Because of population growth and migration to the city, Bosco found the traditional methods of parish ministry inefficient. He decided it was necessary to try another form of apostolate, and he began to meet the boys where they worked and gathered in shops, offices, market places. They were pavers, stone-cutters, masons, plasterers who came from far away places, he recalled in his brief Memoirs.

The Oratorio was not simply a charitable institution, and its activities were not limited to Sundays. For Don Bosco it became his permanent occupation. He looked for jobs for the unemployed. Some of the boys did not have sleeping quarters and slept under bridges or in bleak public dormitories. Twice he tried to provide lodgings in his house. The first time they stole the blankets; the second they emptied the hay-loft. He did not give up. In May 1847, he gave shelter to a young boy from Valesia, in one of the three rooms he was renting in the slums of Valdocco, where he was living with his mother. He and "Mamma Margherita" began taking in orphans. The boys sheltered by Don Bosco numbered 36 in 1852, 115 in 1854, 470 in 1860 and 600 in 1861, 800 being the maximum some time later....

In 1859, Bosco selected the experienced priest Vittorio Alasonatti, 15 seminarians and one high school boy and formed them into the "Society of St. Francis de Sales." This was the nucleus of the Salesians, the religious order that would carry on his work....In 1871, he founded a group of religious sisters to do for girls what the Salesians were doing for boys. They were called the "Daughters of Mary Help of Christians." In 1874, he founded yet another group, the "Salesian Cooperators." These were mostly lay people who would work for young people like the Daughters and the Salesians, but would not join a religious order.

Bosco's capability to attract numerous boys and adult helpers was connected to his "Preventive System of Education."

Don Bosco explained his "preventive system" in an essay, "The Preventive System in the Education of the Young," which can be found here.  It begins by contrasting his "preventive" system with the "repressive" system.  The "repressive" system, he says, has its place "in the army and in general among adults and the judicious, who ought of themselves to know and remember what the law and its regulations demand."  

The repressive system consists in making the law known to the subjects and afterwards watching to discover the transgressors of these laws, and inflicting, when necessary, the punishment deserved.

According to this system, the words and looks of the superior must always be severe and even threatening, and he must avoid all familiarity with his dependents.   

In order to give weight to his authority the Rector must rarely be found among his subjects and as a rule only when it is a question of punishing or threatening.  

But Don Bosco's system is different:

[The preventive system] consists in making the laws and regulations of an institute known, and then watching carefully so that the pupils may at all times be under the vigilant eye of the rector or the assistants, who like loving fathers can converse with them, take the lead in every movement and in a kindly way give advice and correction;  in other words, this system places the pupils in the impossibility of committing faults.

This system is based entirely on reason and religion, and above all on kindness; therefore it excludes all violent punishment, and tries to do without even the slightest chastisement. 

"Excludes all violent punishment, and tries to do without even the slightest chastisement" being what I was going for all along, I was so glad to find this.  

The basic idea is that children are closely supervised at all times by leaders who care for them, model good behavior, encourage reception of the sacraments, participate in their games, and converse with them frequently about behavior norms in a way that "appeals to [their] reason" and "generally enlists [their] accord."  Close supervision and "forewarning" means that there is little chance for a child to commit a fault. Don Bosco believes that young people misbehave, initially at least, because of inattention, not malice:

The primary reason for this system is the thoughtlessness of the young, who in one moment forget the rules of discipline and the penalties for their infringement.  Consequently, a child often becomes culpable and deserving of punishment, which he had not even thought about, and which he had quite forgotten when heedlessly committing the fault which he would certainly have avoided, had a friendly voice warned him.

To apply this system Don Bosco lists several principles of education and discipline.

1.  Close supervision by the people entrusted with the children.  "[The Rector] must always be with his pupils whenever they are not engaged in some occupation, unless they are already being properly supervised by others."

2. Moral teachers who actively lead the pupils to and in each new place or activity. "Teachers, craftmasters, and assistants must be of acknowledged morality... As far as possible the assistants ought to precede the boys to the place where they assemble; they should remain with them until others come to take their place, and never leave the pupils unoccupied."

3.  Allow rowdiness and physical activity.  "Let the boys have full liberty to jump, run, and make as much noise as they please.  Gymnastics, music, theatricals, and outings are most efficacious means of obtaining discipline and of benefiting spiritual and bodily health.  Let care be taken however that the games... are not reprehensible.  'Do anything you like,' the great friend of youth, St. Philip [Neri] used to say, 'as long as you do not sin.'"

4.  Encourage and promote, don't force, the sacraments.  "Frequent confession and communion and daily mass are the pillars which must support the edifice of education, from which we propose to banish the use of threats and the cane.  Never force the boys to frequent the sacraments, but encourage them to do so, and give them every opportunity.... [L]et the beauty, grandeur, and holiness of the Catholic religion be dwelt on..."

"Avoid as a plague the opinion that the first communion should be deferred to a late age... When a child can distinguish between Bread and bread, and shows sufficient knowledge, give no further thought to his age... St. Philip Neri counseled weekly and even more frequent communion."

5.  Exclude bad materials and trouble-making people.  "[P]revent bad books, bad companions, or persons who indulge in improper conversations from entering the college.  A good door keeper is a treasure for a house of education."

6.  Brief daily reflections -- a sort of community examen.  "Every evening after night prayers before the boys go to rest, the Rector or someone in his stead shall address them briefly, giving them advice or counsel concerning what is to be done or... avoided.  Let him try to draw some moral reflection from events that have happened during the day... but his words should never take more than two or three minutes."

7.  Love before fear.   "An educator should seek to win the love of his pupils if he wishes to inspire fear in them.  When he succeeds in doing this, the withholding of some token of kindness is a punishment which stimulates emulation, gives courage, and never degrades.... With the young, punishment is whatever is meant as a punishment.... in the case of some boys a reproachful look is more effective than a slap in the face would be."

8. Do not  shame children.  "Except in very rare cases, corrections and punishments should never be given publicly, but always privately and in the absence of companions."

9.  Employ patient reason and religion. "[T]he greatest prudence and patience should be used to bring the pupil to see his fauly, with the aid of reason and religion."

10.  No corporal punishment.  "To strike a boy in any way, to make him kneel in a painful position, to pull his ears, and other similar punishments, must be absolutely avoided, because the law forbids them, and because they greatly irritate the boys and degrade the educator."

 11.  Clear communication of expectations.  "The Rector shall make sure that the disciplinary measures, including rules and punishments, are known to the pupils, so that  no one can make the excuse that he did not know what was commanded or forbidden."

+ + +

I think these principles of Salesian education and discipline are sound ones that speak for themselves, principles that seek to form and transform human nature rather than to fight against it, and principles that respect and elevate the dignity of both child and educator.    When I discovered Don Bosco I felt I'd finally found someone who was truly on my side.    

If only I'd known about him when I was having to make post-baptism chitchat with Father Spare-the-Rod!

First expansion of the token-for-chores system: Laundry.

A couple of months ago I described my plan to use a token economy pour encourager les enfants to keep their rooms cleaner than they had been.  I reported some preliminary results in a subsequent post.

Now the second month is drawing to a close.  Tomorrow I will count up the children's remaining tokens and issue allowance.  But I'm too curious to wait!  So I'm going to run upstairs right now and see how they did.

[insert sound of me pounding up the stairs, a pause, and then the sound of my footsteps returning to the computer]

Of the 30 tokens I put into their jars at the start of the month, assuming they keep their rooms clean tomorrow and don't lose one more:

• My thirteen-year-old son has 28, and will receive $14 in allowance
• My ten-year-old son has 21, and will receive $10.50
• My seven-year-old daughter has 17, and will receive $8.50

Meanwhile, even though they didn't all meet the standards I set every day --

-- and a reminder, the standards were "floor clean, covers pulled up, closet door shut" --

every room was cleaner every day than it typically was before starting the system.  Before, we had periodic marathon room-cleaning sessions, one day before the paid housecleaner showed up for the monthly vacuuming.  

So from my point of view, this system is a spectacular success.  I am doing almost zero nagging.  Once each day, I pop into their rooms for a check.  If I forget, they get to keep a token (so I'm not actually obligated to check).  

+ + +

Only once did I use the promise of a token for something extra.  One day I needed the kitchen cleaned up really fast, so I challenged my two big boys to speed through it in under fifteen minutes and without complaining, with a promise of one previously-lost token returned to each of them if they could do it.

They did.

There's no way they would have done it if I'd said, "I'll pay you fifty cents."

The psychology of gains and losses is very interesting.

+ + +

My teenage boy still hates the system.  He explained to me this morning that it makes him feel sad and angry every single day to see his jar of tokens on his shelf.  He asked again if he couldn't start from zero and gain tokens, rather than starting from thirty and lose tokens.  "It feels like a punishment," he said, "instead of a payment."

"I do pay you," I said, "at the end of the month, almost just like a paycheck works.  Think of the tokens as an easy way for me to keep track of what you are going to be paid for the work you do."  But he said the tokens were the same as money as far as he was concerned, and when I remove one it is like having his money taken away.

I acknowledged that this system is probably not the best system to fit with his particular personality, but that I was going to keep it going for now because it was working pretty well for the family as a whole.  "It isn't perfect," I said.  "It will evolve and adjust as we all learn what works and what doesn't.  I will make changes to it.  But I am going to make the changes slowly.  This is a long-term project."

+ + +

On Thursday we begin a new month, and the children will receive a refreshed jar of thirty tokens.  They will also become responsible for their own laundry.

Now, Mark and I see eye-to-eye on most of the important issues that face today's married couples, but one of them is not "How To Tell If The Laundry Is Caught Up."   Therefore, I broached the subject with some trepidation, which turned out to be well-founded.  

(I think the laundry is caught up if no baskets are actually overflowing with dirty laundry yet.  Mark will tell me if I have gotten this wrong, but my current understanding is that he thinks it is caught up if there is less than a full load of dirty laundry total in the entire house AND all the clean laundry is put away.)

About thirty minutes later, we were ready to discuss the new laundry system for kids.  My teenage son also participated, strenuously insisting that it would be inappropriate to treat him exactly like his younger siblings, since he is already in the habit of putting clothes in the wash when he's about to run out.  After some discussion, we decided that he was correct, and modified the system accordingly.

We made our plan based on the answer to the question, "What problems do I want this system to solve?"  

+ + + 

Number one, I don't want to hear, "But I don't have any clean clothes!"  On Sunday morning, I want there to be clean clothes for church.  If there's a Scout or AHG meeting, I want each child to have a clean uniform.  If it's swimming lesson day, their towels and suits should be ready to go.  No one should run out of clean pants and shirts.

Number two, I don't want clean clothes to accumulate in the laundry room.  We have room on the shelves and counter for about five baskets full of clean clothes.  Occasionally we will stack towers of clean baskets, but I don't like that because the dirty bottoms of the baskets sit on clean clothes.  Also, we risk losing items that fall behind the washer and dryer.  So five baskets is really the capacity.

That's basically it.  I don't have high standards.  I just want the kids to make sure they don't run out of clothes, and I want them to keep moving items OUT of the laundry room as they move their clothes IN.

+ + +

Today, two days before the month starts, we had a dry run.  I distributed to each child two brand-new square black laundry baskets, labeled with names.  And I pointed them to a brand-new sign posted in the laundry room, headed "Kids' Laundry Responsibilities."

It said:

 

Your clothes (uniforms, church outfits, etc.) clean when you need them (3 tokens)

 

You may have 1 black basket of your clothes in this room at a time (1 token)

 

In other words:  If ever they don't have the clothes that they need clean when they need them, they'll lose three of their tokens.   And, if ever I find more than one basketful of a particular child's clothes in the laundry room, he'll lose one token.

There's more to this.  Such as, when must laundry be done?

I am allowing my oldest to decide when he needs to put his laundry in; but the younger two, I expect I'll have to micromanage just a bit more to start with.  So for now, my daughter is required to wash her dirty clothes on Tuesday mornings, and my second son is required to wash his dirty clothes on Wednesday mornings.  Each of them pays a penalty of one token per day that the weekly load is delayed.  

Once those younger kids are in the weekly laundry habit, I hope to lift the specific-day requirement.

+ + +

It seems a bit too fussy for our family to insist that each person wash his own clothes, dry his own clothes, and then remove his own clothes from the laundry room and put them away.  We have one washer and one dryer, conveniently located on the same level with the bedrooms, and laundry is a continuous operation.  So instead, the ideal we've always had in mind is "one load in, one load out."

Whoever wants to put a load into the washer mus first:  

• make room for a new basket on the shelves by delivering at least one basket of clothes to the correct part of the house
• move dry clothes from the dryer to a basket on the shelves
• move wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, and start the dryer

In this way, we are all helping each other get the laundry done.  But everyone has the responsibility of putting his own clothes into the system (and dealing with the basket of clean, dry clothes that he might find awaiting him on his bed at the end of the day).

Now I just have to confer with my husband about whether to raise the value of a token along with the increased responsibility.  I'm inclined not to raise it until I find out how well they take on their new jobs.

Token economy (results).

In the last post, I described my plan to use a token system to monitor my three oldest kids' keeping their rooms clean.  In this post, I'll tell you how it went.

Before I get into this, I want to reiterate that the "new system" is a perfect example of Mark and I working through parenting problems by making it up as we go along.  

I am trying hard not to think too far forward in this endeavor.  I'm afraid if I start asking questions like

• "How long can we keep this up?" and
• "Is my oldest going to still have a jar of popsicle sticks on his shelf when he's seventeen and a half?" and
• "Will we ever be able to just dispense with the sticks and have them do their job without worrying about it?"

then I will become paralyzed by the fear of being inconsistent.  

And the truth is... their rooms are all cleaner now.

+ + +

So.  I wrote a checklist for each of them.  The checklist has three items on it.

1. Floor clear
2. Covers pulled up  and no big piles of stuff on the bed
3. Closet doors shut.

Yes, this does in fact imply that they can totally clear their floor -- if not by putting everything on the bed -- then by stuffing everything in the closet and shutting the door.  I didn't actually tell them that.  I was hoping they could discover it as a sort of Easter egg hidden in the checklist.  

I set an alarm on my phone to remind me to check their rooms, but I warned them I might do it at any time between breakfast and bedtime.  If any of the three items doesn't pass muster, I pull a token from their jar. At the end of the month we count them up and pay allowance.

+ + +

The first month was March, but I didn't come up with the idea until there were only twelve days left in the month.  At the time, we had built up an indeterminate backlog of unpaid allowances, so first Mark gave them each a generous lump-sum payment to settle up the past months.  That's when we sprang our new plan on them.

Since there were only twelve days left in the month, I figured it would make a good dry-run month.  I issued each of the three children a jelly jar containing twelve tokens (popsicle sticks that I signed with Sharpies).   I told them that each popsicle stick that remained at the end of March would be worth a dollar to them, because we were starting with a partial month, meaning that they could get a maximum of $12 allowance in March.  

"But next month, assuming your dad and I decide we like how this is going, you'll get thirty tokens, and each will be worth fifty cents at the end of the month."

"Will we get thirty-one tokens in May?" the oldest wanted to know.

"No.  I like round numbers.  Keeps it simple.  Thirty tokens every month."  I was determined not to let the system get bogged down with too many details.

"But that isn't fair! That's like having a day where we get nothing!"

"Do you really want to talk about what's fair?" interjected Mark.  "If we go by fairness, you'll owe us money."

You'll get a bonus in February," I helpfully added.   I don't think he was impressed.

+ + +

Fast forward twelve days.   After dinner on March 31st, Mark sang, "Bring out yer tokens!"  I opened up my wallet.

The seven-year-old had four remaining tokens.  She was proud, and pleased to get four one-dollar bills.

The ten-year-old had seven remaining tokens.  He was happy to receive a five and two ones.

The thirteen-year-old showed me his ten tokens, and received his two five-dollar bills.  He had stopped complaining, but he still wasn't terribly happy about it.

+ + + 

That's not the only important result.  From this morning:

Trust me, this is immaculate compared to before.  And I didn't have to say anything to them about it.  

Even though the bottom picture does not show that only one of the boys got to keep his token this morning, because the other one left a pair of underwear on the floor in front of his closet door (out of the frame).

+ + +

An additional positive result:  As soon as this experiment started I realized that I was not going to have much moral authority unless I, too, endeavored to keep my own room clean to the same standards that I was insisting the children absolutely must learn to do.  

So I've been making my bed every morning and throwing stuff from the floor into my closet and closing the door.

I like it.

+ + +

Another thing:  Because I'm checking their rooms every morning, I didn't forget to have cash in my wallet (including singles) on the Day of Reckoning.  So I didn't have to owe anyone any allowance.

+ + +

As I was sorting clean laundry yesterday I discovered another bonus:  I don't have to tell them to put away their laundry anymore.  I can just put the basket of clean laundry on each child's bed and leave it there.  It will have to be stuffed into the closet by morning.  Win.

+ + +

And I also decided that next month, Doing One's Own Laundry Once A Week will be the targeted task.  I hope to let you know how that goes, mid-May.

Token economy.

As a minor protest against April Fool's Day, I am writing a post that is utterly mundane and not an attempt to fool people.   If not for this desire I probably wouldn't have gotten around to posting at all, what with the baby on my lap.

+ + +

As you all know, there are competing Parenting Theories out there on absolutely every topic imaginable about what parents might or might not do regarding their children.  

I subscribe to a few of them myself.  

Some of them really are moral imperatives -- not gonna say which ones I classify that way right now because that's beside the point -- my point is, yeah, there are things people do to their kids (mostly babies) that are objectively wrong, and it's important to spread the word and try to get fewer people to do 'em.  

And there are things that all kids really need, that many kids don't get; things that their parents and caregivers and teachers owe to them, and must give them if they can.  Those needs aren't imaginary and they aren't fads, even if they are sometimes more conveniently ignored.

Such things exist.   

+ + +

On the other hand, there's also a lot of stuff out there that WHO KNOWS what's best, for which the answer to "What's the best way to do it?" is likely "It depends," and maybe there isn't a right way or a wrong way.  There's no harm in exchanging ideas in case you learn of a new approach that might work for you; and sometimes people come up with truly novel approaches that "work" wonderfully -- but there's also virtually no chance that any of the ideas are going to be The One Right Way to do it.  

A great deal of the learning curve of parenting is working out which things fall into which categories.  (I wrote a post a couple of years ago about how that turned out.)

My way of working it out?  

1. Obsessively attempt to adhere to every practice that seemed like it might fall into the first category.
2.  Predictably, fail to do so perfectly.
3.  Observe the results of said failures -- the outcome over the whole family -- to determine where there was more flexibility of okayness, and loosen up there when circumstances warrant.  Continue adhering, however imperfectly, to those practices that prove their worth.

I believe this is called learning from one's mistakes.  I stumbled into it by accident, but I recommend it heartily.

+ + +

Sometimes, "what to do" calls for actual experimentation.  And that is what we are doing right now in the area of allowance.

You know there have to be competing theories of kids' allowances, right?  There must be.  Because there are competing theories about everything.  

Is the money a free gift that they can do whatever they want with?  Including spending it all on candy?  Or does the money come with strings?  Do they learn charitable giving because you make them give ten percent, or because you let them see that you give ten percent?  Is allowance tied to chores, so they can learn the value of earning their money?  Or do they have to do chores just because they are part of a family and family members all must participate because that's what families do?  If they're paid for chores, are they allowed to opt out of the chores?  Do they save if they want and spend if they want, or do you make them save?  Do they get cash or an instant bank transfer?  Can they have a debit card?  Is there a spending limit?  Do older kids get more and younger kids get less, or is it all the same? Do they have to buy their own school lunches out of the money, and if so, are they allowed to skip lunch so they can have more money?   Do they lose their allowance as punishment?  Do they not get any allowance and they have to earn it all?  When they set up a lemonade stand or a tomato patch do you front them the capital or charge them rent?  Marx, Keynes or Hayek?

Bleargh.  I never had the energy to work out which of these approaches was "best" in a theoretical sense (although you bet other people have and they are willing to tell you why all the other people are wrong).  

At some point when my oldest was six or so we got tired of telling them "no" about candy at the store, so we started giving him a tiny allowance and then we would not have to say "no" at the store because he would be limited by the amount of money he had.  At first it was "one treat" and then we decided to give him $1.50 because that's how much it would cost to buy the sorts of treats that *I* would choose.  Things like a nice little cup of sweetened organic yogurt or maybe, if I was feeling especially liberal, a package of fruit snacks.

(I did mention that this was my first child, right?)

Very quickly we ran into problems with the laissez-faire approach when he figured out how to buy worryingly huge quantities of cheap, disgusting candy for $1.50.  That was when we realized that the allowance question was not going to be simple.

+ + +

Fast forward seven years and several more kids.  Skip over all the reasoning and the "why" and the "how we got here."  Don't assume it makes sense.  (Some of it has to do with how things that seemed like great ideas turned out to be time-consuming or inconvenient.)  Up till a couple of weeks ago, we were giving each kid eleven dollars in cash every week month, and one of those dollars they were expected to put in the basket at church, and yes it was absolutely eleven dollars and not ten because THAT WAY WE DIDN'T HAVE TO MAKE CHANGE EVERY FREAKING SUNDAY MORNING.

And we weren't micromanaging beyond that.  They could save or spend the rest however they wanted, and we took them to the bank now and again for a deposit.  My oldest set a goal once to save a certain amount of money, which he did, and I believe he felt some sense of accomplishment, and so did we of course, but I think that was the only time that happened.

And we didn't tie it to chores, ostensibly because we're a family and everybody in a family has to work together and that's that, and also because what a pain to keep track of it, although once in a great while we would agree to pay a kid to do some odd job.

But a couple of weeks ago, inspired by a speaker at one of our co-op meetings, I decided I wanted to try something different for a while.  I'll save time by sending you straight to the book she recommended which contained this idea. It's called Cleaning House:  A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement, by Kay Wills Wyma.  

I may or may not have been seduced by the word "experiment" in the title.

Anyway, I haven't actually read the whole book yet, just a couple of chapters, but let me sum up the basic approach here, which we are totally trying.  In Wyma's story, she got sick of her kids assuming (correctly) that she would take care of all the stuff for them -- laundry, cooking, finding lost items in their rooms, etc. -- so she set about gradually increasing their household responsibilities, which were rather abruptly tied to their allowance.

She did it by the dollar-bills-in-a-jar method.  Each kid got thirty one-dollar bills in a jar at the start of the month.  Each day that he or she failed to meet the clearly communicated expectations, Mom removed a dollar from the jar.  At the end of the month they could keep what was left.  

Thirty dollars was more than they had been getting previously, so it represented a (potential) raise; and she started small.  The first month, the expectation was only to keep their rooms to a minimum standard of order.  After that, each month the stakes were raised:  getting an assigned day to cook dinner for the family, doing laundry, and more.

 

I quite deliberately have not read the whole book.  I'm reading it one chapter at a time.  But I've decided to do the experiment on my three oldest children (13, 10, and 7).

+ + +

Right away I realized we'd have to do it a little differently.  There is no way we will ever have it together enough to have that many dollar bills ready at the start of every month.  I'd have to write IOUs and borrow from the future, and then I would lose my credibility and my authority would go out the window with it.  The reason this system has a shot of working is that the kids can see the money actually leaving their jar every week.  (And it just feels differently from a system where you pay them money each day.)  

But I need reusable money or I will run out.

So we went with tokens.   I used craft sticks, of the popsicle size.  Each craft stick represents some money they can have at the end of the month.  I got some Sharpies, one color for each kid, and signed a bunch of craft sticks to turn them into a medium of exchange.  I put the sticks in a jar and handed them out. I sternly outlawed counterfeiting, and for now, transferring them between kids (because I need to collect data about the incentives).   The amount of potential money represented a modest raise, from eleven to fifteen dollars per month.

And then I set the expectation that, when they leave their room, they must pull up the covers on the bed, pick up the floor, and close the closet doors.   Later in the day I'll check, and if they haven't done it, they lose a token.  At the end of the month we count tokens and pay them allowance based on the tokens.

I'm not exactly sure what my husband thinks of this scheme but on the outside he is backing me up firmly, and that is good enough for me.

+ + +

When we announced the experiment, my ten- and seven-year-olds were pleased at the prospect of a raise.  But my thirteen-year-old reacted with dismay and fury.  Something about it that he could not quite articulate offended him deeply.  He wanted something different -- something where we paid them extra for extra jobs?  something where there was a guaranteed minimum income, a "base allowance"?  something where he didn't partly depend on his brother, with whom he shared a room?  something where he didn't have to be subjected to the same rules as his younger siblings? 

"This doesn't make sense," he kept saying.

I completely sympathized.  Really.  I could very easily put myself in his shoes.  And I wasn't giving him a choice in the matter, although we did want to hear how he felt about it and we wanted to see how it worked as time went on.

"Let me explain something to you that you may not have realized about us," I told him. "Your dad and I are totally making it up as we go along.  This is just something we are trying to see if it helps you and your siblings learn to do a few things that haven't been getting done around the house."

"If you want us to clean our room every day then why don't you just tell us to clean our room every day?"

"Because I want you to do it without being asked," I said.  "I don't like asking all the time."

"But if you want me to keep the room clean every day I'll just start doing it!" he said.  "I don't need the sticks to keep track."

I do,  I thought.  "Look," I said, "if you're so sure that you would rather just be told to clean your room every day and have it not be tied to your allowance... then do that.  Clean your room every day, and you'll get the full amount.  You'll come out just the same -- better, even, because it would be like getting a four-dollar raise."

"What if a kid doesn't do it because he decides he doesn't want the money?"

I was going to say "Fine" but Mark beat me to it and said he wasn't allowed to not do it on purpose.  "Your mother wants the room clean and so you should make a good faith effort to do it." 

I bit my tongue and went with that.  "Yes, and also it wouldn't be fair to your brother who shares the room with you."

"Wait, you mean if he doesn't clean his stuff then I can lose my token?!?!"

More making it up as I go along.  "Hmmmm..... When I check your room, if I can tell that one person has done his share and the other hasn't then I'll only take that person's token -- for instance, if one bed is made and the other isn't. But if I can't tell, like if there's just a bunch of laundry on the floor, I'll pull both tokens."  

(They know well that I do not keep track of whose underwear is solids and whose underwear is stripes.)

"And you're going to give us more to do later?  Will we get more money if you make us do more?"

"I don't know.  Probably not right away.  But," I promised, "we won't change the rules in the middle of the month.  At the beginning of the month we'll be very clear about the expectations, and even if I decide I didn't do a good job setting them, we'll stick by what we said we'd do until the end of the month."

In the end, he submitted to the plan... but he was not happy about it.  I really, honestly, felt bad about it.  I like it when the things I make my kids do make sense to them.  I like there to be some buy-in.  

On the other hand... I had never worried whether it made sense to give them their string-free eleven dollars, either.  We hadn't made a plan to do it that way because it was a good idea or because it fit our theories about how children should learn to manage money.  We just settled into doing it that way.   The new way would not be any less logic-based than the old way.  It would simply be different.  And we would not know if we liked it till we tried it.

+ + +

Tune in next time and I'll tell you how that first month -- actually it was a pro-rated, partial month -- went.

Non-evidence-based style.

My friend M. has been deep in the books, trying to design and redesign a good homeschooling environment for her eight-year-old son who is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and who really needs quite intense attention.  She is looking at various styles of teaching and how they are shown to work with real children.

She came to me a few days ago saying (I'm paraphrasing):  "You know what's really amazing about the so-called 'classical model of homeschooling?'  So many homeschoolers put so much stock in it -- in this idea that the medieval trivium corresponds to three stages of child development -- but there isn't really any evidence for it at all!  If you go tracing back the claims that people make about classical homeschooling, they all go back to just one source --"

"'The Lost Tools of Learning,'" I said.  "The essay by Dorothy Sayers."

"...And, well, she just made it up!  She doesn't claim to know anything about how children develop.  It's just her idea.  But this entire industry has sprung up to support classical homeschooling, as if there was any evidence that designing a school the way she imagines it is something that really produces good outcomes.  There isn't any evidence.  And of course the medieval trivium wasn't at all like the homeschooling trivium that people talk about.  There's no evidence that children ever were taught the way she describes."

I thought for a moment how to respond.  "I think that the essay provides a useful organizing principle," I ventured.  "No more than that."  I did have to defend myself a little bit!

And I do think that the organizing principle behind "The Lost Tools of Learning" is so useful that I maintain it's part of the "homeschooler's canon" of educational philosophy.  

+ + +

But M.'s reminder is useful, too -- that Sayers' essay is just that:  an opinion piece.  After all, I do go around telling other homeschoolers, when I need to, that I am "oh, sort of a classical homeschooler, with a little Charlotte Mason thrown in."  Really, this is just a piece of code, shorthand for what I am not:  I am not an unschooler, I am not a school-in-a-box-er, I am not entirely disorganized (I have some kind of plan), and, well, I'm not entirely "evidence-based."  

(Even the Charlotte Mason reference is really cheating.  I've never actually read any serious books by or about Charlotte Mason.  That reference is code for "I like making my kids tell back what they've learned, and I tried keeping a nature journal for a while.")

One careful reading of Sayers' essay will show you that she never intended her imaginary school to be set up as a real place.  She breezily assumes ideal and impossible conditions:

Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities, and furnish ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom we may experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines chosen by ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims and methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large enough to allow our classes to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will postulate a Board of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we turn out. Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern Trivium "with modifications" and we will see where we get to.

But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning. We will, therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring of our pupils only that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.

Did you catch that bit -- that at the start of her "school" the children have already been taught to read, write, and do arithmetic?  We're on our own for that part, homeschoolers.

Sayers' imaginary school is not, actually, a plan (and she takes pain to point this out).  Nor is it a reconstruction of the medieval trivium in any way -- significantly, she stresses, "It does not matter, for the moment, whether it [the trivium] was devised for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it."

No, this school she describes is a rhetorical device.  The point of the description is to create vivid pictures in the readers' minds, of children arguing, or finding Cassiopeia in the night sky, or examining portraits of the Kings of England, or carefully studying maps.  This is just an illustration to motivate readers to hear and accept her philosophy of education, which she emphasizes by making it the very last sentence of the essay:

For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

This is a philosophy that appeals to me, and it is why I go around telling people that I am a "classical homeschooler."  Not because I think my homeschool should be split up into Grammar and Rhetoric and Dialectic (although I sometimes use those terms to describe the level of mental process that is engaged by a particular book or curriculum).  I tell people I am a "classical homeschooler" because I believe my job is to teach my kids how to teach themselves.

+ + +

Which brings me to the problem of evidence-based teaching.  Evidence is overrated.

If I say "Evidence is overrated," you should know I am speaking tongue in cheek.  I am trained as an engineer and as a scientist, and even though I abandoned that life in its early stages, its inner life has not abandoned me:  I can never lose the engineer's problem-attacking method, nor the scientist's reflexes to observe, test, and revise.  

No, what I really mean is that the marshalled evidence often overemphasizes one kind of data to the exclusion of another kind of data that, depending on the application, may be more important.  The distinction between the two kinds of data:  that drawn from large groups and that drawn from individuals.

Data drawn from large groups can be usefully applied to help individuals, it's true.  Let's imagine an experiemental school -- would that schools would actually do this -- in which two methods for teaching arithmetic are to be evaluated.  Children are randomly assigned to two classrooms, one in which the arithmetic skills are taught via method A, and one in which the teacher uses method B  to teach the same skills.  After a suitable time, the children are evaluated, and method A comes out ahead:  perhaps more students in classroom A have achieved a certain minimum competency, or perhaps the average score of students in that classroom is significantly higher than the average in classroom B.   Perhaps A outperforms B by both metrics.  If the test is repeated over different schools and different populations, and if A consistently outperforms B, that would certainly be a strong argument for teaching with method A instead of method B.  I would gladly support this kind of approach to curriculum selection in my local public schools, who are, after all, in the business of educating large groups.

However, just because A is the better method overall does not mean it is the better method for every child in the class.  Imagine there is one particular child -- let's call him Jacob -- who responds better, in a critical way, to method B.  It's not that Jacob was one of the top kids in classroom B -- no, let's be honest, most of the "top kids" in classroom B would also have been "top" in classroom A, because every classroom contains at least a few kids who are going to absorb material no matter how you throw it at them.  No, this boy was on the margins:  Jacob was one of those who achieved competency in classroom B, did well enough.  But when the classrooms all switched to the A method -- the method that was proved superior by the average-score metric and by the number-achieving-minimum-competency metric -- Jacob did not succeed, did not achieve competency.  More of his classmates will succeed in the A environment, and that is good for them, and good for the school, and good for the teachers, probably.  It does not help him.

I am not, mind you, saying that the evidence drawn from large groups is unhelpful for the large groups.  I do think schools should use data to shape their curriculum, because that is the job of the schools.  I just want to point out that the schools have one job -- to teach the large groups -- and Jacob's parents have another -- to teach Jacob.  

This is, to me, the distinction that gives meaning to the notion that education of children is primarily the responsibility of their parents.  It is reflected in Minnesota law, at least:   Our state's constitution stipulates that the legislature shall establish a "general and uniform" system of public schools; "uniform" is supposed to provide for equal and fair access to schooling, and that is commendable and appropriate for government schools.  The statutes specify this:  "The parent of a child is primarily responsible for assuring that the child acquires knowledge and skills that are essential for effective citizenship."

My point:  You use large-group evidence to design approaches that are aimed at large groups.  If your job is to teach Classroom B, you use what you've learned from metrics that measure Classroom B.  But if your job is to teach Jacob -- and that, mind you, is not legally our state's job, nor a single classroom teacher's job, nor can it be -- it is Jacob's parents' job -- then you have to give primary weight to evidence drawn from Jacob and not to that drawn from his classmates.

+ + +

I derive a lot of inspiration from Dorothy Sayers' opinion piece, even though it is not evidence-based.  Sayers never thought that people would try to copy the imaginary school she described, and I don't either.  I follow her example -- not by trying to create in my home the school that she imagined -- but by trying to create in my home the school that I  imagine.  

I consider the problem that life has posed me -- and I frame it and sketch it out as How will I teach my children to teach themselves?  I make assumptions, I list my constraints, I weigh costs against likely benefits, I approximate when necessary, and in the end I do what I can with what I have.

I make a guess -- this particular sort of curriculum will interest my eleven-year-old, or arranging the school desks in that particular way will keep my eight- and five-year-olds from fighting; I try it out; I check to see if my eleven-year-old is engaged in his work, I listen to see if the squabbles have diminished; I revise my hypothesis, I try again.

+ + +

There is another thing to weigh, too -- and it is sort of outside the evidence of what sort of methods produce academic excellence.  Because academic achievement is not, actually, central to what I am trying to do here (although it's very easy to forget that, because academic achievement is so much more easily measured, and because the culture values it, and I am swayed by culture).  

What I am supposed to be doing is forming human beings who are honest, fair, kind, and wise, who have a firm understanding of their own value and of the value of other human persons, who recognize their direct responsibilities and carry them out.   And no amount of evidence of academic achievement should entice me to apply a method that undermines any of these.

Meanwhile, I am supposed to be forming myself in honesty, fairness, kindness, and wisdom -- and if I somehow form my children in ways that deteriorate my own character, I'm equally wrong.   

 To put it bluntly, if by daily beatings or regular bribes I could ensure my child a perfect SAT score, that wouldn't mean I should do it.

+ + +

Large-group evidence based on large-group metrics will only take you so far.  It isn't useless:  it's just that it is useful for purposes different from mine.  (I can, of course, use it for my own purposes:  what's good for the group may be the best thing to try first, before tweaking to suit the individual.)    This is true about education, but lots of other things too:  taking care of your health, disciplining children, deciding what sort of community to live in, deciding whom to spend time with.  Sometimes "what works" is what matters; other times it's far more important to find something you can live with, whether it "works" or not; most often it is a matter of balancing both.

Good idea, bad idea: Bargain-hunters edition.

This one's so short it's practically a Quick Take.

+ + +

Good idea:  Going to the used book sale and snagging a half-price deal on the pricey art workbook that's part of next year's curriculum.

Bad idea:  Neglecting to check the table of contents or copyright date, thus failing to notice that it hails from twelve years and several complete revisions ago, and therefore doesn't match up with the assignments in next year's art curriculum.

Boo.

Handwriting for boys: good idea, bad idea.

The following recent idea of mine appears, at the time of writing, to be a good one:

+ + +

My eight-year-old son is squirrelly; wiggly; given to making random loud noises of gunfire; constantly doodling ninjas, sharks wearing explosive vests, gratuitously well-armed employment opportunities, and fantastic attack vehicles with all sorts of pointy bits sticking out; never voluntarily positioned in any way that could remotely be called "seated;" easily distracted; hard to hold onto.

No, I don't think he needs a diagnosis of any kind.  I'm fairly certain that all this is within the normal range of "eight-year-old boy."  

He wasn't very much different one year ago, when I was looking at the start of second grade for him, and amassing curriculum materials.  I picked up the second-grade handwriting workbook I had ordered for him.  I looked it over.  It started with review of printing, then introduced cursive, what we sometimes call "attached writing" around here.

 (No, I am not going to get into whether it was D'Nealian or Zaner-Bloser or whatever.  I just call it all "cursive."  Anything deeper is micromanaging.)

Mind you, I think that neat and tidy handwriting is important.  Develops care and attention, is a type of artistic expression within limits, is an opportunity to fine-tune the motor skills, gives children a chance to practice a manual skill and work towards creating small things of beauty in their everyday lives.  And of course kids have to learn how to read other people's handwriting, even if they themselves mostly get by with typing and printing.

But as I flipped through that second-grade cursive handwriting workbook, I knew that if I tried to make my then-seven-year-old sit still long enough to do all that... well... there wouldn't be much time for other writing.  It was hard enough, then at the beginning of the second grade year, to get him to write anything at all in any kind of writing.   I would turn my back and he would have wandered off, mid-sentence.  I would ask him to write a sentence and he would whine about how many words were in it.  

I put the book away.   Maybe I won't even bother, I thought.  I was really the only person in the house who cared about handwriting.  My husband thought it bordered on archaic.  My older son printed everything.  I decided it was not worth the battle.  I did not teach him handwriting in second grade.

Fast forward nine or ten months, to the last couple months of second grade.   The eight-year-old boy is still squirrelly and wiggly, and still doodles constantly, and still never sits down.  But he has (thanks to a lot of daily journal writing and composition assignments, which have steadily and relentlessly and slowly expanded in length and complexity over the course of the year) learned how to write five or six sentences in a row without complaining.  Much.  He has also learned to read for fun, which is a big help in the staying-still department.

And meanwhile, his five-year-old sister has learned to write letters which are shaped well, if large, and has started begging to learn cursive like her older friend.  Also at the same time I have recently instituted a policy of teaching the five- and eight-year-olds together at the same table at the same time, which saves time and also cuts down on escapees.  Which gets me thinking:  Maybe I can teach them both cursive now, at the same time, at the same rate.  

So I start talking it up, a couple of months before the five-year-old finishes her printing workbook.  "When you finish all the printing exercises, I'll get you an attached-writing book, and you can start to learn that kind of writing," I tell her, "and I'll get one for you, too," I tell him, "and I'll teach you both at the same time."  To my shock he seems interested.  And when the books arrive a few weeks later and I start them on A-a and E-e, to even more of my shock, the eight-year-old cheerfully copies the letters the way I show them, proudly shows me his best specimen, comments on how cool they look and how fast he can write them, and innocently suggests that his letters look better than his sister's (receiving a kick in return, which I pretend not to notice).

It turns out that waiting a year to try cursive writing with him, even though all the curricula (it seems) start cursive in second grade, was a great idea.  He has more attention for it, and oddly enough, he actually seems interested.  I'm not sure how to explain this.   Maybe the smoothly flowing lines appeal to his doodly side.  Maybe it feels like writing a secret spy code, or like Chinese calligraphy.  Maybe it's competition with his sister.  Maybe he was simply developmentally ready for this task.  Whatever it is, I'll take it.  

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This good idea does, incidentally, have a bad idea behind it.

My oldest son (now 11) has always been a fairly diligent, seatwork-loving sort of boy, with an appreciation for symmetry and straight lines, and good fine-motor skills.  When he was seven years old and starting second grade, I thought he'd sit down and learn cursive from the copybook and that would be that.  I told him all about how he'd be able to write faster in cursive, how important it would be for him to sign his name on documents, how pleased his grandparents would be to receive handwritten notes from him.  I opened up the second-grade handwriting book, and we got started.

He dutifully copied the letters, words and phrases in the copybook.  But when we started to get to sentences it began to take him longer and longer to finish.  I waited for cursive writing to appear in his daily journal entries, and it never did.  I started to suggest that he could try a little cursive in the journals.  No cursive appeared.  Finally I began assigning him to write in cursive.

The journal entries got very, very short.

"You'll get faster," I said.  He did not.  After a while printing started to appear again.  I reminded him he was supposed to write in "attached writing."  He stopped writing interesting and funny journal entries and started writing very short ones with very short words.  

Time passed with this back and forth.  He got older.  I would assign him a piece of writing, and he would look up at me, worried, and ask, "Does it have to be in attached writing?"  The problem, from his point of view, was that he could not write in cursive very fast; he thought faster than he could write, and it took him so long to write in "attached writing" that he could not get all his work done.  Tears were shed almost daily for months.

I fretted about the right thing to do.  What was more important?

 That I stand my ground and show him that I would not back down just because he didn't like a task?  

That he be free to concentrate on learning the structure of paragraphs and sentences, on expressing himself clearly and correctly -- obviously more important than cursive, and something that he had just been blossoming into (with printing) when I came along with my stupid cursive handwriting book and ruined everything?  

That he endure the rough part of skill-building, painstakingly practicing, and writing slowly and uncomfortably at first, until he developed enough fluid comfort with cursive writing that he could start really using it as a tool to express himself?

In the end I gave up.  It never seemed to get any easier for him, and I started to worry that my stubborn insistence that he write everything in cursive was going to hold him back from the real business of word-craft.  His printing was and is perfectly legible, and he learned enough that he can at least read the cursive handwriting of others.  I told myself that this was good enough.  His father certainly thinks so.

But I still wonder where I went wrong.  Was it in assuming that seven was the right age to start, just because the book said so?  Or did he fool me into letting him get out of learning something he didn't want to learn, by pretending it was too hard?  Or am I still wrong in regretting that this particular learning attempt failed, because handwriting isn't all that important and obviously he had no intrinsic motivation, so it would have been a waste of time anyway?

Somewhere in there is the source of the rot in this particular bad idea.  But at least I learned enough to pay attention to my second son, and to give the benefit of the doubt to waiting.

Good ideas, bad ideas.

I never read homeschooling blogs, ever, except under two circumstances.

1. I am connected to the author, through real-life friendship or longtime virtual friendship.
2. I am actively searching for information, inspiration, ideas, or tips.

One reason I never read homeschooling blogs (except for that) is that there are too many success stories.  It's a sort of Conspiracy of Wholesome Family Learning.   (You know the names of some of the ringleaders.) 

Okay, it's not a conspiracy -- probably -- but likely a natural phenomenon. Everybody wants to post about their best ideas and their best days.   Which is fine when you're looking for ideas, but poisonous for daily consumption, because my real life looks pretty sorry next to other people's best projections of themselves.

The other reason is that there are too many good ideas.   More good ideas than any parent can possibly try, let alone establish in a homeschool.  I have to limit my exposure to other people's good ideas, because I don't want my imagination to be occupied with all the great curriculum and books and activities I'll never have time to do.  Schooling would become a long, long list of what I don't do instead of a short, focused list of what I do do.  I need my imagination to bring my real work to life.

+ + +

All this is a confession:  Sometimes I want to write about my best ideas, too.  I certainly do it from time to time.   I write a lot about co-schooling, for example, because that was one of my best ideas ever (not that I came up with it entirely on my own, of course), and it continues to generate new good ideas, and I think it's an idea that hasn't spread and developed among homeschoolers as much as it should. But maybe I should be fair and write about bad ones as well.  

So I was thinking about sparking a little series or challenge -- maybe some of you would be interested in participating -- called "Good ideas, bad ideas" (or something like that).  

Even though it was homeschooling blogs that made me think of it, please take note:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A HOMESCHOOLER 

There are good ideas and bad ideas all over the place.  General parenting, marriage, family life, car repair, financial decisions, entertaining, etc.  

The idea of the challenge is to write a balanced post containing two stories on the same theme (e.g., homeschooling ideas, car repair, home decorating):   one good idea, one bad idea.  The best "bad ideas" are the ones that "seemed like a good idea at the time," of course, because they have a setup and a punchline.  In fact, maybe a better challenge is "good idea that turned out even better than I expected/seemed like a good idea at the time"

Now I'm really setting myself up -- perhaps this post itself will turn out to be a bad idea --  because I don't have anything in particular in mind today.  Actually, the truth is that I was going to write about one of my good ideas, but it turned into this post instead, and I decided to go with it.  Now all I need is a bad idea to go with it.

I'm about to head out on a family outdoorsy outing, not to come back until late, so maybe I'll generate one in my head while I'm gone, and post tomorrow.  But I'll leave you to think of one, and maybe make a post on your own blog if you have one.  If you do, paste a link in the comments.