Once there were two children who were homeschooled. One was a 12 year old boy and one was a 10 year old girl. They were good friends when they weren't engaged in champion-style bickering. Sometimes when they played together the world was a golden place; they were joyful, creative, funny and so attuned to each other, it was beautiful. Such good, good friends.
But the boy grew bored and nothing could un-bore him. They would do the same exact things but the boy would be bored and the girl would not. When they played outside the boy wandered around aimlessly while the girl: rollerbladed, played basketball, rode her bike, played all kinds of pretend games by the fort and the pond, nature watched, made make believe stew out of acorns and water, dug in the dirt, and generally could spend hours outdoors in exhilarating play. She'd come in with dirt under her fingernails, scratched by thorns and full of some interesting tidbit of something she saw. Sometimes the boy would play like this too, but most of the time he came inside much too soon, sighing that he was bored.
Inside the house the girl was always busy. She liked to make things, cook things, draw things, write things, play things, daydream things, rearrange things, clean things, talk about things. She went about her day singing to herself. The boy sat on the couch and wept because he was so bored.
The mother tried to engage the boy in things that might interest him. She signed him up for activities but he inevitably found something wrong with them, complained bitterly until his mother let him drop whatever it was. This meant he spent more time at home and therefore had more time to sit on the couch and be bored.
The mother very carefully designed his academic work around what she thought he might like. When she worked with him one on one, he sometimes mildly enjoyed himself. But most of the time he was bored.
The boy began to wonder if maybe he should go to school. Maybe getting up and out of the house and being with a bunch of other guys and being in a different atmosphere might be a good thing. After the boy wondered this out loud several times the mother decided it was worth a shot. And now said boy is going to visit a school next Thursday (a nice private Christian school) to see what life is like there. Maybe it won't be boring.
I hope he finds something that works for him. Maybe he isn't suited to an unschooling structure.
ReplyDeleteHi MAB!
ReplyDeleteI hope he finds something too. He might just be lost in the sea of adolescence which is harder on some kids than others. He has a melancholic temperament and I think that makes things harder. But I do want to mention that to me 'unschooling' does not mean no structure. It means the structure which best suits the child. Children often naturally move into what works for them, for the most part. My oldest, for instance, did not like unstructured days and rejected that. She chose to have a structured high school experience for example. To me that is still unschooling! The boy though doesn't know what he wants and often rejects things in a kind of an emotional way. He seems to be in a rut that way. So school may suit him. I don't know. We'll find out!
Your story reminded me a little of my second and third children, only it was the other way around. My 10 year old daughter suddenly wanted to have girlfriends and cultivate her feminine side and she grew away from her 12 year old brother. It worked out OK in the long run since she did find some great "adopted sisters" but I still feel a bit sad about the whole thing. I loved their friendship and the way they immersed themselves in projects all day long.
ReplyDeleteMy Sean went to school and it worked out OK. Maybe at least your boy will realize that school has its drawbacks, too. Or maybe the experience will give him a better idea of what he needs in his education. I think in a way it is still unschooling when a kid chooses to go to school because he's in some control of his own education and isn't trapped like most of the schoolkids.