Theology of Unschooling - treating your child as a guest and the character building benefits of chores
I remember encountering the idea that the unschooling parent should treat their child like a guest. Children were not chattel to be lorded over, the thinking went. Instead, they should be treated with deference. You don't demand your guest do daily chores so why would you of your child? If the guest chooses they can help out to be polite and so it should be with your child. Because somehow asking your child to do chores is too authoritarian.
I do think many parents attracted to unschooling in a radical way have their own problems with authority and also have a romanticized elevation of 'autonomy' as being the highest good. And because they see any incursion of the child's autonomy as unjust in some way, they get to these really weird places where they think treating their own flesh and blood as a 'guest' is somehow more loving and respectful. And also, they impose an unrealistic idea of autonomy on an immature and dependent child; a person in a stage of development who needs guidelines, encouragement and needs to be able to lean on the wisdom of his or her loving and more experienced parent to develop wholesome, healthy habits.
The Catholic understanding of the family is different from this. Children are gifts from God whom we are called to love and nurture unconditionally so that they (and we) might come to know, love and serve God in this life so we may be with Him in the next. While this grants us authority in our roles as parents, we also must not abuse our authority harshly. A book that really helped me with this was Dr. Greg Popcak's Parenting with Grace.
Guidance Counselor and Chores
The thing I found unexpectedly difficult in homeschooling/parenting was the role of guidance counselor to my teens. I had never even really contemplated this role as a homeschooling high school mom. I think I had always underestimated the job of a guidance counselor mostly because the one at my own high school was such a joke and that unacknowledged by me, my mom had done most of the work. Which was kind of homeschooling of her! Or maybe this job is actually always part of parenting and I just never thought about it much.
I think, when it comes to high school, most homeschooling parents worry most about credits and how to develop a transcript a college will accept. But that in fact turned out to be fairly easy. We were eclectic in our homeschool high school. Luckily we have a great local Catholic high school co-op which is where my kids took most of their science classes and some other classes like government or literature, depending on each child. Each of my kid's high school career was a bit different from their siblings, simply because of inclination and opportunity. But even if you don't have a co-op there are so many on line classes, various available curricula for every subject, community college classes and tutors and just plain old self study so that it really isn't hard to piece together a transcript. (Now, if you have unmotivated kids, well that is a whole 'nother ball of wax!)
But starting in high school, teens need to develop basic skills and competencies so that they can become independent adults one day. They need to build not only a transcript of academic classes but experiences and activities that show off their character, sense of responsibility, etc. Or if they aren't college bound, they need to build a resume so they may become gainfully employed at some point.
So first you want to encourage your child to be a well rounded person. In the home this means not only exposing your child to a broad range of topics and interests but also working on basic skills. This is where the importance of chores comes in. This is where I think the 'guest' theory of radical unschoolers really misses the boat. I wish I had been better at chores. I understood the theory and sometimes I was on top of it, but too often, through my own lack of organization and focus, especially with my youngest two children, I was rather ineffectual here.
Chores are a very important part of learning how to become competent. If you help out with family chores, you learn teamwork, basic skills of hygiene, and food prep. You learn how to begin and complete a task. You learn how to keep order and to follow through and the consequences of not following through. It teaches responsibilities and confidence in being able to tackle a task to a satisfactory completion. It also teaches consideration. If you are in charge of washing dishes, you'll notice how annoying it is when people take out a new glass every time they want a drink of water. If you are in charge of keeping a room tidy, you notice when people don't bother to throw their own trash away or dump their coat and backpack on the floor. This tends to inspire tidier and more considerate habits.
I know so many kids who can't even shut a drawer after they pull out a fork to eat with or something. They go to get something out of the pantry and they don't shut the door after themselves. If you can't follow through on that little thing, if you can't focus on completing a task at that minute level, how are you going to remember the bigger stuff? You'll never find your keys because you drop them anywhere. You'll never get your taxes filed on time because you forgot to hit the submit button, etc. etc. Have you ever had a workman come in to fix something only to leave all the lights on and/or they forgot to put the cover back on something or they left a tool behind? They never got in the habit of tidying up as a conclusion to their task. It's sloppy, wasteful and inconsiderate.
I have seen some video making the rounds of a commencement speaker saying something to the effect of 'if you want to change the world, make your bed every morning.' Now I don't know about changing the world, but if you make your bed, your room is tidier, your thoughts are clearer and the first thing you did in the a.m. was accomplish something. The secret is you put yourself in charge of the day by tackling it with many little daily good habits. That builds a mindset that makes you more competent and more capable in the long run. And people who are competent and capable are more confident and just plain happier; less riddled with anxiety.
I never could do chore charts and I truly am repulsed by being so heavy handed in terms of behavioral modification - gold stars and rewards, etc. I personally don't like paying children for routine daily chores. I think those chores are just part of life. However, extra chores, above and beyond this, to my mind, are good practice for working for pay. I did pay my kids to weed the garden or if we were doing a special big chore, like organizing our hundreds of books! But the regular vacuuming, laundry, bathroom scrubbing, dishwasher loading chores were things we did because we had to live in a house together. Having to regularly do tasks like that builds competency.
Another really useful experience for my kids and one that really helped them mature was attending a 'workcamp' each summer. This was usually through our parish or diocese. The kids would go away for a week with a ton of other teens to help repair and refurbish homes owned by usually the elderly poor. They learned how to paint walls and build ramps, repair roofs and install drywall. My only child who didn't attend workcamp is my youngest son who has been diagnosed as having ASD. He suffered from depression, mild to moderate, for all of his teen years. He's just come out of it fully at age 20. Going away with a huge bunch of kids and having to sleep on a gym floor in a sleeping bag was just beyond what he could handle. The constant social interaction just sounded dauntingly overwhelming to him. But I can see that he really lost out in learning certain skills and developing confidence in his own ability to follow directions and work on physical tasks steadily.
Besides helping out regularly around the house and doing service projects to help those outside the home, there are other ways to build competency and self-reliance.
Scouts or 4-H type programs - I think involvement in these sorts of programs is truly and deeply valuable. Two of my boys were Cub Scouts but had lost their desire to be involved upon transitioning to Boy Scouts. However, while they were cub scouts, we had a lot of fun. Working on badge work is fun, social and a really enjoyable way to learn. My oldest daughter was in a Little Flowers group that morphed into something we called the Teresitas. This was for all the teen girls. The moms who hosted this would simply come up with projects the girls could do together. My daughter as a teen learned to sew in this group. They wrote letters to Poor Clare nuns in a nearby convent. They'd put on skits and sing songs to visit those nuns as well as a local nursing home. They baked cookies and made meals for families with new babies or when someone was recovering from hospitalization. At one point, I remember, they were reading O Henry short stories and discussing the spiritual implications of them. I just went to a wedding shower for one of the girls in this group. They are all now in their late 20s and are still friends! The American Heritage Girls troop near us served this same function for my youngest daughter. I was much more involved in that as I was a co-leader for several years. We did so many wonderful things and learned so much and again that is where most of my daughter's friends come from. To me, these kinds of programs are an unschooler's dream!
For a short while we were in 4-H. I loved it. However, I got my kids involved a little bit too late in life. I had never done any 4-H and was shy about joining it. It was a bit too far away and we were already over-committed and really struggling because of my ASD son's depression and anxiety. Even so, he benefited and my unmotivated, introverted middle son also benefited. I wish somehow I had found 4-H earlier and had been able to incorporate it into our lives for a longer period of time. During those two years those two boys got to: participate in selling baked goods at a city fair, which was a really fun experience, competed to build the best catapult by designing their own, watched chicken eggs incubating and being hatched, learned the Roberts rules of order (which was how the monthly meetings were run) and they went camping for a weekend. We also attended the 4H county fair though I am sorry to say we never managed to help out there much. My middle son learned archery via 4H and basic gun safety and how to shoot at the local police station through 4H. My youngest son participated in a speech contest that he actually won! He also learned origami which he was into for a while.
I know of other kids who also developed competency through things like Little League. A local homeschooling mom's son was really into Little League. When he got older he became an umpire. I know kids who were on their local swim team every summer and became life guards. I know kids who got really into TKD and became assistant instructors in their teen age years. I know of another girl who loved horses and grew up to be a riding instructor.
Jobs - this has been a long rambling post that has taken me a couple of weeks to write. But my last point is about the necessity for teen jobs. Teens need to work for some pay too. Starting with lawn mowing, snow shoveling and babysitting for neighbors to working at a nearby fast food place, those starter jobs are really important lower rungs in the ladder of self-esteem and maturity. Sometimes it is really hard to get a job when you are homeschooling a large family and you are out in the burbs or county and mom has to drive you everywhere. I know this has been an issue for us. Sometimes homeschooling opens up some opportunities. A teen can be a mother's helper a couple times a week for an overwhelmed mom of many or, as my daughter did, she can watch little ones while their moms are helping out at the weekly homeschool co-op. But even short term jobs, like a one time big yard clean up for someone or helping someone's dad's office move one weekend are helpful.
And the big thing, I think, is making sure your teen has developed relationships with other adults so he can ask them to be references for future jobs. That's the kind of thing I was bad at thinking ahead on.
Right now my 20 year old (with ASD) is having the worst summer. He's had two bad job experiences and he now has a mental block. He worked for Chipotle for about 5 months but the people were sleaze bags. He found out his manager was dealing drugs! So he quit. Then he worked with his older brother at his marina where he (the older brother) is a supervisor. However, he really couldn't take the heat and the constant manual labor (his brother on the other hand loves being outdoors and is very task oriented so he thrives in that kind of job). And then my poor youngest son ran into a client's car with the little golf cart they have the workers drive around in. So he got 'fired.' Ever since he can't seem to get a job. He has no confidence and I am sure he doesn't interview well. When he's nervous his voice goes very flat and he sounds even more ASD than he actually is! He's applied to many places, but nowadays everything's on line and your application just goes into a void. Hiring companies can't be bothered to treat you as a fellow human being deserving of at least an acknowledgment. This is a problem! He's gone on interviews though and not gotten jobs or internships. He can't seem to keep up the search without falling into depression (and it is a dismal drudge for anyone) and since it's already into June and he is going to school starting in late August, it hardly seems worth it now. I'm feeling desperate!
So we are turning to building skills and doing volunteer work. He is the only one of the kids who never got First Aid/CPR trained, so he just completed that two weekends ago. He's now Red Cross certified. Today, he is going for training at the ReStore for Habitat for Humanity. They are looking for part time volunteers to run their thrift store. He also is going to help out at the parish VBS. He is also signed up for a beginner's orienteering class at a local orienteering club. That's also in July. And he does have his university orientation for transfer students in a week, so that may open up more activities or events. He's also helping with our big new garden we put this spring and watching the little 3 year old who lives with us. I do wish he was more of a self-starter. But we are trying to make best of the situation.
On the other hand, my youngest daughter, all on her own with nary a word to me, got herself hired at the shopping mall and has proved to be a great retail saleswoman, who is already feeling successful in her new job! Which is a very good thing since she's been struggling with Hashimoto's and mold poisoning for the last two years.
Anyway, enough rambling. Hopefully, somewhere in this mess of a post are helpful ideas to those who are homeschooling teens!
I do think many parents attracted to unschooling in a radical way have their own problems with authority and also have a romanticized elevation of 'autonomy' as being the highest good. And because they see any incursion of the child's autonomy as unjust in some way, they get to these really weird places where they think treating their own flesh and blood as a 'guest' is somehow more loving and respectful. And also, they impose an unrealistic idea of autonomy on an immature and dependent child; a person in a stage of development who needs guidelines, encouragement and needs to be able to lean on the wisdom of his or her loving and more experienced parent to develop wholesome, healthy habits.
The Catholic understanding of the family is different from this. Children are gifts from God whom we are called to love and nurture unconditionally so that they (and we) might come to know, love and serve God in this life so we may be with Him in the next. While this grants us authority in our roles as parents, we also must not abuse our authority harshly. A book that really helped me with this was Dr. Greg Popcak's Parenting with Grace.
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| This is the second edition, I have the first. Wonder what he changed? |
Guidance Counselor and Chores
The thing I found unexpectedly difficult in homeschooling/parenting was the role of guidance counselor to my teens. I had never even really contemplated this role as a homeschooling high school mom. I think I had always underestimated the job of a guidance counselor mostly because the one at my own high school was such a joke and that unacknowledged by me, my mom had done most of the work. Which was kind of homeschooling of her! Or maybe this job is actually always part of parenting and I just never thought about it much.
I think, when it comes to high school, most homeschooling parents worry most about credits and how to develop a transcript a college will accept. But that in fact turned out to be fairly easy. We were eclectic in our homeschool high school. Luckily we have a great local Catholic high school co-op which is where my kids took most of their science classes and some other classes like government or literature, depending on each child. Each of my kid's high school career was a bit different from their siblings, simply because of inclination and opportunity. But even if you don't have a co-op there are so many on line classes, various available curricula for every subject, community college classes and tutors and just plain old self study so that it really isn't hard to piece together a transcript. (Now, if you have unmotivated kids, well that is a whole 'nother ball of wax!)
But starting in high school, teens need to develop basic skills and competencies so that they can become independent adults one day. They need to build not only a transcript of academic classes but experiences and activities that show off their character, sense of responsibility, etc. Or if they aren't college bound, they need to build a resume so they may become gainfully employed at some point.
So first you want to encourage your child to be a well rounded person. In the home this means not only exposing your child to a broad range of topics and interests but also working on basic skills. This is where the importance of chores comes in. This is where I think the 'guest' theory of radical unschoolers really misses the boat. I wish I had been better at chores. I understood the theory and sometimes I was on top of it, but too often, through my own lack of organization and focus, especially with my youngest two children, I was rather ineffectual here.
Chores are a very important part of learning how to become competent. If you help out with family chores, you learn teamwork, basic skills of hygiene, and food prep. You learn how to begin and complete a task. You learn how to keep order and to follow through and the consequences of not following through. It teaches responsibilities and confidence in being able to tackle a task to a satisfactory completion. It also teaches consideration. If you are in charge of washing dishes, you'll notice how annoying it is when people take out a new glass every time they want a drink of water. If you are in charge of keeping a room tidy, you notice when people don't bother to throw their own trash away or dump their coat and backpack on the floor. This tends to inspire tidier and more considerate habits.
I know so many kids who can't even shut a drawer after they pull out a fork to eat with or something. They go to get something out of the pantry and they don't shut the door after themselves. If you can't follow through on that little thing, if you can't focus on completing a task at that minute level, how are you going to remember the bigger stuff? You'll never find your keys because you drop them anywhere. You'll never get your taxes filed on time because you forgot to hit the submit button, etc. etc. Have you ever had a workman come in to fix something only to leave all the lights on and/or they forgot to put the cover back on something or they left a tool behind? They never got in the habit of tidying up as a conclusion to their task. It's sloppy, wasteful and inconsiderate.
I have seen some video making the rounds of a commencement speaker saying something to the effect of 'if you want to change the world, make your bed every morning.' Now I don't know about changing the world, but if you make your bed, your room is tidier, your thoughts are clearer and the first thing you did in the a.m. was accomplish something. The secret is you put yourself in charge of the day by tackling it with many little daily good habits. That builds a mindset that makes you more competent and more capable in the long run. And people who are competent and capable are more confident and just plain happier; less riddled with anxiety.
I never could do chore charts and I truly am repulsed by being so heavy handed in terms of behavioral modification - gold stars and rewards, etc. I personally don't like paying children for routine daily chores. I think those chores are just part of life. However, extra chores, above and beyond this, to my mind, are good practice for working for pay. I did pay my kids to weed the garden or if we were doing a special big chore, like organizing our hundreds of books! But the regular vacuuming, laundry, bathroom scrubbing, dishwasher loading chores were things we did because we had to live in a house together. Having to regularly do tasks like that builds competency.
Another really useful experience for my kids and one that really helped them mature was attending a 'workcamp' each summer. This was usually through our parish or diocese. The kids would go away for a week with a ton of other teens to help repair and refurbish homes owned by usually the elderly poor. They learned how to paint walls and build ramps, repair roofs and install drywall. My only child who didn't attend workcamp is my youngest son who has been diagnosed as having ASD. He suffered from depression, mild to moderate, for all of his teen years. He's just come out of it fully at age 20. Going away with a huge bunch of kids and having to sleep on a gym floor in a sleeping bag was just beyond what he could handle. The constant social interaction just sounded dauntingly overwhelming to him. But I can see that he really lost out in learning certain skills and developing confidence in his own ability to follow directions and work on physical tasks steadily.
Besides helping out regularly around the house and doing service projects to help those outside the home, there are other ways to build competency and self-reliance.
Scouts or 4-H type programs - I think involvement in these sorts of programs is truly and deeply valuable. Two of my boys were Cub Scouts but had lost their desire to be involved upon transitioning to Boy Scouts. However, while they were cub scouts, we had a lot of fun. Working on badge work is fun, social and a really enjoyable way to learn. My oldest daughter was in a Little Flowers group that morphed into something we called the Teresitas. This was for all the teen girls. The moms who hosted this would simply come up with projects the girls could do together. My daughter as a teen learned to sew in this group. They wrote letters to Poor Clare nuns in a nearby convent. They'd put on skits and sing songs to visit those nuns as well as a local nursing home. They baked cookies and made meals for families with new babies or when someone was recovering from hospitalization. At one point, I remember, they were reading O Henry short stories and discussing the spiritual implications of them. I just went to a wedding shower for one of the girls in this group. They are all now in their late 20s and are still friends! The American Heritage Girls troop near us served this same function for my youngest daughter. I was much more involved in that as I was a co-leader for several years. We did so many wonderful things and learned so much and again that is where most of my daughter's friends come from. To me, these kinds of programs are an unschooler's dream!
For a short while we were in 4-H. I loved it. However, I got my kids involved a little bit too late in life. I had never done any 4-H and was shy about joining it. It was a bit too far away and we were already over-committed and really struggling because of my ASD son's depression and anxiety. Even so, he benefited and my unmotivated, introverted middle son also benefited. I wish somehow I had found 4-H earlier and had been able to incorporate it into our lives for a longer period of time. During those two years those two boys got to: participate in selling baked goods at a city fair, which was a really fun experience, competed to build the best catapult by designing their own, watched chicken eggs incubating and being hatched, learned the Roberts rules of order (which was how the monthly meetings were run) and they went camping for a weekend. We also attended the 4H county fair though I am sorry to say we never managed to help out there much. My middle son learned archery via 4H and basic gun safety and how to shoot at the local police station through 4H. My youngest son participated in a speech contest that he actually won! He also learned origami which he was into for a while.
I know of other kids who also developed competency through things like Little League. A local homeschooling mom's son was really into Little League. When he got older he became an umpire. I know kids who were on their local swim team every summer and became life guards. I know kids who got really into TKD and became assistant instructors in their teen age years. I know of another girl who loved horses and grew up to be a riding instructor.
Jobs - this has been a long rambling post that has taken me a couple of weeks to write. But my last point is about the necessity for teen jobs. Teens need to work for some pay too. Starting with lawn mowing, snow shoveling and babysitting for neighbors to working at a nearby fast food place, those starter jobs are really important lower rungs in the ladder of self-esteem and maturity. Sometimes it is really hard to get a job when you are homeschooling a large family and you are out in the burbs or county and mom has to drive you everywhere. I know this has been an issue for us. Sometimes homeschooling opens up some opportunities. A teen can be a mother's helper a couple times a week for an overwhelmed mom of many or, as my daughter did, she can watch little ones while their moms are helping out at the weekly homeschool co-op. But even short term jobs, like a one time big yard clean up for someone or helping someone's dad's office move one weekend are helpful.
And the big thing, I think, is making sure your teen has developed relationships with other adults so he can ask them to be references for future jobs. That's the kind of thing I was bad at thinking ahead on.
Right now my 20 year old (with ASD) is having the worst summer. He's had two bad job experiences and he now has a mental block. He worked for Chipotle for about 5 months but the people were sleaze bags. He found out his manager was dealing drugs! So he quit. Then he worked with his older brother at his marina where he (the older brother) is a supervisor. However, he really couldn't take the heat and the constant manual labor (his brother on the other hand loves being outdoors and is very task oriented so he thrives in that kind of job). And then my poor youngest son ran into a client's car with the little golf cart they have the workers drive around in. So he got 'fired.' Ever since he can't seem to get a job. He has no confidence and I am sure he doesn't interview well. When he's nervous his voice goes very flat and he sounds even more ASD than he actually is! He's applied to many places, but nowadays everything's on line and your application just goes into a void. Hiring companies can't be bothered to treat you as a fellow human being deserving of at least an acknowledgment. This is a problem! He's gone on interviews though and not gotten jobs or internships. He can't seem to keep up the search without falling into depression (and it is a dismal drudge for anyone) and since it's already into June and he is going to school starting in late August, it hardly seems worth it now. I'm feeling desperate!
So we are turning to building skills and doing volunteer work. He is the only one of the kids who never got First Aid/CPR trained, so he just completed that two weekends ago. He's now Red Cross certified. Today, he is going for training at the ReStore for Habitat for Humanity. They are looking for part time volunteers to run their thrift store. He also is going to help out at the parish VBS. He is also signed up for a beginner's orienteering class at a local orienteering club. That's also in July. And he does have his university orientation for transfer students in a week, so that may open up more activities or events. He's also helping with our big new garden we put this spring and watching the little 3 year old who lives with us. I do wish he was more of a self-starter. But we are trying to make best of the situation.
On the other hand, my youngest daughter, all on her own with nary a word to me, got herself hired at the shopping mall and has proved to be a great retail saleswoman, who is already feeling successful in her new job! Which is a very good thing since she's been struggling with Hashimoto's and mold poisoning for the last two years.
Anyway, enough rambling. Hopefully, somewhere in this mess of a post are helpful ideas to those who are homeschooling teens!
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