deschooling 'issues'... a vent ...of sorts

[gentheyank]

Ok, so I dereg'ed my kids in feb and I think things are going swimmingly. We are in the deschooling stage. I fully understand whats going on in this stage. I feel like letting my kids just chill, if ds, who is 11, wants to play on the wii and finish his game during 'school hours', its fine! I see it as part of the deschooling process. Dh doesnt. If Im honest, it infuriates me. Ive calmly made my point. And my point is that this will all blow over. Our children will naturally come to a point where learning is fun... where they KNOW how to learn without school. Wii and playing during school hours isnt the issue. The issue is that dh doesnt understand deschooling fully and I feel that everytime he has a blow out, it sets us back, or it kind of stunts the growth, so to speak. Im going to use our 'Wii Issue' just as an example. Its a trigger for dh's frustrations it seems.

Otoh, Im trying to see it from his perspective. I resisted the first time he kicked off when ds was on the wii at a time dh didnt think appropriate. And he did kick off. We had a heated discussion. Things calmed down and I calmly explained whats happening now. He said he 'gets it', he backed off for some time, then he has an issue with things (that I see as pertaining to the deschooling process). Last time this issue came up he kicked OFF, as in screamed and shouted about how Im supposed to be teaching these kids, they should be learning stuff, etc etc. THIS time he calmly said to ds 'Dont even ask to go on the wii until after 3.' In one sense I think its small progress. Dh and I are deschooling too. He'll have days and weeks when nothing is an issue. Then he'll get annoyed and make an issue out of things. Bedtime is another issue, but you can use your imagination with that one, Ill just stick with the wii issue.

The problem I have is this... Im the one who's done the research. Im the one who is taking responsibility for OUR children's education. He keeps his distance in that area. He only pipes in ... I dont know when. Maybe he's feeling like things are out of control or something. Im trying to understand it from his perspective. I know the kids will be fine during this process. I know they will not fall behind in anything. I can see, from the 'progress' they've made that they are FAR better off out of school, their education has already benefited from being HE'd a very short amount of time.

Tbh, I think things are going to be fine. Dh will come around. This process of deschooling is for dh and I as much as it is for the kids. I just wanted to vent and possibly get any advice anyone here can offer.

Thanks.

In my experience it's much more difficult for the parent who is not with the children so much to have difficulty 'getting it'. Heck it took me a good while to get it....as adults we have been indoctrinated into believing sitting down and being taught is the only way to learn, for a very long time. It took me a long time to get my head around the fact that it isn't.
Your hubby wants what's best for his kids, he's probably panicking.
It is more difficult recognising learning is happening when you are not around so much.

Is it possible to declare yourselves on early summer holidays for now-and promise your dh you will all review things as a family at some point? That might take some pressure off
The perceived wisdom is one month of deschooling for every year the child was in school. It took my children longer, as they were so badly damaged, and my my husband MUCH longer!
Funny enough I suggested some Deschooling for Parents links on another site earlier today.
Also How do I stop wanting to see structured learning?

Would your husband be willing to read up on how children learn at home?
How Children Learn at Home is worth reading.

Good luck!

Those links will be very helpful. Thank you. The early summer holiday thing is something that will be helpful when I do get a chance to discuss this without it being prickly, lol.

thanks ever so much.

there may be an outside trigger, like unemployment figures on the news so he worries they won't get exams and will never get a job.

this used to happen in the past with my son's dad eg when they restructured at work, he became more anxious about offspring's freeform education and about "having to do things you don't want" and "knuckling down."

also if he talked to anyone whose children of comparable age were in school.

sorry pressed send too soon, meant to add I have no idea how you would negotiate this calmly in the context of a caring sharing partnership as I am a control freak single parent and my idea of sharing is "first it's my turn and I will be right, and now it's your turn and you will be wrong"

Could you somehow engineer some fun but educational activities to happen e.g. one evening? To try to show your dh that 'school hours' are pretty meaningless now? Maybe he would be happier with a daily time limit for the wii - he sounds like he's getting really hung up on WHEN it happens, which isn't really the issue.

It would be good for him to come to understand that HE isn't going to involve you teaching them from 9-3 each day - even if you end up very structured, that's probably way longer than you'd need!

I understand about deschooling- but does it have to mean letting them have a completely free choice of activities? I would limit screen time anyway because that's what we as a family do under any circumstances. And I think that while your brain is occupied with computer type games, it's not adapting to its new parameters.

We've been home edding for a few years and in the beginning dh had a rather disinterested approach, until he himself got involved by teaching our 4 his hobbies, golf, bread-making and board games. I pointed out how these are all learning opportunities and then dh became more involved. We are involved with 2 local groups and dh was very impressed with the varied experiences our children have had, that neither of us parents would have ever had at school. Try your best to get him involved, even if it is just a card game after dinner.

De-schooling doesn't have to be non-educational.

Akin to seeker's view, I would say that being engrossed in computing/wii/DS type games is actually going to hold back your child from autonomous learning.

His mindset will not be in the school mentality of being a reciever of knowledge but nor will he be growing into an effective HE child who explores and discovers and learns through his own drive.

I'm not sure about DS or Wii (presumably there are things a child is learning from them, or they wouldn't do it. And maybe what the child is learning is about how to recognise and move away from stasis?). Free flow computing is massively educational.

No.

Wii games and some computer games are not massively educational at all.

They are designed to hook in players through sudo-reward systems, illusionary "progress" to higher levels etc.

Sorry - not meaning to claim any benefits of any sort from the Wii - we don't have one and the only time I've ever encountered one, it made me so travel sick I had to leave the room :) DS never closely encountered either.

I meant internet access and some guidance about where cool stuff might be found - that's educational :)

I mean DS the machine, not DS as in "my son"

"being engrossed in computing/wii/DS type games is actually going to hold back your child from autonomous learning."

disagree entirely. Having had three autonomously home educated children, one of whom was mad about pc games, there is loads to learn from such games. It is just another way of learning.

And if you really are allowing autonomous education for your children, then this is a valid way of learning.

From Joyfully rejoycing-an unschooling/autonomous HE website

"Here's something Deb Rossing wrote about what kids learn from video games:

Problem solving, reading, research, numeracy (number concepts, 'math'), computer literacy/using the Internet, literature (plotlines, characters, context, setting, mood), music (some videogame music has actually been released on CD because the soundtracks are amazing), team work (many multiplayer games require working together to accomplish a task), patience and sticking to a task to reach a goal, strategy/planning, delayed gratification - if you go straight for that sack of gold that you can see straight ahead, you'll get killed BUT if you go around the other side and wait for the 'guard' to go past, you can grab it safely, art (the graphics and production values of videogames are usually very high quality). Often videogame playing will lead to interests (short or long term) in graphics, art, film production, creative writing (inventing story lines and characters), programming, special effects, music (sometimes DS will hear a new piece of music and say "that would be good for such-and-such type scene in thus-and-such type game"), languages, and other things. Some games either came from or spawned print forms that are related - manga, graphic novels, books, etc.

And, coming back to it, I realized that in the 'delayed gratification' area I forgot budgeting - delaying purchasing some items in the game in order to get something else, planning purchases, figuring income, sometimes actually 'working' for the coin of the realm in order to purchase something - whether working entails beating a gym leader or crafting a potion or creating a t-shirt or buying an item at auction and selling it at a profit, whatever; etc.""

We are totally autonomous home educators-we didn't restrict any screen time, we engaged with them about it, discussed it lots, but didn't restrict it. My child-as with hundreds of other autonomously HE children who played masses of video games, is doing really well at Uni now. So something seems to have worked.

oh I missed this bit

"His mindset will not be in the school mentality of being a reciever of knowledge"

Sorry but that's exactly the opposite of what an autonomous home educator would want.

being in a school mentality of receiving knowledge is encouraging a child to be a passive learner-I wanted my child to be actively engaged in going out and getting the education he wanted and needed.
and sometimes that meant through these types of games.

Again, thank you SO much for joining in on this discussion. I had left it a day (I think) thinking not many would give input, so Im greatful for everyone's pov.

And I can see it from everyone's pov. On the video game front, on one hand we do restrict screen time a LOT, just bc I want to give their brains time to wind down and I want to talk to my children sometimes (lol).

On the gaming front, I come from a perspective, personally, similar to the one julienoshoe has. I totally see the value in it and I 'ditto' everything julie posted from that website. Thank you for that. Whats more is that my other two children sit and watch him like its a movie, all three of them work together to solve the problems, one of them will go and look something up on the internet to help get past a certain part he's stuck on. So they are learning to work together and I actually see this time as so valuable for my kids during this deschooling stage, particularly.

There is a huge dynamic here when it comes to these kinds of things in our home. Dh is a gamer. Every free hour he has is spent on gaming. That is part of what I find infurating. If he'd be willing to set the example and not play during certain hours, I dont think Id have so much of an issue. There's a few other things as well but I dont want to go into those. And really its not ALL about the wii. Its about understanding the things we're talking about here. Understanding that learning doesnt happen exclusively during the hours of 9 and 3. Its about the fact that learning the way a school 'teaches' is just artificial, there isnt much 'real life' about it. This is how I feel about it anyway.

If Im honest, I think dh'll 'get there'. I really needed to talk this out and hear perspectives from people who might understand, since dh doesnt, I think I felt alone with no one (but my kids, and I couldnt slag their dad off to them ) to bounce my thoughts off onto.

I think I feel a bit differently about it now I know you are a gaming family. Does your dp play games with them?

My son will sit and watch dh play games, we all will when he's playing one that is very movie like. On one hand, I do feel its hypocritical of him to say no to ds playing whenever he wants while he plonks himself down in front of the computer whenever he wants... which is why I say this isnt so much a gaming issue. Its a deschooling issue. Its about dh understanding how HE works which I find frustrating. Saying that I have enjoyed the discussion on gaming, its helped my agrument actually

I think your DH will get it too, but it might take time and lots of reminders. For ages, years even, DH would suddenly say "why aren't they working?" if he saw the girls messing around during the "school day". If I said "well, they've finished it" (because we were semi-structured, at least at the start) he would say "already? Give them some more."

It took ages for him to realise that a) if they were doing formal work it often only took a very short time and b) if they weren't doing anything formal at all they could still be learning. And yet he struggled massively, and still does, with restricting his own TV/ gaming time so they could concentrate.

I think we are more or less there now as I don't hear it often any more. It took lots of patient explanations, often of the same thing, and I think it slowly sunk in. I think a lot stemmed from his irritation that that they were singing/ dancing around/ giggling and being generally loud when previously they had been at school. I can see why it was a big leap to make - and understand the feeling that we had to substitute the school day with something.

I would second the learning from gaming. DD1 was very into a game called Animal Crossing when she frist came out of school. Her interest led her to a forum dedicated to it. She spent hours and hours playing it and on this forum. I didn't limit it at all. During that year she turned from a pretty dire speller to a brilliant one. Her written language is excellent, as good as mine and sometimes better. She says that a year of solid gaming did for her what school had failed to achieve in 8 years of spelling tests and literacy hours. Never underestimate what they are learning when you think they are messing around. :)

Oh I think screen media is vital to learning for some children. My son, for example, is a highly visual learner who learnt to read fluently and do advanced maths simply from using the XBox and the Wii. If your DH is a gamer himself, get him to play with your children so he can see for himself how much learning is going on. Get them to read the instruction manual and print out cheat sheets together, that kind of thing. He sounds full of fear, which is understandable. Unschooling is pretty out there for most of us. I know how frustrating it can be when your husband doesn't seem to 'get it' and you feel he is damaging the process. But be extra kind to him and do everything you can to ease his fears. Encourage the kids to do things you know your husband approves of, show him how much the kids are learning ( put it into schooly terms if necessary), and even share with him how much the kids are learning from gaming and other things when he isn't there. Give him lots of info about what is going on when he is out of the house so he feels included and informed. If he will read articles and sites then sandradodd.com is great.
Good luck.

Just wondered how it's going now a few more weeks have passed?

Things are going much better actually. He's chilled out quite a bit. I still respect his stance to a large degree, but he's calmed down a lot. We've talked about it quite a bit between us actually and he is basically sold tbh, but its the fear thing that occassionally rears its ugly head. It hasnt to the extent it was when I first posted about it. He's just concerned now that I dont get too relaxed about their chores(rolls eyes... to be fair, I am WAY too relaxed sometimes in that department). Its like as long as they do something he percieves as 'productive', he's happy. But yeah, he's getting it, slowly...