Maybe I just won’t write much in the fall
Sep 23, 2005 Homeschooling
Thinking back, it seems like every fall I decide to stop doing extra writing for awhile. Instead of making proclamations each year I should just remember that fall/early winter is really busy (homeschool activities start up, high holidays, then the other holidays, then birthdays for me and Noah). Sometime after all of that is over, I usually make another proclamation about how now I’m going to get serious about my career. So besides remembering that fall is busy, I should also remember that late winter/early spring gets me inspired.
A couple people asked me why Noah says the park is taunting him and it’s because he can’t use it during school hours (it’s the school yard). Yesterday he went over there after dinner and had a run-in (minor) with another kid — an older kid. She rode her skateboard in front of his scooter and said, “Hey, you trying to run me over?” And then laughed. It ruined Noah’s whole night and he came home crying.
“She wouldn’t even listen to me!” he said. “I wasn’t trying to run anyone over!”
It took about an hour to get the story out of him. It started as, “These teenagers were making fun of me!” “I was terrified!” “I’m never going there again!” to the rather small event I have relayed here. I told him that this girl (who started out as a vicious, marauding teenager with a mohawk but it sounds like she was someone just a bit older than himself although impressively skateboard proficient) was teasing him the way he teases Madison, not in a mean way but in a playing-your-own-game way. Like when he rushes by Madison pretending he’s a super hero and for five seconds she’s part of the game as some obstacle or other.
I also told him that getting teased happens to everyone and that this is why Spiderman is such a popular superhero. You know, Peter Parker. We can all identify with Peter Parker.
After he was calmed down, pajama-ed and tucked in bed with a book, Brett and I talked about it. Always one to overreact, I started worrying that we were raising an emotional and social cripple and thinking that we moved here so late — perhaps too late — and that he would be stunted forever. And is it a mistake to homeschool him or does he need more practice dealing with sarcastic skateboarders? But Brett said he was exactly like that as an 8-year old despite living in a densely kid-populated neighborhood and going to school.
(It helps having a sort of control Noah in the boy that Brett once was.)
Noah is normally pretty good in social situations but he is very intense about getting things right and not being a bother thus his horror at being unjustly accused of trying to run people down. And while I was saying, “Is it homeschooling??? Should we have sent him so he would know how to do this???” Brett was saying, “I went to school and it just made me so tense that I cried every single night and had migraines at 8-years old because not only were things like this happening but there was also the teacher, the lessons and the rules.” Brett’s feeling, basically, is that Noah would be like this regardless and that homeschooling is more humane.
I hope he’s right. It’s so easy to think, “I’ve created this!” When Noah was little and very very clingy, people would say that perhaps maybe I was creating a clingy child by being there for him all of the time. Now logically that didn’t make sense to me. Here was my baby who seemed to panic if I went too far away so I should go far away a lot and wear him down? No, I figured that he needed me to stick around so he could see I was a person he could count on and let him make the first move away.
With the homeschool thing it’s harder. We chose to homeschool for a lot of reasons but the most obvious reason is that we felt that it was a better fit with Noah’s personality and would give him a greater shot at confidence and self-sufficiency. That may seem counter-intuitive, I know. But sarcastic skateboarders or not, Noah is generally a very happy, self-confident little boy. I don’t know — can’t know — if this would be true if he were at school. I believe that the daily demands would be an awful lot for him though. As much as I worry about his social skills when it comes to more “rough” kids, I do think (hope) we made the right decision.
I have a friend whose son has a similar emotional make-up to Noah and he’s in his first year of school and really hating it — crying every night and begging not to go every morning. He’s very very worried about breaking any rules and of course the ironic thing is that children who are like him and like Noah and like the Brett boy-child generally don’t break rules, not even by accident. They are so careful and quiet that they are more apt to drop under the radar completely. Once stern look from a teacher and they are basketcases.
Still, this new social neighborhood is going to be a challenge for me, too.
By the way, Madison’s current favorite books are Big Red Barn and Freight Train, both of which I am getting very tired of reading.
September 23rd, 2005 at 9:48 am
Me: reading nerd: check. Very uneasy in social situations: check. Grew up with lots of kids and went to regular school: check. Still couldn’t take teasing very well until almost adult: check. Turned out normal anyways: check.
September 23rd, 2005 at 10:33 am
Last night my intense, homeschooled son was complaining and nagging and fumeing about some things and I offered advice, empathy and help until I couldn’t take it anymore and yelled at him to LEAVE THE ROOM! Even though I know this is pretty common behavior for a kid going through hormonal changes, I spent the rest of the evening rethinking my choices for him, worrying that homeschooling made him feel like he was weird, that he didn’t have enough going on in his life, that he was frustrated because I’d made him too sheltered and everything was my fault.
My usually easy going 4 year old daughter is whineing a lot lately and my response is, “Baby, knock it off. Talk in a normal voice.” If I get upset about it, I just remind myself she’s 4, and this is what many kids do when they are 4.
I don’t know why I can have more perspective with my daughter than my son. Maybe because she’s my second, or possibly because he’s so intense and she’s more cruisin’ in neutral.
September 23rd, 2005 at 10:48 am
I can understand your concerns, but I don’t think homeschooling has anything to do with it. I think Brett is right. My kids are public-schooled, and they are just like Noah.
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:02 am
I have two kids like who are intense etc. etc. but mostly different. They were in school and for them being out has been so much better. My boy and my girl are so much like you describe Noah to be - it was a little eerie to read it.
Last night and this morning my husband was tellling me,for the very first time, how hard school had been for him and how happy he is that our kids get to do it differently.
This is not school bashing on my part because I know there are great schools and great school staff out there. I also know there are a lot of kids that don’t just make it through a school experience, they thrive.
Just not my kids, not right now.
Change is hard even when it is good. (A mantra of mine - a lot of the time.)
And if I never have to look at Richard Scarey’s 68 page Cars and Trucks and Things That Go - ever, ever again - it will still be too soon!
I will carry scars from that stage of my son’s early childhood for ever!
In sympathy!
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:14 am
Such an interesting question. Honestly, honestly, he’s not a social or emotional cripple - SO MANY LITTLE BOYS are like Noah. I swear I’m going out with one. Um, he’s an adult now.
And he’s still an intense, worried, perfectionist - but also a funny, charming, kind man. But he was definitely ‘Noah-like’ throughout school years. When Noah is a teen, he probably won’t be the guy with all the girlfriends, or the guy who has the crazy parties when Mum & Dad are out of town (bummer, hey). But he’ll grow up wonderfully, and he’ll get a great girl (or guy) (like me!), because he’ll be quirky, quietly confident, and interesting.
And I think Brett’s right about the home-schooling.
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:39 am
Oh … Big Red Barn was Sky’s first book. For obvious reasons. A gift. It’s in tatters now; we need a new one. I also love that her name is the last word.
Noah sounds like such a darn cool kid.
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:24 pm
I think sometimes parents and adults in general give ourselves far too much credit - good and bad - when it comes to shaping kids personalities. My personal thought is that most of that is hard wired and we just give them the tools to function in the world with the basic personality that their brains have already determined they will have. He sounds like an extremely smart and sensitive kid. And while that might be an occasional detriment to childhood social interactions it is actually a wonderful way to be so I don’t think you should worry too much. (Yeah, easy for me to say I know)
Now this part is just assvice because my kid isn’t old enough for it to be an issue at all. So right now it is just my unpracticed, quite possibly idiotic rambling… But I think the ability to deal with teasing and sarcasm has been one of my greatest assets in life as a teenager and adult. In retrospect I am glad that my parents never made a big deal about it when I came home crying after the kids on the street teased me. As hard as I am sure it was for my mother to do cause she is the ultimate come to the rescue kind of parent, they pretty much just brushed it off and didn’t let me get all dramatic about it. (On a side note I think there is a big difference between teasing and tormenting. Tormenting can not be tolerated period and is a different matter entirely.) Now I grew up with older brothers who could dish it out with the best of them and I learned early on that I got a lot more respect giving it right back to them then running away crying. To this day the ability, as we Irish say, “to take the piss” loosely meaning to bring someone down (in a friendly, playful way. This is reserved for people you know and like) is highly valued in my family. In addition to just hanging out with my older brothers and their friends I got a lot of exposure to that kind of stuff from movies and sarcastic cartoons. And that is why I will most likely let my kids watch The Roadrunner and The Bad News Bears even though they aren’t exactly politically correct or culturally sensitive in this day and age. In some ways I think kids can learn more from The Roadrunner than Barney. Because life isn’t all about sharing and being nice and following rules. And maybe learning a little of that from a cartoon before being confronted with it in the real world will soften the blow just a bit. Or at least I hope it will. I guess I’ll find out in a few years when my kid toddles off to the playground for the first time.
September 23rd, 2005 at 5:10 pm
It sounds like Noah started life as a sensitive boy. Home schooling isn’t likely to have made him more sensitve. On the contrary, I would assume that its made him more secure. He is, at the very least, secure in his everyday learning environment. A highly sensitive child, as was your husband, will suffer terribly in the cold harsh fend-for-yourself institutional setting of the average school.
My husband is the shy introverted type, and he won’t really talk about his early experiences at school. They were terribly painful times. My son, however, is completely the opposite. Mr Social, not at all sensitive, rebounds from any minor upset with incredible speed. I was also “there for him” constantly as an infant, and rather than “creating” a clingy child, he was independent and wanted nothing to do with me. You didn’t “create” Noah’s temperament, unless we’re talking biologically, and there’s not a whole lot that you can do about it now!
September 24th, 2005 at 12:53 am
My son is like that too. My therapist used to suggest that we should try teasing him at times, to help him see things as not such a big deal, to be able to laugh things off and laugh at himself. But teasing isn’t really in my nature, so I didn’t do much of it. Still, he seems to have become less ultrasensitive, I don’t know if being at school is part of that or not.
When I read the anecdote about the girl, I thought she was making an overture to play with Noah - do you think that was possible?
September 24th, 2005 at 1:34 pm
Em sounds a lot like Noah (she’s 11) and it’s one of the reasons we took her *out* of conventional school. She was unable to get perspective and deal with the day to day social interactions because her peers were able to shrug things off that she hangs on to and internalizes. Her teacher would say “You could do better.” and instead of ‘getting’ that what her teacher meant was “If you had been paying attention, I really hink that you would have had more success with this task because I am confident you have mastered the skills to do it.” she’d hear “You’re a failure.”
She was reading at college level and flunking math because of her learning disabilities. She is so self-possessed and speaks so well, people treated her like a MUCH older child, but she’s really quite socially immature and I’d also say, emotionally. So it caused problems.
8 months of that and she was having migraines every night, throwing up, losing weight and miserable. I took her out. Now she is healthy, thriving and starting to deal with kids a little more successfully on HER terms, which I am glad to see. She is growing into herself a little.
I think that parents just…. we do the best we can. We make the best choices we can and we try really hard to walk that line between protecting our kids and helping them grow into the world. Nobody is walking that line with *us* after all! We’re on our own. But sometimes we find other parents on the same line and it’s reassuring. Like, I am reassured to read about you and Noah because there are parallels there.
You know what I’ve found to be the most reassuring of all? In our new homeschool group, most of the kids who are Em’s age are not as precocious as the kids from her school. The older and younger kids have a little more in common and seem to interact more easily. Rather than the exception, that weird ’sensitive’ kid, Em is just another bright, unique kid in a group of kids who are being allowed to develop on their own terms. It makes me feel better when I see that and I don’t worry as much.
September 26th, 2005 at 2:55 am
Noah sounds alot like my little boy. I was also the same when I was a kid, so yeah I worry that I am making him sensitive too. I also think it is hard having a sensitive boy, because people in general expect them to be stronger. When we are at playgroup and my son cries or gets overly upset about something, everyone thinks he is strange, whereas from the girls it is acceptable. And I sometimes get the blame for making him sensitive because he has dolls, etc.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I do know how you feel.