Thoughts on Intentional Learning . . .

The BIG Picture

Intentionally Plan Your Biggest Dreams for Your Family

Think about your own journey of becoming.  What moved you most as a child?  What new learning has inspired you as an adult?   And then ask yourself, why?  What about these learning experiences was meaningful to you?  Take some time to journal or mind map your thoughts.  Get specific.  Organize your big thoughts.  Not small details. But the big picture items that are assumed or yearned for somewhere in your heart.  Think about and enjoy those types of details: 

• I hope we laugh a lot 
• Play in the leaves  
• Visit Seattle  
• Build a tree house 
• Memorize the last eleven sentences of Dr. King's final speech  

Spiritually - what do you want your children to know?  To think? Believe?  Hold to be most important?  Start with big picture.  Later as you develop your pedagogy you can go into more detail as to how much disciplined time you want to give to the formal learning process  and what it then might look like.  But for now, what are important spiritual learning events that you see attached to different seasons and ages of your family's life?

How about traditions?  What are some traditions you would like to establish.  Half-Birthdays?  An annual Christmas decorating party?  A proper celebration of Advent?  Formal dinners on Thirteenth birthdays? 

Don't be too detailed.  Just remember some happy traditions or ideas or trips you want to aim to make happen in your family's development so that time does not sneak up on you with the passing of unfulfilled precious moments.  Also, try to get your spouse to think of some ideas.  Are there any rites of passage that he would like to see happen in his family's life?  His children's lives?  Would they be different for sons and daughters?  What are unspoken dreams and hopes he may be unknowingly holding?  Hikes?  Favorite Games to be played?  What are songs he may want the family to know?  Events in history that he thinks are especially important?

Brainstorm Big.  Then sort through these hopes.   Give them a priority number.  '1' being essential.  '5' not so much.  

Give yourself a couple of hours together.  Or not.  (Sometimes, involving husbands is far easier said than done.)  Either way.  Gather some of his thoughts and some of your thoughts and . . .   Write them down.  Organize them.  One folder for annual events and/or seasons.  Additionally, create folders for broad grade ranges:    k - 3^rd, 3^rd - 6,^th   6^th - 9,^th and 9^th - 12^th.  Put them where they are easily found. (However that works for you.) 

Again, this is not to be an exhaustive (nor exhausting) list.  Less so very often is more.  Children remember things as tradition and meaningful that are not that frequent.  I would recommend watching out for fear driving anything you do -- fear of regret --fear of failure -- fear of disappointment.  Fear is not your friend.  Grace is. 

Rather, it is a simple process of getting to know yourself.  Some folk do so effortlessly.  Some of us have unfulfilled wishes because we simply do not know how to verbalize them to ourselves.

Then, remember to write out in your calendar for the following year four different  "Quarterly Configuration Meetings"  (or something) on a specific date every three months.  By writing these  down ahead of time, you can remember to assess and plan for the next three months of your family's life.  Again, nothing major.  Just a way to proactively chat with yourself and your familial dreams.

The simple goal is to take time now to establish a planned time, three months in the future,  to sort through your homeschooling  thoughts and reflections.  Slightly formalizing the absolute spontaneity of life can be a wonderful gift.

These visions will shift with time.  But they are the stuff that long later leave us encouraged.  Memories that will matter most to you as a parent.  The things we look back upon and for which we are very glad.  Happiness is not a given.  It is something well-intentioned.  Much like learning. And becoming.  The lasting and significant joys of a precious and finite time together.  Take time to dream about it.

You will be glad you did.

Be Intentionally Positive . . .

Your Children Will be Spending
a large amount of time with you. 

Grow your capacity for speaking positively. 

(It is honestly something that you can grow)
(However, don't have unfair expectations of yourself)

I recently  read  that in parenting the ratio of positive to negative comments should be 4 to 1.  But in the research it is more like 96% negative and only 4% positive.  There are good reasons for this.  One of which is that family's are so often in a hurry.  Homeschooling gives you time to not only  make your many mistakes but to then correct them with  positive parenting comments in very meaningful ways - because you see your child in such a diverse range of gifting.   Again, Time is your friend.  Homeschooling is gracious.  You get to grow in your positive experience of your child.  You get to verbalize it.  You have more opportunities to grow genuine appreciation for them even in the midst of working diligently on hard things.  

You have the kindness of time on your side.  As a mother there were so many deficits to my communication style, I wish someone had told me:  You are going to grow.  You are going to improve.  You are going to change in beautiful ways.  You just have to work diligently at being the parent you want to be; or even more importantly, that your child needs you to be.  

For me, this honestly meant at times biting the right side of my lower lip.  Sometimes  it was numb.  I'm a naturally snarky, opinionated soul.  Deep in my heart I knew my children did not need my negativism.  But it did not simply go away effortlessly.  It was a bit of a fight.  A very much worthwhile one.  

I could have just said this is who I am - deal with it.  But I felt a higher calling to be a kinder person.  God has always been very kind to me, why would I not be consistently kind to my children?  But of course it was nothing that logical.  Just a pause in which I bit my lip and didn't say the snarky comment in my head.  And then with time, the actual unkind thoughts disappeared.  It was not even work.  I became an encourager, and like the Grinch my heart through that process truly grew.  Towards every one and all that folk endeavor.

I am glad that my children were in my life consistently such that I had the privilege to grow beyond the habits I had managed to arrive at parenting with. A petri dish of love and life and patience and proactive compliments resulting in a beautiful growth of seeing and delighting in were my first few years of homeschooling.

Changing for the greater good of your child is a worthwhile journey and it definitely begins with simply being more positive -- genuinely observant of who they are and what they bring to this world and after seeing it, appreciating it and then verbalizing your appreciation.

Empowerment begins young and it begins with you speaking truth in kindness and expectation.

What being positive is not . . .

Having said "Learn to Be Positive" because your children will be with you most hours of the day; please note that I am not saying that you are your children's savior.  

Intentionally -
think about the amount of time you spend on studying

Two Contrasting Approaches:

Calling your child creative without providing essential learning...

Children know when they are not getting  an idea that other children are learning.  I often watch families that "in kindness" try to dismiss the need for the subject matter to be learned by the child.  In almost every case, I am told that the child is creative.  And usually they are.  They are imaginative, delightful thinkers that I always find entertaining in their freedom of soul.  But far too often,  in such a scenario, the child can learn to quit challenging themselves academically and to walk away from difficult learning that ultimately ends up self-communicating  that they are not quite smart enough to get it - learn the avoided subject matter.  When you are around a child like this you can sometimes sense their apathy; or worse,  you can sense their confidence that their parents won't make them learn and that learning is not important.  I usually find this to be heart breaking.  I am working with a very creative, interesting thinker who has already learned how to not try and it is very hard to challenge them.  And  the belief that they are not academic is always not true.  It is the delivery system that might need adjusting - not the subject matter.

Deep, great thinkers have often found early learning a chore.  No need to stress their failures.  I agree with this.  Homeschooling allows us to not spend a tremendous amount of laborious time on difficult and boring routines.  (I love that about it.)  But do pursue learning. Difficult learning.  Frustrating learning.  Optimism is birthed in this process.  Do it in small increments.  Have a chart.  Be consistent.  Fifteen minutes a day can truly be a beautiful thing - even if the climb is  long and slow.  Arduous perhaps.  But you will get there.  And that will be a wonderfully happy moment.  In which a child learns that they can overcome the obstacles about them.

Growing a love of learning is a beautiful love to grow. Watch it take off some time in the unknown future - lots of joy.  Practice verbalizing why it matters.  The tools with which we build our world are the tools of thought.  I sometimes wonder if the ever tepid sea of not-too-imaginative-nor-inspiring love songs is for want of thought.  There is so much that is not being sung about.  A world shaped by profound thinkers is a world with something to say. 

To parents of the children who tell me they are creative, I say:  Let's Give Them Something to Talk About.  Not merely rehashed and inherited talking  points.  But thoughts that have grown the child in well-informed terrain  and by which they are rightly and deeply  awakened to things that truly matter; and are, therefore, able to think on their own with truthful information. 

vs Majoring on weaknesses...

The flipside of avoiding academic hard work is only doing the hard work.  This is where I started.  Thinking homeschooling had to look like school and not knowing what to do with all the chaos and big ideas of my very imaginative children.  I would find myself truly afraid as a single small moment grew larger by the nanosecond.  We were using Oak Meadow (which I love).  And there we were, candle lit, poem to be read aloud - but, no - somehow there was now intense interpretive dance happening and everyone had their place and now it was a very long elaborate prayer to Jesus and another dance and... 

I was continuously confused.  Who was in charge and why wasn't it me? 

Funny enough, I would give anything to have those days back.  To surrender to the wonder.  Which I eventually did do.  And fell in love with.  Time and thinking and making and messes.  I very much had to get over my fear of messes.

I always feel like the exception. but I was that exception.  That person who had to learn in the midst of doing to not be afraid of what wasn't happening.  Spiritually, I felt very led to relax and trust.  But I am not someone for whom that is easy - especially when it is someone else's life:  my  daughters'.

I so easily believed that I just had to ---

I am eternally grateful that life led me to Carolyn and Martin Forte and they led me to homeschooling and I learned how to play and not take things quite as seriously as I once did. 

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