electric boogaloo

Free-range is a legitimate parenting style, right? I mean, I’m involved – but more as loose supervision and lively conversation than actual parenting. Oh, in fact! My parenting last week was almost exactly like being with my two favorite college roommates; they’d come in and I’d have the dining room table covered with my work, exploded in a fan shape surrounding my favorite chair just outside of the kitchen, where the sink was full of all of our dishes.

First Nina would come in and we’d talk about how I thought her new boyfriend was a jerk and same goes for his jerky friend Kevin. Haha! Jerks. Then she’d say bad things about the other roommate and I’d listen sympathetically but wouldn’t really have the energy or time to offer useful advice, much less intervene.

Then she’d leave to go listen to a book on tape. And Tanya would bounce in and talk a lot really fast about this hilarious idea she had while she was walking through the muddy field and oh my gosh wouldn’t it be hilarious if we went to Denny’s and pretended to be from the future but were as subtle and real about it as possible? And I’d look down and read a few paragraphs and look back up and she’d be wearing completely different clothes.

It was fun and it worked, except our apartment was always trashed and I wasn’t responsible for feeding them. So yeah, the last week has been dodgy in the parenting department. And the housekeeping/wife-being/healthy eating/focus on anything other than putting out fires department.

Still, I weirdly enjoyed the boys all week. We talk all the time, we wonder things out loud, we play and make fun of each other. We argue, we lose our tempers and say dumb things then right away take it all back. It’s banter, which is my number one favorite kind of conversation.

And really it was weirdly neat to stand back and observe them while I worked. I watched and listened to them play, heard them weave little lessons into their games from the messy threaded soup of things we’ve studied this year.

Our homeschool curriculum consists of DK books and wikipedia. We have fun but I often worry that I’m not doing enough structured work, not doing enough to make sure they know how to read and do skills… you know? But whenever we sit down and do that stuff, it feels like we are playing school. The rest of the time we’re learning. Me too, I’m learning. I go between feeling confident and brave about our approach and wondering how bad it would be if I managed to somehow not teach them anything. So it’s nice once in awhile to see evidence that it works.

This week Nicolaus:
Realized that an abacus with 100 beads is a great way to count coins. He suddenly knows what each coin is worth, and can add them up. He had one day where he could do it astoundingly well, then the very next day he couldn’t do it at all. Then the day after that he was working on it again.

I love watching kids master something that is a reach for them. You see them digging a rut, then driving back through it over and over until it all makes sense and becomes part of the terrain. Oooh metaphors written when I’m tired suck bad.

He also made up his own culture, danced around and told me new Star Trek episodes, asked for help writing his own Greek myth, and generally dazzled me with his silliness and sweetness all week.

If you have a four or five year old who is making you crazy, please re-read that paragraph. Oh holy moly, we are enjoying age six.

Meanwhile, Graham:
1. Gives his daddy a pistol every day as he leaves for work, so that bad guys won’t kill him. The pistol is invisible, and Kevin says he now has hundreds of them in his truck.

2. Loves to cook pretend food. He makes me things like bagels and asks me to pretend I am daddy so I can eat wheat. He has a better grasp of what a gluten-free diet means than any waiter I’ve encountered.

So this week I took fifteen minutes to make him a play kitchen out of two big cardboard boxes. While I sawed out the refrigerator door, he stood behind me with his hands on my shoulder and said, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

3. He brought me an oversized kids’ math book and asked me to read it to him. Before I opened it he told me earnestly:
“I don’t know anything.”

“Well that’s okay, this book is a great way to learn stuff.” I opened it to the first page, “Alright, how many hats are in this picture?”

“What’s a hat?”

“See the hats?”

“What’s a hat?”

“What?”

“I don’t know anything.”

Then we moved down lower on the page, past counting single items and into counting groups. The book had big pictures of pairs of shoes. I tried explaining it, failed, and came back to: Okay, Graham. When I say ‘go get your shoes!’ how many shoes do you bring me?

“Four.”

“No… how many shoes do you put on when we leave?”

“Four.”

“Graham. How many feet do you have?”

“I’m a kitty. I have four feet.”

“Ohhhh okay, so you have four. Now… what the book is saying is that if you have a group of four shoes…”

“Actually, I decided I’m really a monkey.”

“Oh! A monkey. So now you have two feet. Okay so now when I tell you to go get your shoes on, how many shoes do you get?”

“Zero.”

“Zero?”

“Monkeys feet are really… actually hands. So I don’t have feet. I just have hands.”

Counting objects was making me tired. “Should we see what’s on the next page now?”

“No, I like this page.”

I can’t decide if this exchange means that I should definitely homeschool this kid, or definitely NOT homeschool this kid, but see? We’re having fun.