Transitioning
Mar 11th, 2007 by willa
Cindy at Applestars asked about how my kids and I managed ownership in the middle years. She writes:
At about 11, when my children start to do more formal things, they learn to be in charge themselves . . . by about 13, they are doing well without any oversight or assignments from me . . . just curious if you’ve tried that to free up your time (with a large family like mine 
and vest them more, or not?
In her page called The Collaborative Learning Process, which I printed out last summer because it was such a helpful outline, she writes:
The Collaborative Learning Stage (Ages 11-13). This has been an important transition stage between a more unschooling collaborative approach (collecting valuable information and honoring it) to a collaborative learning approach (sharing valuable insights about adult living and supporting the process in working toward their unique futures). This is where more formal discussions and frameworks are created in helping each child own and take responsibility for their goal-oriented learning lives.
I spent a lot of time in this stage helping each child figure out how to structure their learning and create goals by sharing information and insights about their learning style and timeframes by using learning collaboration.
I guess this is something like what I do, one reason why I thought her summary of “stages” was helpful, particularly since she compared it with Thomas Jefferson Education and several other “methods” that I’ve also read about. Her approach seems to focus on the signs that the child gives about readiness and to work in an organic mode rather than try to impose something top-down or on a strict schedule. This is something I value.
When I look back at what we did with our first three kids (my third is now 17) I see that they did come to this point where they were largely self-”vested”, but the details differed with every one of them. I think most of them were closer to 14 or sometimes a bit older when they got to the point where they said (more or less plainly) that they could do it basically on their own, thank you very much. By that time the older ones had internalized what we (the parents) were trying to do and as teenagers they seem to have a need to work out how that works in their own lives and with their own talents and interests.
For example, my oldest became very academically oriented. He studied Latin and Greek and went much further than I could have taken him. My second is a classic auto-didact, and there were some things I mishandled with him because I didn’t know enough about right-brained learning. I think there were some things I would do differently now with him, but a lot of things we did right by instinct, too. He devoted huge amounts of time to immersing himself in subjects of interest and I did a small amount of “requirements” with him on a daily basis because he needed the interaction for motivation and to work on some executive function skills. My third, my daughter, has become very focused on music and learning more about her faith heritage and on several other things. She is willing to plod through math and the less naturally interesting subjects because learning these things will help her meet her goals for college and life.
My 17 year old daughter meets with me for informal discussion and to set strategic goals and discuss future plans, but the daily and weekly work she manages pretty much under her own steam. Obviously, I’m always there to help her, but I haven’t needed to very much.
I see my 14 year old as just emerging into this stage. He has started to take an interest in planning for his future and already is the prime mover in getting his required subject areas done in the morning. I am still exploring, trying to find the parameters of what he is capable of. Besides occasional difficulties with math, he can coast easily through almost all his subjects. He has a bit of trouble with mechanics in writing and wants to tackle that. I decided to devote the rest of his 8th grade year to finding how he learns best and how to transition him towards seeing the big picture in his studies.
My just-11 year old is in a different boat. We spent much of last year basically radically unschooling. I learned so much from watching him and interacting with him during those days. However, my instinct at present is that he needs more one-on-one time and that some of it should be (loosely, collaboratively) structured. He doesn’t run to me asking to do his formal work in the morning, but he really interacts with the material and it’s a joy to be around him when this is happening. I don’t want to move him towards more independent work just yet in those areas. It is a chance to mentor him — being the easy going child in the middle, with two medically needy younger brothers, he hasn’t had as much one-on-one attention as some of the others.
About freeing up my time — honestly, when I was radically unschooling, I struggled radically with boredom. I even gained a fair amount of weight. It might work great if there were lots of community opportunities in our area or if my kids were very social or if they were all close in age. But as it was, I had to be on task to supervise the little ones and I tried hard to keep engaged with the older ones but it was just too much open time, too much waiting, too much the same every day and no real signs of progress. When I read Cindy’s Collaborative Learning outline and Anne Lahron-Fishers book “Fundamentals of Homeschooling” I realized that there wasn’t enough of a balance of open time and more structured time. I am really glad I experimented with it since it showed me a lot about how our family works, but it was a bit of a wilderness experience and I’m glad we’re past it now. At present, most of our formal work is finished by noon and we devote the afternoons to more unstructured activities. I’m finding it to be a nice balance.
This got looong and I don’t know how interesting it is, but anyway, it helped me to write it all out. Being right-brained myself, I work in fuzzy global mode a lot of the time and sometimes don’t know exactly what I’m thinking until I sit down and write it down and see it right there in front of me . LOL!
Cool, Willa! As you describe it in this post, it definitely sounds like our stages of growth, as you mentioned about the collaborative learning process. I think I will write a post about the formal goals and learning transitions. I was able to write it down differently at a workshop I presented, and a nice left-brained way of seeing the transition emerged.
Anyway, I think we do the same thing, except you do it in a right-brained manner and I do it in a left-brained manner . . . LOL! I’ll share my thoughts in my post, probably for tomorrow . . .
-Cindy
I have found that unschooling requires me to think much more about how I spend my own time. I need to be available, but my main “job” isn’t teaching. Even though I have lots of things I could be doing, I am finding it a real transition to think of them as my real work rather than hobbies. It just seems weird to sit and knit at 10 a.m. I am slowly getting over that but know I need to do better. And I think that is probably the big difference between you and Cindy. She has clearly spent a lot of time developing her own interests as a motivational speaker (for want of a better term) — putting together workshops, travelling to conferences to give them, actively moderating a yahoo group, and writing a book — helping others to see a different way of doing homeschooling.
I do work (for pay) but it comes in waves. So sometimes I have lots to do (and even feel like I am not available enough in some of those periods) and sometimes I don’t have much. It is the nature of the work, but unschooling really fits with that. I guess if you look at someone like Melissa Wiley, who seems to phase in and out of more radical unschooling, she also has her own writing career that has to fit into the day.
But these are just different priorities and ways of thinking of our own lives and work. I do think that there is some evidence on your blog that you could pay more attention to your own needs sometimes (especially around exercise and sleep, but sometimes you also mention that your personal religious practice isn’t quite what you’d like it to be). I think from my experience that that probably feels really odd but you could decide to give it priority and see what happened.
Very interesting, Willa. I am going to check out that link, too. As you know I also have an 11 yo boy who is very much in collaborative mode. My goal has been to work towards more independance by the time he hits high school age, but right now collaboration is just the right spot for him. It is certainly a balancing act in the middle school years, between meeting the need for guidance and fostering growth towards ownership.
I enjoyed all of your comments very much. Nice to have that feedback.
Theresa, your boy reminds me a bit of mine. I think Kieron would love the kind of environment you have created for Superboy.
JoVE, I think you are right about the differences between Cindy’s lifestyle and mine at present. I am in an unprecedented period of my life. For several years we were very busy indeed having babies, making several moves, and dealing with medical issues on a high level. I also have been involved in our family’s home business when it was more active, and I continue to moderate several online forums and yahoo lists. I also write for a homeschool newsletter. Being the right-brained immersion learner type, I find myself quite literally pushing my kids away if I spend too much time doing that sort of thing. I hesitate to take on anything more than I already do of that sort, for the sake of my family life.
I would like to get involved in more hands-on crafts like you do, and some household projects like gardening that would indirectly benefit the kids, but it is a bit of a stretch still right now since I am more of a conceptual thinker and hands-on PLUS maintaining supervision over the little ones are stressors for me right now : ). I have plans for this summer, though!
I am sort of hoping that we as a family are transitioning to something new now that the medical issues are less pressing and our babies are growing up, but right now my sense is that I’m in sort of an interim period.
This discussion is really making me think — thanks, since I always seem to process much better with feedback. I am so glad you are writing a post, Cindy; I just found an old print-out of a very short post you wrote on your yahoo group about transitioning, but would love to hear more left-brained details.
I also was going to say about the knitting at 10 am, JoVE — I was so much there all during last year. Not knitting specifically but just getting out of the mode of “getting things done”. It WAS hard sometimes, but worthwhile because it made me much more conscious of the natural flow of a day. That is a really interesting point about Melissa phasing in and out of radical unschooling and the rhythm of her writing work. I never quite thought of it quite that way, but it seems somewhat in the nature of homeschooling to flex depending on life circumstances.
This is a wonderful post, and - since my oldest is just 12 - it helps give me a glimpse in to the future and get a better idea of what the “big picture” looks like. Like you, much of my time and energy has been absorbed in parenting the littles and addressing complicated “special needs” issues (not as complex as what you’ve addressed with your boys, but it has absorbed an amazing amount of time and energy over the past 7 years). There was also the day care, which I gave up in Fall. I think I am close to a stage in our lives when I have time to direct my energy in other ways. Thanks for sharing your experiences. As I’ve said before, I love the way you think and write.
[…] I did not sleep well last night, after some medical blog-surfing. We had an appointment for Aidan in town. So after the discussion about transitioning this weekend, I decided that today would be an unschooling day for Kieron, and that I’d try Sean on choosing his own work to see what would happen. So he did Math, Greek, and read Our Life in the Church and Celtic Heritage Saints. That is not what I would have predicted, but it was interesting. I can see that he is close to being where he could take the reins for himself. Which is always nice to see. When they are about twelve, mine always go through a restless unenergetic stage (if you can’t imagine both at the same time, can you remember when you were 12? I can) and I fear for the future, even knowing better…. but they do seem to come through on the other side. […]