The Littlest Unschooler

Last night, I was sitting in Mal's room watching him play when it occurred to me some of the amazing things he's learned this year. Besides physical milestones like standing up and starting to form words (even if they're largely his personal vocalizations for things), he's learned how to unplug things, unscrew lids, use his teeth as a tool to pry stuff off (I know, dentists, you don't need to message me), how to identify an M&Ms bag, what cooking and cleaning "looks like" enough to imitate both, that people will laugh if he does certain things (so that he does them over and over and over again), to identify animals as living things in pictures, where to look when I say "There's a hummingbird!" or "There's a squirrel on the patio!" or "Look at all of the birds at the feeder!" He remembers where stuff is, and he knows how to get to things he wants (especially the things we don't want him to have and that we try to hide from him). He knows that if he wants Daphne, he has to yell because her fan is on and she can't hear over it. And, well, you get the point. He's picking up a lot of stuff.

And that was the point: he's picking it up.

He has learned a lot in the past nearly-11 months, and except for a few signs, words, and instruction to make all of our lives easier, we haven't "taught" him anything. I don't sit him down and force him to look at a book, repeating "cat cat cat" and pointing to a picture until I think he "gets" it. I don't force him to look at books at all. In fact, I spend a lot of time pulling books out of his mouth, but that's not the point. The point is that the books he looks at he chooses to look at, and he turns the pages himself (board books; the other ones he tears the pages out himself, so it's a no-go), and he points at pictures himself. Then I'll give him the name, and we'll sometimes go back and forth making the animal sound.

Speaking of which, do giraffes make any vocalizations?

I was thinking about how much and how quickly babies learn, and extending that to unschooling. I think as kids get older, we feel like there's a need for us to enforce something called "academic rigor," which boils down to forcing them to do things so competitively it feels like work and they might start hating it (unless you have a kid who really likes that kind of thing or the subject matter enough that there's no screwing it up for them).

Why?

My child is learning at lightning speed. It's not always fun. There are things he's learned that he has not enjoyed, like that banging his head against things might be funny, but if you don't do it just right, it can also be extremely painful. That's not a lesson I would force on him, and not just because that'd be tantamount to abuse. It's because it's best learned for yourself. I firmly believe that most things are.

Today, we had Mal's (early) one year pictures taken and the photographer asked me about holding Mal's hand to walk with him for one shot. I tried, but he wouldn't go for it, and I realized: We've never done that. We have never held one or both of his hands to try to get him to or help him to walk. He walks some, but it's his choice... and, well, frankly, he walks sideways, like a crab on two legs. But whatever. He'll figure it out.

We haven't tried to "teach" him this skill. We didn't try to "teach" him to crawl, or encourage him to crawl by putting things he wanted out of his reach. He just crawled when he was ready.

This attitudinal realignment is so far off from what I believed when Daphne was a baby. I feared that if I wasn't singing the alphabet or doing hand shapes or going over colors all of the time, intellectually stimulating her at every opportunity when she was so young, that I'd lose time and miss out on some window. Well, and obviously she turned out brilliant and artistic and amazing. But I don't think it has anything to do with my trying desperately to help her figure out where her nose was when she was wide awake after a 4 AM feeding at six weeks old.

Anyway, I've been thinking about unschooling a lot lately. Daphne's gearing up for a project she's launching as part of her "early preparation for adulthood." (Please don't ask her about it! She hates that. I only get updates as she's ready to tell me. Seriously, ask her about it and she might drop it altogether.) She's testing some waters to see if she can make a living doing something she loves... while she lives at home and doesn't have to pay rent. It's a good time to start, right?

We plan to send Mal to the Waldorf School when he's older, and it's one reason we moved here. They play a lot. It's part of the core "curriculum." But I guess we'll see once we test those waters how flexible they are in letting him choose what he's doing. Of course, by then, it might be *so* expensive to live in Austin, we will have moved somewhere that the excellent Waldorf education is not a possibility, in which case it will be a no-brainer: we'll continue on with the same.

So far, so good.

I love watching my kids learn their stuff.

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