But How Will they Ever Socialize?

Since it still seems to be the most pressing issue to anyone who hears that I choose to homeschool my children, I think it is time for another edition of "but how will they ever socialize?"

It is quite often that I find myself in a conversation explaining why I homeschool and how I homeschool.  Sometimes it takes one minute into the conversation, but usually it is much less, until the other person suddenly says, "but what about friends?" or something along those lines.  I can be talking about giving children the freedom to explore their passions, or I could be explaining the benefits of a curriculum tailored to each child, or I could be giving examples of how homeschooling allows each child to grow to their fullest possible potential, it doesn't make a difference, I am usually interrupted with some variation of this question: "But how do they socialize?"  That puzzles me a bit, but next comes the even more frustrating part, where I give many examples of ways that my children socialize and meet friends, which by the way are not the same thing, and the questioner will not be satisfied, and will always close with some variation of, "my kids need to socialize, so I would never homeschool."

As a parent of school children, you might be wondering if us homeschooling moms are keeping a tally of how often we have this type of conversation with you and other friends, family, and total strangers.  We don't.  Well, we don't anymore, because our kids have used the tally notebook either for math scrap paper or to create paper airplanes.  In a homeschooling house, paper always seems to find so many uses, and good luck holding onto yours.  But let me tell you, the tally is high.  It is very rare that a homeschooling mother tells someone about her children's education and she does NOT get asked how they socialize and how many friends they have.  It is the default response to the idea of homeschooling.

This makes me wonder, is making sure they have friends the main goal in raising children?  When I think of my goals in raising my children, I think of rising them to be compassionate, to be kind, to be self sufficient, to be true in their religious practice, to choose careers compatible with their natures, to be successful in their chosen careers, to have the confidence and experience needed to socialize as well as interact professionally and in other capacities with other humans of all ages and backgrounds, and to be self aware, and to be strong in their values, and indeed to have strong values.  Those are just some of the top priorities in raising my children.  I can go on for another few pages before "having friends" even makes the list.

People wonder (out loud and often and repetitively) how my kids make friends, and I wonder when this became a parenting goal. I took my children out of school because I felt the goals I had for them would not be reached through the school system.  When I tell this to people, they will usually agree that school does not give children the freedom to follow their passions, or to learn at their best pace, or to develop a sense of self necessary to be a successful adult, or encourage individuality, responsibility, or values.  But, they will argue, what about friends?  Well, homeschooled children have friends, I answer, but even if they didn't, I would still do exactly what we are doing.

"Flying With An Infant" And Other Cliches That Never Took

Piece of cake.  Easy as pie.  On cloud nine.  These are just some examples of cliches that are used everyday.

Just for fun, why not examine some cliches that never quite took, and try to determine where they lost their way.   For example, instead of easy as pie, why not try this saying instead, "easy as flying with an infant."  I am currently on my way back to LA from the east coast, so this particular saying comes to mind.  On the way out, my baby fell asleep at takeoff and woke up during landing.  Flying with her was "easy as pie."  Or maybe "easy as flying with an infant."  But here is where it gets tricky: on this flight, it took her five hours until she fell asleep, and for all those five hours she was, well, a traveling infant, which now that I think about it answers my own question.

Okay, so what about "slept like a baby?"  That one is used to imply "slept very well," but that is not very accurate, is it?  Which makes me wonder why some cliches get away with being inaccurate and yet are accepted and widely used, while others are quickly discarded for the same reason.  For example, when is the last time you used, "flying with an infant" to imply a feeling of calmness and relaxation?  (That one keeps coming to mind no matter how deep I dig to find another saying.)  Why use a double standard for sayings?

Then there is another favorite, "pot calling the kettle black," which is used to call out someone for being hypocritical by accusing others of doing something they are also guilty of doing.  On this one "flying with an infant" might be equally interchangeable, because if ever 300 or so people are guilty of the same thing, it is a plane full of passengers praying that the infant will fall asleep.

And of course, you have "Abandon Ship!" which is, if you gave a flying infant the power of speech, how she would describe her activities during the long, crowded flight.

From The Mouths Of Babes

Studies suggest that at sixteen months of age, babies pick up about ten new words a day.  That sounds about right.  Here in our house, our toddler suddenly started adding new words to her vocabulary every day at about that pace.  Actually, she is adding new words to all of our vocabulary.  Whatever she names something for the first time, that's what we all call it from then on, because it is too cute to call it anything else.  So balloons are now baboons, apple juice is appadut, and cheerios are chooftiot.

Many years ago, as a young and idealistic mother, I was determined to model proper language for my children.  I thought that if a baby hears proper language usage, he will be mature verbally at a younger age, and I believed that if you talk baby talk to babies, that is how they will always talk.  My older kids, now teens, definitely have excellent verbal skills and vocabulary, so at least I was right on the first thing.  But I sure hope I am right on the second thing.  I hope balloons will always be baboons, and shoes will always be shoots, and that da moon will always be absolutely fascinating, and a baba filled with appadut is always nummy.  Because I can still remember another baby, 13 years ago, calling a baba filled with appadut "babajoo," and I cannot imagine why I ever taught him to say apple juice.  Lesson learned.

Peace And Quiet? No, Thanks.

Every parent yearns for peace and quiet.  We crave just a few moments respite from the constant chaos of parenting.  But usually, when we finally do hear the beautiful sound of no noise at all, we fear that silence.  Case in point: my new baby.  I finally moved her into a bassinet so that I can sleep for a few hours straight at night.  But this didn't help me sleep better at all.  Instead, I kept getting up to put my finger under her nose and make sure she is breathing!  I feel worried every minute that she sleeps peacefully, and I am reassured by her kvetching and fussing.  It's good to know she is breathing.

There are other types of breathing too.  For example my preteen boys breathing, which sounds more like wrestling, but is equally reassuring.  When the wrestling stops and all goes quiet, I get really nervous.  My mind starts racing with all the possibilities of what could have gone wrong, and I run to see what is going on.  My boys see my face and ask, "Are you okay?"  Yes.  I'm just glad you are both still breathing.

Most parents can relate to my fear of silence with regard to my toddler.  There is no silence that screams louder than the lack of noise coming from him.  I need to hear his constant breathing, in this case the sound of toy cars crashing into each other, soccer balls being bounced off the living room walls, and all the accompanying breaking sounds that accompany a toddler at play.  When I don't hear any noise from him, I RUN to check on him and make sure he is still breathing.

Then there is my eleven year old son.  Lately he has been acting really strangely, cleaning up his room, not fighting with his siblings, and even completing his school work without any fuss.  Last night, he went to bed the first time I asked.  Jarred alert by the silence, I went to his room to check on him.  There he was in bed, ready to go to sleep.  I was so confused by this behavior, and I worried that something was wrong.  I went to put my finger under his nose, but I couldn't figure it out.  "Mom, are you okay?" he asked me.  I'm not sure, I thought.  He seemed to be breathing, but yet I was still unsettled by the peace and quiet.

As my kids are getting older, it gets increasingly more difficult to check that they are okay, that they are breathing.  I am worried that my finger-under-the-nose trick no longer works for some of them.  I yearn for peace and quiet, but along with that I need a new way to check that they are still "breathing."  And I wonder if I will ever be okay with the calmness I dream of.

I am starting to understand why my mother will call me sometimes in the evening and ask how everything is going even though I just spoke to her that morning and told her everything is fine.  She probably just wants to check that I'm breathing.

Yom Hashoah

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  There is some controversy in the Jewish Orthodox community if today is an appropriate day to commemorate the Holocaust, and I won't go into the details of that debate here.  But personally, I often find myself wondering how every day is not Holocaust Rememberance Day.  Maybe not on an international level, but certainly among Orthodox Jews, the grandchildren of survivors.

I grew up among Holocaust survivors.  Every member of my shul (synagogue) over the age of 50 was a survivor.  They were as varied in personalities as any other group of people.  There were the quiet ones, the boisterous ones, the friendly ones, and the ones who were always shushing the children.  They never discussed their trauma, but they didn't have to, it was in the lines on their faces, in their smiles that turned into a sad, nostalgic, far away look, in their silence.  You could hear their stories loud on clear on the breath of every word they spoke.  You could see it in the lone tear that accidentally escaped their eyes seemingly out of nowhere.

As a child, I knew to never ask them about their pasts.  I read books from those few at the time who published them, but I never asked my next door neighbor how her family was killed, or the people at shul how they survived.  But it came out in stray comments here and there.  For example, the man at the kiddush who refused to drink coca-cola because it tasted just like the bugs in his mouth he woke up to every morning as a partisan in the forest.  Or the lady who lovingly told me I was lucky I looked like a shiksa (non-jew.)  Or the lady who accidentally called me Sarale all the time, then apologized and said I just look so much like her child that was killed.  A tear runs down my cheek as I try to recall her name, but cannot.

And of course there was my grandfather, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp.  He survived by the strength of his stoic resolve, and he tried to pass that on to us.  So if we were upset about something, he would ask loudly, "Do you have a roof over your head?  Do you have food to eat?  So sheifele, what in the world is there to complain about?"  He thought he would cure me of night terrors one night when he was babysitting and I woke up crying from a nightmare.  He listened to the tale of my scary dream, then told me, that's nothing, wait till you hear what happened to ME when I was your age!  True, this turned out to not be a good cure for nightmares, but now that he is gone, I cherish those nightmares he shared with me along with the happy memories I have of him.  And while I would never share with my young children the details of the horrors of the Holocaust, I am sad that they don't know them.

It wasn't the details or the events themselves that are etched on my soul.  Surely books will always survive, telling the tale of terror that our ancestors lived through.  But the story will never be complete without seeing their faces, without tracing the numbers on their arms, without hearing the flatness of their voices as they suppress the pain inside them.  I am sad for that part of the narrative that we are losing, for the real, human side of the story.  I am sad that my children will need a specific day to remember the Holocaust, that it isn't on their minds every single day, because they never witnessed that pain firsthand, and it isn't a part of them.

Time To Not Go Back To School Again

So it's that time of year again, and everyone is asking when I plan on starting.  I ask them, "Are you referring to when I plan on starting not sending my kids back to school?"  The response is rarely a laugh, and usually a sincere, "Yes, when do you start homeschool, before or after Labor day?"

This seasonal conversation highlights one of the biggest differences in mindset of a homeschooling mom and a non-homeschooling mom.  Homeschooling is about integration of life and learning.  It is about natural, organic if you will, education.  It is education not defined by any parameters, not least of which is dates and time.  Which is why it is also difficult to answer to the question of "how much time each day do you spend homeschooling?"  It is as if we speak different languages.  I don't have any set dates, or set times, when learning occurs as opposed to not learning.  Vacation and work are intertwined.  We homeschool all year, and 24 hours each day.  And yet none of those hours is anything like school at all.

"When are you starting?" is a question that reminds me how different homeschooling is from regular school.  I don't usually have an official start date for not sending my kids back to school.  In our lifestyle, summer and fall flow seamlessly into each other, as do all the other seasons.  Usually, what will happen is, one day, sometimes well into September, I will notice that all my kids are home, some playing chess while some are coloring.  I might marvel at the temporary serenity and calmness in an otherwise hectic day, and that moment of pause will make me realize that indeed I am homeschooling my kids.  So maybe that is my official start day.  But how do you explain that to someone who wants a quick answer?  I guess the quick answer is, sometime after Labor Day.

Lessons Learned From My Grandmother

It has been almost six months since I lost my beloved grandmother.  My mind has still not completely digested that she is gone.  There are moments when I reach for the phone to call her, to tell her something I know she would appreciate.  It came as a surprise how much I miss telling her every Friday what I cooked for Shabbat.  Less surprising is how bittersweet good news has become, without being able to share it with her.

There were some questions I never got to ask her.  I have always wondered if she was happy with some of her choices in life, and if she would have done things differently if she could do it over.  There are questions that I never would have asked her, because she would have considered them foolish.  She would have said, what is the point of wondering what could have been?  She taught me to accept your lot even while trying to improve it.  She taught me that life doesn't have to be what you want for you to be happy, and people don't have to be perfect for you to love them.  She taught me that love and happiness are a choice  you make, not something that happens to you.

She was the strongest woman I have ever known.  As a young teenager, she escaped Nazi Germany barely in time, and moved with her parents and brother to Australia.  She left everything and everyone she ever knew behind, but she never looked back.  Then, when her idealism brought her to America, she again left everything and everyone she knew behind.  She never expressed any regret, and accepted her difficulties without any negativity.  This is the greatest lesson she taught me, to always forge ahead, with a smile in your heart, and never look back.

There were times when she guided me through my own difficulties.  She would always tell me not to be so emotional, and to focus on what needs to be done.  She would remind me to see the positive in every situation, and to count my blessings.

In recent years, I noticed a hint of questions in her eyes and voice.  But she never let those questions out, and they never affected her actions or her belief.  In her silence, she answered some of my questions. She taught me that you can believe, and you can love, and you can be certain, even while you have unanswered questions.

I wish she was here right now.  She would tell me to stop being so emotional.  And to count my blessings.