To begin with, I actually thought my middle son was ill. He was so unbelievably distraught about something that had happened at school that there was no way I could get him dressed or out of the door. So I assumed today was a sick day and phoned the school office. This is probably getting our family closer to our award for Worst Attenders of 2013. I wonder if we get a trophy?
After half an hour or so it was clear that it was just panic that had gripped him. I sat him down and explained that his big brother was doing some work at home today, and that if he wasn't going to school we would find him some work to do too. Then I had a little panic attack of my own.
You see, the reason I thought that home-school time was working so well for me and my eldest was that it was exactly that, time for me and my eldest to bond over something interesting. My eldest is really good one-to-one. He revels in the adult time and in the feeling of being treated as an equal. Moreover, he and his middle brother don't really get on that well. They don't get on badly, but they don't play together much. They seem to have totally different interests and glide past each other on a day-to-day basis, sharing space and family life without actually being playmates. Moreover, both can find each other intensely annoying. I envisaged the next few hours as being a three-way tug-of-war with lots of emotional rope burn and without the element of fun.
But in the event, it was OK. No, more than OK, it was actually pretty amazing. First and to my relief, middle son thought school at home would be just fine, and the boys were charmed by the idea of working together. Fortunately, we have two computers, so I set one up on the laptop and the other on our ancient desktop with the spelling site. They worked at different levels for twenty minutes and then we tested them both. Eldest was helpful in supporting his little brother, which I expected. What I didn't expect was that when it came time to test the eldest, little brother both wanted to try to read the words out loud for him, and then wanted to know what all these strange new difficult words meant. For a kid with speech delay, this was good stuff.
I gave myself, erm I mean them, a short break. Then we gathered around the table for our second lesson. Fortunately, I had something I'd planned for a while that was actually easier with three than two. I am trying to get my eldest to loosen his imagination a bit, instead of being gripped with fear and stress every time he picks up a pen to do art or writing. So all three of us covered a piece of paper with shapeless scribbles. Then we swapped our sheets around and took turns in guessing/inventing what imaginary pictures were represented by the scribbles. We finished them off, adding neat leaves to the scribble-tree, a sun coming out from the scribble-cloud. Then we talked about what story might be happening in the pictures.
I was pretty sure they would both be able to manage this task technically. But what I wasn't sure of - and that was a pleasant surprise - was the fact they didn't just work on the same task together, they supported and encouraged each other. I am used to seeing them completely ignore each other's interest and work. This time they were chatting and laughing together as they worked. They looked like two brothers, rather than two boys who happen to live in the same house.
Lunchtime came. At the moment we are experimenting with only sending my eldest to school in the afternoons. I got the boys ready, picked up their bags, encouraged THEM to pick them up, reassured them that they had already had enough to eat and didn't need an afternoon snack, took them to the door, realised they didn't have shoes on, found their shoes, persuaded them both that yes they DID need them, got halfway up the drive...and hit a wall of rain that was so heavy I could scarcely see them.
"I'm sore!" shouted my eldest. I have no idea whether he really was or whether it was just the panic about the rain. But whatever, there was no way I could get him up our impossibly steep driveway. We all went back to the house. Whereupon I planned an impromptu lesson around an educational DVD, and gave them some maths problems. And my younger son spent the whole day out of nappies, for the first time ever. Not a wasted day, then. Quite an important and useful one. But most importantly was the way the two boys got on together, in a completely different way from the usual squabbling over toys and food. Creating a learning environment was better for them as people.
I am not saying I want the responsibility of home-schooling both my sons fulltime. It was a day off, there was the novelty value, I was not seriously trying to introduce a new concept to my eldest, the younger one was not in one of his non-compliant moods, etc etc. But I can't escape the nagging thought that this was extremely good for them - both - in different ways. What started out as a meaningless scribble on the blank sheet of the morning, an incoherent tantrum, turned into an opportunity to - to what? To spend time with them? To teach them about each other, about learning alongside each other, about being friends?
If I was arriving in New Zealand at this point, I think I would seriously consider fulltime home-schooling. As it is, we have an excellent school, where they are both happy and settled. But there are cracks. We heard this week that my middle son is having social difficulties, that he is not integrating with his peers any longer in the same way that he was managing a year ago. Is school going to work longterm, if he's not happily integrated with the rest of his class? In fact, is it working now? He is able to read and do his sums without difficulty. But he is refusing to engage with group work, messing around at mat time, and refusing to participate in the work of the remedial small groups. I don't believe that there is such a thing as a neutral school experience. Either you are learning good habits, or bad ones. At the moment, he seems to be learning some bad ones, alongside the good ones of literacy and numeracy. It's not going that well. And I have deep doubts about my eldest's ability to manage a full school day, even if we do manage to get the magical ramp that might make it easier for him to get out of the house and into school.
I don't have any solutions. All options have drawbacks. I feel a bit irritable that whenever I mention homeschooling every professional I speak to jumps in to tell me that it would be a terrible idea. But I also don't think that my middle son should be out of school at the moment. He needs structure. School is a good way of providing that. Not the only way, but a good way. My eldest son too, benefits from the structure and energy of school. But I also increasingly feel that they both benefit from my individual attention, teaching them at home. I feel that I am looking at a page full of scribbles, waiting to see if a picture emerge.
No comments:
Post a Comment