Arty stuff

One of the ways you can tell if someone is cut out to be a good homeschooling parent is if they and their children just LURRRVE crafts. They can't get enough of them. They are the parents who clog up Pinterest with their glorious "see, a working international model of the Space Station, my kids just threw this together in the five minutes before lunch with a spare paint-pot and a couple of pieces of pasta," sorta stuff.

I am NOT that kind of parent. I would venture to claim expertise in the field of parental negotiation around diagnoses. But I am dim and mediocre in the area of craftiness. I make sturdy but uninspired efforts in that direction. There is a CRAFT box which the children love. I leave them to it, unless the babysitters feel like doing something with it. We do the odd themed "ooh goodness it's Easter soon where is my Cheat's-Guide-To-Colouring-In-Easter-Egg-Pictures book?" With great effort and stress, I've managed the basics. The children have made drums, chalked pictures on the drive, cut out snowflakes for Christmas. Ya know the sorta thing. But I've always struggled, because until the Great Ritalin Miracle of 2012, my eldest just was a spinning ball of crazy energy and if you got crafts out, he would simultaneously decide
1) he was going to build the Great Wall of China out of paper RIGHT NOW, and it had to be JUST RIGHT: cue meltdown from him
2) he was going to take the scissors/glue/glitter and experiment on how many dangerous things he could do with these at once: cue meltdown from me
3) he was going to shout at his brothers (who were generally quietly and biddably doing whatever I'd suggested) for using the red/green/purple pencils/whatever he wanted RIGHT NOW: cue meltdown from everyone.

So when the book I'd ordered from the library about Arty Parenting arrived, I looked at it with the misgiving that I would feel if someone had suggested to me that I really ought to spend time cuddling a jellyfish. It suggested stuff like sketching with your kids. I laughed hollowly. Sitting still and sketching? You might as well ask a leaping frog.

Today I felt a right fraud for keeping him off school. He wasn't in any pain at all. Leaping around like a, er, leaping frog. But he'd had diarrhoea - which might have been psychosymptomatic in origin but was nonetheless smelly. The rules are clear, no school for 24 hours. I looked sadly at my gym bag.
But he could walk! he could get into the car and out again without screaming! the sun was shining! We could do that mythical homeschooling thing of which others speak, a FIELD TRIP! Plus I had some medical paperwork to sort. I felt rather guilty about exposing the medical admin staff to my son's bugs. Then they messed up his paperwork and were rude to me. I rather hoped they would catch it after all.
Down the road was Devonport. I'd been there on Sunday for coffee with my husband. Some cuddly hippy-bunny-types have yarnbombed the front parade of shops. It's labelled with chic panache "Knitty Graffiti." Ideal for our current project on Graffiti.
It was a bright, clear day. We looked at the knitted art and then my son asked to go to the beach. Why not? We walked across, he splashed around on the edges of the sea. I felt happy and at peace, like a NZ tourism ad. Usually when I write a sentence like this, it is followed by "And then something really terrible happened," but this time it didn't. He just did something lovely and innocent that brought me out in cold sweats. He showed me a twig he'd found on the beach and said "Can we take it home and make something?"
Er, yes, I said, trying to suppress my panicky "but I don't have a CRAFT BOOK that will teach me how to make something from something you have just found on the beach!" sequence of thoughts.
We took it home, and I brought it inside with the grimly depressed sense of a prisoner who has been asked to carry his own axe to the scaffold. I made lunch, procrastinated a bit. I could just give him his spelling game. Or Mathletics. Mathletics is proper learning. There are worksheets, too, that lovely site I've joined online, he could have some of those. Comprehension. The Three Rs. He does not need to be given the opportunity to follow his creative desires and...
oh, hang on. He's autistic. That is EXACTLY what he needs. As much creative growth as possible, precisely because he is anxious and prone to worry about getting it wrong and all he ever wants to draw normally is those blasted Skylanders models. He's telling me what he needs, I thought. You have to do this now.
I took a deep breath and went to prepare the artroom, that is to say I cleared the porridge and banana skins off our kitchen table. I fetched the damn sticks, plus some shells from our last beach visit. I put them out and got the pencils. Then I waited for the spinning ball of hyper inattentiveness that is my son meeting crafts.
"You can do what you want," I said with a calm I did not feel. I anticipated that this would shortly involve hurling the shells around the room. With a great effort of will, I recalled the art-with-kids book. "I am going to sketch." I started sharpening my pencil. He sat down beside me. "Hey, what do you call a, do you know what Skylanders is...can I colour in one of the shells?"
"Sure."
He took a shell fragment and did a rainbow shape across it. Pretty. I'd never have thought of that. Then he watched me for a moment. I am not much good at sketching but I do find it relaxing. Or I would if I ever got any bloody time to do it. "Mum, look at me." I looked across at his paper. He had drawn a shell, pretty accurately, and was starting to colour it in. We talked, as we drew. Mainly about Skylanders, although Monkey Quest and Beast something-or-other made an appearance too. And I realised how happy I was, just taking the time to do something together: teaching by osmosis, or example perhaps, but not particularly by content. And he was focused, and he was calm. Partly the result of maturity and Ritalin, but also the context. This is learning, not silly messing-around-time.
And I mentally thanked that book about doing art with your kids.

Later, I gave him some worksheets to do. He grumbled and groaned, but quite enjoyed them I think. And actually, that balance is right for now. I'm not ready to let him lead the way totally: I'm not sure he is the right kind of child for that experiment. But I am ready to let my guard down a little bit, to experiment beside him. To make sure he isn't the only one learning, or doing arty stuff. We both seemed to be happier that way.
And this, I've realised, is kinda key to making this homeschooling thing work: that I have to be happy, learning alongside him. That's the whole reason we are doing geology: not because I knew it all so that it was an easy place to start, but because I knew nothing about it and would find it interesting. For me to be happy with this sudden shift in role, I have to be engaged. Even if it's just learning about rocks, or remembering how to sketch, and wondering if I am persuade him to do it sometime again. Like those yarn-bombers, who we discussed on the way home. "Why do they do it?" we asked. And came to the conclusion because it made them and others happy. Just because it was fun.
Cumulus' latest INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS REALISATION ABOUT HOME-SCHOOLING: IF IT'S GOING TO WORK, PICK A STYLE THAT IS FUN FOR THE PARENT, TOO.