Scaring children with just one word: Chores

I am sitting in my favorite armchair, with a cup of hot coffee - yes, you read that right, I am drinking coffee that is still hot.
The house is quiet.
How did I manage this, you are wondering. No, I didn't send them all away to boarding school, and no one is duct taped to the wall currently, and so as I came to sit down with my fresh hot coffee and a book, I too wondered why is it so quiet and where did they all go?

I may have discovered a new trick as I think about how this came to pass.

After lunch, I discussed schoolwork and goals and schedules with the children. Then, I put the baby down for a nap and in passing, mostly to myself commented on some chores that needed to be done.

I didn't ask any child to do them, just mentioned them in passing and then went to the kitchen to get my coffee.

When I returned, the living room was empty and all the children were gone. Silent as caterpillars they crawled up the stairs to their rooms.

Some are reading, some are playing, some are even sleeping.

I've tried to maintain an afternoon quiet time, but it hardly ever works because there is always one child who insists on being noisy. But, today, the mere mention of chores sent them all away.

I'm sure I can't use this trick every day, but today I'm going to enjoy the silence and enjoy my hot coffee before it gets cold and I'm going to try to finish my February book.

Baseballs, Broken Windows and Little Boys

I've been perusing some of the my old articles, trying to re-purpose my work. Online publishing is both good and bad; good because my work appears published instantly and that is gratifying, bad because it appears in a mountain of documents created by other writers seeking instant gratification and then it gets lost there.

So, I've started to go back to my first days of blogging and look again at the work that I've done and try to see how I can bring it out of the slush pile and back to life, so to speak. Some of them are a silly, waste of time and I wonder now why I bothered to click Publish. But, others are really excellent and I'm sad that they have been lost in the wasteland.

One of my favorites is a story about the day Ethan threw a baseball through our friends garage window, and then he learned how to fix the damage he'd done. That article memorialized that event for us, and those who've seen it have appreciated it. In fact, it was such a good piece that it has been stolen and copied a few times. Let me tell you, it is weird to see your work with someone else's byline.

But, I read somewhere, "Don't worry about your writing being stolen, worry about writing something worth stealing."

So, since this piece was so popular, I'm giving it a plug here so more of you can see it.

The original text and photos first appeared here on Hubpages.

How Children Fail, a book review

Some of us thrive on competition and approval. I did well in school when there was a prize at the end. But, learning simply for the joy of knowing? I lost that somewhere around second grade, when knowledge wasn't enough of a prize by itself. I didn't get it back until well into adulthood. Even now, when I take a class my mind retreat to How Do I Get An A? approach to learning. It's what I know, and it has been well-integrated into my publicly educated mind.

But, when I'm free from rewards and punishments, I learn much more and I learn it much faster. What motivates me?

Reading "How Children Fail" by John Holt as my January book to review made me consider these things.

We all fear failure in some way, and we all have learned by adulthood techniques for protecting ourselves from it. 

Some of us take the tactic of simply not trying. Holt says, "You can't fall out of bed if you sleep on the floor." Children who are used to missing the mark learn to expect failure and to set themselves up so that they (and their teachers) won't be disappointed.
I have a child who does this; I can see him tense up at the sight of new material because he is terrified that he will have to face failure if he attempts something new. That is my fault. I've been teaching him the way I was taught in school, but what worked for me doesn't work for him.

Some children are so concerned with getting to the right answer that they miss entirely the instructions they are supposed to be following (these kids love multiple choice questions, and they test well in this format, but not necessarily because they understand the questions). 

I have a student like this as well, and I see now that it is the result of my teaching her the way I was taught instead of the way she needs to know.

Some children refuse to admit what they don't know. They are so afraid of being wrong that they won't tell the teacher when they don't understand something. Holt says that information that goes by without understanding is like leaving something at the Howard Johnsons (that was the '50's, so maybe now we would say it's like leaving something at McDonalds). Eventually, you have to go back for it, so the sooner you go back and get it the better.

For years now, I've been plugging along, teaching the way I was taught, and I feel like Holt when he says, "the valiant and resolute band of travelers I thought I was leading towards a much-hoped-for destination turned out instead to be more like convicts in a chain gang..."

If they only knew how wonderful it would be to have the knowledge that I offer them, wouldn't they want to learn it as badly as I want them to? Probably not, but even if they did that doesn't mean that they want me to tell them how to learn it.

After watching my 15 month old learn to walk, I understand something else Holt explains in his book. She gets up and tries again because she is not afraid of failure. She does not see her falls as failure, she just knows something went wrong so she tries again.

This is what children do when left on their own. No one taught her how to walk. This is the joy of discovery. The night this video was taken, she took 28 steps in a row unassisted. She did not learn to walk at 9 months or even at a year, but she does not know that she walked later than her peers, and she doesn't care.

She is discovering the joy of learning something simply for the pleasure of knowing it.

There is good reason that John Holt is known as the father of unschooling; his words ring true to many of us who have been schooled.

This book, How Children Fail, I highly recommend to every parent and teacher and to anyone who has ever been a student.

Parenting from my Armchair: Baby v. Vacuum

I settle down for a relaxing evening with my husband after all the kids are asleep. I’m all snuggled into my armchair and ready to watch a good story on the television. We choose from over 120 items we have saved on our DVR (because we want to do this more often than we actually get to do this).

Just when the story is getting so good I’m barely eating my popcorn, it suddenly stops and a message appears on the screen. It says, ‘Your Playback Has Ended’ which translated really means:

“Your kid’s been messing with me!”

Parent’s night in has once again been foiled by our genius one-year-old who has a knack for knowing how to push just the right buttons on the DVR to cause our favorite shows to stop recording at pivotal plot points.

The next morning I see her butt-scooting across the floor, with toys in both hands, pretending to play with them while getting gradually closer to the DVR.

From my armchair I say, “No.”

She looks my way with her mischievous grin and scoots a little closer. She even points to it and babbles a few words. They sound like,

“Try and stop me.”

I give her my best motherly, “Don’t you dare” stare. This only seems to make her more determined as she drops the toys and heads for the machine in a full out speed-crawl.

She’s challenged me to a race and I take the bait. I lunge from my armchair to stop her hand, but I arrive too late. The buttons have been pushed and I don’t know how to undo it. I won’t know what damage has been done to my favorite television characters until it is too late. I could cry, but I don’t.

I have tried every tactic I know, but she won’t bend her will, so I am forced to bring out the secret weapon.

It stands about four feet tall and has a stylish purple handle. The one-year-old pauses her plans for television domination and watches me unravel the power cord. Just as my finger nears the red power button, her eyes defy me with a “You wouldn’t” glare.

“I would” my eyes reply.

She tests my resolve and while her eyes never leave mine, she reaches for the DVR. Her finger reaches the button just as mine does. Suddenly, the loud whirr of the vacuum causes her arm to recoil and now I have her undivided attention.

I push the purple handled whirring machine toward her and she zooms to the other side of the room. I continue sweeping the carpet, pretending I don’t notice her, except when she moves toward the DVR, I turn the vacuum back toward her.

Soon, she is sitting in a corner gripping her soft-edged Pooh blanket and her eyes pleadingly say,

“Make it stop.”

So, I do.

But, I let the vacuum sit out for now, so I can return to parenting from my armchair. When she points to the DVR, I point to the vacuum, and I win. For now, the score is even.

****This is the first story in a series titled, "Armchair Parent"