We decided to educate Lily ourselves. Most people would assume then that one or both of us function in a teaching role. Well, not exactly.
A few years ago, while trying to come up with a plan that would meet Lily’s intellectual needs without me feeling like I was constantly playing catch up, and while not making Lily’s world tedious and frustrating, I stumbled upon a site ( Natural Child Project ) and the concept of unschooling.
I’d looked into the concept of unschooling and was put off a bit because, while a good chunk of the idea seemed organic and intelligent, as well as beneficial and enjoyable, some aspects (like the no teaching focus) seemed so counter intuitive and just plain not what seemed the best option for us. I pushed back. I inquired. I tried to bend the concept around our world, and tried to bend our world around the concept. Still, with all the effort and even the “stepping out and uneffort”, I didn’t get any further in the logic specific to us department.
Then, something interesting happened… The aha hit me in a whisper. Lily’s whisper, to be precise. She came up to me one day, a few months before she turned 3, and told me she wanted to “explain me of something”. She was working out how the light on refrigerator did not stay on when the door was closed, but did come on when it opened. How many of us just assumed it stayed on all the time before it became obvious what a waste of power THAT would be?? Yeah, so… I’ll never know whether something one of us said encouraged her curiosity concerning power consumption, or maybe, from her vantage point, she actually saw the light come on/go off in transition. Either way, she wanted to figure out HOW and so, while I watched from around the corner in our little Taos house one morning, she sat on the floor at the foot of the fridge and opened/closed it over and over, and climbed all over and in it. I still don’t know exactly what she was looking for, and like to imagine all the possibilities NOT already knowing what she was looking for might have formulated for her mind to ponder, but eventually, she grew still and just looked at the box.
I hesitated, but waited, really not wanting to step in or even have an effect on the process in the slightest. I didn’t want to give her any clues, didn’t want her to think I knew something she didn’t, and didn’t want her to feel pressured in her exploration and discovery. So, I resolved that unless she started to climb INTO the fridge and bring the door closed on herself, I would just be uninvolved, completely.
After she stared at the outside of the fridge for probably a minute, with a look of consternation about her 2 year old cheeks, she opened the thing as wide as it would go. Satisfied that it would stay open, she stepped up and started her staring routine, now of the inside. It took her about a minute of what I imagined was her brain/eyes scanning every square millimeter, looking for something she didn’t know what. Then, abruptly, she shut the door, opened it wide, shut it, and then opened it just a tiny bit to peek in. What followed was one of the first times I ever heard the audible sound she still makes when she knows she’s figured out her dilemma.
“Ahugmn”, is about the best I can describe in text, what this lovely sound is like. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes it’s barely there. This time, it was barely there… As were her fingers, as they came and grabbed my pant leg and pulled me into the kitchen. In something just above a whisper, she said, “I have to explain you of something”. I followed where she led.
She opened the fridge door and, loudly then, declared, “It’s that thing!” Beaming, satisfied smile. Is there anything better than a proud and confident two year old!
I asked her then, continuing in the process of “not involved”, what “that thing” was. She replied, “I don’t know but.. does this (shows me) and so the light knows to come.” (I have this on video, from my phone that I hid in my sleeve.) I asked her if she was trying to figure out how the light worked. “Yep. And it does.”, was her straight forward reply.
That day, I decided that if she could decide on her own that she wanted to know something just because she did, and then proceeded to have the confidence and curiosity to figure it out on her own, then maybe I should start learning how to trust the process. In order to do so, I had to learn how the youngest of minds function, how they learn, how they develop, and how to best support them. What I learned was entirely different than what I’d been taught and what I’d observed in the countless other examples of “proper education of children”.
I decided that if my 2 year old could go searching for an answer to a question that she hadn’t even enough information to formulate beyond a simple point of curiosity and observation, that perhaps I should learn something. That is when I became a learner instead of a teacher. Now, I learn with her, and we share our knowledge, fueled by mutual curiosity or inspired interest, and we both expand.
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Yesterday, I asked Lily to turn the heat up. It was set to 66 for over night and I was cold. I asked her to take it up to 70. I heard the button presses: on, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71… 70.
“I went one too high, so it’s right at 70 now.”, she remarked satisfied.
Then, a few minutes later, we were looking at pictures of Katie and she asked how old Troy was. 29 was my reply.
“How old are you?”
“34”
“You’re older than him. You’re 5 years older than him.”
“Yep.”
– Why is this significant? She is 6 (and two weeks), and we have not “taught”, “learned”, “focused on”, or “worked on” this sort of arithmetic, in any formalized setting or fashion. If she were enrolled in a standard educational environment, she’d have started Kindergarten 6 weeks ago. Troy, what are the standards necessary to enter Kindergarten?
The point is, without us doing anything specifically to “teach” any of these concepts, she has assessed, observed, formulated, and is now calculating numbers in a logical and useful manner, when she has a reason to do so – not some meaningless (to her) worksheet.
Where did she pick up these skills then, if we/someone didn’t specifically teach her? Everywhere.
Is this the extent of her comprehension? Not even close, but it’s something I can pinpoint and reference for CDE Standards purposes, and more importantly, our own reference.