Unschooling Thoughts

Valorie Delp is one of my favorite homeschooling bloggers on the net. In a few recent posts she discusses the ups and downs of unschooling. This is something we tried for a while while my wife and I were still together. Now that we are divorced, my ex-wife would like to unschool completely. I am not on board.

Let me start out by saying that I am not against unschooling. My problem with doing it personally is that I don't think either my children's mother, or myself, have the time to unschool properly. In essence, I think there is a huge difference between unschooling and no-schooling.

In my understanding, unschooling requires the participating parent or parents to be available on a near full-time basis, and dedicated to pursuing the child's interests to whatever degree the child's attention span will allow. This may mean using text books, literature, the internet, the local museum, whatever is needed to encourage learning in whatever direction the child would like to go.

No-schooling, on the other hand, requires little work on the part of the parent(s). I actually overheard an unschooling mother say she simply can't imagine doing school work at home as she doesn't have the time or energy. This type of approach is doing a disservice to the children involved by not encouraging growth and an apatite for learning.

So, while I would love to have the time to unschool my children, I think the semi-structured eclectic homeschooling rout will have to suffice for now. What do you all think?

Major Challenges

I was just rereading Single and Homeschooling by Terri Brown: http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/9-2article15.htm

The biggest challenges about being a single parent and homeschooler, are not having the financial resources, time and energy to do everything we would like to do,” says Hill. “It is very difficult for me, as the sole parent, to be actively involved in all the various activities my kids would like to undertake. Just the physical act of driving them to and fro is exhausting and overwhelming.”

One single parent homeschooler interviewed finds the challenges to be mostly emotional. “I’d say the biggest challenge would be that I don’t have anyone to discuss everything with, no one to work everything out with. No one to boost my confidence when I need it, or bounce ideas off of when I feel stuck.”

I can certainly relate to the physical and emotional challenges discussed here. When I was still married, my wife and I had our schedules arranged so that one of us was always with the kids. She worked evenings and I worked days. We rarely saw each other there toward the end. Then, once she moved out, we planned to attempt to change our kids lives as little as possible by giving them the same basic schedule with each parent. I naively believed this would mean that what they needed from me would not be substantially more than it had been before. As is so often the case these days, I was mistaken. During my time with the kids, their demands on my attention and time were far greater than they had been in the past. There are several reasons why this is the case.

One very important cause for this change is the fact that this is a time of unprecedented fear and stress in their lives. Their worlds have just been turned upside down, and it is natural that they will be more needy. My four year old cries more often now than he did when he was three. My ten year old seems to cry almost as often as the four year old. Quite out of character. The 13 year old magically transformed from a child into a full blown teenager in the space of three months.

Another factor influencing their increased emotional and physical demands on me is they seem to feel they need to maximize their time with me. They always appear to feel that time is running out. They are constantly counting down to the moment their mother will come pick them up with both trepidation and elation. How can they ever truly relax? I desperately hope this is a phenomenon restricted to the early months after a divorce.

Of course, a final issue leading to a serious increase of pressure on dad is the reality of our custody situation, namely, I have a 13 year old in the house full-time. Without another parent around to assist with the emotional and practical implications of raising a teenager... Well, the resulting pressure left on me is pretty intimidating.

The culmination of these factors has encouraged me to start this blog, and to begin a search for resources, both emotional and practical, to aid me in my new endeavor. So, believe me, we'll be talking more about this! Any feedback?

Intro to Me

How do you start the first entry of a blog? I have no idea. Maybe I should pretend I have been doing this for years, and you all are just now coming on board, late to the game? I guess not. My name is Kevan. I live in Northern Nevada with my three children, two dogs, a cat, and a duck. How's that for a start?

I married when I was 21 and my wife was 18. My wife-to-be had a 15 month old daughter when we met, and within a year of our marriage, I had adopted my eldest daughter and had another on the way. Six years after the birth of our second daughter, we had a little surprise: a bouncing baby boy.

After eleven years of marital bliss, I now find myself a single father of three beautiful kids. We have always homeschooled our children, and during the divorce process, we both expressed our commitment to continuing their lives as normally has possible. The big plan was to split custody equally and continue to work off shifts, thus maintaining a sense of normalcy for our children. We were going to live very near each other and continue to work together. I know it will come as a huge surprise to hear that things have not turned out quite as I had imagined.

To start, my now ex-wife moved over an hour away into California. It turns out that is a lot of driving when done four or five days a week. And that is actually one of least of the problematic decisions she has made that has caused continuing problems with our plan. In any case, the short of it is this: I have full custody of our oldest daughter, and primary custody of the younger two.

Needless to say, this changes things for me. I now have a 13 year old girl living in my home all the time, and I have no help with her rearing or schooling right now. I can not exactly leave her home five days a week and go off to work or school. Since I am nearly done with my technology degree, my grandparents have generously decided to help me financially so I can finish it. It is not nearly enough to live on, however, and school is incredibly time consuming at the rate I have been attending (22 credits last semester).

So, what to do? You're looking at it! Well, not exactly. I transferred my credits to an online school, and began looking for ways to support myself and my children from home. Now, believe me, I have no delusions of financial grandeur about this blog. SPH is born primarily of my desire to communicate with others in a similar situation as the one I now find myself in. I searched the internet for a community of like-minded people. While there are some wonderful articles and blogs out there, most or all of them are outdated and abandoned. Did they all get remarried? Who knows. But the point is, I want one and I couldn't find one. Also, I am working to find ways to make a career of the things I am passionate about, my kids, technology, etc, and in the mean time, I want to fill a little online nitch along the way. Who knows where it will lead?

So, let's roll. I will do my part by keeping up on news and opinion regarding the things single homeschooling parents have to face, and I really hope to learn from, and get to know many of you. Please let me know you are here by emailing and commenting often. You know how it is: It can get to feel pretty lonely out here sometimes.

Kevan Thoman