The Art of Carefully Stepping Out of the Way

image: Rachel Samanyl. Modifications: TSL

Do you interrupt your children's learning?

I recently found some new games for the iPad, including one called "Montezuma Puzzle". It's basically a puzzle version of Tetris. The game displays an empty box, along with a bunch of different shaped pieces and your job is to fit them all together.

The girls and I worked together at first, and then I found other things to do. I walked by to check their progress and saw that B had discovered the "hint" button. They were now using it to complete about 85% of the puzzle.

I scolded them a bit for using it to guide them. B argued back, followed by abandoning the game to do something else. Both girls were now grumpy and bickered back and forth during their play.

I was annoyed with myself. I had interfered and created an issue where there was none. The girls had been independently taking turns, assisting each other and having fun. They just weren't doing it the way I expected them to.

Over the next week, they played the game together on and off. If I had the urge to look or comment, I busied myself with something else.

And then I heard, "Ok, if you can't figure it out, use the hint."

I sat down near them to spy. B and C were completing the puzzles by themselves, asking each other for advice when they got stumped, and using the hint button on the harder puzzles.

I had failed to recognize in the early days of play that they were naturally scaffolding. The puzzles were new and challenging, and the hint wasn't cheating; it was modeling. The girls were moving through the steps of learning...examples, modeling, try it with some help, do it independently. When I got involved, I disturbed their flow. The process became frustrating and annoying, and came to a halt.

The key lesson about unschooling that I have found to be the most challenging and most necessary to learn is this: I have to get out of the way. Be a facilitator. Not a micromanager.

Adults are used to sequential learning, because it's how most of us were taught. Some kids learn well this way, some do not. No matter the method of choice, all kids LEARN, with or without adults peeking over their shoulder. I find every day that more learning is accomplished without my intervention.

It's been a transformation for me. I began as a public school teacher and became a structured homeschooler. Life happened, and we became "relaxed homeschoolers" which led to my discovery that less is more, especially when it comes gifted kids, and unschooling was the best fit for us.

B summed it up succinctly the other day while experimenting in the kitchen. I offered her a cookbook, to which she replied, "Why would I want to follow a boring recipe, Mom? It's way more fun to not know what I am doing at first, and keep trying. All of a sudden, my brain figures it out, and I know just what I need to do."

Yes, indeed.

Grammar Lessons: Learning is a Verb

I am starting my graduate program today.

I will be studying Marriage and Family Therapy over the next few years, and hope to primarily counsel gifted adults, children and families eventually, and use my skills and knowledge to help this exceptional subset, among others.

I am a kid on the first day of school.

I woke up several times thinking about my classes. I only hit the "snooze" button twice this morning. I logged on to my computer at 5:30am and read my course plan, my goals and assignments, until the excitement to write about it overwhelmed my need to memorize my syllabus.

This is what being inspired to learn feels like. This is the spark of passion, the eagerness to follow a new path.

Learning and school should feel this exciting for our kids.

Let's teach them that learning isn't sitting at a desk for eight hours, listening to an adult tell them what to think and how to understand, then completing hours and hours of homework in the evening.

Let's teach them that learning is passion - self-directed, need-to-know, delve in deep passion. Learning is questions that keep your mind awake far past your bedtime, discussion that exhausts your parents, and a book that you just can't put down.

Acquiring knowledge is not accomplished by sitting still. Let's teach them to move, to fidget, to run, to pace, and let their brains sort through all of their thoughts and ideas.

Learning is not a one-dimensional activity. Enable the children to pick their own resources and topics, permit them design their projects. Allow them to sit and just think for awhile, without feeling pressured to answer.  Accept that "the project" can be simply letting the information be absorbed and become imagery in their heads, that will materialize once it is processed. Be patient.

Learning is a verb. Let's get out of the way, and let our kids show us which direction they'd like to go when we stop treating it like a noun.