The Homeschool Journey

Christopherus Questionnaire Feedback

A few months ago Christopherus conducted a survey, or questionnaire, amongst friends, clients and customers. People filled in an online form which we designed specifically so as to maximize individual feedback and minimize multiple choice questions. We wanted to know, in people’s own words, their thoughts about Christopherus and our work.

And the response was good. We were pleased by the number of respondents and by the relatively high proportion who took the time to thoroughly fill in their questionnaire and give us thoughtful, useful feedback. We heartily thank all of you who did that!

Response to our new Bookstore and to the website as a whole fell pretty evenly into two camps. Some of you love our look and think that our website is incredibly easy to navigate. But about as many of you do not like what our website looks like and get lost easily. So we’re kind of stuck there, not clear how to use such feedback. Both camps were almost unanimous in acknowledging how helpful, thorough and useful the content of the website is. That we can work with!

Our books and services got very good reviews – we like the words people used such as “professional”; “doable”; “user-friendly”; “deep”; “warm”; and “arising out of anthroposophy.” Those are all things we strive toward in our work!

A few people wished that all of our materials were available as components, in much the way that for second grade, for instance, one can purchase math, Animal Legends, and Saints & Heroes separately. While sympathizing with this desire, we have to point out that splitting up – or off – separate books only works sometimes in the curriculum. Second grade and fifth grade lend themselves nicely to this and so that is how we created the curriculum for those years. But third grade especially, for instance, cannot be packaged in this way because the flow and sense of the curriculum for that grade demanded that it be presented as a whole. There is so much overlap between Native American stories, weather studies, math and practical projects that to split it up would fragment the curriculum and compromise its integrity. And we simply cannot do that.

A good number of you expressed concern that the middle grades curriculum is not complete and seemed to be suggesting that you wished it was packaged like that of the earlier years. Many of you also want a Christopherus high school curriculum. Regarding the first, we have created the middle grades curriculum as a series of books (which will be added to over the years) because that is, in our opinion, the best way to meet the requirements not only of the middle grades Waldorf curriculum, but of the needs of homeschooled children of this age. Each of you will be homeschooling your child in a completely individual way during those years, depending on what is available in your community; what your child is interested in; and how you interpret the curriculum itself. We explain all of this more fully HERE where we also point out that this is the case in Waldorf middle schools as well, where differences are a lot more apparent than in earlier grades.

As for high school, again, we sympathize but….to create a full Waldorf high school curriculum is such a tremendous undertaking that few schools even attempt it! To do justice to such a project is, unfortunately, well beyond our means and would require a much larger Christopherus with a much bigger specialist staff. And…the demand for high school materials has been (at least in the past 8 years) very, very poor. We have carried a number of high school publications for those working with Waldorf education with their children of this age but we have sold only a pitiful few and will no longer even carry them.

What else..? Oh yes…a few of you asked very specific questions about shipping. The questionnaire was not designed to handle feedback and not all of you left email addresses…so if anyone has a specific question about shipping, please contact Leigh at the Christopherus office.

A request for going over to digital format, whether ebooks or similar, was expressed by a number of you. Obviously, this is of special interest to those of you outside the US as shipping costs can be prohibitive. But becoming more “screen-based” would be a big decision for us, not something we could contemplate without serious and in-depth conversation in our organization. While computers are wonderful tools – and there would be no Christopherus without computers – we are unwilling to contemplate transitioning from being book-based to being screen-based right now. There are too many complex considerations involving health, communication, teaching practices, business practices and spiritual integrity for us to do this without an awful lot of thought and consideration. So for now – and for probably quite a long time – our only ebook is our early years book which is very informal, not a teaching text, and which has no illustrations.

Once again, thank you to all of those who participated in our questionnaire! And a big congratulations to Emily in Ohio, Jill in Connecticut, and Katharine in Minnesota who were each picked in a random drawing for a $25 Christopherus gift certificate!

 Donna

Communication Blackout

My sons have left home. They are now 18 and 20 and live in England, which is where they were born.  They are tall, strong, articulate young men, deeply concerned with the inequalities and tensions of our current day. The elder seeks community-based political solutions and the younger is focused on the quality of human interactions in his everyday life.

And neither of them uses social media or even the computer or a phone very much. For me, this is hard as it can mean that I don't speak with them for weeks on end. But overall, because I see how it impacts their independence and their growth, I am very pleased.

For instance, the two of them hitch-hiked to France a couple of weeks ago. They were aiming for a particular city, and an event that was taking place there. They agreed that if they got separated, that they would meet in a particular park. And that is what happened. My older boy got lucky and got a ride all the way to his destination. The younger - as he told me a week later - had three days of "trials and tribulations". And so Daniel, the older boy, simply hung out in the park for three days, waiting for his brother to show up. Once there, they navigated an unknown city in an unknown language and found their way.

This probably sounds crazy to some people. Why not avail oneself of modern conveniences like GPS units and cell phones? Why have to take such chances and rely so heavily on....on other people. Which is what happened. During those three days in the park, Daniel found   people to pass the time with. He got to know a bit about the city and the culture. And he also relied on himself and his own inner resources.

This kind of life lesson is especially valable for  Gabriel, the younger boy. Here's a boy who has in the past refused to ask shopkeepers questions and described himself as 'timid' and 'shy'. Well, during those three days of trials and tribulations, he had to depend on himself, on what he could call up from deep within, to keep going. No one was going to do it for him.

Both boys had a wonderful experience concerning how to survive without communication tools several summers ago when we were on a bus taking us from La Crosse to St Paul. The GPS on the bus suddenly broke and the driver was completely helpless. There were paper maps in the vehicle but he was so used to using a GPS that he could not read them. Maybe he forgot how. Or, scarier still, maybe he had never learned how. So my husband went up to the front of the bus. He didn't especially know the way, but he knew west from east and that, for instance, Winona was in the right direction - and so directed the bus (and without even the aid of the paper maps for extra Brownie points!). Our boys were very impressed by this and over the years we have seen again and again how deeply this simple lesson in common sense and a rudimentary skill such as knowing how to read a map, influenced them.

Gabriel did have some preparation for these current adventures last summer when he spent a couple of months hitching around the UK and US. What was especially wonderful were his experiences with strangers, with people who extended help to this unknown boy. He had people drive out of their way to take him places; he had people buy him food; he had people (not scary ones) offer him a place to stay. And he got to hear the stories of mothers, veterans, people bored with work or looking for work, ex-hippies who used to hitch...all sorts of people.He got to experience a connection with other human beings in a way that many people, who stick only to those whom they know, never have.

Back to the use of cell phones, well, Gabriel did have one for a while. He had a girlfriend who insisted he get one so she could call him all the time. I can remember one notable evening when she texted him at least 20 times in the course of an hour. He was doing his homework (he was at school at this time) and every time she texted, he'd put down his work and read what she had written and usually respond. I was sitting across from him, knitting. Finally I said " what is the deal here?" Nothing, he responded. Just my girlfriend. So how about you focus on your homework and then when it's done,   you text her? Because of the way he'd been raised, he knew that a) this was a reasonable suggestion and b) I was not about to be fobbed off by " but that's what all the kids do". So we "entered into  negotiations". He could see that breaking one's focus and concentration repeatedly was simply not a good habit to cultivate - whether it was interrupting one's homework or something else in one's lfe. As a (mostly) homeschooled boy who valued long uninterrupted periods of focus on a particular interest, he knew from his own experience, how disorientating split concentration could be. And he didn't want that.

The end came, though when one night I went into his room to look for something and found him asleep with the cell phone, switched on, on the pillow next to his head. The next morning we had a long discussion about the health effects of cell signals. And I asked the question of why he needed to have the phone on like that. What it came down to was that his girlfriend was having some problems and that she "needed" to be able to contact him. Frequently. So I pointed out that if she was in trouble, she needed him in person, not via text. And that in the interim, both she and he needed to sleep and not be constantly at the mercy of such communication.

Well, that chapter of the cell phone story ended soon after because Gabriel and his girlfriend broke up. Most of his friends had cell phones but he was starting to become uncomfortable with how they were used. And besides, he had facebook.

But eventually, without me saying anything at all, Gabriel became uneasy about facebook. His brother eschewed social networking from the beginning, knowing how dangerous it is for internet companies to have all of one's data and  to also have such a potentially powerful tool at their ultimate control (witness the fact that the British PM contemplated blacking out facebook and twitter during the recent riots in the UK). But Gabriel only really got fed up with facebook when, once again, he saw how it affected his friends' relationships. He thought it weird and unnatural how one "friends" people whom one has never spoken with in the flesh and how people can post anything, including hurtful or misinformed information, one someone's page. He saw how his friends were affected by this and he saw how a few teens seemed to live for updates and messages on their page - but in real life had trouble socializing.

So he closed his facebook account - which was an eye opening experience for him as it is not possible to simply delete one's page. Facebook "saves" it for you "just in case". It took him three days of downloading special programmes to be able to override Facebook's possession of his personal information and finally be rid of it.

By now the cell phone had gone. Again, this was mainly because of what he observed around him. What bugged him most was how kids would arrange to get together - and then spend half their time communicating with other people on their cell phones!

That's the story of my media-free boys. They value human relationships in the flesh and they know how to handle themselves in difficult situations. How could I be prouder of them?

Respecting the Child

This piece was written in the middle of my guest appearance on the blog, "Catherine et les fees" so as to clarify and deepen some things which had come up during our conversation. A link to this thread is found at the bottom of the article. And by the way, if anyone wants to invite me to guest on their blog, do contact me donna (at) christopherushomeschool.org.

The issue of respecting a child, is so important and so woefully  misunderstood. Here we have a great example of "you mean one thing by this and I mean something totally different".  So I need to try to define terms a bit here.

Some people, especially those coming from AP or "gentle parenting" background may come from a place where listening to what the child says and basing one's actions on what s/he says are paramount. From a Waldorf perspective, it is also critical that one listen carefully to what a child says - but we - or let's just stick with what I think as it makes things a little less complicated as there are of course differences within Waldorf - so I would say yes, listening to  a child is important.  But sometimes what is not said is actually more important. Or what the child's developmental stage is saying. Or what lives behind those articulated words.

For instance, we have the example of a child who refuses to do her work - some people might just say oh, ok then, don't do it then. Others will say no, you must do it. Both positions could be wrong, and either could be right. It depends entirely on the context of the situation, which includes the child's age. So...if one is asking a child to do something which is beyond what she is developmentally ready to do, then it is quite reasonable that she refuses.And because she is just a child, she cannot say "Mom, I am not able to do this much writing because my left-right orientation isn't complete and it is too much of a stretch to do this". We might know that this is a possibility because we are adults. Our job is to understand enough about children and about this particular child so we can make that detterminations. We are not respecting that child if we expect her to be able to articulate her needs. For to do this, she must be self aware and self conscious and until she has reached and passed the nine year change, her natural stage on consciousness is NOT self aware and self conscious. To expect her to be so is to in effect say that her earliest stages of development are not as valid as her later ones.

Along the same lines, she might be testing you to see what you will do - and here things get very controversial because some people can think that by saying that children test adults I am saying that children are manipulative. Well, if by the word manipulative, we mean "conscious of what they are doing" (and I am speaking of young children here,though depending on the situation even teens - even adults unfortunately - can test another unconsciously) then no, of course not. But if by manipulating we mean "pushing one's buttons, seeing what happens" then of course they are manipulative - they are manipulating" things to see what happens and seeing where the power vacuum is. And it is really scary to be a child and to discover that there is a power vacuum, ie that an adult collapses in the face of a child's testing. And children can react in unexpected ways to this discovery  - some continue to push in a seeming attempt to push that adult into finally finding herself; some behave very badly; some go inward and become quiet and perhaps even prematurely self sufficient.

Children come to this earth not merely as less experienced adults - they do not spring as fully formed autonomous beings,  as Athena emerged from the head of Zeus. They are not merely less competent - they have entirely different ways of experiencing the world, have an entirely different consciousness than older children and adults. This is perhaps THE key to Waldorf education, what one needs to grasp if one wants to work meaningfully with its essence.

A great example:  I used to run a Waldorf parent/toddler group many many years ago. Most of the children were around 1 or 2 years old but we had one 3 year old who loved nothing better than playing with (and bossing around) the little ones. One day she decided to organize a game of hide and go seek. She looked around at the other children clumped adoringly around her and covered her eyes with her hands. "I'm hiding" she declared. And so she was. To her consciousness, because she could not see the others, then it followed that they could not see her.

This is not merely an example of "less experience" - it is clearly an example of "different consciousness." And this is what we MUST understand so that the zillions of questions we have as parents and educators can at least take a coherent shape. Without an understanding of how children experience the world, then it is hard to imagine how one can come up with any meaningful questions at all. One needs a basis for forming those questions, a framework of understanding to refer to so that then one is not merely doing what someone advises, but understanding for oneself what the advice (good or bad) springs from.

So back to the example above, of the child refusing to do her work, we listen to  what she says. We acknowledge what she says. Then we decide what to do. Maybe she has been working very hard and very diligently over the last days or weeks and so we say "Hmmmm....you don't want to do your writing. Let me shorten it a bit and then we'll finish our lesson and have an early snack after you copy that into your book."  We might say "Yes, you have been doing lots of writing. Let's take a break. fter snack you can draw a picture instead."

Or we might say to the child who is testing us "Nope. Gotta do that writing my lovely! No two ways about it!" We try a bit of lightness and warm but firm insistence. Tears might follow - that is good! The child is able to release her tension - that is so important and so right! So often parents  fear their child's strong emotions, thinking that it means they have done something wrong. On the contrary, it can mean one has done something right. Every human being experiences the tension between what they want to do and what they can, in a given situation, do. What a gift we give children if we let them experience that tension and then do not collapse in fear if they scream or cry but gently hold the space and do not get upset ourselves. This is not about us - it is about that child. It can be supremely selfish of us to take away the child's emotions and not let her experience them.

And of course this is fraught with dangers! Absolutely! One can easily list to the other side and become authoritarian. But that is the danger in every human encounter. For example: I have someone now who works for me - do I ask too much of her? Am I listening to her opinions? What happens when we disagree? Can we find ways to work together? And so on. Of course, the difference there is that we are speaking of two adults. So in that relationship, my  employee also has responsibilities - she has the responsibility to speak up, to make her thoughts known, to be take ownership of the balance between her life and her work and so on and so on.

With a child, the relationship is of course utterly different. And it is entirely understandable that parents do everything they can to not perpetuate the oppressive relationship that they might have had with their parents. Remember the story I told of the boy in the bull's pen? (On Catherine's blog I told the story of finding a child of about 5 poised to jump into a bull's pen at the intentional community where my family used to live.) Well, once I go to know his mother, I understood why she created no boundaries for her children - her father was an unbearable bully and ran his family like a military unit. So she swooped to the opposite extreme with her children. What was interesting there was how her two children reacted to her utter lack of boundaries and her desire to give those children "freedom": the daughter was one of the dreamiest non-focused, "out there" children I have ever met. She lived in her own world and seemed unable to cope with the one she had incarnated into. The little boy, on the other hand, was totally out of control, one of the naughtiest (and most wonderful) children I have ever worked with.

To finish, I want to share one last anecdote, this from a book by Corrie Ten Boom whose family worked hard during WW2 to save the lives of many Jews and were eventually destroyed themselves by the Nazis. Corrie tells a story of a train trip she took with her father. She was about 13 and asked her father a question about sex. He paused for a while and they sat in silence (that alone is something worth taking from this story as so often parents seem to think they must immediately always respond to the questions of their children without any time for distance or reflection). Then he said "When we get off the train, will you carry our bags?" Corrie said no, she couldn't possibly, they were too heavy for her. Then he solemnly said that the same was true for her question, that for now, its answer was too heavy for her to carry and that he would carry it for her until she was ready to carry it herself.

So - what do you think of that? Some undoubtedly might think how quaint and old fashioned - that children Need Information. Do they? Says who? I used to work with teen girls in a juvenile detention unit - they had all the information that anyone could wish for. Did that in any way at all stop them from acting foolishly (or  fearfully)? Nope. Not a jot. What those children had needed but did not get were adults willing to bear the load of being parents  and taking the full responsibility of carrying them until they were able to step out into life themselves. No amount of information could make up for the hole that was in those girls' souls.

Of course that is an extreme example - but do you see how it follows on? It is based in the thinking that children are simply less experienced younger people - no different from adults except that they are younger and do not know as much. Thus from that point of view it makes perfect sense to think that by giving information, children will then "be empowered" to make right decisions. One can see how people honestly think that this is respecting children - and of course from one point of view, it is. But in a larger context, in a context of understanding what it means to be a child, it is not. I do not dispute the loving compassion in the intentions - nevertheless, it remains highly problematic.

If only it were that simple!

And by the way, least anyone think I am some sort of 19th century throw-back that is against sex education, I should hasten to say that at the slightly Waldorf high school where I used to teach I led the "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" class. But my emphasis was on human relationships - that of the teen to his/herself and to others. Information was given, but it was very much of secondary importance.

If what I have written here resonates with you, I encourage you to have a good look through my other blog posts on similar subjects. Here is the Blog Index.

And here is the link to our Bookstore where we sell a number of audio downloads that deal quite concretely with how to work with children in accordance with their developmental needs.

And here is a link to our early years ebook which is entirely based on conversations between me and mothers dealing with such subjects.

Lastly, here is the permalink to the thread on Catherine's blog so you can have a read of what prompted me to write this post!

 

Artistic Workbooks

I have frequently been asked to recommend art books to parents, not only to those who cannot (or think they cannot) draw but also to those who are familiar with artistic modes of expression but who would like, perhaps, to explore anthroposophical ideas of art.

I now have two books which I can recommend! Neither is for the beginner artist and neither is directly helpful with working with one's children. Having said that, it is of course very true that the more sensitive one becomes to the nuances of artistic expression, the more one evolves as an artist (especially if one thinks one is in no way artistic!), then the deeper and more meaningfully one can work with the Waldorf curriculum. So....have a look at these books and be brave - they might just help you stretch further than you thought you could!

The books are Dark and Light Drawing: 52 Exercises and Sweater of Rain: Gesture Stories. Both are by Laura Summer, an artist who lives and works in Upstate New York where she and others have founded the Free Columbia Art Course, whose mission it is to "provide an artistic course of study out of the inspiration of anthroposophy that seeks to promote culture and freedom." These and several other books are available from their website:   www.freecolumbia.org

The first title is a workbook, a series of drawing exercises in black and white which lead one through an exploration of darkness and light, of composition and balance. Laura gently questions and challenges one to explore  relationships to point and periphery, to gesture, mood and tone, building upon each previous experience as the exercises progress.

Sweater of Rain is not a workbook as such but it is an invitation to explore the mood and gesture of the festivals of Easter, Ascension, Michaelmas and Advent. Laura says:

In creating these stories I tried to see what the gesture of a season is. How is Advent different from Easter? What happens at Ascension? At Michaelmas? In creating paintings and block prints to accompany these stories I tried to bring the gesture of the season as it is revealed in the story to visual expression. You will not find illustrations here but rather visual experiences that may make you question, what gesture lives here?

The seemingly simple yet compellling artwork which Laura provides gives much food for thought and soul nourishment as one strives to find one's own relationship to the changing gestures of the seasons.

Join the Conversation!

I have been invited to guest blog on Catherine Forrest's blog, leading a conversation on the topic of "relaxed homeschooling". Interested in this? Then join us! I will kick off the conversation with a short piece on Monday 17 October and then everyone is invited to have say or ask me questions.  I will be available for that week to keep the conversation going, after which it will close.

Catherine's blog is usually in French (she's Canadian) but some of it is in English. As I speak and certainly write no French (at least not of the recognizable variety) this thread will be entirely in English!

Here's the link to Catherine's beautiful  blog.

And by the way, in the summer I led a discussion on Carrie Dendtler's parentingpassageway blog on the question of first grade readiness which you can read here.

I am enjoying being a guest on different peple's blogs...so if anyone wants to invite me to guest on their's, contact me! donna AT christopherushomeschool.org

Children and Social Networking

At the bottom of this piece is an article that all of you who have children heading toward an awareness of social networking - or those who are involved with this already - might need to read. The article is from Yahoo and is not written by a Waldorf educator or from a particularly alternative or questioning of media point of view. Indeed, the article is about Teens and Social Networking - notice how very young these teens are and that for us, as Waldorf educators, the term "teen" is questionable with children as young as 13. This article is not about 16 and 17 year olds.

 

Please read this. And please discuss it with your spouse/partner and any friend or relative who might think that communicating with your child via Facebook might be a good thing. Over the years I have met too many parents who were caught on the backhand with new developments in technology and did not foresee how their children would get caught up in the newest game or trend. My sons were young teens 5 to 7 years ago and only that short time ago things like Facebook simply weren't an issue. How lucky I was. But for those of you with children entering their teens, already in their teens and younger, this is a huge issue, one to think through carefully and clearly.

 

I wish you all the mindfulness, clarity and heart-centered wisdom that you need to be able to come to the right decisions for your families when considering where to draw the boundaries with social media.

 

Here is the article.

September Boom and Bust

September Boom and Bust

If you're like most homeschoolers, you started your new homeschooling year well organized, with clear goals and with great enthusiasm. You had all your lessons well planned, with interesting and engaging projects to do to keep the work well rounded. You memorized a couple of stories, a song and three verses and felt on top of things. Your children were excited, well behaved and compliant. Chores got done, walks were taken, stories listened to and main lesson books begun. Lessons flowed and were punctuated by times for play and each day drew to a satisfactory conclusion.

That was Week One.

Week Two was similar... but it was a bit harder to get the day started. The children seemed a bit more restless, maybe a tad cranky. Somehow chores weren't all done because somehow there wasn't the time. Or other things seemed to take precedence. Only one walk happened because it rained. Or the baby needed to nurse all morning. Or the phone kept ringing and the guy from the gas company needed help finding the gas meter. Stories were listened to just as avidly (yes! - something went right!) but your second grader was not as keen to do her writing. Or presented a full agenda of demands on how exactly she wants to make her main lesson book. Listening carefully to her demands, wondering if one day she would become a union negotiator or a divorce lawyer, you fought down the feelings clogging your chest and stomach, refusing to concede to panic, cheerily assuring yourself that you must, after all, be flexible, that you are a homeschooler.

 

By Week Three you began to recognize a pattern whereby half the time you felt determined to stick to the curriculum at any cost and the other half of the time you either fantasized about becoming a n unschooler or catch yourself thinking that the public school down the road isn't so bad after all. You haven't had time to memorize any new stories and have forgotten two of the verses, Your children balk at the song they seemed to like so well when school began. You haven't touched the reorder or a paint brush yet and feel overwhelmed by the idea of beginning handwork.

 

September Boom and Bust has hit!

 

Welcome my friend. Welcome to Real Homeschooling. Welcome to Real Life.

 

One of the dangers of the many beautiful blogs about Waldorf homeschooling that one can peruse is that....well, people do like to post about their successes and are rarely inclined to post photos of the dirty dishes piled in the kitchen or of the ripped out pages of the main lesson book that their tearful and furious third grader spewed across the living room. Everything can look perfect and everything can look so easy. And one can then so easily feel inadequate, forgetting that these seemingly Perfect Waldorf Homeschoolers are as imperfect as the rest of us.

 

And rest assured, it happens to every homeschooler. Even to ones who are real veterans, mothers (or fathers) who have faced down second graders who refuse to do any writing, toddlers who insist on having their own main lesson books, and children who equate playing the recorder to some bizarre form of torture with barely a murmur, with barely an eyebrow raised or an expletive suppressed. All of us - yup, me too - have had that horrible feeling that This Is Not Working and felt the temptation to succumb to despair and just give up. It's that 3 in the morning feeling that everyone gets - "What was I thinking? What made me think I could homeschool? Have I ruined my children?!"

 

But we don't give up. We soldier on. We figure it out, we find ways to renew ourselves, we adjust our expectations and we persevere. And it is precisely because of this, because we allow ourselves to feel how awful homeschooling can be and how inadequate we feel and yet overcome this wall, that we gift our children great life lessons. Through our striving, they experience that inner effort is required to work meaningfully in the world and that one does not simply give in and give up.

 

Of course, this is something that we, as adults, must do in our own inner sanctum, in the privacy of our own souls. We, hopefully, can get support from others (partners/spouses, friends and so on) but we do not share our struggles with our children. Boundaries can be blurred in homeschooling - one of the reasons that many Waldorf teachers used to be (and some few still are) against homeschooling. And with good reasons. A degree of objectivity needs to exists in the relationship between the teacher and students and though this must of course be filled with warmth and love, the parent does need to cultivate the ability to step aside from her role as mother and, on occasion, act differently, as teacher. Some Waldorf homeschool consultants have thus recommended that the teacher actually, literally, wear an item of clothing during her teaching times that acts as a cue that now she is Teacher and not Mommy. While I think that this is taking this too far and can fall into the equally problematic but opposing dilemma, that of trying to turn home into school, that the thinking behind this is sound. The trick, as always, is to tread that delicate middle way.

 

So we don't tell our children that we are thinking of abandoning this main lesson because it just isn't working. We don't break down and start to cry or have a temper tantrum (though if either of those very human things do occur, we simply pull ourselves together, acknowledge that "Mommy was really sad but now I'm ok. Whewf! Crying can make me feel a lot better....let's get the beeswax down and make some autumn leaves to decorate the Nature Table"). But we do let our children see that we are working to always make things better. The most precious lessons that arise during homeschooling are not all the songs learned and the pictures drawn - they are the lessons that teach our children what it means to be a human being. For surely that is the point, the reason why one educates a child.

 

Learning how to cope with our inner struggles and learning how to soldier on might mean that we say something like "Today we are going to spend the whole morning cleaning the house because we didn't manage last week. Let's see how many songs we can sing while we work". Or we say "This week you aren't going to write in your main lesson book. I would like you to just write on the board or on paper. Then next week, let's see what might go into your book". We look at a problem (chores aren't getting done) and instead of agonizing about it or resolving to stay up until midnight cleaning the house alone(thus becoming tired and resentful and of no use to anyone) we find a creative and guilt-free way of addressing the lack. A child who is tearing up her main lesson book in frustration might need to take a break from being expected to write in her book. One learns to work sideways, something I myself learned to do as a youth worker working with disturbed children who were not responsive to a direct approach. Over the years, I found that by working sideways, one avoids so many of the "I to I" struggles one otherwise has with one's child (I address this in detail in several of my audio downloads, such as the one on discipline).

 

The trick here, the way to get through September Bust, is to, first and foremost, look to ourselves. We need to feel good about what we are doing and feel we have the ability to carry on. A homeschooler who is sticking to the schedule and curriculum so tightly because she does not truly understand what she is meant to do or, conversely, a homeschooler who hasn't got enough materials to enable her to work with her child's lessons in the right way needs to find the time to learn more about what she is doing so that she can then be free to be flexible. Such flexibility when educating one's children can only come through knowledge. Knowledge and the inner serenity that allows one to face the inevitable problems one faces during homeschooling and not be overwhelmed or feel like giving up.

 

Rudolf Steiner said that to be a Waldorf teacher required three things: knowledge of anthroposophical child development; knowledge of the particular children standing before one; and commitment to unending personal development. These requirements are as important for Waldorf homeschoolers, I would say, as they are for teachers. And while the latter is vital for teachers - for anyone who works with other people, children or adults - unending personal development takes on a somewhat different urgency and character for homeschoolers. For while working in a circle of colleagues can bring all the challenges of dealing with other people, at least a Waldorf teacher always has someone to bounce ideas off of, someone who knows the children and has his own wealth of teaching advice to share. At home isolation can mean that one feels utterly alone in making decisions and teaching and even if one has a supportive spouse and perhaps a Waldorf co-op, at the end of the day, it's just you and your child staring at each other across the dining room table, crayons and main lesson books spilling out between you.

 

Waldorf teachers - all truly sensitive teachers - also experience September Bust and periods of despair and burn out. But again, they have each other and, if they are lucky enough to teach at a school that is adequaly staffed, have the benefit of mentors to guide them. At home, September Bust can be so devastating because one can feel so alone. There's no plan for September Bust in the schedule (not even in the Christopherus schedule!) and one can then feel that this is one's own unique problem and one's own fault. And though it may be one's own fault that one is has not taken sufficient time to prepare (or made the effort to simplify if life demands less than perfect ideals of what Waldorf homeschooling should be) this problem is not, in any way, unique. Hopefully, that is something one can take solace from.

 

So what to do when September Bust occurs? Here are a few possibilities:

 

*   Recommit to homeschooling and not to the creation of a Waldorf school at home. Your family's health and well being are top priority - and that means that although what results may not look like what is done at a Waldorf school, designing a doable form for your days and weeks together is what is most important. Once you and the children can breath, you can then tweak things as necessary.

 

*   Remember that no Waldorf teacher ever covers everything he or she wants to cover during the course of each grade. Being a really good teacher means being responsive to the needs of one's class (remember Steiner's requirements above) and thus having the flexibility and vision to be able to create meaningful experiences for the children from out of oneself. To do this properly, however, one does need to have a thorough understanding not only of those children as individuals, but of child development as well. And to have the inner strength and mindfulness to be able to carry this knowledge into action, means that one works unceasingly on one's inner development - again,refer to Steiner's requirements.

 

*   Be gentle on yourself. Mindful, conscious parenting is a courageous task and although its benefits are, of course, inestimable, that in no way reduces the sheer hard never-ending work that is required. And for those who take that extra step to homeschool - well, just double everything. Triple it - at least! - on bad days.

 

*   Find ways to renew yourself. You must have a break. You really must. Your time in the bath is just for you - it is not playtime for the whole gang. Sleep must mean sleep - or at least the drifting sleep that nursing in  a family bed can allow. And time with a girlfriend is just that - time for two adults to connect. It is not a time for play dates. Be creative and find ways to ensure that every week you have at least a couple hours to yourself, when you can reacquaint yourself with your body, your mind and your soul. And that goes for you AP parents as well (remember, modern Western AP practices often do not look like what they were originally based on, often to the detriment of parent and child).

 

*   When in doubt, go outside. Pack everyone into the car, drive into the woods or to the beach and play. Break the tension - yours and the children's. Re-group and then take one or two steps to try to get back on task the next day. Do not, however, think that by taking a day off that you will then need to do EVERYTHING right the next day. Baby steps, baby steps.

 

Many blessings to you on your homeschool journey. Remember the mantra of every parent and every homeschooler - this too shall pass!