Advent Thoughts

Our wonderful local Catholic homeschooling group has members sharing reflections for each day of Advent.  Today was my turn, and a couple of the moms I am privileged to know suggested that I share these thoughts beyond our group, so I'm just going to leave this here:

Not only am I not a cradle Catholic, although I was raised in a sometimes-churchgoing Lutheran family, I was pretty close to atheism for a number of years.  And even after my conversion, although I believed in the Eucharist intellectually, part of me still felt that it was strange and off-putting for a few more years yet.  From the outside looking in, it is admittedly an odd thing to do, to ritually consume the flesh and blood of another.  I grappled with understanding it spiritually and emotionally, with being comfortable with understanding it, for quite some time.

And the thing that brought me closest to the Eucharist, that led to me understanding it on a visceral level, was becoming a mother.  From the backaches and headaches and nausea, there were tiny feet kicking in my belly.  From the pain of labor, there was life in my arms, vibrant and crying.  This is my body, given up for you.

I wondered if I was strong enough to do this thing, to take on the enormous task that had been entrusted to me.  And I rocked and nursed and cried through mastitis and cracked nipples and uterine infections and all the months of sleepless nights that left me dazed.  This is my blood, poured out for you.

And I think that as mothers, we are entrusted with a unique understanding of Christ, not just in His creative power, but in His suffering.  Because it is in His suffering that life is created and sustained.  He gives up His body that we may be fed, He suffers physically that we may have life.  And like a mother, I imagine that this burden was heavy for Christ.  And like a mother, I imagine that there were times when He was afraid, overwhelmed, exhausted, drained.

So when we nurse babies or rock sick little ones to sleep or lay awake with third-trimester heartburn or stay up to go over math worksheets, we offer ourselves to our children, creating and sustaining their lives with our bodies.  Becoming a mother means laying yourself down, submitting yourself to the beauty of a divine creation that tears you apart, both literally and figuratively.  And as much as standing in line to receive the Eucharist, we do this work of motherhood in memory of Christ, as well: do this in memory of me.

Advent is a time of waiting for Christ and the redemption He brings us all, but the first Advent was Mary’s journey to motherhood.  Our redemption was in her aching back and swollen ankles and labor pains.  Our redemption, our nearness to Christ, is in our own work of motherhood.  If in Lent we watch Christ lay down His life for us, in Advent we watch Mary lay down hers for Christ.  Mary was strong, and the difficulty of the circumstances of her motherhood is unfathomable to me.  And so in Advent I prepare for Christ, but I also try to deepen my self-giving in motherhood, as well: the self-donative, self-effacing, self-rendering, redemptive work that we all do, like Mary, in our task of raising little souls for Christ.

Be with us, Lord, in our daily work as mothers.  You have given us both Christ and Mary as models of self-giving love; help us to understand and follow their example.  In the footsteps of Christ and Mary, allow us this Advent to say "yes"  to our vocation without fear.

Changing Seasons

I have not chained myself to the computer to blog all summer.  I have all sorts of excuses – a new wee one keeping me busy, a funk of post-partum baby blues that left me tired and not wanting to do much of anything for a while, going back to work, the never-ending blur of kids’ summer camps, playground playdates, and trips to the pool, the fact that the carpet in my house is barely identifiable underneath all the coloring pages and toys.  Really, though, it’s been nice to take a break.  But since I promised myself that I would start up again with the new school year, and since I just printed out my first week’s worth of lesson plans – then here we are!

We had some great fun this summer.  Sprout went to his first sleep-away camp, half of it with SSHH and half alone, with the Cub Scouts.  SweetPea did her own day camp, and all the kids rocked out at Vacation Bible School.  We went on a week-long family camping trip and got cold and hot and dirty and bruised and scraped and too full of s’mores.  We did some summer reading but no math or grammar or Latin or geography and it was really just very, very nice.

But I’m approaching school with a bit of a deep breath this year, as we also spent the summer doing some very conscious, planned regrouping as a family.  A new baby always shakes things up a bit, but beyond that there was a general level of chaos and crisis that needed to be sorted out.  We like the free-wheeling nature of our homeschool, work-at-home life, but there’s a line between “loosely structured” and “stay in your pajamas until dinner” – and we were starting to cross it.  After a few false starts, we found a chore structure that is working well for us and WOW, is it ever helping.  It’s not perfect – you could still lose a small child in the clean laundry pile (and we routinely do) – but everyone knows what they need to do every day and how to do it, and the bathrooms are (relatively) clean, beds are made, and the kids have even taken over most of the pet care.  SweetPea can fold all her clothes and the baby’s, too, Sprout can Swiffer the kitchen floor like nobody’s business, and SweetPotato is an expert wastebasket-dumper on trash night (although being the smart worker that she is, she’s trying to train up Doodle so she can delegate this chore to her unsuspecting little sister).

We also needed to work with Sprout.  He’s smart as a whip and knows it, and we were encountering increasingly difficult power struggles with him.  He’d refuse to do something – anything, really, from picking up a book off the floor to finishing his math – and then things would get started.  He’d turn on the obstinacy, the volume would escalate, occasionally he’d lash out physically, and we’d end the day barely wanting to look at each other.  Things were getting worse, not better, and we just didn’t know how to change.  We knew he was a loving, kind, caring, respectful kid – the other adults in his life just couldn’t say enough about how respectful and helpful he was, and he was still always the first to volunteer to play with TaterTot or read a book to Doodle.  His goals in life at the moment are to be an Altar Server and Eagle Scout.  But when it came to good ol’ mom and dad – it seemed like every day was the beginning of a new war.

In desperation, we bought a stack of parenting books that seemed to fit with our general outlook and started reading, because we clearly needed to up our game.  And we did a lot of talking, and a lot of praying, and a lot of begging God to not let our beloved kiddo turn into a juvenile delinquent.  And we went back to the drawing board in terms of how we interact with our children, and tried to treat them more Catholically.  Because if we’re going to talk about the inherent dignity and worth of every person, and how we are each fearfully and wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God, then every encounter should lead with respect, kindness, and openness.  And if we’re to treat them more Catholically, then we needed to be focused not just on their challenges as individuals, but on how those challenges affect their role in the family – for in Catholicism, contrary to secular society, the fundamental unit of society is not the individual but the family.

And we hadn’t been doing very well on that front.  It’s hard, admittedly, to respond calmly and respectfully to a kid who is yelling at you at the top of his lungs about how awful you are, and who has just shredded his grammar worksheet on the floor and thrown his pencil across the room.  We certainly aren’t any kind of mean parents, but the frustration level with these outbursts was building quickly, and we’d clearly soon be in over our heads.  We’d decided at the beginning of this parenting gig that we weren’t going to spank our kids, and we’ve stuck to that, but it turns out there’s more than one way to injure a child.  Yelling, demanding, not stopping to listen to them – those can be just as harsh.  It’s not my job, I’ve learned, to control my kids, or to have them “do what they’re told.”  It’s my job to teach them to make responsible choices on their own without coercion, to be their coach, to help them navigate the thousands of decisions that are made in the course of every day, respectfully, thoughtfully, and all the while preserving the freedom of will that is so integral to their inherent dignity. 

And how that’s played out in practice in our house is that when Sprout starts to tip off the deep end – we step back.  Most adults I know don’t have perfect control of their emotions all the time, and it’s certainly unreasonable to expect that of a nine year-old.  So when he starts to boil and taking a deep breath doesn’t cut it, he can take a moment and head to his room.  If he needs to punch something, he can beat up his pillow.  If he needs to scream, that’s okay, too.  If he just needs to sit in quiet, away from everyone, fine.  When he’s ready, then it’s time to face the issue again.  We’re trying to ask for things from our kids, and not tell them what to do.  My litmus test for myself is that if I wouldn’t speak to SSHH that way, then I probably shouldn’t be speaking that way to my kids, either.  “Sprout, clear your place at the table please” is not impolite, but it’s authoritarian.  I’d never speak to another adult that way, because it would be insulting.  Yet somehow I had been repeating that phrase, and hundreds of others like it, every day.  “I’d appreciate it if you would scrape your plate and put it on the counter now so we can do the dishes” is respectful.  It offers a choice and a reason.  It offers a conversation if it’s needed, and asks for rather than demands obedience.

It sounds like the recipe for chaos and disobeyed rules right and left.  But the beautiful thing is that it’s working.  Chores are getting done, we’re so much more peaceful, and I no longer feel like I’m walking on eggshells with my son.  This past Sunday he’d been playing chess (the new obsession among the kids) with SweetPotato.  She, being four, was frustrated by the loss of one of her pieces and Sprout’s insistence that she follow every miniscule and incomprehensible rule of chess and tipped the board over, scattering the pieces.  Sprout yelled, she yelled back, they both ran out of the room.  I asked them to work together to pick up the game – and Sprout started to lose it.  He got louder and louder, insisting that he wasn’t going to touch it because it wasn’t his mess.  And while I was in mid-sentence, he turned and walked out of the room.  I found him in his bedroom, and (stupidly) continued the conversation, insisting that he help since the argument over the game was due to both of them.  And then, since we were just going ‘round in circles, I quit.  It really annoyed my immature self to let a nine year-old have the last word in the argument, but we were both getting angrier by the minute.  So I quietly asked him to do whatever he needed to do to calm down and then when he was ready I would appreciate talking with him, and I left.  And you know what?  Not three minutes later he trotted up the stairs, beaming, telling me not to look because he was going to give me a great surprise – and he cleaned up not just the chess set, but all the toys and flotsam and jetsam in the living room, all by himself and entirely of his own volition (and got a big hug and a high-five for it, too).  Given the opportunity to exercise his choice to comply, and treated with respect as an independent person whose feelings and opinions matter, he couldn’t wait to not only restore the status quo in our war-zone of a living room, but make a contribution of value.

I’ve learned so much through all this.  I’ve learned that being a “nonviolent parent” doesn’t just mean “don’t spank your kids.”  It means treating them as persons who, while they may still be “in training,” have dignity, worth, and value equal to that of their parents.  They are not offshoots or appendages of me.  Their opinions and voices matter.  Their interests and time matter.  I don’t care one whit about computer programming, but to Sprout, this is vitally important – so when he’s reading a book about the history of the internet and I ask him to pick up his stinky socks, I have to realize that although the socks shouldn’t be on the floor, I am asking him to change focus in a way that would be hard for an adult, let alone a child – and that I have no right to expect compliance solely because I am “the parent.”  Compliance comes from respect, respect comes from love, and love is hard work.  The necessity of getting through the day means that the kids don’t always get what they want, but the necessity of stewarding little souls means that they always need to be heard.

As Catholics, we spend a lot of time yammering about the inherent worth and dignity and value of every person, whether we’re talking about the unborn or the elderly or the disabled or the Third World.  Among all that, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that the dignity of every person starts with those people closest to us.  And while we’re not perfect, and while I do still lose my temper and more often than I’d like, and while my house is still appallingly messy, we’re getting there.  School is going to be a test for us, because the demands on everyone’s time and attention and energy are going to increase dramatically next week, and that’s going to breed more opportunities for conflict.  But I like my kids.  I love my kids.  And even though this parenting thing is really, really hard, every minute of every day, I feel like I’m on the road to being the kind of parent that I want to be for them.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Our house was filled with joy yesterday, as our sweet little TaterTot was baptised.

Since we were having friends and family over afterwards, it was preceded by a flurry of shopping and cleaning and snapping at the big kids (seriously, how hard is it to pick up your stinkin' room?!).  I lost my cool more than once over the disastrous state of the house and the kids reluctance to help.  I bought a trunkful of food, and saw an entire trayful of sandwiches inexplicably slide right out of the van door when I opened it and onto the driveway.  I may have taught the kids some new vocabulary - SSHH, bless him, just picked up a grass-encrusted sandwich and took a bite, and went out to buy replacement sandwiches.

And as we prepared for the baptism of our fifth child, I thought about preparing for our wedding.  We were adamant - sometimes to the chagrin of our families, I think - that we wanted the focus of our wedding day to be the Mass, and not the party.  We spent more hours choosing the readings than the menu and flowers.  Because marriage, like baptism, is first and foremost a sacrament.

I have a friend who was raised in a Catholic family but no longer practices her faith.  She was asked to be the godmother to her cousin's son.  Her cousin is also no longer a practicing Catholic.  And you know what I really admire?  She said no.  She said that it would be dishonest for her to stand up and say that she would support  this child in learning the faith, and that it was dishonest of the parents to do the same thing.  She told her cousin that the promises made by parents and godparents at a baptism mean something, and are to be taken absolutely seriously, and that she would not support them if they planned to use the baptism just as an opportunity to dress up the baby and take pictures. I thanked her for saying that, because even though it's not a faith she practices, she was respecting the need to take the sacrament seriously.  It's not a family tradition or a pretty ceremony or photo opportunity or way to pacify insistent grandparents.  It's not cute or sweet. It's a sacrament - it is self- and life-altering for the people involved.  To treat a sacrament as less than that is demeaning to those who wholly believe it.

The baptisms of our children have all been joyful events, of course, but they've also been just a little bit frightening as well.  Those promises made to God at a baptism are enormous, and raising a faith-filled child is a task only accomplished through patience and persistence and tears and grace.  It feels like a Sisyphean task more often than not.  We are so absolutely blessed to be surrounded by loving, prayerful friends and family, many of whom came yesterday to worship and celebrate with us.  We are humbled by their example of God's love.  And we continue to be lifted and supported by their prayers and friendship as we take on the work of keeping those promises we made yesterday.

On Mother's Day

So it's Mother's Day.  It might be the penultimate Hallmark holiday, eclipsed only by Valentine's Day.  I've been getting advertising emails all week, claiming to have What Mom Really Wants, from Tiffany jewelry to laminate flooring.  They are heavy on sentiment, telling buyers that "Mom deserves it!" and "Remember all she's done for you!"

And many of the moms I know have been beaming over the demonstrations of love they've received from their families, smiling as they share birthstone necklaces and chocolates and flowers and sweet handmade cards.  And it's wonderful that they are loved and appreciated by their spouses and children.

And all of that is lovely, truly, and every woman, myself included, would love new floors and new bling and cards decorated with sweet child's art.  But at Mass this morning, I started to think about why Mother's Day has always felt a bit hollow for me, why it's always left me cringing just a bit.  And I think it's not just because it's been so very commercialized, but that he focus is on thanking mom.

In the Christian context, motherhood is not a choice or a lifestyle or a job.  It's a vocation.  The calling lies with God, and the choice of the mother is simply whether or not to answer it.  And like most things God calls us to do, it is both a blessing and a burden.  In the case of motherhood, this has been clear since Eve.  There's the gift of co-creating life, the warmth of baby snuggles (being enjoyed right now at the keyboard, actually), the joy of watching children learn, the pride of seeing them grow in understanding and independence.  But there is a cross to be carried, too.  Carrying and birthing children rips apart a mother's body; mornings begun all too early after sleepless nights with a toddler screaming "MOMMY UP NOW!!!" can bring one to tears. It can be oh-so-lonely, with days spent with snot- and spit-up-covered clothes and little adult conversation.  Job opportunities passed by, meals made and thrown on the floor, diapers and clothes changed and changed again, toothpaste cleaned from sinks.

That's part of mom-world whatever your religious convictions may be, but the secular Mother's Day industry would have one believe that this should prompt thanks - shown, of course, by expensive gifts, cards, and brunches.  I'd argue that, in the Christian context, thanks is less appropriate than empathy.  You don't thank someone for their vocation - that comes from God.  You can, however, support them in living that vocation - you can help them carry their cross.  Even Christ recognized his cross as a blessing and a burden, and even he had help carrying it.  And I don't think that talking about the sacrifice or cross of motherhood is ungrateful or that it takes away from the tremendous gift and blessing that it is.  God's calling is always a gift, but it is never easy.  And sometimes, no matter what the calling it, one needs help to live that calling.  I read a terrific post this week in which a young mother speaks very honestly about the spiritual struggle of motherhood, and how it is impossible to carry the cross alone.

In the case of Mother's Day, maybe that doesn't look much different than celebrating a secular Mother's Day.  Maybe some women find their burden lightened by jewelry - and that's cool.  But overall, the context looks different: a young father gets up early to help with the get-everyone-breakfast-and-out-the-door madness - his wife's burden is lightened.  A friend takes a birthmother out to lunch - and shoulders some of her cross on that day.  A sister takes her niece or nephew to lunch - giving a single mother time to refresh herself before picking up her cross again.  A grown daughter calls her lonely mother to chat for an hour - easing the weight of someone away from her children.  A friend offers a hug to a woman suffering through miscarriages or infertility - showing love to the mother of children unborn.  Kids pitch in to clean up their things or fold the laundry - for that day, they carry the cross with their mother, and she carries it less.

Motherhood is joyful.  It is a blessing.  It is a gift.  My heart feels like it might explode every time I look at one of my dear, sweet, amazing children.  But motherhood is also heavy, exhausting, and terrifying.  It is lonely, and feels like drowning more than flying much of the time.  And so if, as Christians and Catholics, we are to do something "appropriate" on Mother's Day, it might be not to say "thanks" or to "celebrate," but to help mothers carry the wonderful, awesome, heavy cross of their vocation in some way.  In doing that we help carry Eve's cross, Sarah's cross, Rachel's cross, Elizabeth's cross, Mary's cross - Christ's cross.  And to carry the cross - whatever it looks like - is the calling of every Christian.

My own grandma - a wonderful Christian who carried her cross and helped others carry theirs (and who received an awful lot of handmade Mother's Day cards).

Why I Don't Teach My Kids

So one of the most common questions we get from families whose kids go to "away school," as we call it (seems better than "traditional school" or "regular school" or what have you), and who are familiar with our stay-at-home-dad and work-at-home-mom life, is "so who does most of the teaching?" And the answer is usually a brief blank stare, followed by "well, um, they mostly teach themselves."

Given that we have little-littles around, who are prone do making messes or yelling or needing to be changed or nursed every five minutes, and given that I work from home and need to focus on that, "teaching" just isn't going to happen.  And that's not a bad thing. It forces the kids to learn how to learn, and to recognize when they need help and how to get it.  Once they become independent readers and can get through material on their own - they're off to the races, and I just sit and watch and keep them on track and answer questions as they come up.

SweetPea is, age-wise, in kindergarten, but she's got a thing for math, so we've let her work ahead at her own pace, keeping an eye on things to make sure they don't go off the rails.  She's midway through the second grade books now, and yesterday she started to learn addition with carrying.  As she started her work and I was getting snacks for the littler ones, I called downstairs that she should come and get me when she started math, so I could help explain it to her.  "Oh, I started already," came the reply, "everything is fine, mommy."

I trotted down and looked  through the work she had done - and darned if she didn't have it right.  I asked her to talk me through a couple of problems as she did them - and she clearly "got it."  "I told you it was fine," she said, rolling her eyes as she sat back down at her desk.  And the lovely thing isn't that she can carry and add, it's that she was able to pick up the book, read the explanation, follow along with an example - and presto, she was in charge of her learning.  Easier for me, empowering for her, and far more useful out there in the world than listening to me ramble on about arithmetic.

If SweetPea is picking up steam, we're slowing down with Sprout.  He is so bright, and such a thinker, that we've unwittingly been pushing him too hard.  He can do the work - but being challenged in every subject, every day, is starting to get to him.  So we're backing off a bit.  He loves robots and engineering and building things - so playing with his build-a-robot kit might be plenty of science.  He just came back from a "STEM Engineering Challenge" night at the local community center, beaming ear-to-ear about building boats from straws and tape.  Maybe we'll ditch the books  sometimes and do more of that.  Playing SushiMonster, an app designed too get nine year old boys to practice their times tables by making monsters explode when they get a problem wrong (genius!), might be better than speeding through the next grade's math.  He could - but if the choice is a stressed-out kid who is working way ahead of his age, or a happy kid who enjoys learning?  I'll take the latter.

The second-most common question is what grade the kids are in, and I honestly don't know at this point,  Sprout's books range from third through sixth grade, SweetPea's from kindergarten through second.  They work where they are challenged but happy.  They did their state-mandated testing at their chronological grade-level, because the tests really are a formality and just part of the requirements to legally homeschool - but they are hardly a reflection of the work we do every day.  So I have no idea how to honestly answer that question, and usually say "K and third," and then one of the kids starts a long digression about how their grammar book is really for grade X, and the question-asker leaves very confused and probably wondering what we're doing at home, anyway, that we can't come up with a united front on such a simple question as "what grade is he in?"

So we're continuing to fumble our way along - much more comfortable and confident than last year, and feeling much more at home in homeschool-land.  I'm listening better to the kids and what they need, and I'm far less terrified at the thought of throwing something out when it's just not working.  We're counting down  the days until the end of school (22 more days, people!) and figuring it out and actually looking forward to next year already when we get to start it all over again.  At this point last year, I certainly never thought I'd say that - and that, more than tests or books or grade levels, means we're probably on the right path.

Bringing Home Baby

We were blessed last week with the safe arrival of our newest little one - a little brother, at long last, says Sprout!

He's a pretty chill little guy, and is usually happy to watch life going on as he's toted around.  I mentioned this to a relative, and their response completely threw me for a loop.  "Of course he's laid back," they said, "with everyone else competing for you all the time, he has to be!"

I wondered if they understood anything at all about a family's love.  That it's not a finite pie, with each addition to the family meaning less love, time, and attention in everyone else's "slice."  That each new addition multiplies the love, instead of dividing it.  That I truly feel bad for Sprout, who as the oldest by nearly three years had no little playmates to entertain and dote on him when he was younger.  The poor guy was stuck watching clueless mom and dad try to amuse him, unable to come up with stuff that subsequent children have been privileged to enjoy like "turn Costco box into a racecar and push the toddler around the house as fast as you can go" or "create obscenely loud, impromptu marching band and tour the living room to entertain the baby."

I suppose I don't really care what everyone else thinks of our little family, though - it's what SSHH and I and the kids think that matters.  And they are genuinely overjoyed to have a new little brother - despite mom's time and lap being occupied with a nursing newborn right now, and despite the general upheaval that always comes with a new baby.  Even little Doodle, not yet two years old and at times a bit confounded by her new "big girl" status, will sit on my knee for an hour, beaming and patting her sleeping brother and saying "Nice bay-bee!  Nice bay-bee!" over and over again.

The kids get it - every life is cause for celebration.  When we told them that we were expecting another baby, Sprout's response was "I'm really lucky to have so many people to love me!"  The idea that a new sibling might somehow be taking something away from them is completely foreign to them,  They see their little brother for who he is, a tiny person fearfully and wonderfully made by God as we all are, and they love him unconditionally and infinitely.  And they've welcomed him with joyfully open arms.  I learn so much from them, always.  May we follow their example and do the same for all of God's children.

Onward and Upward

Easter Break is here (can I tell you how happy I am?) and the newest wee one is due to arrive any day now.  It would be just too easy to have the little squish show up when the kids are on a break from school, but they're excited by the possibility of a few unscheduled days off after Easter, too.

We wrapped up the third quarter of our school year last week, too.  We do quarters, and at the beginning of the year I set a calendar showing the kids when the quarters are and which days they'll get off of school.  It's a little artificial, but they like getting "holidays" and knowing exactly how close they are to finishing up with school.  If we didn't have a schedule we'd get nothing done, so it works well for us.

And with third quarter we wrapped up a few other things, too.  SweetPea - technically in kindergarten - finished first grade math and grammar.  We've been careful not to push her through the work, but she's enjoying it, and so she just marched right through the textbooks and did just fine, and we're not about to hold her back because of the grade numbers on the books.  After Easter she'll start the second grade books, and we'll keep a close eye on how she's doing and go as slowly - or quickly - as she's ready for.  She's loved being in Daisy Scouts this year and at a recent meeting the girls had to write down one thing they were afraid of.  She wrote that she was "scared of first grade" - until we pointed out that she was almost finished with it, and hadn't even noticed.  She wrote her first-ever book report this spring, and loved writing about a horse book - and celebrated with a ride on her much-loved pony buddy.

SweetPea has been racing ahead academically, and we appreciate that homeschooling is letting her move at the right pace for her, but I think it's Sprout who has really benefitted from learning at home this year.  Last year was so, so hard in many ways.  We were all adjusting to our new roles, and we were all at odds with each other a bit.  The learning curve was steep, expectations were (perhaps too) high, and the nuts-and-bolts of getting through the work sometimes seemed impossibly hard.

This year we've been able to relax a bit, in part because Sprout knows his job - and is less likely to blow up when his lack of focus means that he's still working on math problems at dinnertime.  I'm also more flexible.  He needs more work on his multiplication tables and grumbles about how dumb, and stupid, and hard, and awful they are - but he happily practiced them for almost an hour today as he tried to get a high score on some eyeroll-inducing math app called "SushiMonster."  I've also been less hesitant to ditch what isn't working for us.  He started reading The Black Cauldron and it was over his head - so we switched gears and did Harry Potter instead.  Neither one of us was frustrated, neither one of us felt like we'd failed - we just set the book aside for another day or year and went 

.about our learning

And as Sprout approaches the pre-teen year, I'm more happy than ever that SSHH and I are the primary educators in his life.  He's encountering and noticing hard things that weren't on his horizon before, and I'm glad that we are the people he's coming to with questions - not his teachers, not his friends - his parents.  Whether it's moving from "how will the baby come out of there?" to the much harder "how did the baby get in there?" (and yes, his nine year-old self got a straight answer to that), or "why did someone post a comment on this computer game that it "is so gay it makes my f&*^ing eyes bleed?" - and what does that mean?" or "I read a Garfield comic and someone said Jon dances like a retard.  What's that?" or  "what's an abortion?" - we have been able to navigate the answers with him.

Sprout just finished reading Maniac Magee and put together a short but pretty incisive paper, for a nine year-old, on the portrayal of race in the book.  We had a lot of talks about it, and about how people form opinions of each other, and what things are important about people and what things aren't, and how to form respectful friendships across differences.  He read, and answered comprehension questions, and learned about topic sentences and finding quotes in a book - but it was full of little life-lessons, too, and I'm glad that those happened around the dining room table and not in a classroom.

When we started homeschooling I read a lot about the "growing up" aspects of it.  I was concerned that our kids not be "sheltered," that they not be limited to our sometimes-insulated Catholic homeschooling group, that they learn about the diversity of people and beliefs in the world and how to encounter them respectfully and openly while still maintaining their own faith and identity and not succumbing to relativism.  And I think that we're accomplishing that, in a small way.  But that involves running up against hard questions, and navigating hard answers, and while I trust many people to teach my kids math and writing and geography, I don't trust them to guide my kids through those questions when they are prompted by a book or article or conversation read in the context of school.  I don't trust that when those hard questions come up, that a kid who spends most of their waking hours and most of their learning time with other people will automatically turn to their parents first for advice and answers.  And so I'm glad that while Sprout is out there getting his feet wet in the big wide world, he's able to stay grounded and connected to the moral compass that his family and faith should be for him.