“I CAN’T CONTROL MY KID!!” (Part I)
This is the fifth article in a series answering hard questions dealing with homeschooling. In article one, we made a brief list of major concerns and objections one might encounter to homeschooling. Let’s take up the fifth point on that list now.
- Some children may be a handful for the family to “handle”.
This is not a simple problem. In fact, it probably ranks as the most difficult problem a parent can have with a child. There are some essential truths to be confronted regarding our children. I feel reasonably confident in these truths, having watched and taught children for nearly 40 years, and having at one time, in some distant and forgotten age, been a child myself.
Truth # 1 – Every child is different.
There are many reasons for this. First and foremost, each child is born with unique strengths and weaknesses. You may attribute these skills and shortcomings as you see fit – the will of God, heredity, whatever. The fact remains that each child is different, and this presents an insurmountable problem to the person who wishes to make a living advising parents regarding their children. Since no two children are precisely the same, then no single piece of advice is going to exactly solve the issues presented by two or more children.
Your child is unique. There’s no one like him or her. I realize that every parent sees their child as “special”, and I am inclined to agree. Every child is special, and that is so regardless of which definition of “special” you are using – 1) Unique or different than all others, or 2) Wonderful.
Those of you with several children (I have two) know that even though they were all raised in your household, and often have been provided the same opportunities and experiences – each child is simply special (different). We may share the same experiences as others, but we each respond to those experiences uniquely. I’ve seen identical twins with dramatically differing interests and responses to the world, twins raised in the same house by the same parents, sent to the same schools, you name it.
What does this mean to those parents with a “problematic child”? It means that what works for another person’s child may not work, and in fact is likely not to work, in an effort to control or manipulate one’s own. Your child will not react to an approach in the same way that another child does.
This uniqueness and difficulty to handle is (in the long run) a good thing. I know some of you are moaning, rolling your eyes. However it IS a good and a necessary thing if our civilization and species are to survive.
History books are nothing but tales of different people who were allowed to grow up and express themselves in the world. Great artists, religious leaders, politicians and soldiers, inventors and philosophers all had amazing contributions to make BECAUSE THEY WERE DIFFERENT FROM EVERYONE ELSE.
Does anyone really think that a guy like Socrates, a man willing to die just to be right and to stand for the truth – was easy to raise? Imagine his poor parents as they listened in to his all too honest explanations of why he had to beat up Billy next door. (Or was that Billicus? Billicles?) Imagine him explaining to his own teacher why he (the teacher) is wrong about, oh, name a subject, simply because Socrates has observed the world more thoroughly than his teacher. Would young master Socrates take the quiet and “smart” route and shut his mouth when he had discovered others wrong? No way. You can just hear him engaging in debate with his elders, forcing them to think and look and reconsider, and to wonder why they were not killing this obnoxious child!
And how about Bill Shakespeare? Does anyone think he was a quiet lad? An old ham like sweet William? Could it be that he had little to say, and listened calmly? The man who would give titanic birth to Hamlet and Othello, as a good little student? Not bloody likely. Not with that imagination!
Think Caesar’s mom could tell him what to do, even once? How about Genghis Khan’s Mom, or Napoleon’s, think they had much luck with their little world conquerors? How about Einstein, a boy staring at beams of light and dreaming of hitching a ride on one? Think he was a piece of cake? Imagine the restless questions he must have asked his folks, certainly not the common garden variety “mom, why is the sky blue”.
People who are capable of great achievement are restless. They’re dreamers. Often, they’re gifted in ways that the rest of the world, especially “experts” do not understand. Some great people have been branded through the years as “uneducatable”, such as Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Alva Edison. Think the experts got it right?
People capable of changing the world, as a great religious or political leader does, are not followers. They do not sit easily or well in class. They do not always (or often) do as they’re told. They often do not like to be told what to do or think.
The survival of our species absolutely depends on this uniqueness in each of us, this special quality. Nature loves big numbers and differences. Consider the tens of millions of species of living creatures on Earth, if you’re not certain. One guarantee of survival is a large population. Another is the unique gifts individual members of a species provide their entire species.
I’m not advocating for run-amok children being allowed to plow the kid at the next desk into the ground, or to blow up the chem. lab. I’m not a fan of physical abuse when it is inflicted by either adults or children, and I personally saw to it that a few physically abusive children were kicked out of schools. of course, one wonders where those children got their ideas, and one considers their parents and the environment they were being raised in, and one frowns at the appalling levels of violence such kids are exposed to in games, movies, TV, you name it. Still, adults have a duty to keep their own children safe, and that includes safe from bullies.
Nonetheless, if someone is telling you that special Is “bad” and “normal” is “good”, they are lying. Such lies are usually born out of self-interest. Most teachers would love it if they could have a classroom filled with quiet, tractable children. Why, a classroom filled with brain-dead, barely responsive and politely identical children would be…um…er…great. Right, teachers? (I dislike most teachers enormously, as you know.) Hence, bad teachers wield certain tools to “equalize” and control their students, tools like grades, tests, iron-clad schedules, seating charts (in as opposed to recognizing a student by his or her individuality), and the worst of it, evaluations. They often recommend that “difficult” children be removed from the “group”, placed in remedial programs, or sent to a psychologist who might prescribe some “helpful drug”. They often imply that a child is “different” because of something “wrong” that mom or dad did.
But “different” is the stuff of survival and great acheivement. Different is good. Special is good. More to follow next article.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
This is the fifth article in a series answering hard questions dealing with homeschooling. In article one, we made a brief list of major concerns and objections one might encounter to homeschooling. Let’s take up the fifth point on that list now.
- Some children may be a handful for the family to “handle”.
This is not a simple problem. In fact, it probably ranks as the most difficult problem a parent can have with a child. There are some essential truths to be confronted regarding our children. I feel reasonably confident in these truths, having watched and taught children for nearly 40 years, and having at one time, in some distant and forgotten age, been a child myself.
Truth # 1 – Every child is different.
There are many reasons for this. First and foremost, each child is born with unique strengths and weaknesses. You may attribute these skills and shortcomings as you see fit – the will of God, heredity, whatever. The fact remains that each child is different, and this presents an insurmountable problem to the person who wishes to make a living advising parents regarding their children. Since no two children are precisely the same, then no single piece of advice is going to exactly solve the issues presented by two or more children.
Your child is unique. There’s no one like him or her. I realize that every parent sees their child as “special”, and I am inclined to agree. Every child is special, and that is so regardless of which definition of “special” you are using – 1) Unique or different than all others, or 2) Wonderful.
Those of you with several children (I have two) know that even though they were all raised in your household, and often have been provided the same opportunities and experiences – each child is simply special (different). We may share the same experiences as others, but we each respond to those experiences uniquely. I’ve seen identical twins with dramatically differing interests and responses to the world, twins raised in the same house by the same parents, sent to the same schools, you name it.
What does this mean to those parents with a “problematic child”? It means that what works for another person’s child may not work, and in fact is likely not to work, in an effort to control or manipulate one’s own. Your child will not react to an approach in the same way that another child does.
This uniqueness and difficulty to handle is (in the long run) a good thing. I know some of you are moaning, rolling your eyes. However it IS a good and a necessary thing if our civilization and species are to survive.
History books are nothing but tales of different people who were allowed to grow up and express themselves in the world. Great artists, religious leaders, politicians and soldiers, inventors and philosophers all had amazing contributions to make BECAUSE THEY WERE DIFFERENT FROM EVERYONE ELSE.
Does anyone really think that a guy like Socrates, a man willing to die just to be right and to stand for the truth – was easy to raise? Imagine his poor parents as they listened in to his all too honest explanations of why he had to beat up Billy next door. (Or was that Billicus? Billicles?) Imagine him explaining to his own teacher why he (the teacher) is wrong about, oh, name a subject, simply because Socrates has observed the world more thoroughly than his teacher. Would young master Socrates take the quiet and “smart” route and shut his mouth when he had discovered others wrong? No way. You can just hear him engaging in debate with his elders, forcing them to think and look and reconsider, and to wonder why they were not killing this obnoxious child!
And how about Bill Shakespeare? Does anyone think he was a quiet lad? An old ham like sweet William? Could it be that he had little to say, and listened calmly? The man who would give titanic birth to Hamlet and Othello, as a good little student? Not bloody likely. Not with that imagination!
Think Caesar’s mom could tell him what to do, even once? How about Genghis Khan’s Mom, or Napoleon’s, think they had much luck with their little world conquerors? How about Einstein, a boy staring at beams of light and dreaming of hitching a ride on one? Think he was a piece of cake? Imagine the restless questions he must have asked his folks, certainly not the common garden variety “mom, why is the sky blue”.
People who are capable of great achievement are restless. They’re dreamers. Often, they’re gifted in ways that the rest of the world, especially “experts” do not understand. Some great people have been branded through the years as “uneducatable”, such as Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Alva Edison. Think the experts got it right?
People capable of changing the world, as a great religious or political leader does, are not followers. They do not sit easily or well in class. They do not always (or often) do as they’re told. They often do not like to be told what to do or think.
The survival of our species absolutely depends on this uniqueness in each of us, this special quality. Nature loves big numbers and differences. Consider the tens of millions of species of living creatures on Earth, if you’re not certain. One guarantee of survival is a large population. Another is the unique gifts individual members of a species provide their entire species.
I’m not advocating for run-amok children being allowed to plow the kid at the next desk into the ground, or to blow up the chem. lab. I’m not a fan of physical abuse when it is inflicted by either adults or children, and I personally saw to it that a few physically abusive children were kicked out of schools. of course, one wonders where those children got their ideas, and one considers their parents and the environment they were being raised in, and one frowns at the appalling levels of violence such kids are exposed to in games, movies, TV, you name it. Still, adults have a duty to keep their own children safe, and that includes safe from bullies.
Nonetheless, if someone is telling you that special Is “bad” and “normal” is “good”, they are lying. Such lies are usually born out of self-interest. Most teachers would love it if they could have a classroom filled with quiet, tractable children. Why, a classroom filled with brain-dead, barely responsive and politely identical children would be…um…er…great. Right, teachers? (I dislike most teachers enormously, as you know.) Hence, bad teachers wield certain tools to “equalize” and control their students, tools like grades, tests, iron-clad schedules, seating charts (in as opposed to recognizing a student by his or her individuality), and the worst of it, evaluations. They often recommend that “difficult” children be removed from the “group”, placed in remedial programs, or sent to a psychologist who might prescribe some “helpful drug”. They often imply that a child is “different” because of something “wrong” that mom or dad did.
But “different” is the stuff of survival and great acheivement. Different is good. Special is good. More to follow next article.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
