Just a short reply to the posts...I really don't spend much time feeling guilty. I think most guilt makes you a worse parent than a better one. But guilt also serves a purpose, without guilt we wouldn't have a conscience. I often think I don't feel as guilty as a should lol. Anyway, it is always good to look back on your past and say, "I did the best I could and it wasn't that bad." But I strongly believe in improving myself. I think the thing for me is that, while reading this book, I noticed a problem with myself and I want to change it. There really is nothing wrong with that. I don't want to do things to my kids that I know aren't what I believe (like yell at them frequently or stunt their emotional growth) then look back and say I did good enough. I am more than a "good enough" parent, more than a "good enough" person.
Thanks for the welcome!
So dh (Matt) was off work yesterday. He was playing a computer game (we both love it and frequently have a mock spat over who gets to play lol) and I sat next to him on the floor and read the book out loud. I was at the section where they talk about schools being set up more for girls than for boys and how by 3rd grade a child has a set opinion about learning. It cited specific experiences by boys and remembrances of men (as well as lots of research studies but that isn't as important to my point right now). So many of them mirrored Matt's school experience/his feelings about school. It was also really similar to my brothers' school feelings/experiences. It has me a bit worried about the schooling options for our sons.
I already don't want to send Tain (4 yo) to public kindergarten. He is not ready to learn to read, even by next year he won't be. He is a very active, very physical child that lags behind in writing and reading and letter recognition. Or, if you believe the research cited in Raising Cain, he is exactly normal for a boy. I've always felt he is normal for any child his age, that the natural inclination toward reading starts much later than the artificial timeline we create in school. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has resulted in much more academia in kindergarten than there used to be. I have heard startling reports, a mom of a child that attends the same school Tain does told me that her daughter was lagging far behind, that she was trying to get her a tutor and afterschool one on one time. For kindergarten! (Remember the kindergarten we went to? Where your main goal was to eventually be able to cut along a line or color *sort of* in the lines of a picture? The place where kids were more likely to stick paste up their nose than on their project?) She also said that they get very little recess time since so much time is needed for these (in my opinion) ridiculous standards and also for test prep, test taking, and then prep for the next one. Another friend was telling me that the school near her requires reading and counting in 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s and 20s to something like 200 as well as being able to do that in Spanish. I believe we are not teaching our children to be dynamic thinkers, we are not teaching them to be functional in society, we are teaching them how to take a test and how to regurgitate something they "learned" by rote. To further support this theory, Matt went to a nontraditional high school. He was on the block system; to graduate he had to do an intensive project that was approved by a board. I attended traditional high schools, 6 classes a day, regular tests. As adults, Matt is much better at thinking on his feet, at finding solutions to new/unique problems than I am. I think it is more than a personality difference, it is the way our brains were trained to approach situations. I, however, am a much better crammer/test taker than he is. But that isn't exactly useful in the real world, is it?
It is vitally important to me that our sons develop a love of learning, and if that means I keep them out of school or at least out of a traditional school, that is what I will do. Honestly, I had already been exploring my options prior to reading the book but the book gives creedence to my instinct. Tain is an emotion stuffer. I truly believe that if I sent him to public school he would turn into one of those sullen, angry, depressed boys. Ideally, I would like to get him into a CES school, you can learn more about them at www.essentialschools.org. If I can't get him in one of those, I'd like to put him in an all boys school, mainly just for the elementary years. So I guess we need to start looking at where to move! lol
I know a woman who started reading Raising Cain and felt like they were telling people that even well-intentioned mothers are doomed to forever screwing up the lives of their sons. I really don't see that. For me, it has supported all the things I have suspected about my sons, studied some things that aren't really applicable to our family, and I am eager to finish it so I *hopefully* have a greater understanding of my sons and, therefore, how best to raise them to be the men I want them to be.
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