SuperMom versus The Comic Books of Doom!

Welcome to the September Carnival of Natural Parenting: We’re all home schoolers

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how their children learn at home as a natural part of their day. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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I love to read. I was not one of those kids who taught myself to read when I was three, but at some point I learned, and I loved reading. My Oma reads. I remember spending the night at her house on weekends, and we’d sit together at the dinner table, ignoring each other, each engrossed in a book we took out from the library. My other grandmother bought me books. (To this day, I still think that purchasing books is a status symbol. Forget seeing a 2011 Honda Odyssey Touring minivan; my real mommy-envy comes from seeing a house full of books that don’t have city barcodes on them.)

My mom is a big reader as well. She read to me, long past the point of when I was old enough to read to myself.  In fact, I remember the last book she ever read out loud to me, when I was at least 10; The Pigman by Paul Zindel.  There were always books around when I was growing up, and magazines. Lots of printed material in the bathroom.  At breakfast, I read the back of the cereal box.

I assumed that when they got to the age of five, my children would be readers as well.

They’re not.

To say that this irked me would be an understatement. Having children who didn’t read – and I currently have twin 7-year-olds, a 5-year-old, and an almost 3-year-old, with only one reader among them – felt like a splinter in my non-dominant hand. Some days it irritated me a little, enough to Google for a remedy. Some days it didn’t bother me at all. But it was always there, in the back of my head, prodding me: my children didn’t read.

The September after they turned five – and with trepidation – I sent my twins, Animal and Mineral, to public kindergarten.  In my heart, I wanted to homeschool, but the practicality of homeschooling with four young children seemed impossible.  And I did love the mommy break for seven hours each day, when I went from four kids down to two.  But after a few months of school, I determined that they were neither learning nor having fun – either would have been a good enough reason to keep them in school – and I decided to homeschool.

I started the year with an expensive math curriculum and “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.” I’ll spare the long details, but suffice it to say that we lasted about 11 lessons, and I never found them easy.  Mineral tolerated it; Animal was downright hostile toward it.

My next tactic was going to the library every week.  This wasn’t much of a chore for me; I’d go to the library at least that much on my own.  The mission was keeping Animal and Mineral off the computers. Once I mastered that, I tried to keep them away from the comic books.

The *^$@#%($ comic books, I tell you!  If having non-readers felt like a splinter, having children who coveted comic books felt like Chicken Pox.  It was so incredibly annoying. It was like they could see how badly I wanted them to read – and not just read, but love reading – and yet instead of reading like I wanted them to, they wanted to look at cartoons.

Trying to be a hard-ass mom, I only allowed them to take out a comic book if they also took out a “real” book.  They might love comic books, but I would show them who was boss! They grudgingly obliged me, but later I’d find the “real” book in my car, while they sat on the couch with their comics (typically upside down, and reading from right to left).

My epiphany came a few months later when I was in the hospital with dehydration. (Not comic-book-hatred related.)  I was admitted for a few days, with an IV in my arm and giving poop samples in a cup, and my husband brought all the kids to see me.  Animal and Mineral proudly brought me a 3-ring-binder, in which they’d made a comic book. For me. Their awful, irritated, passively-aggressively-trying-to-force-them-to-read mom.

I took my pooping in a cup as penance, and vowed to encourage reading of any kind, even if it wasn’t my kind. And that’s what it was really about anyway: I wanted them to read the way I thought was right.

I would not label myself as an unschooler, although that’s how I am now when it comes to reading.  We have books.  We have computers.  We have a TV and I use closed-captioning, because when you’re in a house with four young kids and a dog, it doesn’t matter how loud you turn the TV volume, you will still miss most of the characters’ conversations. The kids have games and toys that they want to understand, all of which require reading.  One of them reads. The other three don’t read yet.  I am okay with that.  They all love comic books.  I’m okay with that too.

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• A is for Apple {But right now it’s more fun to pick apples!} — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment has a four-year-old who wisely knows she must forgo the worksheets for now and do things with her mother if she’s going to learn.
• Baby Talks — Amy at Anktangle talks, talks, talks all day long to her preverbal baby, about simple things and complexities. (@anktangle)
• Baby University: Little Man, My Teacher — The ArtsyMama shares how her relaxed and patient “teaching” at home resulted in a confident little one when she returned to work.
• Creating a Sensory Garden — A sensory garden has given Marita at Stuff With Thing and her girls practice in math, science, budgeting, fine motor skills, and more. (@leechbabe)
• Despite the Big Yellow Bus — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante has surprised many friends by sending her kids off to mainstream schooling — but their learning doesn’t stop there. (@seonaid_lee)
• Down on the Farm — Megan at Purple Dancing Dhalias describes the multitude of skills her children learn by homeschooling on a farm.
• Early Childhood Education — First Do No Harm — Laura at Laura’s Blog provides an incredible list of tips to facilitate learning at home.
• Education Starts At Home — Luschka at Diary of a First Child was happy to realize that learning at home isn’t limited to older children. (@lvano)
• Every Day Is A School Day — Summer at Finding Summer lists the ways her family learns in this poem of a post. (@summerminor)
• hands on — the grumbles at grumbles and grunts read her little one Sherlock Holmes in utero. She’ll continue to make learning fun now that he’s on this side of the womb. (@thegrumbles)
• Have a Happy Heart — Erica at ChildOrganics has days of poop on the couch and oatmeal down the pants when sending her children to school seems like the perfect solution — until she regains her perspective. (@childorganics)
• Home Sweet Home Schooling — Check out CurlyMonkey’s Blog for a photo montage of how her kids are learning anatomy, architecture, and more — all at home. (@curlymonkey_)
• Homeschooling — My Needs? — Do you homeschool for the kids, or do you do it for you? Read some thoughts from Home Grown Families. (@momtosprouts)
• Homeschooling: A Way of Life — Kimberly at Homeschooling in Nova Scotia has children who meet learning with enthusiasm and are becoming self-sufficient at a young age. (@UsborneBooksCB)
• How We Homeschooled — Deb at Living Montessori Now details in retrospect how her two lifelong learners spent their homeschooling years. (@DebChitwood)
• Learning at Home With a Preschooler and Toddler — Need some inspiration? Michelle at The Parent Vortex shares her tips and resources for lifelong learning. (@TheParentVortex)
• Learning at Home: Are We All Homeschoolers? — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings incorporates homeschool ideas even though she plans to send her kids to school. (@sunfrog)
• Learning From Life — Mamapoekie at Authentic Parenting doesn’t even have to think about how her daughter learns. She just does it. (@mamapoekie)
• Learning Through Play — What better way to learn at home than through play? Dionna at Code Name: Mama lists the many ways children learn through play, whether they know it or not. (@CodeNameMama)
• Learning With Savoury Pikelets — Deb at Science@Home breaks down how cooking facilitates learning. (@ScienceMum)
• Lessons Learned by Bowling (Yes, Bowling) — What life lessons can you learn from bowling? Ask Jessica from This is Worthwhile. (@tisworthwhile)
• Life is learning, learning is life. — Kristin, guest posting at Janet Fraser — Where birth and feminism intersect, defends the truth that children are hardwired to learn. (@JoyousLearning)
• life learning… — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children found that structured schooling is about teaching, whereas unschooling is about learning, and her family resonated with the latter.
• Live to Learn Together — RealMommy at True Confessions of a Real Mommy knows that children learn in all different styles, so only one-on-one attention can do the trick.
• Natural Parenting and the Working Mom — Jenny from Chronicles of a Nursing Mom shares how natural parenting in the Philippines — and learning at home — includes “yayas” (nannies). (@crazydigger)
• Not Back to School: How We Learn at Home — Denise at This Holistic Life has learned to describe what unschooling is, rather than what it isn’t.
• Our Learning Curve — Andrea of Ella-Bean & Co. has a special bookshelf set up where her daughter can explore the world on her own terms.
• School at Our House — Where is learning happening at Kellie at Our Mindful Life’s house? It is pouring all over the floor. It is digging down deep in the earth. It is everywhere!
• Schooling Three Little Piggies — Despite the mess and the chaos, Melissa at White Noise lets her children into the kitchen.
• SuperMom versus The Comic Books of Doom! — Mommy Soup at Cream of Mommy Soup realized that if “getting the kids to read” was the goal, it didn’t matter what the kids read. (@mommysoup)
• The joy of learning at home — Heather at Life, Gluten Free has a daughter who sees magic in the stars and understands the honeybees. (@lifeglutenfree)
• those who can’t teach — Do you need a superiority complex to homeschool? Stefanie at Very, Very Fine wonders.
• Too lazy to unschool? — If unschoolers aren’t lazy, Lauren at Hobo Mama wonders if she’s too lazy to live her dream of free-form education. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Unschooling the School of Me — Rachael at The Variegated Life considers what she’s teaching her son about work as a work-at-home mother — and the extreme work ethic she doesn’t want him to emulate. (@RachaelNevins)
• What We Do All Day — Alison at BluebirdMama discovered that it’s easier than she thought it would be to quantify how her child learns all day. (@childbearing)
• Who taught that kid ‘exoskeleton’? — Nervous about how you will facilitate learning at home? Don’t be – they will absorb things on their own! Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma shares her story. (@kitchenwitch)