Last year is when I dropped the bombshell. I told Lucas (3) that Sid from Ice Age was not actually real. I then proceeded—cold-hearted father that I am—to show him an interview with John Leguizamo on YouTube. Lucas had a sort of stunned look on his face as his brain scrambled to make sense of what he was witnessing. “That’s clearly Sid’s voice…but that’s not Sid…” It took him a few minutes of follow-up questions and explanations before he finally accepted that Sid was a fictional character. I felt mean, but I also liked that he had this newfound realization. The next thing he asked, looking to me for reassurance, was “But Diego—he’s real, right?” I think I may have (or at least should have) waited until the next day to introduce him to Denis Leary. You can only take so much world-shaking in a day.

A misconception I had when growing up had to do with chewing gum in bed. My mom told me that I mustn’t go to bed with gum in my mouth, because it might end up in my hair. I always wondered at this mysterious process—how the gum would work its way deeper into my mouth, up through my head, out through my skull, and into my hair. In any case, I didn’t want to test it out.

And then there are the verbal idioms we pick up without having any idea what their origin is. This is fine except when we don’t get it quite right. Oftentimes, these don’t surface until we write them on paper. My mom used the phrase “for all intents and purposes” quite a bit. So did I. Except that I always said, “for all intensive purposes.” It pretty much sounds the same when you say it out loud. The fun thing with Google is that you can find other people making the same mistake you made. I didn’t realize my mistake until college, but Google reassures me that there are about 406,000 other people making the same mistake, so I don’t feel so dumb.

Misconceptions are a part of life and learning. They can be funny sometimes. Do you have any favorite misconceptions or delusions you’ve labored under for some part of your life? Or stories about how your kids have made humorous conclusions about what’s true or how things work?

My 3-year-old son Lucas has a favorite book that we read almost every night: The Very Bumpy Bus Ride. He also likes it when Sammy (9) reads it to him. But one night—I can’t remember how this started—we started being silly about how we read the words. Oh yes, I remember that, after Sammy had read it to him for several nights, when I came back, he thought it was funny how I said “Mrs. Fitzwizzle.” All I had to do was say that once and he would crack up. So I tried saying it several times in a row, and he cracked up even more. I can still get him to laugh, just by saying that name.

From there we started messing with the other words. Doing baby talk or talking like a ventriloquist or flipping the sounds around, as in “The Bery Vumpy Rus Bide.” (This spoonerism approach in particular cracks Sammy up.) Now Lucas contributes to the word massacre by mixing his sounds around and being silly about it. He practically has the whole book memorized, so he’s getting pretty good at saying the sentences while flipping the sounds around, saying nonsense words that rhyme with the originals.

In the past, I might have had some concerns about this game, fearing that he’s learning the words the wrong way. But now I laugh at the thought. He clearly knows the words, and adding this layer of processing complexity (starting with the original and coming up with a non-sensical rhyming word) does two positive things, as far as I can tell. It reinforces his knowledge of the words by engaging with them in new ways. And it makes him want to continue by keeping things fresh and fun.

Another thing I like about reading the same book over and over again is that kids start making some pretty astute observations. I imagine that the earliest tendency of most kids, when being read to, is to associate the words they hear with the pictures they see. The letter symbols, to them, are just extra clutter on the page. This was also evident with Lucas when he would ask me to “read” particular things he saw in the picture. And I’d tell him, “It doesn’t say anything about that. The only words are these ones down here.” Once he started to realize that, he made the observation. “Daddy, isn’t it funny that on the big-picture pages, there aren’t very many words, but there are lots of words on the small-picture pages?” That’s when I taught him how to spell “counter-intuitive.”

If you want to hear more stories about the diverse ways in which kids engage words and eventually learn to read, I highly recommend Peter Gray’s recent article about this topic: “Children Teach Themselves to Read” .

Yesterday was another beautiful day. I went on a run and stopped by at our beach to enjoy the sun. After I got back, it was PlayTime with Morgan again. She said she wanted to go to the beach again, but she ended up getting upset about not finding the clothes that she wanted to wear. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to budge, I suggested that we just do a regular PlayTime at home. But no, she still wanted to go to the beach. I asked her to “climb out of your hole”—a phrase that my wife recently started using with me when I’m in a bad mood, but that didn’t help either.

Then I noticed her American Girl doll and said, “Shall we play with dolls at home instead?” And just like that, she jumped up and said, “Okay!” and we were off. It turns out that Samantha and Kit are actually long lost sisters, with amnesiac parents named Paul and Polly, both of whom faint a lot. Also, Samantha loves horses but has never had one of her own. Imagine how excited I was—I mean she was—when she got a new horse for her birthday. Polly taught her all about how to groom the horse, brush its hair, curl its mane and tail, and even fix up a broken leg. Polly knows her stuff; she could barely get it all out when talking a mile-a-minute. The rocking horse still has its paper cast on this morning, but it should be able to come off soon.

That’s why I like PlayTime. Even in the face of a near melt-down, playing dolls with your Daddy can have an instantly positive impact on your emotional state.

First, it’s challenging for me to focus on and visualize the scenarios they create. I have to listen and concentrate. And even though it’s only 30 minutes, I still find myself losing focus and asking, “Can you say that again?” I want to be clear on what it is I’m supposed to be doing. It’s better to fall slightly behind and then catch up quickly than to fall way behind, reveal it obviously by saying something dumb, and then witness that look of betrayal and disappointment. “Where have you been, Daddy?” But I’m slowly getting better. And I have hope that it will get easier. I haven’t reached that plateau where I’ve gotten caught up effortlessly in the play. There have been moments, but they’ve been isolated and short-lived.

I wonder if 30 minutes isn’t long enough for me to get past the hump of inertia? Maybe I need to expand the time a bit. This might help me let go of any clock-watching tendencies and lose myself in the play. Yes, I wonder if PlayTime just needs some tweaks.

If the kids love it so much, why would I want to change it? Well, I definitely take comfort in the fact that they love it regardless. Even if it never gets easier for me, that alone makes it well worth the effort. But making it more engaging for me, I think, would also increase the quality of the experience for both of us. And if my first tweak is to extend the session by 10 minutes, then I’m sure they’ll have no problem with that. It does always seem to end too quickly for them.

The second aspect that’s challenging is related to the first. Not only do I have trouble getting the play going, but sometimes the kids do too. At first, I thought this was just a matter of age. Sammy (9) had no problem at all getting started. All I had to do was keep up. He didn’t need any guidance, just supportive energy. My first PlayTime experience with Morgan (6) was a bit slower-paced, and it took her a while to get started, but soon she was off to the races too. With Lucas (3), I had to be more of a leader and be creative.

But since those first experiences, each of my kids have had their off-days. Sometimes it’s indecision about how to use the time. Other times it’s just a matter of not being inspired. So this is another reason I want to get better at it. When they’re not feeling particularly creative, I can contribute more and get the juices flowing.

Last night, I did PlayTime with Lucas. It took a little while to ramp up, but gradually he got more and more into the fantasy. He loves to shrink himself and go in tiny cracks in the floor or walls and then emerge out from some other surface. He’s definitely getting better at PlayTime. If he can do it, so can I. Right? Starting today, PlayTime will be 40 minutes long.

I was homeschooled from 3rd to 9th grade. (I’ve related some of my highschool experiences already.) I’ve always been proud of the education of my youth. My mom was truly a pioneer in education. Whereas now there are homeschoolers everywhere, very few people were doing it when I was a child. My mom and a small group of other parents had convictions about education and the sort of environment they wanted to raise their kids in—and they did something about it. They pulled their kids out of school and taught them at home. I have fond memories of homeschooling and the freedom it afforded us. We could go skiing on Mondays when the slopes were clear. We could go on impromptu outings and field trips to the Science Center or play dates with our fellow homeschoolers. This experience had a definite impact on the choices I planned to make as a parent.

For one thing, I had experience with alternatives. Many people grow up without ever considering educational alternatives, but for my family, it was totally normal to do so. Just the fact that we did this—even if the education my kids are receiving today looks very different from the education I received as a child (“traditional” school-at-home)—the fact that I had this experience made it that much easier for my wife and I to consider educational alternatives for our own children from the get-go.

Since I was so fond of my own homeschooling experience, I grew up thinking I would probably do the same for my own children. When Sammy reached preschool age, we took the opportunity to enroll him at the budding preschool at our church in Seattle. We had a generally positive experience there with both him and Morgan, who attended for a couple of years also. But as they continued to grow, I continued to do research and reflection on what I wanted for my kids and whether what they were doing (preschool) was what I really wanted.

One of the things that bothered me about preschool was how set up it was for kids to please the teachers. Don’t get me wrong. The teachers were very nice and loving to the children, and the kids did love to please them. But something seemed strange and fake about this to me. I had always tried to have genuine conversations with my kids, assuming they were smart and could understand what I was saying. I would also try to speak to them as if to another adult, at least insofar as respect and honesty are concerned. I wanted to afford my kids as much respect as any other human being, and be honest with them as I would with any other adult. In other words, I wouldn’t act fake just to make them feel a certain way or get a certain response out of them. But at preschool, some of the interactions I saw—when dropping off and picking up my kids—seemed very fake to me. Teachers would act so over-the-top happy about seeing my kids arrive or tell them how cute they were. Etc. The thing that bothered me the most was how much my daughter Morgan ate it up. I didn’t like witnessing her so easily manipulated by their well-intentioned, but nonetheless manipulative, overtures.

After our Kindergarten run-in, we decided to start “unschooling” both our kids. We had been reading a few books here and there. Lisa had read The Unschooling Handbook, and I was starting to read some of John Holt’s books, including How Children Fail, which was very powerful and made me re-think so much of what I thought I knew about education. That book really got my wheels turning. I even thought I might start blogging about it (resulting in this false start)—so many were the insights and aha moments that were stimulated by reading that book. My library copy was full of little strips of paper used as bookmarks on every few pages with my responses to all the thought-provoking stuff I read in Holt’s book.

Another author that influenced me greatly was John Taylor Gatto, particularly Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and a couple of other books he wrote. I’m a sucker for impassioned rhetoric, and he had me nodding my head vigorously right off the bat. We continued to go through a phase of reading all we could about education and parenting, including other authors, such as Alfie Kohn’s exhaustively researched Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Also, Scott Noelle’s “Daily Groove” continues to be a thought-provoking resource full of helpful parenting ideas. We also attended the LIFE is Good unschooling conference a couple of years in a row and very much enjoyed ourselves there.

But we had a spur in our boot that made us want to keep looking, perhaps even beyond unschooling. Despite our misgivings, Morgan did love the social atmosphere that preschool provided. And I did see some benefit in their spending time apart from their parents on a regular basis. We had heard something about an “unschooling school” in Bothell, WA. I looked it up and read all the great essays on The Clearwater School website. I was quite inspired by what I saw. In fact, whereas I assumed Morgan would love it, I saw even more potential for how it could help my oldest, Samuel (then 6) grow through interaction with a wider variety of people, away from his parents.

So I made some more trips to the library and came home with books like Free at Last, Legacy of Trust, The Pursuit of Happiness, and Reflections on the Sudbury School Concept. These all came straight from Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968 and the original source of inspiration for the 30+ Sudbury schools around the world. (You can get all of these books and many more at their online bookstore.) I very much enjoyed Daniel Greenberg’s scholarly look at education and what it means. Also, as one of the founders of Sudbury Valley, he had lots of stories to tell about their experiences. I was inspired—even more inspired than what I had discovered about the “unschooling” approach to education.

In fact, I was so inspired that I became a little jealous of kids who get to go to a Sudbury school, despite the fondness for my own schooling that I mentioned above. In the summer of 2007, I even started Googling for what that might look like. What would Sudbury schooling for adults look like? I searched for “synthetic village” and didn’t find much. But then one day I stumbled onto to the Clearwater Commons website, a co-housing project that some of the Clearwater School people are working on. It was then that I discovered the term “co-housing” and “intentional community” and was only a few clicks away to finding the house that we were to buy only a few months later, in Indianola, WA, home of both Wise Acres (where we now live) and The Trillium School (where my kids go to school).

Last summer, I had a chance to attend a staff conference at the Sudbury Valley School campus, and I’ve continued to be nothing but inspired by what I’ve seen. One of the most inspiring things I’ve witnessed is how dedicated the founders of various Sudbury schools are. The strength of both their intellect and their commitment is astounding. I’ve never been so exhausted after a conference. The discourse went from morning til night. I thought some of the technology conferences I’ve attended were pretty intense, but they were nothing compared to this one.

I remain fond of homeschooling, and unschooling in particular. But the Sudbury model is what inspires me. In a future article, I’ll look at some of the distinctions between unschooling and Sudbury schooling.

Then after hearing Sammy say he wished someone would give him a clown drawing, Morgan (6) did her version of the same picture:

…which I thought was sweet.

But the robot is old hat now. I recently looked on eBay and was surprised to discover that used ones are in pretty high demand, presumably because they’re not making any more of them. Sammy was already interested in selling it, and was excited to hear that he might be able to get $50-$100 for it (we paid $100 originally and new ones are now selling for $500!!). He has already saved up enough money, from gifts and allowances, to buy an iPod Touch. Selling the robot will make the decision that much easier for him.

Selling the robot is kind of like the closing of an era for me. I won’t particularly miss its shouting and burping and farting, but I will miss the giggles it engendered in all the kids. Mostly, it’s just another reminder that life is transient, and now—not later—is the time to enjoy and appreciate and be thankful for my loved ones.

The book is not exactly a children’s book. It’s a modern-day “Scrooge” story, and it deals with some heavy themes, like death, divorce, and cancer. But it’s been a really neat way for me to connect with my daughter. She is very engaged by the storytelling, as made evident by her astute questions. She’s learning about the adult world, and we’re getting a chance to talk about it. If I ever go on too long in answering a particular question, like “What’s a lawyer?”, she’ll tell me I’ve said enough, she wasn’t really that interested, and please keep on reading.

You never know what kinds of connections you might make with your kids or what will strike their fancy. This one caught me by surprise. I’m so impressed by Morgan’s attentiveness that it makes me want to go out and buy a bunch more of this guy’s novels to see how long I can sustain these special moments of connection.

My brother and his wife are about to give birth to their first child. I can’t wait to be there to support them and celebrate with them. I remember when Sammy was born, almost 10 years ago, and my brother was right there. I have one photo in particular where he was overcome by the emotion of being an uncle for the first time:

Soon I’ll be able to share the same joy with him. I’m looking forward to it.

It did turn out to be very enjoyable. (What a coincidence! ) I read a book to Lucas (3). Then Lucas said he wanted to know how to read, so Sammy (9) decided to start teaching him. For about an hour, Sammy painstakingly went through every word in Blue Hat, Green Hat, and Lucas stayed attentive the entire time. Sammy got exasperated a few times (what do you expect from a 3-year-old, Sammy?), but Lucas was still enjoying himself. And so they persisted. After all of that, I think they were both a bit tuckered out.

When I say it “went very well”, it wasn’t because Lucas did anything particularly different. It was because I changed my own perspective. (Ironically, he also went to sleep earlier than usual. Perhaps he was expecting to feel my normal resistance, and, finding none, just relaxed.) Even if he had stayed up extra late, my intention was still to remain calm and enjoy every moment I had with him.

Stay tuned for the next bedtime report.

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem to characterize our age.

I read this quote recently, and I thought how appropriately it characterizes the state of education in America. But it’s also a great thing to consider in your parenting. Are you perfecting means but confusing ends in your parenting?

This is as good a context as any to share one of my struggles/failures as a father (as I recently promised to do). I have been known to get in some really nasty moods, especially late at night, especially if I’ve been eating anything sugary. And I’ve recently seen a pattern in myself of dreading bedtime, i.e. putting our kids to bed. Morgan, my daughter, tends to be the easiest. She’s ready for bed the soonest, and she falls asleep quickly. And Sammy, my oldest son, although he takes his own sweet time (he gets that from me), is pretty cooperative too. But Lucas, who shares a room with Sammy, is my 3-year-old, and he doesn’t like going to bed, at least not lately. And I don’t like putting him to bed. In fact, I recently told my wife Lisa, “I hate bedtime.”

On more than one occasion, Lisa has had to come to relieve me, when she hears Lucas crying. In those cases, I’m tired and cranky and impatient. All I want is for him to stay in his bed and let me go to bed. I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want to snuggle him, I don’t want to rock him, or make up any more stories. I just want to go to bed.

Fortunately, we’ve recognized the pattern and are starting to do something about it. Lisa and I will be taking turns, so neither of us gets burned out and each of us gets a break. This is a good start. Also, I’ve been attending better to my own sleep and eating habits, which helps prevent those nasty moods. As for getting Lucas to bed, we’ve even started talking about using rewards or punishments to get him to start cooperating. (Yes, I’ve read Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, and, yes, I know this is not ideal.)

This is a sad state of affairs, because bedtime can be a great time for connecting with your kids. One of the things Lisa and I both want to do is start intentionally enjoying bedtime. In other words, don’t just perfect the means of getting the ostensible end: getting the kid to sleep. But ask: what other ends, or outcomes, do we want from bedtime? If getting him to sleep were the only aim, then we may as well just drug him. (I’m kidding, sheesh!) What if bedtime was not only a time to get Lucas to sleep but also a time of connecting with him? Of hearing him and understanding him and deepening our relationship? What if a change of perspective is all that’s needed?

I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re still figuring it out. But I’ve started to step back and ask myself, what’s really possible here? What do I really want from bedtime?

• Setting aside a particular time of the day to focus on writing
• Continuing to let go of perfectionism in both writing and parenting

Perfectionism has always been an issue for me. If I don’t have something written perfectly or thought through perfectly, I tend to get stuck. Writing has always been difficult for me, but as I’ve learned to let go of perfectionism, things have gotten easier. I’ve embraced this mantra: “Done is better than perfect.”

Bloggers lead double lives. There’s the life we live on the Web—our online persona (perhaps one of many). And then there’s the real, day-to-day life we live at home and at work. It’s funny how a book, or even a blog post, creates a static representation of an author in the reader’s mind, since that may be all they have to go on. When reading a self-help book by an “expert” on self-help, we assume that the author is probably a high-functioning person, having mastered and applied the techniques they espouse. Or when reading a book about spirituality, we assume that the deep insights therein come from a person who is spiritually grounded, devoted to God, [insert whatever ideal picture of spirituality you have]. And clearly, for someone to have such insights, they have to have been in touch with a truth that’s greater than themselves. But the thing I unconsciously forget is that they’re people, just like me. They might be getting old. They may die soon. They may be going through a tough time. They may be “backsliding”. They may have been failing. The point is that they’re changing, and the book they wrote is just a snapshot of what they were thinking at a particular time in their life. The book may be quite popular, and the book itself doesn’t change. But as soon as it’s published, the writer and the book begin separate lives. The writer goes onto live their real life, perhaps writing more books, or perhaps not, but in any case, the writer is not the book. In a certain sense, this is so patently obvious that it seems silly to be saying it. But I have to remind my less-than-conscious mind not to equate a book with its author.

I think that one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging is that I feel like I haven’t been a very good parent lately. And I have this (increasingly conscious) belief that, to write about something, you must be an authority on the topic, or at least you must practice what you preach. And I accept that these are good principles to follow. But what do you do when you fail to practice what you preach? Or when you start feeling like you don’t know what you’re talking about? Is the only option to stop writing? (That’s what I’ve done.) No, I don’t think so.

I think there’s another option that has integrity and that can create value for readers. Of course, it’s easy enough to think of options that have neither. (Keep on B.S.-ing to sell more books. Live a double life. Pretend you’re something you’re not.) And we all know that the world has no shortage of pointless blogs. I think the key is simply this: honesty. Let people know you’re not perfect. That way they’ll relate to you better. Share what you can, even if it isn’t already perfectly thought through. People may still yield some benefit from what you have to say.

So now I’m doing something to overcome both of the things that were blocking me: lack of a scheduled time for writing, and perfectionism. First, I now have someone keeping me accountable for writing during the times that I say I’m going to write. And second, I’m going to start sharing about my failures as a father, not just my successes. And maybe get more, ahem, personal.

He quickly came up with an idea for some role-playing. We both found ourselves stuck inside a massive labyrinth with all sorts of nooks and crannies and walls and hidden doors and chutes and stairways. We had to be careful not to step on any floor tiles that released arrows or trap doors. Our task was to find our way out. Along the way, we came across strange creatures (played by our kittens) that looked benign but actually secreted dangerous green slime. We also came across a room full of treasure, and we almost met our doom when the treasure became so alluring as to make us mad with greed, losing our minds. In one case, I saved him; then it was my turn to be weak, and he saved me. We also changed size several times, whirled our way across dimensions in a magic elevator, and narrowly escaped being eaten by a 10-headed monster with 40,000 arms.

At one point, I had him laughing hysterically, and, in accordance with Cohen’s advice in Chapter 5 (“Follow the Giggles”), I tried to see how long I could sustain it. After cracking up and saying, “That was hysterical,” my son told me, “Okay, let’s get back to the game.” Heh, I was making him laugh, yes, but I was getting off task. I’m clearly still learning.

We started at 3:49pm, so I thought to myself, “We’ll wrap it up at 4:20,” rounding up to the nearest 10. But I was so exhausted by the time 4:18 came around, I was thinking 4:19 would be a good stopping point after all. As it happens, when he saw it was just about time to finish, we extended it slightly and wrapped things up nicely at 4:23pm. We made ourselves wake up from our dream and found ourselves lying on the floor, grateful to be safe and at home.

We’re interested in trying out one technique in particular. In chapter 9, “Follow Your Child’s Lead,” Cohen introduces “PlayTime,” a scheduled, more intense form of playing with your kids where you make an explicit, concerted effort to follow their lead, wherever they want to go, for a specific period of time.

The basic format of PlayTime is quite simple. The parent or some other adult sets aside regular one-on-one time with a child. The adult offers the child undivided attention with no interruptions and with a clear focus on connection, engagement, and interaction. In a sense, PlayTime is just Playful Parenting Plus, where the “plus” means more enthusiasm, more joining, more commitment to closeness and confidence, more fun, a more welcoming attitude toward their feelings, more willingness to put one’s own feelings aside, more active and boisterous play. In addition, you don’t answer the phone or cook dinner or take a nap during PlayTime.

One of the things that attracts me to this particular technique is that it is a commitment for a specific period of time. It is “time-boxed.” I get to go all-out, knowing that I don’t need to worry about pacing myself beyond the agreed-upon length of time. It’s a safe way to start building my playing muscles. A high-weight/low-rep strength training program. At least that’s one way to look at it. And I don’t have to feel guilty when I’m not doing it all the time.

Another thing I like about it is how much the kids will love it. We’ll be upfront with them about what we want to do. And we’re going to schedule specific times. With two parents and three kids, that’s six sessions total. We’re going to cover each of these once a week. And we’re starting with a 30-minute period. That may seem short, but we want to be realistic.

During PlayTime, I’ll let my child know that what we do is entirely up to them. I’ll follow along, infusing the play with whatever energy I can muster. And I’ll let them remain in charge for the duration. It will be hard work but it will also be rewarding. We’re going to forge some nice connections, and I’ll have a chance to get some deeper glimpses into each of my children’s worlds.

After I’ve had some chances to try this, I’ll be reporting back on my experiences. Stay tuned.

In fact, I had half a mind to get rid of the Dick and Jane book. It’s so obviously designed for teaching reading, as opposed to having any literary merit of its own. Even so, my daughter is eating it up. She delights in the pictures and uses them to sleuth out the meanings of the words. So I won’t be getting rid of it any time soon.

It’s fascinating to see how different kids learn to read. Some are more apt to “sound words out” based on what they’ve picked up about the different letter sounds. Others begin by learning specific words as a whole and later recognizing them by sight. It’s pretty obvious that my daughter does the latter. She’ll see “funny” and say “silly”, which tells me she’s not sounding things out. She’s going straight from image to meaning, even if she uses the wrong word.

Of course, such categories oversimplify things. In reality, each child uses a variety of ways to learn to read. Not only that, but each word is learned in its own unique way. Each word is first encountered in a particular context and has uniquely personal meanings. How “home” gets wired into the brain is not going to be the same as how “and” gets wired into the brain. “Home” can have all sorts of connotations; perhaps “home” is a lot more meaningful than a utility word like “and”. Then again, my daughter is particularly fond of “and”. She used to point out every instance she could find during bedtime story reading. She associated “and” with the delight of recognition and discovery.

If my observations seem to ignore all the various learning style theories and methodologies for teaching reading, that’s intentional. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about reading. But I’ve never been particularly impressed. My overall response to the massive amount of literature about reading pedagogy is “what a waste”. The underlying assumption of the whole field seems to be this: The better we understand how people learn to read, the better we’ll be able to ensure they do it. Hey, that sounds pretty reasonable at face value. But it assumes two things:

1. We actually can understand how reading works
2. People won’t learn to read if we don’t make them

I dispute both of these. The number of books written about the phenomenon of reading is not an effective indicator of how much we actually understand about the miracle of human communication via the written word. Theories and their resulting methodologies, such as phonics and reading by sight, are at best crude attempts to structure how human beings develop their innate capacity for communicating via written symbols. We only have little slivers of understanding about how it all works.

What’s worse is that such methodologies so often ignore what motivates people to read in the first place. And in doing so, they often destroy children’s motivation by turning reading into a required, assigned task. Regardless of how cute or fun they try to make it, reading becomes extrinsically motivated, i.e. something you do because you’re supposed to do it, not because you yourself have discovered it to be valuable.

What motivates kids to read? That’s entirely contextual and has everything to do with what interests them in general. My daughter is motivated to read about Dick and Jane and Baby Sally and Spot and Puff, because she finds all these characters adorable and she loves the pictures. Other kids first learn to read because of video games, or dinosaurs, or magicians, or baseball. It depends on the kid.

Another assumption, probably the worst of them all, is that all children should learn to read at the same age. We all know that babies learn to walk at different ages and talk at different ages. The same thing goes for kids learning to read. At Sudbury schools, where kids aren’t forced to start reading before they’re ready, kids learn to read anywhere between 4 and 11 or even 12 years old. If you’re not naturally predisposed to read before the age of 10 and you are put into a traditional classroom at the age of 6, then you’ve got a long road ahead of you, potentially filled with heartache and demeaning labels. All because of a faulty assumption.

Reading is among the many skills that kids will naturally pick up in a literate society such as ours. But we as a society don’t trust the process. We act on faulty assumptions, apply a cookie cutter approach, make reading something you must learn in school, at the same age as everyone else, and then we wonder why we have an epidemic of “learning disabilities”. Could it be we’re doing more harm than good?

Where was I? Oh yes, my daughter is learning to read. This may be the start of a real growth spurt, or it might just be a passing phase, in which case she’ll pick it up again in some other context later on. Either way, we’re going to trust the process.

I noticed something last night. (It’s probably been obvious to everyone but me.) Even when I’m spending time that’s devoted to hanging out with the kids, I habitually avoid them. Some ways of avoiding them include doing certain kinds of things with them: like watching movies, or even reading to them. You may ask: how is reading to them avoiding them? Well, for me, reading out loud is an intrinsically enjoyable and challenging activity, and it allows me to “kill two birds with one stone” when I do it in front of my children. The point is that my aim is to do something that I like doing and that the kids will go along with. While it is wonderful to see them fully engaged in listening to a story, it’s also true that I often read to them as a way of not engaging them.

In particular, I avoid playing with them. I do like board games (well, certain ones anyway). But unstructured role-playing games are exhausting to me. They’re not engaging, for whatever reason. (One reason is probably that I just haven’t exercised those “muscles” in a long time, and my imagination is atrophying.) And my oldest son has been giving me this feedback lately. “You never play games with us!” Now I’m starting to see what he’s talking about.

I probably sound like a horrible father by now. Truthfully, I am a bit horrified at the realization that I so habitually avoid engaging my kids, even while spending lots of time with them. But I’m thankful that this insight is coming while I still have a chance to do something about it. Last night, convicted of my selfishness, I worked hard at engaging the kids on their level. This time that meant being a monster who eats kids and carries them on its shoulders while looking for more “meat” to eat. All around the house. Over and over again until bed time. (I slept well last night.) As a result, I felt more connected to the kids. And last night while I was tucking him in, my 3-year-old (who hardly ever says such things) told me with a beaming smile, “I love you, Daddy” and gave me a big, fat hug. That made it all worth it.

I’ve now resolved to find more ways to lose my selfishness and connect with my kids in ways that are uniquely meaningful to them, not just me.

I was proud of how he handled his own fears. We had talked often of what courage means: being afraid, and doing it anyway. Guided by that definition, he courageously boarded the bus despite his qualms about doing so.

In the end, we decided to pull him out, partly because he was experiencing such stress over it. He would say that he liked it (perhaps trying to please us), but he just wasn’t ready. Circumstances during the second week of school, including dog behavior issues and me being out of the country, combined to make for one big ball of stress. When I returned home, my wife and I had a big talk about it, and decided rather effortlessly to respond to what our son was telling us, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. We decided to homeschool, and indeed to try out this thing called “unschooling” that we had been reading about.

But one experience that first week of school stands out in my memory. My son had forgotten to bring his homework to school. So I drove to school and brought it to his classroom. I peeked inside and saw the kids standing in a group, singing a children’s song, being led by the teacher. My son didn’t see me at first, but then he looked up, smiled, and waved.

It’s hard to describe the feeling I had. I felt both attracted and repelled. It was so cute to see him willingly be led by the teacher in this song. He was cheerfully going right along with it. Even as I remember it now, I get a sort of sick nostalgic feeling. Despite the cuteness of it, I also felt that something was being destroyed inside him, or something of his personality was being undermined. The feeling I had is similar to the sick feeling I had on a couple of occasions as a child when my mom or someone else gave me a gift that I hated. I felt a mixture of gratitude and anger and guilt for feeling angry. Yuck, it really was a sick, sappy, weepy feeling.

That feeling played some role in our decision, but, by itself, it probably wouldn’t have caused me to pull him out after only two weeks. We’ve taken a very different path in our educational choices, and I have no doubt there are pros and cons to each decision we’ve made. But I do admit to taking some comfort in the fact that my son was as sensitive as he was to respond to Kindergarten in the way that he did, and that circumstances at the time propelled us so easily into choosing a different path.