I wrote that post last night about embracing entropy and accepting disequilibrium. And wouldn’t you know, this morning the kids got up early and my daughter begged me to do a math lesson and my son cooperated during the lesson by only making a small mess feeding the pattern blocks to the cats and trying to sharpen pencils. I’m not ready to call “equilibrium” just yet. We did start out the morning with a monumental tantrum from the little guy because I wouldn’t let him get a wet diaper out of the garbage and put it back on. But I’m feeling much more confident that things will work out okay.
I think about the day so far and can flag a number of things that have irritated me but that now seem to have solutions without me forcing solutions. Some examples:
“My daughter hasn’t done math in nearly a month! Will she ever want to do math again? How can I get her back into a routine?”
I’ve been reading all of this stuff about Thomas Jefferson Education, which is all about “inspire, not require.” The idea is that we never force our children to learn anything. We introduce them to a variety of subjects, ready to assist them in learning when they express an interest. This is how my daughter learned to read and how she’s already doing basic multiplication and how she’s halfway through Suzuki Flute Book Two. But now that she’s six and we need to “officially” start homeschooling according to the state, I’m getting really nervous about just letting her learn as she wants to, in spite of the fact that I really do believe it’s the best way for kids (and anyone) to learn. When she asked without me suggesting it to do a lesson in her Saxon Math book, I felt hopeful that inspiring, not requiring might actually work.
“My kids are getting up so late every day. It’s out of control! How will I be able to have any routine at all if they’re sleeping until 9 every morning?”
It’s kind of silly for me to complain about my kids sleeping in. They’ve both always been early risers and I’ve always complained about that fact. Who wouldn’t complain about a child who, from age two to age three, thought a proper wake-up time was 4:30am? At the time we lived in an 850-square-foot apartment near San Francisco, but I found myself wishing we had cows so at least it would make more sense for me to be up two hours before the sun. But I got used to early mornings, and this “sleep until 9” thing has me irritated. This morning, however, both children were up before 7. Problem solved, I suppose, as long as earlier bedtime goes along with it.
“If I had access to my cloth diapers, the little guy wouldn’t be trying to dig dirty dipes out of the trash. I have all of these cloth diapers in storage, and here I am using disposables, polluting the environment, hindering our EC progress, and spending more money than I want to.”
Well, this one isn’t solved. I still find it irritating, but there’s not really a practical solution at this point. Three more weeks of disposables and we can go back to our preferred bottom coverings. And the little guy is doing pretty well with the pottying, even with the ultra-absorbent core. He even told us when he had to go poo (and used the public restroom for this purpose) when we were out at Old Sturbridge Village Saturday.
So, today I’m telling myself a big, old, “I told you so.” Nothing like gloating to myself about myself.
Imperfect Happiness 