Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Natural Learning Approach
(continued)
Make it clear to them you expect responsible behaviour and model it yourself. This involves consulting with them when making decisions, allowing them the opportunity to make important decisions. Risk taking is a natural part of development. Make time for joint decision making, planning, reflection and discussion of responsibilities.
Discuss goals together, and how to implement and evaluate effort. For example, ask what they want to do, how they want to do it, what they will need, and what it should look like when finished. Value the process, it is more important than the outcome. Be interested, but not overwhelming. It is, after all, their learning process.
Offer challenges in response to their development based on your loving observation of them. Allow and encourage them to organise their own time, belongings, personal life and learning projects. Make plenty of time for them to pursue their own interests and activities, valuing their play as learning in action.
Involve them in everyday ‘real’ life. They may need help to finish most tasks but this is real learning and develops self-esteem and responsibility. Provide them with opportunities for social growth outside of the immediate family, with people of all ages and cultural groups. You need to be resourceful and imaginative, adaptive and creative, and able to locate resources according to the need.
Take the time to really listen to them as they talk to you and ask you questions, and use complex language in a natural, not contrived, way. Promote their own language development by example and practice. ‘Listen’ to your children’s non-verbal as well as spoken communication and actions, and try to make sense of them in order to better understand your children’s needs in all areas. Respond in meaningful and useful ways at all times.
Don’t test the children. Children are quite able to, and do, challenge themselves as part of their own development. They adequately ‘test’ themselves when they ‘know’ they can succeed. Once they have demonstrated to themselves they can do something, they will enthusiastically engage your attention to demonstrate their new skill. Trust them. Left alone, children never fail - we ‘fail’ them all too often.
Encourage children to ‘have a go’ before they demand or ask for help. This means allowing for accidents and mistakes. Mistakes are simply lessons - treat them as positive learning events, not disasters! Frequently children can already accomplish the task themselves, but their confidence is lacking. Loving guidance and allowing them to try without judging their results builds independence and self-esteem.
Make offers of help or instruction or intervention, but don’t control or direct activities unless your children request it.
Allow the child to be your teacher by showing you how you can help them learn. See how they do this for you naturally in any case. Respect their knowledge and abilities as different but equal in value to your own.
Don’t clutter up life with ‘unnecessary’ rituals or interruptions - things that cause obstructions to the children’s activities. Be sensitive to their needs as well as your own. If you give them a lot of time to use as they wish, they will be more than willing to compromise later and co-operate with you. Children are usually reasonable and fair until taught how to be otherwise. However, all children, especially younger ones, thrive on some routine; predictability offers security. Examine carefully the need to ‘finish’ everything - a seemingly important aspect of our western culture. Is the learning in the ‘doing’, or the ‘done’? Perhaps it is not as important to finish as to recognise the accomplishment in learning new skills and abilities. Discipline is learned gradually. Allow the children to choose when, and if, to finish a task, project, piece or work, etc., or negotiate a contract with clear expectations and conditions.
Take the children seriously. Observe them closely without invading their privacy. Children are the first and best source of information about themselves, not the latest child development best seller or curriculum document. Take note of their comments, questions, answers, behaviours, interactions, etc. Then interpret the observations to see how you can enhance their development, how you can help them grow and learn.
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Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
