Monthly Archives: November 2020

Why remote learning is hard and how to make it easier

parenting

When my fourteen year old son went to high school at the beginning of the year, it was a great fit for him. He really loved it.

For five days.

Then a student had a positive corona test and all the boys were sent home. Zoom classes replaced in-person classes for the next week and a half. Then he returned for one more week of school before the break before the fall holidays. And that was it.

Since then, it’s been zoom, zoom, zoom.

Sitting in his room for hours every day across from a screen, alone. I didn’t like it at all. At one point I instructed him to sit at a table outside, facing the orchard next to our house. He said that it was much better – I knew being outdoors with fresh air, sunshine and the sight of nature would be a much better learning environment – but the internet connection wasn’t reliable and back to his room he went.

But he was learning and continued to feel motivated and connected to his teachers.

Then the school reopened for local ninth graders, but the dorm remained closed. So my son and three others who are too far for a daily commute were left alone on Zoom. As non-ideal as it is when the teacher is teaching directly on the screen to all the students, it becomes much less ideal when he is teaching in person to most of the students and just a few are left on the screen, ignored in the proverbial corner.

My son has amazed me with his consistent ability to show up on zoom classes with a good attitude, day after day. But when the announcement was made about the regular classes resuming (though not for him) he got discouraged and upset. How, he asked me, is he supposed to ask a question or have any personal interaction with his teacher in this situation? Hope that his teacher remembers to look at the screen to see if he has a question once an hour?

After hearing this news, the next day he didn’t attend online classes – he had lost his incentive to participate.

That day was followed by Shabbos, which allowed him to decompress. He took a long run with a friend on Saturday night to a local spring to burn off the frustration he was feeling – he was still wound up pretty tight – and came back feeling much calmer and more accepting of the situation. Not happy about it, but able to deal with it. And he went back to his online classes.

Fortunately, the school asked for parental feedback and enough of us voted for a capsule that they finally opened the ninth grade dorm yesterday. (A capsule means, they keep the kids isolated as a group for an extended period; they each have to have a negative corona test to be allowed in, no entrances or exits are allowed once the capsule ‘closes’; no connection with other students not in the same capsule.) I was so happy to take my son to school yesterday. And he is SO happy to be back!

I believe globally we’re going to be paying the emotional and developmental price for this online learning ‘solution’ for years to come. Kids aren’t meant to learn like this.

>> BH my son just became a bar mitzvah. Thank G-d he has matured a lot in the past few years and all the skills I learned from you have been very helpful. Recently with the whole remote learning we see that he is unmotivated and takes very little initiative in completing his work. I wouldn’t say he was ever super motivated but he learned in school and did ok grades wise. Now it’s a disaster. I was hoping you could give me some guidance about how to build in my son an innate desire for learning and motivation to help him be more successful. Thank you! <<

For years, the main question people have asked of me as a homeschooler has been, “What about socialization?” It wasn’t hard for people to picture kids doing well academically in the home environment, but it became clear to me after hearing this question for so many years, that the most important part of school was social.

And now, students have had the most important component of school taken away, and parents are left focusing on the academics as if it’s an independent issue from the learning environment.

It’s not.

We really can’t directly create intrinsic motivation and desire for anything. This is an organic process that happens on its own, that is part of an emotional maturing process that comes from within the child. What we can do is create external conditions that support the child’s maturation process.

This consists of a lot of emotional connection, emotional safety and emotional space. Developing interests actually comes in the quiet spaces in our lives, not when we’re scheduled and kept busy from the outside. We have to find the emptiness to want to fill it. We can help our kids make room for an interest to develop by backing off and giving them room to find their interests. (This suggestion generally makes parents very anxious and the process of waiting for the interest to emerge requires a lot of trust in the inherent maturational process; it often looks like they are lazing around and zoning out for a while).

The ideal learning situation is when a student has an interest in the material and a connection with the teacher. In this situation, you’ll see students do super well – they stay engaged, the enjoy learning, they want to be there.

When one of those is missing, learning can still happen.

When both interest and connection are missing, learning will come to a standstill. And then you have the unmotivated student.

When all my son’s ninth grade class was on Zoom, he told me that hardly anyone was paying attention. Honestly, this is predictable – the question we should really ask is why are some students able to learn effectively on Zoom? (The answer is above – a combination of interest and connection with the teacher.)

How can you get a child who feels no connection to the material or teacher to care about it? You can’t.

You really can’t.

This is why people then try to use the carrot/stick approach. To promise incentives, and when that doesn’t work, to use penalties or punishments. That includes the withdrawal of our positive feelings about them.

My suggestion would be to pull back as much as possible regarding your expectations of his participation on Zoom. I know parents feel like they have to make sure their kids are showing up for their online classes, but understand it’s asking something unreasonable and unnatural of our kids to learn in this way. Perhaps you can look at his schedule with him, and ask him to pick the most important classes for him to show up at – like two or three a day.

(Honestly, I don’t think any of us adults would be able to sit through hours of classes on topics that we don’t care about, day after day. If we continued to show up at the screen daily, we would zone out and open another window on our screen, to read or watch videos of things that interest us more.)

Encourage him to find outlets or hobbies for all of that pent up energy. Teenage boys are meant to be moving around a LOT! If he wants to talk about why he doesn’t like online learning, be willing to hear him out without telling him why it’s important for him to do it anyway.

Let him know how awesome you think he is, independent of his school success. Honestly, it matters so little in the course of one’s life how he does in school. What is much, much more important is that he feels loved and appreciated, and has some feeling of success in an area that matters to him.

My thirteen year old was feeling kind of blah – hardly any kids his age around, no extracurricular activities available, politics in the shul that made it an unpleasant environment…Then of his own volition he began learning in the evenings hilchos shechita with a local shochet. He found a different shul to attend where people are warm and welcoming (he gets up for neitz – the sunrise service – and enjoys having breakfast there before coming home). Then he had a couple of extended jobs come his way working for people he likes, and making money. He feels purposeful and positive about his days now.

I don’t see the blah period as a bad thing; it’s actually an inherent part of his life getting better. There has to be awareness of having a space to fill, and a desire to fill it, before someone can make choices that feel better to them.

Avivah

When I don’t want to write about Down syndrome because it’s hard.

Trisomy 21

Tonight Yirmi (8) was almost run over by a car.

You know how I said in October that I was going to share thoughts about Down syndrome, and then didn’t?

It’s because it’s so hard sometimes. So, so hard.

I’ve asked myself, what’s the point in writing about the difficulties, in telling you how overwhelmed and discouraged and exhausted I sometimes feel? What is the gain, who benefits? Do I need to write to get it out for myself? So you empathize with me? No. So I don’t write anything.

To add to that, I don’t want to negatively impact the perspective towards people with Down syndrome. Because there are so many societal stereotypes to overcome that are hurdles for the person with Down syndrome. So I don’t write anything.

And yet, what about my reality? To ignore all the challenges and not write about any of it seems dishonest. By not acknowledging the challenges, all my positive posts would be taken on their own without any counterbalance to accurately reflect my daily experience.

Yirmi is an awesome kid. Truly. He’s smart and kind and enjoyable to spend time with. 

And he’s been an ‘eloper’ (I’m choosing the more positive term rather than ‘runner’ or ‘escaper’) since before he turned three.

This is common with kids with T21, and it was my biggest concern (other than government involvement) when I thought about fostering a baby with T21. Because I didn’t know if I could deal with it with another child. (I reassured myself that it wasn’t a sure thing that he would become a runner, and maybe without Yirmi’s tutelage, he wouldn’t have been…..).

Generally this is an issue parents face with very young children for a short time that is pretty easily managed by just keeping the door locked. But when kids get older, they become very capable of unlocking doors, climbing through windows, over gates and fences, out of cars….

I’ve spent over five years, every single day, wherever I am, monitoring Yirmi’s whereabouts. Early in the morning before I’ve even fully woken up and opened my eyes, my ears are already listening to hear if he’s awake and trying to leave the house. 

When he was five, we had double sided coded locks installed on our entry door. Overnight, the stress level of every single person in the house went way down. It wasn’t perfect and there were still many instances to deal with, but it dramatically cut down on the management aspect.

And then we moved here 7.5 months ago, which has been so wonderful in so many ways.  Where there are many more possible ways to get out than one, and with a child who is bright, curious, persistent and determined – all our efforts to keep him in fail. Fences, gates, locks…it takes him just a couple of minutes to figure out a way out.

So it comes down to constant surveillance, and that fails, too. Because it’s actually impossible to not take your eyes off of a child in the course of a day.

Since Yirmi turned eight this summer, I’ve realized that he isn’t generally doing something inherently dangerous, he’s not running away – he’s running toward friendship, connection and stimulation. 

It’s normal for an eight year old to want to get out, to see people, to have experiences. It’s appropriate and understandable. I don’t want to turn my home into a jailed fortress (though believe me, I’ve seriously considered it many, many times). It’s been really important for me to remember that this isn’t a behavior issue but a processing issue.

What that means is the natural desire for independence isn’t tempered with an awareness of danger. Additionally, it’s as if he has no memory of anything we’ve repeatedly talked about on this topic – our constant reminders and discussions about needing to ask us before he goes somewhere – even if it was two minutes before. It literally makes no impact.

So things happen.

Tonight I brought him home from playing at the neighbors, and started to prepare the foods he requested. I turned around…and he was gone, again.

I assumed he went to play with the neighboring children in the area near our garden gate (that’s usually where he is), and a few minutes later, I asked my older son to see where he had gotten to.

Before my son left to get him, someone came to our house asking if I was his mother. She informed me that as he sped down the hill from our home on his ride-on car straight into the traffic of the main street that our street dead ends into, he had almost been hit by a car.

She described how he flew in front of a car whose driver slammed on his brakes, missing him by a hairsbreadth. She and another person who saw what happened both told me that he went between the wheels – presumably she meant he flew between the wheels of the car that stopped and the one right ahead of him – but it was clear that it was a very dramatic, very close miss.

It had been five minutes that he had been out of sight.

I went to retrieve him from the store on the other side of the street where he was waiting, not wanting to look at any of the other customers. I didn’t want to hear any comments about why can’t you watch your child, and don’t you know he almost got killed and where were you???

No one has any suggestions about how to keep track of him that I haven’t already tried. All I hear is, “You need to be more careful.”

How? How can I be more careful than I already am? He’s bright and capable – and his processing ability isn’t like a typical kid. So his impulsivity has nothing to balance it.

I know one day this isn’t going to be an issue. But right now, that feels far away and it takes a lot of emotional energy to get through the day. I try to begin my day with quiet meditative time in which I fill my mind with positive thoughts about Yirmi; this makes a huge difference as the day unfolds. When I don’t do it, by the end of a day I feel like I simply can’t live like this. Not one more day.

This ongoing, years-long challenge has been significant not just for me, but all of our family members living at home. It’s draining for everyone; it’s definitely not all unicorns and rainbows, that’s for sure. There are blessings and challenges with every child, and for me raising a child with Down syndrome has meant more of everything. I feel the blessing more and I feel the challenge more.

Avivah

The Biggest Little Farm – permaculture as a parallel for healthy parenting

gardening, parenting

Today I watched a movie that my husband saw on his flight from the US over 18 months ago. He told me then that he thought I’d love it; I finally enjoyed it with the boys today.

The Biggest Little Farm is a beautifully filmed true story of a couple that decides to leave the city, buys dried up farmland and uses biodynamic principles to turn the land into a lush, healthy biosphere where crops and animals live in harmony and support one another in a cycle that becomes increasingly more powerful as time goes on.

Ducks are used to remedy the massive snail infestation, nesting boxes are installed to encourage predatory birds to make their homes in the orchard where gophers are damaging the tree roots and birds are eating the fruits, and animal waste products are a critical part of the process of strengthening the soil. (When the person was enthusing about the waste cycle supporting soil health, one of my boys laughingly said, “Just like you, Mommy!” Yep, me and my appreciation of duck doo. 🙂 )

Afterwards I was musing about how an approach that trusts the effectiveness of natural principles always means keeping your vision on the long term and investing more upfront. No quick fix to get the results you want and sometimes it looks like those using mainstream approaches are getting ahead, but by working together with nature, your efforts end up supported rather than thwarted and your job becomes easier and easier over time.

Exactly like parenting.

It feels harder when your child is throwing a tantrum to listen and guide their emotions, rather than firmly tell them to stop crying. It seems easier to punish a child who isn’t acting the way you want (an example from the film would be to shoot the coyote), but those problems then only temporarily go away. And new problems are created with that approach.

When you build your child up with your belief in them and your belief what they can be (ie trust the natural principles and be willing to give them time to mature, just as true of plants as children) instead of breaking them down with your criticisms and frustrations (film parallel – douse the crops with heavy doses of pesticides), they become stronger and stronger, and need less and less management and feedback the older they become.

This film is a heartening vision of what is possible, and seeing what is possible rather than being told how the world is on self-destruct mode is certainly a much more appealing approach for me. And it’s possible on a very small scale – these are principles that I try to integrate into my gardening.

Another very enjoyable and educational documentary that we watched three weeks ago was Kiss The Ground – I found it free on youtube but when I just now did a quick search to link it for you, I don’t see it there now. It might have been pulled or you might need to search a little longer than thirty seconds. 🙂 It’s worth the watch; if I had to choose between the above two films, I personally preferred Kiss The Ground because it was so much more informative though the cinematography of The Biggest Little Farm was fantastic.

There is also a TED talk (this was the first thing that I watched on the topic, after lots of casual online reading) on the transformative power of regenerative agriculture, the approach detailed in Kiss The Ground, ‘How regenerative farming can help heal the planet and human health’ by Charlie Massy. Understanding carbon sounds like a bore but it’s really interesting and actually has the power to reverse decades of damage to our planet.

Avivah

My first grandson, gardening and other random stuff

gardening, homemaking, parenting

A couple of weeks ago my oldest daughter called to let me know she was in labor, and since the next night I was scheduled as the keynote speaker for the online Jewish Homeschool Convention on the topic of: How to Enjoy Homeschooling: Trusting your child, yourself and the learning process, I quickly jumped online to give you the details before I headed out to be with her.

Unfortunately, it was only two weeks later when I got online again here that I saw that in my haste I didn’t push the ‘publish’ button! However, there are recordings of the great lineup of speakers for a nominal fee, if you’re looking for some inspiration/perspective/encouragement.

Back to my laboring daughter…I now have a beautiful grandson, joining our three granddaughters.

When my husband and I had a new baby, for the most part we were on our own. It wasn’t until our seventh child was born that we had parents living nearby, but by then we were used to doing everything ourselves and they were used to us doing everything ourselves, so the main support for me after birth was my husband and children. When there was a shalom zachor/ bris to make, we (ie my husband and kids) made all the food, did all the setup, cleanup and organizing. It’s so nice how different it is for my daughter to have so many family members to lend a hand – all of the adult married kids were commenting on how very different it is from when they were growing up.

We were hosted for four days by our second daughter, who lives a short walk from her older sister and made us feel very much at home. Not an easy feat, when hosting seven people all day and night (in addition to hosting the bris) in a two bedroom apartment! We rarely go away – the last time was for my daughter’s Shabbos sheva berachos almost three years ago – and we all enjoyed it so much.

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I wrote and rewrote in my head various posts for Down Syndrome Awareness month over the last weeks, and didn’t post any of them despite my intentions. I hope to share about why another time (time allowing, which is the big challenge).

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The weather report said that rain is imminent and that caused a flurry of activity in the last couple of days. Firstly, since we don’t have a storage shed, we decided after Sukkos ended to leave our schach in place on top of the pergola, and then to top that with a rainproof covering. Yesterday we bought the heavy duty covering and last night got my husband and ds13 got everything covered and rain tight. Such a relief to have it done before the rain!

Then it was on to preparing a dry spot for our animals for the rain. Right now that means two ducks, four quail and three chickens. (We got a chicken chick to keep the sole surviving quail chick from the batch he incubated company, but then the chicken outgrew the quail and we borrowed two chicks from a neighbor to keep the chicken company!) The boys decided to take the chickens to a local farm for the winter, where they previously sent our two muscovy ducks when a neighbor complained about them perching on our mutual fence a couple of months ago.

Ds13 waterproofed the quail pen and ds11 waterproofed the duck coop, and then ds11 and I laid out a path of synthetic grass leading to the animal area so that they won’t track mud into the house when it rains. (At least not from that area!) Ds13 pounded in six foot posts and strung a tarp over it to make a dry spot to keep their bikes in the backyard.

We also cleaned up the little corner of my yard that has become a dumping ground for various project materials. Before we bought the used kitchen that we installed (I’ll do an update on that separately, I’m pleased with how it’s turned out), we got another kitchen that didn’t work for us (it was my husband’s first time making that kind of purchase- usually I buy those things – and he used it as a valuable learning experience.)

Though we gave away all those cabinets, I’m left with three slabs of granite countertops and two sinks that I might want to use when I redo the kitchen upstairs. Yesterday I spoke to the handyman I was told could do this kind of work but he said that he can’t do the finely skilled cuts for an indoor kitchen that I would want. So I’ll think a little longer about if there’s another project I want to use them- a potting sink for the garden, maybe? -before passing them along.

Then there were all the boards stacked messily and other odds and ends from various projects. We cut some of the boards down yesterday to make additional shelving inside the kitchen cabinets and neatly stacked all the rest, so now we can get rid of all wood that was left. It’s so nice to have it look nice and be possible to walk through that small area.

I’ve done lots in the garden, and there’s still plenty to do! There’s actually something quite nice about that; it’s not a pressure for me. I really enjoy gardening. I’ve been fairly steadily adding to the garden beds – I have nine fruit trees now, along with a grape vine and a pitango bush, so most of my additions have been decorative plants and a few palm trees.

My next project is to install a drip irrigation system and possibly sprinklers if that will be necessary for grass; I made an appointment with a gardener to come in a couple of days for a consult so I can understand what’s involved, and see what installation we’re ready to take on ourselves. Then I want to put down some sod grass so I’ll have something beautiful instead of a big mud puddle in the winter. There’s not much of a chance of successfully growing grass from seed with two ducks free ranging around!

I recently learned the term dehisence, and for the first time recognized what the seed pods of periwinkle look like. My eyes were opened to the possibilities of gathering seeds. I gathered a bunch of the periwinkle seed pods with ds13, then we went on to gather seeds from the yellow gazanias and orange marigolds. I told him he could sprinkle some in whatever garden bed he wanted, and we’d see what came up. I’m not such a fan of planting seeds because I don’t tend to get them to a big enough size to transplant into the garden before something happens to them, but I’m packing these away and in a few months will plant them to have ready for the early summer.

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On a communal note, we enjoyed hosting a minyan in our yard during the Sukkos break (our family members made up half the minyan!). We even had a sefer Torah, which was very special. Once the boys went back to yeshiva, we ended the minyan. However, we appreciated the sense of connection with other attendees that was created and would like to continue to help build a sense of community at a time that it seems to be disappearing. Beginning this Saturday night, we’ll be hosting a weekly melave malka/kumsitz for men and teen boys.

Not to leave out the girls, though! Because quiet time for me to write or prepare classes is so limited in my life at this stage – and being that I get up so early, it’s challenging to stay up late enough to give classes – I’ve hesitated about offering classes for women even though I’m a teacher to my core. But a recent conversation with a teen inspired me to offer a teen girls discussion group/kumsitz, beginning this Saturday night. The focus will be what is essentially at the heart of all my classes, regardless of the topic, living a life with meaning and joy. And since I’ve committed to doing it, I’m going to somehow find time to prepare and stay awake!

I thought I’d leave you with my weekly menu plan, but naturally my planner has temporarily disappeared and since I can’t remember it by heart, I’ll have to leave you with my good intentions instead. 🙂
Since ds13 has recently gotten interested in cheese making, I’ve spent a lot of money on milk and we’ve been enjoying homemade yogurt and cottage cheese for breakfast this last week. I can also tell you that lunch today was chicken jambalaya and dinner is supposed to be sweet potato peanut burgers but will be a simplified version since I didn’t feel like making something with that many steps later in the day. :):)

Sending you all my warmest wishes for a wonderful week to come!

Avivah