Hornblower over at Indefagitable put out a post “It is good enough to be kind” This is a post related to my thoughts upon reading her post. My thoughts may or may not actually be related to her post (and her follow up). This is a flow of thought post because I have been interrupted five times while typing it which is really my way of saying “here is half a thought that I had hoped to polish but ran out of time so let’s hope this is complete enough to make some sort of sense”
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Before I had children I didn’t give a fig about where they might go to school. Or what they might want to learn about. I don’t live in an area where there are such things as lotteries or schools that are significantly better than the next one. I also didn’t worry much about the burgeoning competition from India or China. I ran along in blissful ignorance.
Then I had my first boy.
I’m not sure when it began to creep in to my thinking but soon enough there it was: “What would he learn?, Where would he go?, Who would he be?” I found myself musing on what exactly my expectations would be for my children. It turned out I wasn’t fully on board with having a lot of expectations mostly because he was so tiny. It felt a little wrong to start out his life with a long and tedious list of things he’d HAVE to learn. So I asked myself what was the most important (to me) things that he MUST learn….I came up with two. He must learn to swim. He must learn to play piano.
That probably should have been my first indication that I was not going to define success in a typical manner. What is the world was I thinking defining my musts with just two….TWO things he must learn. I remember stating clearly at the time and I still do today: “all other activities will come because he wants to pursue them.” I was not going to require his participation for the sake of exposure. For the most part I have stuck with this. We present the options and give him an opportunity to select to participate….or not. Later when we found ourselves homeschooling, I expanded on my list to include a few more goals. They too were simple. And most recently I have added some life skills to the list.
My Manifesto for my kids*
Learn to swim so that you can save yourself.
Learn to play piano so that you will have music with you always.
Learn to read for pleasure and for knowledge
Learn to see the beauty of numbers and speak the language of math as fluently as possible.
Learn where food comes from begin with the seed and end with a meal on the table.
Learn how to do the laundry from sorting the loads through to matching the socks.
*I reserve the right to edit this list from now until perpetuity. I reserve the right to add and delete items from this list as you grow and change. Piano will never be deleted so go practice. You will learn to swim but I won’t send you to lessons until you are ready (will not burst into tears or have a panic attack). I however will probably continue to freak out around water even after you know how to swim. You have to love me anyway. Gardening does indeed count as learning where your food comes from so yes you do have to help weed the plants. Laundry is never done accept it now or you’ll still be grumbling about it when your thirty. I didn’t include all the little things but you should know them by heart: be kind, be polite, laugh, ask questions and most importantly above all else love.
