Some thoughts from Jason

The recent rain (finally), has kept Kali and I mostly thinking about indoor projects for the past few days, which has brought some disappointment in that the front walk will not be finished as quickly as I had hoped. However, anyone who has ever received an eye exam from a five-year-old in baby blue panties and a purple tutu top is familiar with the compensations. Slowing down is sometimes necessary for me to appreciate what a precious treasure it is to have young children in my life. We’re getting housework and odd forays into the outdoors accomplished also, but it’s still a different pace and feeling from when I am trying to incorporate Kali into meaningful progress on a home improvement project.

Kali will be starting next week at Shenandoah Valley Community School, which is a small school based on a Free School or Unschool model that is available as a full time, accredited school option for children 5-11, but which currently happens to be serving families who wish to combine home schooling with a depressurized, democratic, student-initiated educational setting. That is to say there is a good number of students, but they are all part time. This is the way we will be approaching Kali’s schooling as well, but we have not yet formally signed up as a home school family, since she isn’t required by the state to be formally enrolled anywhere until next fall. The lack of formality has not, of course, prevented the irrepressible flow of questions from Kali’s mind to the nearest trusted ear. Many of her questions are mathematical, such as wondering what two times a google is. She recently counted to three hundred out loud to me, which, since it was the first time she’s gotten past the 120s, was anything but boring for me. Fortunately, she seems to have realized that the system is fairly repetitive once you get the hang of it, and has, at least temporarily, lost interest in further accomplishments in the counting department, sparing me what would surely have become a rather dull exercise in active listening. This is all to say that I feel the Free School model is essentially correct in its assertion--as I understand it--that children actually do want to learn, and usually need less prodding than opportunities and resources. I would add to that that having healthy adult models, especially when they can spend work time together, is an essential ingredient in optimal development. I feel that the most popular lifestyles in our society currently give short shrift to this need, and that school as it is usually configured does little to fill the void.

What school does provide (for most kids) is opportunities for developing friendships, which I feel is also extremely important. We hope that Kali can meet some cool kids at SVCS next week! She has her neighbor Reese and her church friends, as well as some cool cousins, but thus far we have not managed to turn those opportunities into the long hours of negotiated co-existence that I feel are the most foundational. Of course, she is only five, and is just now beginning, I feel, to be really ready to start focusing on peer relationships.

In so much of what I’ve written so far, I can’t help but notice how different this week would have been if Nora had still been with us. We would be accomplishing so much less, would be so much more stressed out, would be so much less present to Kali and her antics, would be aching with the burden of her suffering, and yet we find ourselves wishing it could be. It is still so painful, and yet not to shrunk from, to hear Kali making references to her baby sister almost in the present tense, as if the realization has yet to fully take effect. I passed another milestone in the journey yesterday, when I dusted the shelf under Nora’s picture for the first time since her death. We miss her so much. Jason