Love in a Time of Homeschooling Read online

  “Look at this, Julia.” I pointed to my narrow structure, twenty-one stories, teetering, collapsing. “Wouldn’t you like to build a tower?”

  She glanced at my pile of rubble and shook her head. Sighing, I stood up and walked across the room, determined to teach my daughter, now three years old, the art of balancing one block upon another. But when I reached her corner and looked at the floor, there before her knees lay a wooden dragon with a long red-and-green tail and triangular spikes arranged across its back, its feet, and its huge snout—the first of many dragons to come.

  “Julia,” I murmured, “I love it.”

  “If I had a grant,” Molly once stated, “I would spend a year observing Julia. She seems to learn in ways that I’ve never seen before.”

  But Julia’s time with Molly was all too short. The next year, Julia moved upstairs to join the “big kids,” ages three through six, in a space three times as large, with twenty-eight children, two teachers, and one assistant. The transition, to put it mildly, was not a success. Most children flew from Molly’s nest with pride in their mature status, excited by the many shelves of materials in their new classroom and delighted by the expansive size of the upper playground. Julia, however, refused to take flight. She took one look at the upper classroom, with its crowd and noise and constant motion, and she balked. She wanted to go back downstairs and stay with the little ones.

  “It’s not a problem,” Molly assured us. “Many children like to make a gradual transition. After a while she’ll get tired of this, and the upstairs class will seem more appealing. In the meantime, she can come down here as much as she likes.”

  For two months Julia spent half the day, every day, in the toddler classroom, showing no signs of letting go. She didn’t mind that the newcomers were half her age and still in diapers. She barely noticed them. She remained absorbed in her own work, her own marbles and tongs. Eventually the upstairs teachers became exasperated. With my guilty acquiescence, Julia was exiled from the toddler space—the first in the string of losses that we adults know as life.

  This was my initial encounter with my daughter’s aversion to change: the tears, the howling fury, the desire to go back, back, back. In coming years, the trait would appear over and over—most notably in dismay at home improvements. A simple change—a scratched brick fireplace newly covered with ceramic tile—would cause Julia to weep for twenty minutes. Once, when I hired a contractor to demolish our thin, crooked front porch and build a wider screened space, Julia complained for months. She mourned the holly bush that was cut down in the process, and the original porch columns, which were octagonal cement lampposts.

  Many human beings, young and old, deplore change. What seemed unusual in a child less than ten years old was Julia’s capacity for profound nostalgia. From her preschool years forward, she vocalized the belief that all human life, and her life in particular, was better in the past. Her yearnings for her toddler classroom were mirrored at age five, when she entered a public kindergarten, full of lamentations for her lost Montessori world. From first grade forward, she longed to return to kindergarten, with its blocks and Legos and dolls. At every stage, she became more convinced that life got harder—not more interesting—as she aged. Each new year brought new responsibilities, added homework, and the incremental loss of basic comforts. Soon, in her average school day, the toys would be gone, the carpet gone, the background music gone. By middle school, recess would be gone.

  And all of these losses began at age three, when she never quite adjusted to her new Montessori classroom. Over the next two years Julia would often cry when John or I brought her to school.

  “Just drop her off and drive away,” advised the teachers, who met the line of cars at the preschool gate. “It’s worse if you linger. You’d be surprised how quickly the kids dry their eyes and jump into their work as soon as the parents are gone.”

  One teacher added this bit of wisdom: “Don’t worry if Julia doesn’t want to go when you drop her off. The real question is whether she wants to stay when you come to pick her up.”

  Therein lay my comfort. Because, at twelve-thirty, whenever I came to retrieve my daughter, she was never eager to leave. At pickup time, when parents parked their cars and went inside the classroom, I would inevitably find Julia absorbed in a puzzle, a painting, a collection of tiny barnyard animals. I welcomed her absorption as a sign of contentment, but her concentration was often so complete it was hard to drag her away. Other children might complain when it was time to go; they might beg for a few more minutes, maybe whine and drag their heels, but eventually they would finish their work and follow along. Julia, however, often refused to budge. She remained oblivious to time and to the needs of her waiting sisters. Oblivious to me, with my string of errands to complete.

  If I could have given my daughter any gift in the world, I would have given her endless bundles of time, hours and years and centuries. Time to explore every caterpillar on the playground, to cover every inch of a canvas with intricate detail, to finish every game, every puzzle, every book. To me, Julia’s imagination was a constant source of wonder, but she was often painstakingly slow at her tasks, sometimes because of her wandering mind, sometimes because of her meticulous attention. She maintained a separate schedule that never fit the group, and at the end of the school day, I sometimes had to resort to lifting her up and carrying her out scratching and screaming, while the other mothers watched. “Yes,” I felt like saying, “my daughter is a wild animal.”

  “Transitions are hard,” the teachers would say. “Go to your car, and we will bring her to you.” (Like most children, Julia would obey a teacher more readily than a parent—one of the big challenges behind homeschooling.) Meanwhile, they recommended books to read, such as Raising Your Spirited Child. But I suspected that Julia’s behavior was something different from mere willfulness. Both her creativity and her resistance to transitions (from one grade to the next, one hour to the next) seemed to stem from a deep inwardness, an engagement with her own imaginative universe, which often cut her off from the customs and schedules of the world around her.

  This trait had already manifested itself in her social life. By age three it was clear that Julia was not engaging readily with her peers. In the classroom, she rarely spoke to other children, unless they spoke first. On the playground, she would dig or climb or run, but usually alone. If other children joined her, she welcomed them, but she seldom looked for companions. “The other children seem comfortable with her,” the teachers assured me. “And she seems fine with them. She doesn’t seem to be shy; she just prefers to be alone.” Then the teachers would tell me about the benefits of independence, and the problems of children who were never happy alone. “To be content with oneself is a gift,” they said. “Our society places too much emphasis on social life.”

  I knew all about that. I knew that genius often springs from solitude, and that Albert Einstein avoided other children. (Mothers with unusual children always point to Albert Einstein.) Little Albert was right to prefer solitude, since the boys of his day spent so much time playing soldier in an ominous prelude to their eventual goose-stepping.

  I had been somewhat solitary as a child, happy with the silence of books and puzzles. But I had always enjoyed two or three good friends with whom I could play whenever the desire struck. And because of my social delicacy, I knew firsthand that people who are happy alone can also yearn for companionship; they can feel their separateness like a deficiency in the bones.

  John, meanwhile, had no sphere of reference for fathoming Julia’s lone-wolf nature. He had been a social child, and was now a happily extroverted adult—the sort who could stretch a five-minute grocery store errand into an hour-long social event. To him, Julia’s preference for solitude was a strange anomaly, but no great cause for concern.

  “Given a choice between a box of Legos and a pair of kids, Julia will choose the Legos. Maybe that’s antisocial, or maybe she just knows what she wants. What can you do?”

>   I, for one, was determined to do something. Over the next few years I planned playdates and sleepovers and elaborate birthday parties. I took Julia to dance classes and art workshops—any place she might feel encouraged to be social.

  “Isn’t this too much?” John asked. “Ice hockey was my only scheduled activity when I was a kid; other than that, I just played outside.”

  “But you lived in a neighborhood full of children,” I explained. “If Julia wants to see kids her age, I have to bring them out here, or take her to events in town. And she seems to like these activities. At least, that’s what she says.”

  My efforts bore fruit in playdates and birthday party invitations. Still, Julia never became easygoing in a group. Left in a room with one child, she might start a conversation. Left with three or more, she would usually walk away.

  Meanwhile, preschool ended and she was destined for the public schools. Our small Montessori program was not offering kindergarten the following fall, something they had done in the past and would resume in the future. Instead, Julia’s teachers said farewell with cautionary phrases.

  “I hope Julia is assigned teachers who will appreciate her unique nature”—the parting words of Carmen, Julia’s upstairs teacher.

  “She would be an ideal candidate for a Montessori elementary program,” Molly added. “Her style of learning is different from the public school routine.” But the nearest Montessori program was an hour away, and I was not willing to face the drive, or the steep tuition. Besides, our town’s small elementary school seemed charming—far superior to anything John or I had experienced as a child.

  I had attended the public schools in Raleigh, North Carolina, during the early years of desegregation. Grade school in those days was most notable for lessons in water fountain bigotry, taught by a few authoritative white children, who claimed that if you drank from a fountain after a black person, the water would taste bad. I tried it a few times and imagined that, yes, I could taste a slight difference. Not enough to make me go thirsty, or to stand around and wait for some white kid’s lips to purify the water, but just enough to make me think.

  The adults at my elementary school taught their own disturbing lessons, mostly in the form of thick wooden paddles. My second-grade teacher handled the paddling for the entire grade, and I can still recall her dragging a limp, screaming boy across our classroom’s linoleum and stuffing his crumpled body into the tiny, pine-walled bathroom in the corner. For the next few minutes our class listened to the smacks and howls, until eventually Mrs. Strand emerged alone and continued the history lesson, while gasping sobs and whimpers filtered through the pine door.

  As for John, his elementary years were spent on the receiving end of the paddling. He was the sort of high-energy boy who today would be dosed with Ritalin, but in the 1960s was treated with multiple visits to the principal’s office. John never minded the paddling—he was used to that at home—but he did object to the soap that Sister Mary Catherine stuffed into his mouth. Once, she forgot about his bar of Irish Spring until the foam started running down his throat, and the child next to John announced, “You have bubbles coming out of your ears!”

  I suspect that many homeschooling parents were driven by dismal grade-school memories. Considering our dreary experiences, one might ask why John and I didn’t homeschool all of our daughters from day one. The answer lies in the promise of a small school system located in a college town where education takes center stage. To our jaded eyes, the tiny school district of Lexington, Virginia (which consists of one elementary school and one middle school), seemed naïvely endearing.

  In Lexington, there are no paddles, no soap-stuffed mouths, and no serious drugs or alcohol until ninth grade, when the city merges with the county to form a larger, consolidated senior high. The school that Julia planned to enter in the fall looked like something Mr. Rogers would have endorsed. Waddell Elementary’s dignified brick structure stands in a tree-filled neighborhood where hundred-year-old houses sell for half a million dollars. (My elementary school neighborhood consisted of middle-class ranch houses most memorable for the guy who liked to perform naked calisthenics in front of his picture window every morning while hordes of squealing girls spied through his boxwood hedges.)

  Julia’s school seemed to be a secure haven surrounded by natural beauty. Woods Creek, which skirted her Montessori preschool, flowed behind Waddell Elementary as well, and although a tall fence kept children away from danger at the water’s edge, at recess they could see ducks paddling and hear water cascading over a small dam.

  Between the creek and the elementary school’s back wall, a large garden beckoned, with sunflowers and rosy arbors. It was the brainchild of a gracious retired couple, who had conceived, created, and maintained the “Roots and Shoots Garden” with the help of children and community members. Each elementary grade tended a separate space: the kindergartners nurtured a “sunflower farm” while the first graders maintained the Peter Rabbit Garden, where a small jacket, shirt, and shoes hung on a scarecrow’s empty cross. The largest space was assigned to second-graders, who helped to seed and weed several raised vegetable beds, growing enough golden spuds for an annual potato bake. Meanwhile, the third-graders maintained an alphabet garden: A is for aster, B is for black-eyed Susan, C is for coneflower. From there, a blooming arch led to the fourth-graders’ herb garden, overgrown with basil, lemon balm, sorrel, and catmint; and beside that stood the fifth-graders’ butterfly garden. This lovely outdoor classroom also held tiny Edens in little corners not assigned to any grade. Julia’s favorite was the fairy garden, a five-by-five space where three-inch gnomes and winged ceramic creatures kneeled on mossy rocks, mingling among painted toadstools at the edge of a tiny pond. To the left of the garden were a baseball diamond, a basketball blacktop, swings beneath shady trees, and a vast wooden playscape with slides and wobbly bridges and miniature climbing walls.

  The garden made me hopeful for Julia’s education. It seemed a living testament that here were people who cared about nature, community, and children. Decades from now, Julia might look back on her elementary school years with a fondness for that patch of ground.

  And inside the school? There, the class size averaged around sixteen students, led by teachers who were very bright and kind—people the children knew from the local grocery stores, or swimming pool, or churches. As for the families, since our town’s two chief employers were a pair of colleges, Washington and Lee University, and the Virginia Military Institute, most of the parents had a deep commitment to education.

  Nothing about Waddell’s environment would have steered me toward homeschooling. In fact, John and I felt lucky to have such a pleasant school in our town. Many American families are less fortunate, facing overcrowded classrooms, dangerous disciplinary problems, and exhausted or unmotivated teachers. But Waddell Elementary wasn’t like that. In Lexington’s ideal environment, where natural beauty and small-town values combined with the intellect of a college crowd, I thought that Julia might enjoy her school. She might learn in a loving environment, making friends and nurturing her spirit. Everything might be okay.

  Or not. Despite all of the promising signs, Julia’s early days at Waddell were awash in tears. Every afternoon, when I picked her up, she climbed into her car seat and sobbed—“Kindergarten is so haaaard.” She didn’t mean the classwork, which consisted mainly of coloring and cutting and pasting. What she resented was the lack of freedom: sitting at an assigned desk for long stretches of time, filling out the same worksheet as every other child, speaking only when called upon, and having to ask to go to the bathroom. Lack of choice, lack of movement, lack of soothing background music. She had entered a fallen world from which she could not escape.

  The trouble, some parents might say, was her Montessori background. Julia had become accustomed to independent work, allowed to concentrate on one task for as long as she desired and to visit the bathroom whenever she chose. If she had been enrolled in a more structured daycare center, she mig
ht have gotten used to following the crowd.

  Highly structured preschool programs might benefit some children, but in Julia’s case such a preschool would only have inaugurated the misery three years earlier. And misery it was. Each day, when I retrieved my unhappy child, I remembered the Montessori teachers’ ominous words: “Don’t worry about tears at drop-off time. Was your child crying when you picked her up?” Yes, mine was weeping.

  In part, Julia’s tears were a sign of exhaustion. After attending preschool until 12:30 each day, it was hard for her to sit through kindergarten from 8:30 to 3:00. John and I had both attended half-day kindergartens, and we were skeptical about the full-day routine. Six and a half hours of school activities seemed like a lot to ask of a five-year-old.

  “Your child will be tired and cranky,” several mothers had warned. “She’ll need a snack right away.” But all the grapes and cheese squares in the world could not quell Julia’s feeling that school was a dreadful burden.

  “She’ll get used to it,” John said. “You can’t expect her to actually like school.”

  In fact, there were plenty of kids who seemed to like it. I asked other mothers what their children thought of kindergarten, and soon got sick of hearing “She loves it!” or “He’s having a blast!” I knew there must be other moms with tearful children who loathed school, but in our cheery little town, Julia and I appeared to be members of a brooding minority.

  Nevertheless, Julia stuck it out, and after a few weeks the tears dwindled. She became attached to her teacher, Mrs. Larson, an older woman who kneeled down to her five-year-olds’ eye level whenever she first met new students. I valued that small gesture, and the challenge it presented to the woman’s aging knees. An eye-level greeting meant a lot to a five-year-old—the assurance of having an older face smiling into one’s own, and warm, older hands cupping one’s palms.