So we're just one month into the "unschooled" sojourn. I'm getting my sea legs, so to speak, about what my obligations are to my child, and where her freedoms extends.
Here's the thing- I firmly, & with about the same conviction I believe in gravity with, believe that "what you do not inspect, you can not expect". (Thank-you Ingrid Cannon, for that irreplaceable gem.) So my child choose several courses to cover this year in her "year off" (with math being the one exception) Great, she took the helm. But at what point is it the first mate's job to look at the steerage captain and say, "Ice burg"? My daughter is behind in work that should have been turned in- 2 weeks into the offical school year. But she says, I should not tell her what to do, when to do it, or how to do it, because this is her "year off". This illustrates to me that the full extent of our partnership and expectations were not completely verbalized before taking this adventure on. We did not talk about the important things to the extent that she remembers the finer details of our arrangement as I remember giving them. I'm wondering if a written contract at this later stage can resolve the issues. Mostly, I'm getting teenage death ray looks from my 14 yr, and monotoned, serial killer voice instructions, like, "Mom, you are breaking your promise to let me unschool. I will do it when I want to do it."
In my mind, a year off was, "I won't give you work to do that you don't pick yourself." It was never going to be, "You can do anything you want, including nothing." So. The 64 thousand dollar question is- how to fix what is broken? Or perhaps the question is- what does unschooling look like at my house?
Here's the thing- I firmly, & with about the same conviction I believe in gravity with, believe that "what you do not inspect, you can not expect". (Thank-you Ingrid Cannon, for that irreplaceable gem.) So my child choose several courses to cover this year in her "year off" (with math being the one exception) Great, she took the helm. But at what point is it the first mate's job to look at the steerage captain and say, "Ice burg"? My daughter is behind in work that should have been turned in- 2 weeks into the offical school year. But she says, I should not tell her what to do, when to do it, or how to do it, because this is her "year off". This illustrates to me that the full extent of our partnership and expectations were not completely verbalized before taking this adventure on. We did not talk about the important things to the extent that she remembers the finer details of our arrangement as I remember giving them. I'm wondering if a written contract at this later stage can resolve the issues. Mostly, I'm getting teenage death ray looks from my 14 yr, and monotoned, serial killer voice instructions, like, "Mom, you are breaking your promise to let me unschool. I will do it when I want to do it."
In my mind, a year off was, "I won't give you work to do that you don't pick yourself." It was never going to be, "You can do anything you want, including nothing." So. The 64 thousand dollar question is- how to fix what is broken? Or perhaps the question is- what does unschooling look like at my house?
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