Barbara Frank

President Obama recommends  shorter summer vacations for U.S. schoolchildren so they can attend school for more days than they do already, because he believes that they’re at a disadvantage compared to students in other countries.

His Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, says more school hours will “even the playing field” when it comes to comparing our schoolchildren to those in the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, homeschoolers excel with far fewer hours of instruction than most public schoolchildren receive. So is it really more hours of instruction that schoolchildren need?

First off, President Obama’s assertion appears to be inaccurate:

Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.

“Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,” Duncan told the AP. “I want to just level the playing field.”

While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it’s not true they all spend more time in school.

Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests – Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).

Apparently children in the countries that outscore ours in math and science attend school for more days per year but fewer hours per year. So the suggestion by Obama and Duncan that a longer school day results in “gains” (test scores, which do not necessarily equal learning) is not backed up by the foreign countries whose kids outscore ours. They actually have shorter school days.

But if you read the entire article, you find that merely educating kids isn’t really the point anyway. Here are your clues:

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.

That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.

Aside from improving academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the heart of the community.

“Those hours from 3 o’clock to 7 o’clock are times of high anxiety for parents,” Duncan said. “They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table.”

Do you see it? What we’re talking about here goes way beyond merely educating a child. This is about raising children because their parents have been deemed unable or unwilling. This is about schools becoming publicly subsidized daycare centers for school-age children, even on the weekends.

What it’s not about is how many hours of instruction it takes to educate a child so he can beat the math and science scores of kids in other countries. Homeschoolers have already demonstrated that.

Close-Up of Tops of School Buses in a Parking Lot, Brooklyn, New York
 

So here we are. The last weeks of summer already! The months sped past, and now there’s a chill in the air, it gets darker a little earlier in the evening, and there are other signs that fall is on the way.

With it comes a new school year for the neighbors as well as for us. Soon you’ll watch the neighbor kids line up for the school bus while your kids are still in their pj’s, and maybe still in bed. Will you think, “We are so lucky to have this freedom.”? Or will you think, “Oh dear God, help me, I’m not sure I can do this after all!”

I don’t mean to put pressure on you, but I have to be honest: your attitude is going to be a major factor in the success of homeschooling in your family. How you look at this venture speaks volumes to your children.

Imagine you’re seated on a jetliner getting ready to take off across the ocean to Hawaii. You hear the captain calmly announce that the jet is ready to take off. As he makes his routine pre-flight announcements in a practiced, serious, authoritarian voice, you feel as though you’re in good hands.

Now, imagine instead that his announcements begin with him nervously stammering, his preflight speech sprinkled with um’s, er’s and ahem’s. How secure do you feel?

Nothing has changed; after all, you’re still on the ground. But the captain’s attitude can be cause for feeling secure or cause for alarm. How you feel is directly linked to his attitude.

It’s the same way with your kids. They see their friends going to school. Strangers ask them where they go to school. They hear about this school place and all they know is that they don’t go there. How you behave will make them either feel secure about not going to school, or make them worry that there’s cause for alarm.

Does your attitude need work? Are you scared or worried? Have others, parents or friends, made you feel insecure about homeschooling your kids? Better get your act together! You don’t want to doom this school year before it’s even begun.

Think about why you’re doing this. Think of all the things your kids have already learned while in your care: each screaming little newborn bundle of needs has become a walking, talking, bright happy child. You’ve already shown that you have what it takes to raise and teach each of your children. God has given you the responsibility of doing this, and He has equipped you for it.

So turn away from watching the big yellow bus pull up to the line of neighbor kids, face your own kids, and in a practiced, serious, authoritarian voice, say: “Everybody get dressed! We’ve got work to do!” And then set about making another year of learning and memories.

The scent of sunblock no longer gives me a thrill. My pots of flowers look overgrown and a bit dehydrated. The weatherman’s announcement of another day in the high 80s makes me cranky instead of happy, as it did back in May. Yep, slowly but surely, summer is on its way out.

Now it’s the thought of the apple harvest, cooler nights and going back to sweaters that makes me smile. Oh, and new books, new glue sticks and crayons, support group meetings starting up again and a fresh start to the school year.

I couldn’t wait to put away our school stuff a few months ago, yet now I’m eagerly thinking about getting back to the challenges and joys of homeschooling every day.

I wasn’t always like this. Those first few years I homeschooled, I faced each fall wondering if I’d be able to pull it off for another year. Sure, I’d taught my kids to count, to read, to print letters. But that soon seemed like small potatoes. Up ahead loomed cursive writing, fractions, topic sentences, science projects, and someday, chemistry, foreign language……trigonometry!

I’d had some success in the early years, but how would I tackle the big stuff? I faced each fall with trepidation. I’d think, “We’ll try it for one more year, and then decide…..”

And the years passed, and the kids kept learning, sometimes in spite of me. Seemed like I learned along with them, though, and things came back to me that I hadn’t thought of in years. Fractions made sense this time. Geography was so interesting. And once they reached high school, I learned that you could sign them up for community college chemistry if you didn’t want to turn the house into a Chem lab. What a relief!

So, are you scared? Or are you excited? Or both? It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that you want to homeschool, you enjoy seeing your kids’ eyes light up when they catch on to a difficult concept, you know where to go when you need help in helping them. The emotions come with the territory. Just keep thinking, “One more year, then we’ll decide whether to keep going.” And before you know it, you’ll find yourself facing every fall with excitement, not fear.

(Looking for some tips to get your year off to a great start? Check out my free e-course, “Top Ten Tools for Homeschooling Parents.”)

By now I imagine you’ve amassed quite a pile of books and curriculum as you get ready for another great year of homeschooling. There’s nothing like the sight of all those new materials to get the enthusiasm going.

But the books that look so inviting in August are often less loved by November. The fact is that for both kids and parents, homeschooling can become boring if you just rely on a set curriculum.

It took me a while to figure that out. As I said in The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling,

Like many people, I began homeschooling by imitating the schools of my youth. I bought a boxful of curriculum, divided it into daily assignments, and taught my kids right out of those books.

And there wasn’t anything especially bad about that, except that after the initial excitement wore off, my kids started to get bored. Instead of being excited about doing school, they ranked it right down there with making their beds and setting the table-something we have to do, so let’s get it over with.

That was not in my game plan. I didn’t want them to be bored. I was bored in school, and I still recalled how bad that felt. I wanted my kids to enjoy school.

What I soon realized was that while they might have been bored with school, my kids still loved learning. They enjoyed visiting museums. My daughter read through stacks of books without my telling her to do so. And my son drew beautiful, detailed pictures that were not assigned by me.

I even became bored by the assignments I was teaching the kids, and it must have been around that time that I came up with the idea of playing store. I labeled some items in our pantry (using prices written on sticky notes), then dug up all the spare change I could find.

I became the storekeeper, and the kids became the shoppers. They’d choose an item from the pantry and pay me for it. Often I had to make change for them. Soon they were buying more than one item at a time and figuring out how much they owed me. Before long, they started taking turns being the store-keeper. This became a game they enjoyed for a long time, but I think I probably learned the most from that experience, because I saw that homeschooling didn’t have to be boring, like formal school was for me as a child.

This success led me to become more creative with our homeschooling…..(read the rest of the chapter HERE)

The moral of the story? Enjoy those books, and take advantage of that carefully crafted curriculum. But make sure you don’t spend the whole day with them. Provide your kids with plenty of time for creative learning, independent learning and free play. As the old saying goes, “Variety is the spice of life.” Keep that in mind, and your children will learn more, and have fun at the same time.

A Mother and Her Baby Boy Take a Nap Together

When I was a child, I spent a lot of summer days at my grandmother’s house. One of her unbreakable rules was that everyone had to take a nap after lunch. I remember saying, “Someday my kids won’t have to take naps!” I imagine I usually muttered that shortly before drifting off.

But once I had children, I found that I loved naps more than I could ever have imagined. After a morning of playing out in the summer sun and heat, the kids were tired, I was tired, and everybody enjoyed a siesta in the cool house during the heat of the early afternoon. After naptime, all of us felt good!

It was Dorothy Moore who helped me get my kids into the nap habit from the time they were tiny. Here’s what she had to say in the book that introduced me to homeschooling, Home-Grown Kids:

There is both research and clinical evidence that children who do not either nap or have at least an hour of very quiet rest time during the day are not able to get to sleep as well at night. Because they are overtired, they do not sleep as well when they do get to sleep. They are restless and more susceptible to bad dreams. This poor quality of nighttime sleep makes them vulnerable to fatigue again the next day. A vicious cycle is established, and then parents wonder why the children are excitable, irritable, hyperactive, and difficult to handle.

One benefit she didn’t mention is what it does for moms! Either you get a chance to renew your energy with a lovely nap, or you get a bit of time alone for reading, exercising, or doing something else you want to do. I believe naps were a huge factor in my being able to raise and homeschool four lively kids for many years without losing my marbles.

As the kids got older, we changed the name from naptime to peace-and-quiet time. The rule for the older kids became, “You don’t have to sleep, but you have to do something quietly in your room.” It was good for everyone to either sleep or have some alone time. Afterwards, they’d have a snack and run out to play, refreshed and ready for fun.

So if naps aren’t already a part of your family’s summer routine, try snuggling with your toddler on the bed in the heat of the afternoon for a little while. Suggest that your older child lie down for a bit with a good book. It’s a great way to keep cool, and to renew your energy for the rest of the day. We don’t have any napping kids in our house anymore, but I’m known for occasionally flaming out for a while in my favorite chair. Unlike the four-year-old me, I think naps are awesome!

With the renaissance of homeschooling in the early 1980s came a trickle, and then a flood, of books and magazines about homeschooling.

These were eagerly read by homeschooling parents wanting to know how others were teaching their children, because there weren’t many homeschoolers around to talk with.

Today, reading about how other families homeschool their children is almost too easy. There are more magazines and books than ever, plus countless blogs on the Internet where parents reveal every last detail of their homeschooling journeys, or so it seems.

There’s a very real danger here, however. With so much personal revelation out there, it’s way too easy to compare your family and your homeschooling experience to others. This is not a good thing!

You can always find someone whose homeschooling experience sounds far more successful than your own. It’s way too tempting to think, “We have so many struggles, and after reading about this family, it’s obvious that I’m in over my head in this homeschooling thing. Her kids are doing so many wonderful projects, and I have to fight to get mine away from the video games to do anything. I give up!”

The fact is that every family is different, and no family can imitate another and come up with the same results. It’s not fair to compare another family to yours: different kids, different parents, different financial situations.

When you read about other homeschooling families, try to think about which of their ideas would work for your family instead of imitating everything they do in a misguided attempt to “succeed.”

Besides, homeschooling success is defined in many different ways. For one child, it’s getting to college on a full scholarship. For another, it’s making his or her way in the world on their own. For a few, like my teenage son, it’s functioning to the best of your abilities despite multiple disabilities.

So go ahead, read all the homeschooling books and magazines and surf homeschoolers’ blogs. Visit the Carnival of Homeschooling each week. Glean as many great ideas as you think might work for your family. Discard those that turn out to be wrong for your family. And always keep in mind that there’s no one right way to homeschool. The beauty of homeschooling is that it can be tailored to each family, each child, and each parent.

In His Solitude

Little kids love summer. Big kids love summer. But what about teens?

My kids looked forward to every summer until they became teens, and then everything changed. Suddenly, running through the sprinkler just didn’t thrill them anymore.

I was used to them rising early to run out and play with their friends. But once the teen years hit, they’d sleep later and later, completely missing summer mornings and sometimes needing to be called for lunch.

I remember worrying that my older son would suffocate in his room. By 11 am, he was still sound asleep with the window shut tight while the sun heated up that end of the house. My attempts to rouse him were greeted by growls, as though he were a confused bear who thought he was still hibernating through the winter.

Once conscious, he’d stumble downstairs, where the hunger that had built up over 12 or 13 hours of sleep made him eat as though he’d gone days without food. His enormous breakfast would segue into lunch with the rest of us, and he kept on eating. Then he’d head outside to play basketball with friends for the afternoon, come home in time to eat an enormous dinner, and play on the computer before lapsing back into his night-time coma.

I learned from friends with older children that this was actually par for the course for growing teen boys. Looking back, it makes sense to me now. After all, it takes a lot of rest and nourishment to grow to 6″ 4″ and wear a size 16 shoe! But at the time, I was quite mystified.

Do you have a young teen in your house this summer? Are you mystified by some of the things you’re seeing him or her do? As teens’ bodies change, their emotions and behaviors change, too. Learn more about how to live with your teen in my free Special Report, “Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens.”