turn out well = be a kind person, be true to yourself, have confidence and don’t let people walk all over you, use your abilities and talents to their fullest. I always think that this is better then an arbitrary definition of having attended Harvard, which really does say nothing about you as a person.

I also think that in the turning out well, you can hit some points and not others. I, for one, have terrible self esteem in some aspects, but great esteem in others. However, we adore our parents. Even though I have many memories of interactions with them making me feel awful and like I wanted to cry but I had pretend to be tough.

My two brothers, myself, and even my half-sister, always end up taking care of my mother and dad (in whichever way it is needed at the time), and my parents still take care of us, even if tiny ways. My mom will grab my kids so I can take a nap, and she’ll pack lunch for my brothers even though they are full grown adults with jobs that can easily afford to buy a delicious lunch. But they’ll make a 20 minute drive just to come have coffee, lunch, talk to her and ask how she’s doing.

In that sense I think their efforts as parents have been successful.

And I think I inherited my unhappiness from my dad. And I think my brothers inherited their perpetual chilled out attitude and overly optimistic worldview from my mom.

I was trying to have a conversation with Chris, my husband, about this just this last Sunday night. I kept asking if he thought he turned out fine even though his mom wasn’t around much. But I didn’t have the words.

I love this post for putting my thoughts into questions and giving it a frame of words to actually advance the discussion in my family.

Wait.

“… parents want a grading system to know how they are doing.”
and yet isn’t it those same unschooling parents that don’t want or like the “grading” system for their children in the public schools because the assessment is not fair or is inaccurate? It seems like learning metrics are difficult to shake and hard to live without regardless of the vantage point from which they’re measured. Maybe the best metrics come from unbiased sources which are trusted for known reasons that are important such as grit, kindness, etc. in various circumstances.

As a homeschooling mom who began our homeschooling journey with the aim of proving to the world (i.e., my mother) that our decision to homeschool was a good one and that my kids were highly intelligent, I began in earnest recreating “school” at home, complete with desks, workbooks, Montessori manipulatives, worksheets, aggisgnments, and homework. I was determined that my kids would be math geniuses or else some other kind of prodigy, given that they were clearly capable of doing advanced academic work, and I, a highly intelligent person with advanced degrees, should produce nothing less, right? I mean, they should smoke the public/private school kids in every subject, not to mention test scores, and it’s my job as a parent to push them, especially in those areas in which they show promise, right? Right?

After many days of arguing with my (often crying) kids about the importance of doing their work and doing everything correctly, etc., I realized that I was making them miserable and pushing them away from me “for their own good.” I also realized that I was unfairly burdening and pressuring them to perform in order to validate our decision to homeschool in the first place – not to mention saddling them with baggage from my own crazy childhood.

I also put myself in my kids’ shoes: If I were 8 and forced to sit alone at my kitchen table all day doing worksheets while my mother yelled at me, I’d beg to go to school.

And so began our journey into unschooling.

I can’t say that I have never looked back, though, because letting go of and rethinking practically everything I have been taught and have believed to be true — about success, achievement, status, intelligence, one’s concept of what someone needs to know or be able to do in order to succeed — ain’t easy.

But I realized that this was my struggle, not theirs, and when I lifted this burden from their little shoulders and just Let Go, beautiful things began to happen. The unnecessary stress disappeared from the house, my kids and I quickly grew close again, and I started to become the loving, supportive mother that I had always wanted to be — and, to be honest, the one that I wish I had.

But from this struggle, it became clear what my “goals” for my kids are, and what my husband and I hope the kids gain from their homeschooling experience. These are very similar to yours, Penelope:

– I want my kids to know that their parents love them, and I want them to carry this love with them throughout their lives as a source of inner strength and peace.

– I want my kids to know themselves, and to have the confidence and wherewithal to pursue their talents and abilities in order to create a meaningful, full life for themselves, and to have the courage and confidence to define success and happiness on their own terms.

– I want to have a close relationship with them, and be involved in their lives as a reliable, constant source of support, encouragement, and love.

(Basically, I want for them everything that I didn’t get either from school or from my parents.) Because of our decision to unschool, our family is on track to achieve these “goals.”

Thanks for another great post, Penelope. I am grateful for your blog; your wit, wisdom, insight and brutal honesty inspire me, encourage me, validate my decisions, reassure me, challenge me, and just plain make me laugh.