Happy or good? How about both?

Lately, I've received compliments about my children, and what *good* boys they are.  It always makes me feel a little uncomfortable, being given praise for something that wasn't even my goal.  It's not that I don't like that our boys are good people, or that I don't appreciate that they are typically kind, generous, patient, friendly, and so on.  But never did I consider it my *job* as a Mom to turn them into good people. I just assumed that they'd be good people.  Always, my goal has been to help them become happy people, peaceful people and, someday, loving gentle men.  Really, my first goal is that they be happy -- that we all be happy.  Because I value happiness. I also happen to believe that happy people ARE good people.  It's happiness that gives us that *filled up full place* from which we can share goodness.

Part of why I feel awkward receiving such compliments is that I feel like I didn't really DO all that much to turn them into nice people.  At least not much in the traditional sense.  We don't punish our kids; we don't insist that they do something now; there are no set bedtimes or arbitrary rules just for kids. We've never required them to say thank you or please; there are no *magic* words here.

When Andy told me someone asked him how he *became so obedient*, my first thought was that I abhor the very idea of obedience for either children or adults. Obedient people worry me, because the word obedience implies not only that one does what one is told, but that she or he does it even when -- especially when -- it goes against his or her own instincts. If the only reason one has for being honest, friendly or helpful is fear of punishment for not being obedient, where is that person's innate sense of what's loving?  What inner sense, aside from fear of punishment, guides him?  Certainly someone whose only reason for being good is because his parents require obedience (to whom? God? the parents? the law of the land?) isn't a good resource in those moments when there's no rule book, when a situation or a relationship calls for creative solutions.  And for me life is all about relationships and creative solutions.

I grew up hearing that happiness and pleasure weren't acceptable goals. Doing what made one happy was *hedonism* (one of my Dad's favorite slurs to throw around then).  For the record, hedonism is defined as "the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good".  I always wanted to ask why a desire to be happy was bad, but it was clear that just asking that question would have exposed me as a bad person.  Why does our culture elevate obedience and goodness above happiness? Do people really believe that happiness and goodness are mutually exclusive?  Or do some people believe that obedience will bring us happiness? You know, once we make our peace with being obedient to rules that make no sense to us.

I remember hearing often that parents need to teach children to be good, the idea being that letting children have too much of what makes them happy spoils them, and they'll turn out to be selfish, bad people.  Or maybe more accurately, that if people aren't forced to be obedient, they'll never learn to be good.  I believe that we all start out good, and what our society so often desires from children (and from adults, too) is not obedience, but cooperation, consideration, compassion.  Because we've been conditioned to think that cooperation is unnatural, we believe that obedience is the path to cooperation. Experience tells me that happy people are naturally cooperative; children whose needs are met have the emotional space to cooperate, to think of the feelings of other people, to share.  Children whose needs are met become adults who know how to get their needs met, which is more likely to make for happy adults whose cups are full enough to be considerate, compassionate and cooperative themselves.

When I became an adult, and later a Mom, being happy topped my list of goals.  I wanted to be a happy person, to have happy children who would become happy (and maybe undamaged?) adults.  Often, when  people learn that we let our children do what they want, eat what they want (or not eat what they don't want), sleep when and where they want, that I carried them when they were tired (long after they could walk), that I bring them food when they're hungry (rather than making them wait until mealtime or insisting they come to the table), there are admonitions --  that they'll be spoiled, and think only of themselves; that they won't learn how to do for themselves or others.

Happy people are kind, patient, gentle, generous and cooperative.  I think happy people are all those things because being happy is easy, it's not exhausting, doesn't demand extra time or energy.  Being told you must do all the things on some list IS exhausting. When someone makes a list that implies you'd not figure this out on your own.  Exhausted people, with unmet needs, don't have the energy to reach out to others, to be kind or to care what anyone else is doing, how they feel or what they need.  Tired, stressed people are too busy trying to be sure they're "good enough" to have anything to share with anyone else.

Often, in children, happiness and cooperation look like obedience or a sign of a good upbringing.  Really, it's just the result of being happy people who live consensually, who are heard and honored and whose needs are consistently met. If that happiness results in them being good children, that's bonus in my book.

Games for learning or fun?

The subject of games and gaming has been in my thoughts and conversations often over the past few months. Which games benefit kids; which ones can 'make learning fun'?

When people first find unschooling, a common theme presented is that we learn through games or that unschooling is about finding ways to *make learning fun* .  I get that saying we have fun learning is to counter the idea that we spend our days forcing our kids to learn a curriculum around the kitchen table. I understand the appeal of games as learning tools to make the point that learning need not be drudgery, that even when it looks like all we do is play all day, learning really is happening.  Sometimes, it's tempting to make that argument to convince others -- extended family, in-laws, friends who kids attend school, neighbors, etc -- that we really are responsible parents.

Today I was part of a conversation about learning games; someone asked about 'fun games to help learn grammar'.  At first I groaned, because I'm a lover of words and a lifelong grammar geek.  Around our house, words are fun, whether we're making puns (Gary is the master of bad puns!) playing with double entendres, singing songs, or telling stories or bawdy jokes.  The very idea that one would need a game to make grammar fun is laughable!

I understand how people get confused about the topic, though.  Anyone who went to school got the idea that some particular subject was both essential and no fun to learn.  For me it was math.  Really, though, that makes learning much more complicated than it needs to be, and we risk sucking the fun out of playing games.  Games are designed to be fun. When learning happens to happen along the way to enjoying or becoming good at a game, that's a bonus.  I say when not if, because you will learn something, even if it's not about the actual game -- we're big story tellers while games are played and many own childhood memories, as well as my kids' current stories, are shared over games.

Learning as the purpose of a game? I think that's just plain dishonest.The idea of *games that teach (insert subject here)* has always bothered me. When we do that we're separating out certain parts of life into subject matter, and assuming that one or another is hard to learn, so it's necessary to *make it fun*.  We're saying that this particular subject is not only hard to learn, but it's no fun at all, so we need to invent a *game* to sneak some learning into our kids.  We're saying that we don't trust our child will embrace learning something new.  Usually, that's a sign that what we think our child needs to learn isn't truly necessary to his life.  After all, if you're enjoying the way you spend your days, and you hit a point where you need more knowledge to continue your enjoyment, why wouldn't you want to learn that?

Several years ago, when Andy was 8 and Dan 4, I bought a couple of Mad Libs books, before a road trip thinking it would make a fun ice-breaker for the cousins (my sister's kids were 12 & 7 then).

We were at my sister's when I asked if anyone wanted to play Mad Libs with me, because I LOVE Mad Libs. Andy asked, "what's Mad Libs?" Before I could answer, my sister said "it's a game that helps you learn parts of speech." Gee, thanks. I could feel the fun being sucked out of the room. And with it my kid's trust. It was no surprise to me when no one wanted to play Mad Libs.

It was several years before I found anyone who would play Mad Libs with me. Andy had no interest in playing a *game* created to teach him something. We are people who love words, and we're grammar geeks, so words are fun in every other part of our life, but he wasn't going to play that game.

About a year ago, Dan discovered the Mad Libs books, and his best friend's Mom also had some around, so the kids played those. Now we play Mad Libs every so often, and even Andy joins and has fun.  It makes me sad to think we missed 3 yrs of Mad Libs fun. Sadder, though, is that for some time after that day, Andy was suspicious of any new game I tried to introduce, worried that each one was just a pretext for some kind of learning I thought he needed.

Life is fun! It's also messy, complicated, easy, challenging, confusing, and brilliant, in so many ways. Along the way, while living a full life, we learn whatever we need to know to navigate the life we make. If grammar or math or chemistry or history is necessary, and a person finds it's not just absorbed without effort, then be honest about making the effort to learn what you need to know to have the life you want.

If something comes naturally, then just let it flow and along the way other necessary learning will follow, just like a big sticky ball of knowledge -- often wrapped up with exciting trivia from our full day-to-day lives. It's dishonest to construct or choose a game specifically to teach a child a particular skill that you or someone else think a child needs to know.  Be honest, be real, play games for the fun of it.

What About.....

College? Math? Science? Algebra? their future?

The longer we're at this unschooling life, and the older our boys are, the more I hear these questions. The questions come from extended family, or folks new to unschooling, and sometimes from those who choose to use a curriculum (or several) to homeschool their child because they wanted him or her to get more education, to be better prepared for "the real world"; essentially so their child can be ahead of the game.

Honestly, I've never understood the desire for a child to be 'ahead of the game', or the appeal of a child scoring above grade level in a test, for example, or having the best grades in his class.  Is there some kind of race no one told me about? Is there proof that the faster a person learns something, the better he'll be at it; that somehow knowing everything a year, or two, or several, before his peers will guarantee success in life? 

I've always thought it more likely that information crammed in at a faster rate is more likely to be forgotten at a faster rate.  That's absolutely how my brain works. Well, unless I'm learning something I consider valuable, something I can use today and tomorrow and the next day. When I'm learning something that matters to me and improves the quality of my actual life today -- not just the potential quality of my life in some far-off future day -- I can pick it up like wildfire and remember all I need to know. 

Learning something that might someday help me to be more successful -- to take on more work -- in a topic that really doesn't interest me? I can cram enough info into my head to answer enough questions to pass a test and get the piece of paper showing I learned the material. After all, I did manage to graduate high school, and I can assure you that what I learned in Algebra and Applied Chemistry was learned in just that fashion.  Do I remember enough of those subjects to pass a test today? No way!  I would look like a complete idiot on a high school Chem exam today.  That's because in my day-to-day life, the curriculum of that Chemistry class is useless.

People ask me "how do your children learn math?" (or science, or whatever subject it is they've been told is both essential and hard to learn -- usually something they themselves didn't take to quickly or well. Hence the fear.)  My first instinct is to ask them how much of that subject they use in daily life. If their grasp of that subject is good, then they don't need to worry their child won't learn it.  If their grasp of the subject isn't as good as they've been told it should be, it's likely because they don't need that subject in the depth schools attempt to teach. They've forgotten (or never really learned it) because it has no value in their life today.

Higher math isn't a big deal for many people in their everyday lives. And really, it's not even something we as parents worry about. Our boys can do all the math they need for day to day life. If and when they need to know more math, we're sure they will learn what they need. We will be there to help them find the right classes, the right books, to help with homework if they want our help. Most importantly, we give them our confidence and trust that they can learn whatever it is they need to know.  Our reason for that confidence is that, so far, we've all managed to learn whatever we need to know to have the life we want; so far they've learned all they need to know (and along the way, their learning has taught us a lot, too!)

People spend our whole life learning new things; at least we should expect to learn new things for most of our lives. So why all the rush to have children learn everything they'll ever need in the space of 18 or 24 years? Does a child walk any better because he learned at 9 months instead of 17 months? Does someone read better as an adult if he learned to read at 4 than if he learned to read at 8 or 12?  Does a person become good at math only if he started learning math at all the 'right' points in childhood? Does someone become a good writer of great novels only if he learned to write well in high school, or college?

For me, the real core of unschooling is trusting, coming to know in your bones, that you, your child --- that people everywhere -- don't need to know everything, and we certainly don't need to learn those things on the same schedule.  What we do need is the confidence that we can learn whatever we need, to handle whatever life throws our way.  Our children need the confidence that they can learn anything they need to learn, when that learning will support the life they want.

So often, people have this idea that somehow all these subjects taught in school, often the same subjects we struggled with ourselves, must be *important* and our children must learn them now, or at least on the same schedule as all the other children.  Many people have the idea that homeschooling should make children better educated, that they should be better prepared for college, academically advanced. I think, too, that we risk making our child's educational success very important in validating the choices we make, and whether or not we're good parents.

It's not that it's less important to me that our kids be successful, just that I define success differently. I also have different ideas about what kind of education is important for a person to have. I define success as happy and capable, strong and confident.  I think lifelong learning is more important than completing an education. 

I'm not raising my children to win the race for learning in 25 years so they can spend the next 50 years resting on their laurels. I am instead supporting, enjoying and instilling confidence in them that they can learn whatever, succeed at whatever they love, do whatever makes them happy and whole, no matter what life throws their way.

What makes him Dad?

I had only one item on my list of what kind of Dad I wanted for my children. I wanted my children to know they are loved.  That's it. Just to know their Dad loves them.

I wanted to hear my children's Dad say "I love you" to them, sincerely and often. For them to hear him say it to me. To hear it myself. Really, I thought just hearing him say that would be enough.  That somehow it would fill all the holes in my own inner little girl, while preventing holes in my children. A Dad who could say that, and mean it, with no embarrassment, and no agenda; I was sure that was answer enough.

Then, that was all I knew to ask for.  It was the one absence that I felt most defined my own childhood.

Gary, though, does so much more than just make the boys feel loved.  No wait, that's not exactly true.  He does so much more of the things that show how much he loves them.  

I've come to know that loving your child isn't just saying the words, as important and healing as it has been for me to hear those words fill our home.

Being the Dad I want for my children is the countless thousands of little things, the every day moments that fill our home with Dad-love.  It's 17+ years of greetings and partings, of enthusiasm at what the boys love and are doing, at who they are. 

It's the simple hellos, the fixing what's broken, the showing how to do what needs to be done, the watching them as they show off what they've learned to do. 

It's reading Garfield comics together at bed time, or any other time.  It's watching bad tv together. It's Dan helping as Gary works on the car, It's hearing Andy say Ohio-gozai-mas (good morning in Japanese) in the very same way Gary says it when he calls his own Dad and it's morning where his Dad is. 

It's seeing Gary here as Will's Dad, after years of wondering if I'd be able to give Will a Dad. 

I feel it when the boys do something for me, take care of me in some way, and do it just as they've seen Gary do for me. It's seeing the boys become younger versions of Gary in ways small and large, because he is who they want to be.  

It's the moments when one of the boys asks me to tell our story, when I share a moment  from our time together before they came along, or when they were younger and didn't have context for the stories that define who we are. 

It's the love that now fills my story, my children's stories.  It's patience, and tender loving care when one of the boys is sick (I'm not good at puking kids, and I'm useless from midnight to daylight, unless the problem can be solved with breastfeeding, which we're now long past).  

We see and feel it when Gary stops whatever he's currently doing to watch Andy's new yo yo trick, or admire a new lego model, or hear Dan's latest story of what happened while he was playing with his friends.

It's those moments when a problem arises, when I'm not home, but Gary is, and he handles it.  And I feel comfortable knowing he's going to be able to handle it.  

It's not being alone in this journey as a parent. I don't mean just physically not alone, I mean really trusting that Gary's got this one.

It's also those moments when Gary finds himself stretched to his limits, when he doesn't know what to do in a given situation, and we figure out together what do to next. In the moments when we hope we've done it right, when we trust each other, and we trust the other's love for our child

And, yes, it's also in hearing him say "I love you" to my children, when really saying it is just confirmation of what I see my boys already know deep in their bones.  

The Other Shoe

or as I've always called it 'too damn good syndrome'.  You know, that feeling that everything in your life is going so well, that any moment now it's bound to crash down around you?  Sometimes -- okay always -- it's some irrational fear that something awful has happened any time someone you love is late getting home, or just an overall panic that somewhere, something is going wrong in a way that will cascade into your life? 

Other times, it's that completely irrational fear that all the people who've told you they love you, who think they love you, don't really know you, because you've kept the darkest, ugliest parts of who you are some kind of deep, dark secret.  Well, you think you have anyway; usually the people who love us, already know those things about us. We only think we've kept the secret because they love us enough not to talk about our touchy spots.

I've had those irrational fears my entire life.  That kind of indefinable fear that when things are good, it's just the set up for a really good crash, as if the whole universe were plotting against me.  In the book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, the author talks about this mindset, and says it's very common in children of divorce. I'd always thought it was some kind of worth issue I grappled with, an accumulation of all my fears that I'm not really someone people could love, not if they knew who I really am, how I really feel. 

I don't really know that it's fallout from my parents' divorce -- given how late in my childhood that came. More likely, it's fallout from their awful marriage.  Whatever the reason, I've come to see it's something we can absolutely hand down to our own kids.  If our attitude is one of pervasive distrust and fear of rejection, our kids pick up on that.  

I do know it's not a mindset Gary shares. He does expect things to work out most of the time.  He views my fears as superstition at times, I know.  And maybe they are.  I seem to have this contradictory idea that if I do everything right, touch all the stones, that's my only hope of a good outcome, of safety.  And yet, when everything is going right, I'm sometimes terrified that nothing I do will be enough, that it will all crash down in some confirmation that I was never really meant to be happy, that everything I touch is somehow tainted. 

I spent years, decades really, thinking I was unique in feeling like a fraud, in pretending things were fine and that disaster wasn't lurking around every corner.  Maybe I'm not. Maybe there are other people who feel those same fears, or people who used to feel that way and overcame it. 

I've been working diligently the past few years to free myself of this feeling.  One of the first things I learned is that I had made a career of hiding big parts of who I am. In a childhood where I was frequently told I was too sensitive, too soft, that life's "not like you think it is" I'd learned to survive by not sharing the things that made me weird or different. I did my best to escape notice, to laugh off the mistakes that I made without letting on that really I believed I needed to be perfect to be good enough.

I'm not convinced all this is the result of my parents' divorce, or even of their bad marriage.  I think it's more a sign of our culture's insanity around individuality, some kind of collective fear of being rejected, of not being good enough.  And I think it starts very early in life, when we begin to think we can "mold" our children to become what we want them to be, or to fit into the small bit of space we have available for them; when we want them to fill our need to feel loved, or to impress others.  

I'm beginning to move past that, to finally trust that I don't need to be perfect to have a right to relax into who I am.  It's taken me most of 50 years, tho, and it seems there must be an easier path to it.

looking for a partner

In Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, the author writes "I was surprised to discover that they [children of divorce] often go in search of partners raised in stable, intact families." She also writes about how many children of divorce come up with a shopping list of sorts for a partner.  

In reading this, I see I did exactly that, though not the first time.  When I married the first time, I had only one item on my list. It wasn't even a good item, like honest, or hard-working.  I figured all I wanted was someone who wasn't smart enough, cunning enough, for head games. I'd had enough head games to last me several lifetimes.  Sure, I knew people were supposed to want to marry someone who was honest, loving, kind, trustworthy, hard-working, patient; but I never expected someone like that really existed, that men like that could be found anywhere.  Besides, if such a man existed he wouldn't want me, and he'd be much too boring.  

After my divorce, I made a list of qualities I wanted in a partner -- at least 4 yrs older than I was, never married, no kids, a nice extended family.  I didn't really consider whether or not my intended's parents should still be married, but as it happens that's been a real blessing to me.  


When Gary and I began dating, I quickly realized that I needed very much to become more the kind of person I wanted to be with; to be more trusting, more honest, to learn those skills I'd never learned growing up. It wasn't fair for me to ask someone to be all those things, unless I was really able to be honest, sane and patient.  While I've grown a lot, in some regards I'm still a work in progress.

I also found that being in a relationship and being happy required more awareness, more honesty with myself, more introspection than I'd expected.  I was constantly called to review my own part in a disagreement, to ask myself what I really wanted. Did I want to be right, or did I want to see a new side of things, to revisit my own expectations and maybe even change them? 


I wonder if having a list of qualifications for a partner, an actual checklist, is something other people do.  Or is the process better integrated for people who grew up in a happy marriage? Do those fortunate people just intuitively know when it's right?  Clearly, Gary didn't have such a rigid list or I'd never have made the cut, not in 1986 anyway. 


Is that awareness of who we need to be, not just who we want to be with, something our kids will just pick up by our example, or do we need to talk about it with them?  Maybe it depends on the kid. 

Does having happily married parents help?

In an early chapter of the book I referenced in my earlier post , the author writes that kids who grew up in happy, intact marriages "brought a confidence that they had seen it work, that they had some very clear ideas about how to do it" (it being marriage).

And I had to disagree with that, at least in our experience. Gary's parents are very happily married, for almost 59 yrs now, and they are very good at being married. At the same time, tho, Gary had decided by age 30 (when we met) that he'd likely never marry, and had no confidence that he'd know how to be happily married. I remember him saying "Think about it -- everyone gets married thinking it will last forever, and half of them are wrong. What makes me any smarter?" So, even tho he'd grown up in a very happy marriage (really, his folks are so very good at being married) he had no clue how to actually make a happy marriage, and no confidence he could actually do it himself.

I, on the other hand, grew up in the marriage from hell, which became an even uglier divorce just as I was leaving home (really, you'd not have thought it possible to make things worse than they were, but my parents found a way). I married young and divorced fourteen months later, after the abuse expanded from only me to our baby. Statistically, there was no reason for me to expect I'd be good at marriage someday, and yet I had the greatest confidence that we'd marry and it would last, because there was no way in this world I was going to divorce ever again. Not even an option. And because I was sure I wanted Gary to be here forever.

First, I pointed out to him that not everyone gets married expecting forever -- I well remember standing at the courthouse for my first wedding, thinking "Please, please, one of us has to have the good sense to say NO!" Then we both said "I do" in our turn, and my very next thought was "What the hell have I done?" Thinking I couldn't be the only person who had that experience (I later learned that I certainly wasn't alone in that very bad choice to say yes, when every right voice in my head was screaming NO) I figured somehow I'd still convince Gary to marry me (and I did, but not that day).

It's a question Gary and I revisit often -- how is it that he grew up with such happily married parents, and yet he didn't feel like he had any idea how to be well-married? I've known his Mom and Dad (they are now my Mom and Dad) for over 25 years now, and I can see how they do it, but that's likely because after my early divorce, I made a point of figuring out how I was going to do this right, and because I'm a people watcher. We ask ourselves this question because we want to be sure we are helping our boys to understand how to be happily partnered someday. This is especially important, given how many of their friends come from divorced homes, even in the unschooling community where we spend our time. It's very possible they'll choose a partner who comes from a divorced home, maybe even a home where their grandparents were also divorced, given the statistics that say children of divorce are more likely to divorce later.

What answers do we have to this question so far?

Well, in recent years we've seen several marriages end, and each time, we find ourselves reassuring the boys that our marriage is good, that we'd never consider divorce. We answer their questions honestly, and share stories and examples from earlier times, both in our marriage and during our 8 years dating. After all, we have 15 years of stories that pre-date the boys' presence or memories, stories they'll only know if we tell them.

We talk about commitment, promises, how much work it is to live with someone else, even when you are over-the-moon crazy about him or her. About those days when you feel tired or grumpy, or when every sound makes you tired; when the kids are sick or the bills pile, or you get news that the one who works is being laid off. We talk about how you each keep the other's secrets, that you've each agreed to be the other's fall guy, that we try always to keep in mind to treat your partner the way you'd like to be treated; that it helps to remember how kind he was to me when I was sick, or tired, or pregnant. We tell them the whole point of being married is that someone does have your back, so it's important to have theirs.

We also have something more to share with our boys -- my past object lessons. I share from my childhood, talking about the things I saw that didn't work. I share from my first marriage, honestly telling them it takes two people to make a marriage, and that when it doesn't work, it's never just one person's fault. Because I truly do believe that, I'm required to be honest about my part in why things didn't work, about why I chose to leave that marriage and get a divorce. I can't simply villainize my ex, and say it was all my fault.

So, for those of you who are happily married, with kids -- how do you impart to your kids what makes a good marriage?

For those of you blessed enough to grow up in a happy marriage -- did watching your parents together show you what makes a happy marriage? Were there things they said or did that helped you understand marriage?

For those of you who, like me, came either from unhappy marriages or divorce -- what did you take away from those years that gives you hope for your current marriage? Or maybe you had a first (or even current) not-so-happy marriage, and you learned lots there.

What would or do you tell your kids about what it takes to make marriage good? Or do you feel it needs to be said at all; is it maybe enough to just live it as an example?