Whew!!! I'm so relieved and happy to put Hibiscus and Emerson on the bus to school, and walk back down the lane with just one little Buttercup on my back!
We found a school that I actually feel pretty good about, The American Montessori School. It's not very American and only kind of Montessori, but at least they are creative beyond rote-based learning, repetition, copy work, and beatings for misbehavior in a classroom of 30 children. Daddy and I had this idea of wanting our kids to experience a different kind of education, and get to know neighborhood children, but the more I have watched this the more uncomfortable I felt about sending our sensitive, volatile, dramatic kids to a school like that. Best of all, this school has 20 students and four teachers. I think some individual attention is a need right now. Oh, and a high wall around the perimeter. Given that both children declare that they are going to run away, that's a big bonus!
They have been DREADING going to school. I have literally had hours of tears on the subject, as well as threats and violence. I tell them they don't have to worry about it, because Mama and Daddy have already made the decision for them. And Mama and Daddy don't have to worry about it, because formal schooling is so important we would not be able to present ourselves as proper foster parents without sending our kids to school. So off they go.
So sending them to school is not something I've waffled about, but I do feel a little bad about being so darn HAPPY to see them go. Describing the tears at the bus stop, a relative asked me "and did Mama have a few tears too?" Um, no. Not at all.
(First of all, getting backpacks packed, bodies dressed, everyone down the road, and then trying to stuff them into a car when they don't want to go, is not the kind of thing to make me sentimental. Actually, bluntly, I don't think I'm very sentimental at all.)
I'm a home-schooling type of person, or at least I want to think of myself that way. I absolutely love teaching, and I love even more watching children learn. I have so many ideas for helping children understand, but even more, I like watching them explore and figure things out. I know that I can't practically homeschool right now, but if that's really the type of person I am, shouldn't I be disappointed to have two of my (still very young) children gone for most of the day, five days a week? If I really am loving being a mama of three, why would I want to be free of two of them?
I've been thinking about this. First of all, I'm not HOME. At home, we have so many options and choices to keep busy in a productive way. If we're feeling traditional-school-y and need to learn to read, we can buy reading materials and go to the library and set up a pretend store and count out the money, and work our way through excellent and carefully selected books. If we're feeling Waldorf-ian, they can follow me out into the garden and help me bake bread and make yogurt and train the dogs, and I can send them into the field or the woods to see what they can see and collect and discuss. If we were more Montessori-an, I could pull out different boxes of manipulatives or browse the stores or on-line to find just the right thing, and we could do a different amazing craft project every day to explore color and texture and nature. When they are feeling social, they could choose a gymnastics class or swimming or art or scouting. When they are feeling wild, those activities would get their wiggles out, and we could walk to the park every day, or just let them loose in the woods. If we wanted to be un-school-y, they could explore the world and we could go to the library to find books to answer their questions and visit farms and zoos and science museums and art museums or whatever caught their fancy, and we could watch the ocean and drive to the desert to read our books about the desert and play with the old settlers' tools.
And here, what can we do? They can either come with me to run errands (where children are inevitably expected to behave normally, which is a little beyond my brood), or they can play around the apartment. Our selection of toys is not bad, books are reasonable (but if they really like a subject we can't find another book about it), but the outside is pretty boring. And outside is where children thrive! Thank goodness we have a yard, but not only is there not anything in the way of bicycles or sand boxes, it is so carefully groomed that there is not even much in the way of sticks or stones or dirt or places to hide or leaves to collect or anything. And nothing to plant, and no animals. Animals and children provide a great deal of mutual joy and education.
There are no parks. There are some fields, mostly pounded down to the dirt, and either connected to a school and/or full of boys playing soccer. Still nothing to do, and if I let my little non-conformists near a bunch of soccer players, there would be a lot of tears in no time.
We can get to one swimming pool via public transportation, but it's an expensive outing. Every other place I've heard of for children we would have to drive to, which means hiring a car for the day. The only playground-type equipment are at malls, which is not exactly being out in nature, or easy to access. Most of them have a charge to enter, which makes it not worthwhile for a short time.
And, the children's areas seem to be packed with brightly colored equipment, children all over the place, and maybe even loud music pounding through, or a giant screen with older boys playing flashing video games. If you know about sensory procession issues, you might have heard about "seeker" behavior, which means someone who craves action, noise, speed, lights -- and they can't process any of it, and they go absolutely bananas. Yes, that would be my children.
So, there is nothing for children to DO. I don't think children need to be doing all the time, and I want them to learn to have downtime and entertain themselves. But kids tend to do that better when there is some contrast. They have had a couple really good days around the house, when they have moved naturally and happily from one creative game to another, playing "house" and piling up baskets and eating their lunch outside and calling each other "mommy" and "daddy" and "baby," and then wanting to do some art together and reading books to each other. They have their rhythm, and when they're in it, I just try not to interrupt. But I notice those days come after we have been busy for a few days. After another day of not-much, they start to pick fights with each other, and their play turns into ripping-apart-the-shrubbery and throwing-everything-in-the-living-room-to-the-other-side-of-the-living-room.
And then, there is Buttercup. Buttercup needs some one-on-one time. Okay, they all need it, but right now, Buttercup needs it the most. I think it's not so much because she's the littlest, although little ones always needs more attention, but just because she is naturally quiet and mild, and the others are naturally.... I think "hurricane" would be a good word, although other types of natural forces would also work! They are wonderful, dynamic, creative, passionate personalities, but Hibiscus and Emerson are always intense and needy. I think at any age, and I think even if she had had a normal background, Buttercup would just dance to a different drummer -- or maybe a flute player.
Right now, she needs to bond with me, and she needs to realize that she is valuable and her needs can be fulfilled. She just can't do that with two loud and dramatic siblings always on center stage. The screaming really bothers her. She gets kicked over when someone is mad, and left by herself in the middle of the yard when they get busy playing.
This is only our third day together, and already it has been so neat to really start to see Buttercup being Buttercup. She's learning to play something she wants to play. She's learning to not always be looking for another child to follow around. She's learning she can ask me for things and get them. She can take all the time she wants eating and say "you see yogurt, yum yum" for every single bite. She can think about what she wants to say and have a chance to say it. She can speak in her little chirpy voice and be heard. She can spend hours and hours either on my lap or holding my hand or on my back or working on "squishing" the laundry in the tub next to me. She can neatly wipe all the bits of yogurt of her chin and the smudge on her arm, without having someone else upend a glass of water all over her. She can throw a normal two-year-old fit about not getting another cookie, and solve it herself thirty seconds later by finding a balloon, without having someone else throw an even bigger fit about how mean mama is and try to grab the cookies to give Buttercup more, but end up throwing them across the room and be sent to a "sit" where she screams for half an hour, and meanwhile someone else starts throwing his own fit about his cookie not being as big as someone else's cookie, and why won't you listen to me describe the the cookie factory I'm going to build?
It's a wonderful gift to have busy and loving siblings, and Buttercup absolutely loves it and loves them and loves being the local baby, but everyone needs a chance to be themselves, too. And every child really, really needs a special relationship with their mother. I think that's why babies are so very needy, so they build it; we have to start in a different place.
I hope one day, we'll be able to balance all those needs. I hope one day, I'll be able to be Buttercup's mama without being forced to send the other kids away for the whole day. (Not that we might not choose to send them to school for other valuable reasons, but I hate the only-way-to-manage feeling.) I hope one day, I'll be able to fill the kids' need to explore with their need for safe and quiet space. I hope one day, they're able to control their "seeker" behavior enough to be safe in a busy environment.
But right now, we're living THIS one day at a time, not living for the distant one day. So today, I read a bunch of books while Buttercup snuggled on my lap, and then she protested going up on my back but fell asleep right away, and I didn't have to worry about someone screaming or cannon-balling me and waking her up, and then she told me she was hungry. And when she finishes her yogurt and bananas, we're going to take a walk and bring those big kids home. And they've been busy singing new songs and making new friends and playing in the sand box, and doing something.
So off we go!
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