Tuesday, December 8, 2015

The Surprising Ways That Children Learn

This post is in no way meant to be boastful or to convince you that one way is better than another. I'm simply having one of those moments that unschooling parents relish in. We are so often drilled and scolded about what our children are learning by well meaning friends and family that even the most confident of us will second guess our decision to forego a standard curriculum. It is okay to sport a huge shit eating grin when not only our intelligent decision making skills but our gut instincts about our own children are validated by some shocking revelation of their intelligence and character.

To you this may look like a simple board game but it was a huge moment of validation for me. 


Miss Evan was under the weather last week after returning from her recent trip to the Dominican so she invited a friend over for an easy night of chillin. (A formally schooled friend of the same age.)

We decided to bust out the Game of Life, and granted, this is one of our favorites but I had no idea just how much the kids are absorbing from a simple board game.

As we began to play, Evan had to explain the fundamentals of the game to her friend. This is completely understandable considering her friend isn't as familiar with it as we are. Fine. The game continued and something quickly became apparent. Her friend continued to ask for help but it clearly wasn't out of laziness or disinterest. She was making a genuine attempt to win but for the life of her (no pun intended) she couldn't read the instructions on each space or do the fairly simple math involved in "paydays" etc. 

Now Evan can be brutally honest at times so once my shock wore off I became concerned for a moment that she might say something insulting. Thank goodness, she did not, rather she continued to assist, sitting up to read the spaces, do the math and give her friend education, career, insurance and investment advice as we proceeded to finish out the game. 

As I sat in silence I was utterly amazed to hear my little "Squeaky" matter of factly spewing the benefits of insuring your home. (Well, because the $10,000 your insurance will cost you is way less than what you'll have to pay if you have a fire. Thank you for that insight.) 

Well big deal you might say and okay she didn't break into the tax advantages of a 401k but what she did display was critical thinking skills. I watched as she considered different options, checked out the board to determine different odds and calculated (whether by actual numbers or an estimation) to come up with the most sensible action. 

I guess what really made me take notice was the way her friend sat, completely blank, waiting to be told what to do. It was more that than the way she struggled with the reading and math. It was the fact that she lacked maybe the confidence or the motivation or the desire to try to figure it out. And bless her little cotton socks, I just love this kid. I am in no way happy to point out her shortcomings. Evan did very well academically in the French school she attended for four years so I'm not saying that continuing on that path would have caused her to have a worse outcome or to not be able to think but I am saying that even when we remove that element children can still learn and thrive.  

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