When Things Go Wrong: Using CM to Troubleshoot

In For the Children’s Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay includes:

• The child is accepted for who he is
• His mind is not looked down upon
• He shares his interests
• Friendship
• Security
• Creativity
• Not judgmental
• ALL are under God’s authority
• Enjoying knowledge {i.e., the parents/teachers are enjoying it also, not just the children}
• Not artificial
• Freedom within structure
• Friendly
• Purposeful
• Relaxed
• Not cooped up or organized too long

These are some aspects of good homeschool atmosphere.

Some of the examples given at our reading group, when we discussed this, were fascinating to me. I think especially of my friend, who was able to have a contagious interest in something. Her son, who was not initially interested, became so because she was interested.

When it comes to my current Circle Time difficulties, I think that our main problem is not atmosphere, but there is a resulting atmosphere problem that I need to control. First, there is the silliness. I am not against silliness, but it is tearing down our Circle Time habits, and once it appears, it is like a weed with a long taproot, almost impossible to get rid of, at least for that day.

But second, there is me. I start to violate the above list, becoming unfriendly, tense, and generally unpleasant to be around. It is something I need to guard against.

Problems of Habit

Habits are things we don’t actually make decisions about. Miss Mason likens them to train tracks. We run along the rails, as it were.

Macaulay tells us that habits can be things like:

• Paying attention or concentrating
• Noncommunication
• Failure or discouragement
• Truthfulness
• Self-control
• Unselfishness

Of course, there are far, far more habits than these. These are just the beginning of the list we can build.

Macaulay also considers the daily rhythm or schedule a habit — and I noted when I read this that there have been times in the past where I’ve “solved” problems by moving the routine around so that it better fits our current needs.

When I think about using these categories of atmosphere, habit, and life to troubleshoot, I am struck by the idea that habit is where our problem lies. We had a habit of good Circle Time behavior. We are losing it, and if I don’t get it under control soon, we will have a habit of bad Circle Time behavior.

I need to think through my behavioral expectations for Circle Time and help my children regain the old habits they had, or new ones they might need. I think this is my surest road back to Happy Circle Time.

Problems of Life

Education, Miss Mason says, must be life-giving. So just as food and air and water and sunshine and sleep are necessary for a wholesome bodily life, so the mind must be given its due allotment. The mind needs but one thing, according to Mason, and it is ideas. This is the food upon which is grows and thrives.

To use this for troubleshooting, though, I think we’d have to expand the category to simply mean “life-giving,” for how many of us have tried to settle down to a good, living book, full of wonderful, beautiful ideas, only to have the time spent unsuccessfully because we or the child are too tired. The bodily life is inextricably tied to the life of the mind, which is why, when it came to one of our daughters, the quickest way to educational progress was dietary adjustments and not curricular.

For this category, I imagine we can ask ourselves these sorts of questions:

• Is my child getting enough sleep every night?
• Is my child eating a healthy, balanced diet?
• Is my child allergic to anything?
• Is my child exposed to pure water and clean air?
• Am I offering my child a broad and generous education, full of living ideas? Or am I offering busy work full of information divorced from ideas, things which couldn’t be interesting to anyone for very long?

Troubleshooting

It seems like every problem I’ve experienced while homeschooling, every bump in the road, fell into one of these categories. Sometimes the problem was atmosphere. Our family was in the midst of a crisis and the home felt tense. Or I was putting pressure on a child to do something he simply wasn’t ready for. Or someone woke up grumpy and upset everyone else.

For us, the problem has often been habit. Miss Mason reminds us that if we do not put in place good habits, bad habits will grow up of their own accord. This is why she says that the job of habit is to correct nature. It is assumed that we will run into bad ways without structure. So I need to constantly build and guard our habits — I need to have a habit of habit making, truth be told. I don’t always have that, and we suffer for it.

MP3, 50 minutes

And sometimes the problem is that something is no longer giving the child in question life. Something is draining the child. If, for example, I was filling Circle Time with tedious things, devoid of ideas, no amount of good habits or atmosphere could rescue us. Sometimes, a child is trying to have a habit of attention, but they are distracted by their own tiredness from lack of sleep, or that unsettled feeling from food allergies.

I am going to try and file this away in my mind so that, next time troubles pop up {and they inevitably will}, I have some categories to use as I try to get to the bottom of the matter.

If you want to think more about this idea, try downloading a copy of my talk Bad Days and Weeks: Troubleshooting Difficulties in the Home Schoolroom.