Oh, Penni! It must be an utter drag to just want to enjoy your soon-to-be-leaving child, and have to plan menus and tidy up those huge dust bunnies in the guest bedroom at the same time. I can understand that it must be a busy time in Dan's work life as well--when I read a long article in Newsweek about his company, I thought about you right away, and how busy he must be right now.
My dear sweet daughter had a social falling out at high school, a problem with a girlfriend who was her link to the crowd of popular girls. The school is so small that she now finds herself isolated, with no other crowd she would be interested in joining. Her high school was the very best one academically for her, and starting over in tenth grade at a school which would not be as good, anyway, is somewhat illogical. The popular ninth grade girls seem very experienced sexually, and some of them use drugs. The popular girls perceive her as smart, and the smart kids perceive her as popular, and these two groups exist in total isolation from one another at her school, so I understand her dilemma. She is bored in her classes, but has started writing just stunning poetry in her spare time.
I remember getting through junior and senior high school by reading historical novels of the British and French courts surreptitiously because I was just dying of boredom, and I don't want her to be turned off to learning the way I was. Gifted children have a really difficult time of it, I think--intellectually they are interested in things that make relationships with their peer group a little weird and unsatisfying sometimes. She is starting to perceive a lot of children her age as somewhat vapid, and I remember feeling the same way. I realize that if she found a friend who was also really intellectual and they clicked emotionally it would be great, but that just has not happened, and breaking into the existing friendships of tenth-graders in yet another small school isn't necessarily easy, either. And those school shootings and all the attendant journalistic explorations of how unhappy teenaged life can be just reinforce my ambivalence about this issue.
Surprisingly (to me, at least) there are a whole bunch of accredited high schools on the web, designed for home schoolers, teenagers who have careers as actors, skaters, etc., and children who are in far flung corners of the earth somehow because their parents are travelling or posted in far-flung places. They offer honors courses, and individualized, computer-based tutoring. They have SAT-preparation courses, lab sciences, and all sorts of other very normal courses of study that are usually completed in high school. Because the children are learning these at home, they don't take as many hours. When you think about it, quite a bit of classroom time is taken up with bureaucracy and the needs of children who don't understand a particular concept, or are acting out for some reason.
Then there is another, even more radical philosophy, called "unschooling", where the child follows its own leads. Typically, internships, part-time work, community college courses, visits to archaeological digs or whatever excites the curiosity of the child are involved here. My daughter still wants to attend college (at least this morning), even though she is not enjoying high school, so this approach seems a bit radical for me at this point. I would encourage her to involve herself in teenage travel programs, etc., and to work a few hours a week when she turns sixteen, but I do want to know that she is learning all the things she needs for building blocks into higher learning at the same time. This summer she is in a counselor-in-training program at a summer day camp, because she wants to work with children in some capacity.
I guess we'll just see! I was exposed to educator John Holt's philosophies ("Why Children Learn", "Why Children Fail"), and he became an advocate for home schooling because of the problems of educating children in classrooms. I was always fascinated by the Summerhill approach, not its seeming lack of respect sometimes, but the idea that children learn well and rapidly when they are pursuing an interest or curiosity, not just following a textbook. Home schooling for high schoolers is led by them, and there is not much parental involvement at all (she is ahead of me in math and science already, anyway), so I do think she can establish her independence whether she is sitting in a room somewhere all day or is engaged in a variety of activities that intrigue her.
Interestingly, my talks about pot must have gotten through, Penni. My daughter remarked that she had higher moral standards than to even think of smoking pot, and that this in itself makes it hard for her to relate to the other girls at her school.
I bet you are a scream as a mom! That idea of trying on the maternity clothes and wondering whether there would be comments is indeed twisted, but in such a delightful, Rambi-like way. Your children are very lucky to have you!
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