Homeschool Vs. The Type A Personality

In my old life I possessed (or was possessed by?) what psychologists call the Type A Behavior Pattern, which in real life meant that if things didn't get done exactly how I planned them then I was not happy. Also typical of a Type A, I had a problem with patience. I lived most of my life thinking not only did I have none, but that I never would. Then I decided to homeschool my children.

It was hard letting my Type A tendencies go. At first I didn't even think it was possible. They'd been with me, had indeed been me, for my whole life. I'd never met a task I couldn't make more complicated. Everything had to be done to my "perfect" standards. Decorating the Christmas tree? You'd have thought it was the end of life as we know it if that ornament, that one right there, didn't get moved over half an inch. Writing a note? Any minor slip of the pen, any line that gravitated ever so slightly upward or downward, warranted starting over...and over...and over. Hosting a birthday party? That was a bittersweet day for anyone unlucky enough to be in the house during the last few hours before guests were due. One time, unbeknownst to me until a few days later, my little one went over to the neighbor's house to use the bathroom because she was afraid to go in the one I'd just cleaned.

In my experience there is no room for an active Type A personality at the head of a homeschooling family. Around here, those signature Type A traits just had to go. It was either that or homeschooling itself, and thankfully I had the common sense to decide rightly which it was going to be. Ridding myself of that which seemed so important to me was a painful process, emotionally and sometimes physically. I do believe that I have permanently numbed the "salty" part of my tongue with all the biting I did as I learned to curb my inclination to bark orders and ensure that everything was done "the right way."

Once the decision to homeschool my girls was made I promptly bought or borrowed every book related to homeschooling that I could find, and read them cover to cover. I found website after website that told me how to teach, how to set up a classroom, how to keep records, and how to decide on curriculum. This lasted a few weeks. Then I began to plan. Oh, did I love the planning stage! Every topic to be studied for every subject for each child was not only outlined, but included copious notes determining which books to use (including which to purchase, which to borrow, and from where), how long each topic would take (down to the number of days), and what assignments would be completed (perfectly, of course) for each topic. Outline maps of distant lands and avian anatomy diagrams found on the Internet were flying off the printer in a frenzy. I loved all the decisions I had to make. I was going to be great at this!

Except a funny thing happened on the way to homeschool...those kids.

My plans sucked the life out of them. Apparently my favorite line was "Aren't you done with that yet?" because it started coming out of the mouths of my younger daughter's dolls. The more work my girls did, the more I demanded. "You can finish two pages of math in a sitting? Good, then do three." They must have felt so trapped; nothing they ever accomplished was going to be enough to satisfy me. God help them if they needed more time to understand a concept; didn't she see that if we spent another day on prepositional phrases we'd never finish the book on schedule? Learning about anything that was important to them had not occurred to me, either. A couple times I think we studied something that may have marginally interested one of them, but that was admittedly an accident. "What do you mean you want to learn about comets? Can't you see that in science we are in the middle of flower anatomy? Sorry. We're a long way from the solar system, kid."

This tragedy lasted about eight months. Then they revolted.

It wasn't a loud, hostile mutiny. My kids are pretty well behaved, as children go. It was much more passive, and it took my hard head quite a while to realize just what was happening. The child who could previously do three pages of grammar exercises in a sitting now began to complain that it was "too hard" before finishing the first. The one who flew through single digit multiplication last week suddenly didn't "get it" when it came to a subtraction review. They were whiny and unproductive, the older one retreating to the bathroom seven times before noon and the younger one saying things like, "Tomorrow isn't a day when we have to do school again, is it?" That hurt. I was getting frustrated and angry; didn't they see how much effort I had put into this for them? I realize now that we were burning out for the sake of what society and I regarded as important. No one was happy, and what I thought was homeschooling was nothing but drudgery.

Are we just not cut out to be homeschoolers? How does anyone manage to do this? Why would anyone want to?

It was time to figure out just what was going wrong here. Though anxious that we were most definitely going to get behind in the Almighty Schedule, I decided that I needed to take a mental health day. Type A personalities need those.

After breakfast the next morning I told the kids that they could do anything they wanted that didn't include television or video games. A tent constructed of every extra blanket and sheet in the house (plus three folding chairs and some canned goods) was erected in minutes. In went books, dolls, juice boxes, crackers, two kids and the hapless family dog. I didn't see or hear from them again for three and a half hours, except for the dog who escaped forty minutes into his captivity and sought me out to provide sanctuary.

The first thing I did was pour my fifth cup of coffee. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that there is a link between the extreme caffeine consumption of Type A people and the magnitude of their lesser appreciated personality quirks.

Next I pulled out a slew of notes and papers from the homeschool conferences we'd recently attended. Something was urging me to look to those resources instead of the library of homeschool how-to books I'd amassed. I knew those books by heart anyway, and we were no better off for it. As I leafed through those conference papers I found a listing of workshops. Certain titles jumped out at me almost immediately, probably because they were the ones that were not marked with stars as "must attend." These previously ignored workshops had descriptions including words and phrases like relaxed, delight-directed, engaged, and happy. Relaxed? Engaged? I was skeptical, but curious. I got on the Internet and began to research. I looked up the speakers, found some of their articles online, and learned what their homeschooling attitudes were. I even Googled the very phrases that were foreign to me, like delight-directed. What I found kept me busy for days.

It dawned on me that this information had always been available, but I hadn't been able to see it before. The child-led learning philosophy is so irreconcilable to my previous Type A teaching philosophy that I realize now we had to nearly bottom out before I would be motivated to find a better way. I came away from my latest research jaunt excited and relieved. It was good to know that we could still homeschool, and do it well and with joy. I was also humbled. I'd really missed the mark. Homeschooling is not having an institutional school operating in your home. It is this amazing balance of teaching sparingly and yet learning constantly. It is simple, and it works like nothing else.

It became obvious right away that what went wrong in our homeschool was directly related to my Type A behavior. Wikipedia notes that Type A personalities tend to be highly competitive, overly pressured by time, impatient, aggressive, unable to relax, and insecure. They are often over-achievers. I would add that these factors trigger a need for perfection and create huge amounts of anxiety over trivial things.

I understood that the real changes needed to save our homeschool had to happen within myself. I gave up my beloved, detailed planning and dictatorial control over what we learned. The old me would choose a topic, determine how many days or weeks we would spend on it, and proceed to hurl information at the kids. Nowadays I have a never ending list of things the girls seem to show an interest in, and we find books on those topics at the library. Throughout the day we get on the Internet for information when one of the girls is moved to know more about something they've just read or heard. If the interest dies, that's fine. More often than not one interest will lead to another, and we're off in search of information again. The process of learning this way is so smooth and effective, but my past belief that certain things had to be learned at a certain time wouldn't allow for it. Now the girls largely determine what we will learn based on their interests, and not on what I think should be learned at that time. Their ages and interests are so wide and varied that with little effort on my part we are studying all the basics (literature and English, science, history and geography, the Bible) nearly all of the time. I admit I do have to require that math receive attention, as one daughter is particularly resistant. I also encourage the girls to be involved in something related to the arts, but they choose whether they would like to read the biography of a composer, or write and direct a puppet show, or try to draw like Picasso.

The key to overcoming being driven by Type A traits is to constantly ask myself, "Why are we doing this?" I've learned to discern between being motivated by what is important to and for my children to learn and what is merely me trying to take control and soothe the savage Type A beast. One discovery I made that helped me lose the "dictate their curriculum" mindset is that there is no specific scope and sequence that all schools follow. The topics schooled fourth-graders are being taught in one state are not exactly the same ones that they're being taught in another. With that information, angst over whether the girls were learning what they "should" be learning was gone.

Something else I had to do away with was The Twins. The Twins were named My Faulty Concept of Accomplishment and My Insecurities. They complimented each other beautifully and sustained each other perpetually. I was big on textbooks and workbooks and felt that each one had to be completed not only entirely but perfectly. I was constantly asking friends with children in public school what their kids were doing in class, and was very concerned with whether my girls were "ahead" or "behind." I finally came to ask myself, "Ahead of or behind whom?" It was a revelation that the only thing my daughters should be doing was their own personal best. Family members, not necessarily well-meaning, only added to the power The Twins had over me. My parents were convinced that I was unqualified to homeschool my daughters, that the girls would grow up to be ignorant social misfits, and they let all of us know it. My mother once told my then 11 year old daughter that she would never have any friends if she were homeschooled, and quizzed my then six year old with books used for public schooled second graders. I would love to say that I stood up and required that my family treat my daughters and me with respect, in spite of their objections. I didn't. I had The Twins to think of, remember? Sure, I may have sputtered out something stale about how "research shows that homeschoolers are just as well, if not better, socialized as schooled children," but for the most part I sat, quietly seething, and took it. On the side I told my girls not to mind what was being said, because homeschooling was strange to my family and people tend to put down that with which they are uncomfortable. I know, it was lame.

Then a neat thing happened. My youngest suddenly blossomed into a terrific reader by age 7, and she took every opportunity to show it off to her grandparents. In one fell swoop not only was my family effectively silenced, but my insecurities practically disappeared. I had helped that kid learn to read, and suddenly I knew that I could help my girls learn anything! The Twins began to lose their grip on me. To be sure, it was no planned action that began removing The Twins from my consciousness and our homeschool, but I doubt anything but a bona fide accomplishment would have had such an impact. Good thing homeschooling is full of such triumphs!

Our homeschool is now a far cry from where we started. I have learned to hold fast to what is important and discard what isn't. Happy children who are excited and productive as they go about their day is important. Whether they learn about simple machines at exactly age 10 is not. Some of those Type A behaviors, especially impatience, do occasionally make an appearance these days. For the most part though, I have been able to leave them behind. What I've learned about homeschooling and seeing what works so well for our family makes things like micromanaging a course of study and comparing the girls with other children seem downright ridiculous. Once my heart found the right path to follow in our homeschool, the anxiety fueling my Type A behaviors faded away and took the need to dictate and control with it. I do still get uptight about whipping the house into perfection when we are having people over, though. I can live with that.

Today two walls of our home office are adorned with large construction paper models of the sun, planets, stars, the asteroid belt, and many, many comets. My kid finally got her solar system.