quitting to get started

An unhappy teen drops out of the ninth grade only to find that school is where he most wants to be.

Recently, out of the clear blue sky, my college-freshman-age son was awarded a $500 scholarship-an honor received by only a few students at his college. A few years ago, such an honor would have seemed impossible.

From his first days in school, it was evident that Shawn was bright and articulate. But when he hit middle school, his borderline attention deficit disorder (ADD) and delays in writing skills turned school into a nightmare for him-and, ultimately, for our entire family.

My husband and I read books, consulted doctors, prodded, punished, and ignored. We encouraged, praised, medicated, and attended meeting after meeting at Shawn's school. Nothing helped. His homework was incomplete, lost, left at home, or piled up in the bottom of his locker. Occasionally, he handed some of it in, but it was usually late, and rarely made his teachers happy. He read voraciously and was curious about the world around him, but school was a disaster.

I, too, was frustrated and confused. Fairly consistently, Shawn aced his tests, and could tell the teachers anything they wanted to know in articulate and exquisite detail. But those gifts counted for nothing if he couldn't do his daily work the way the teachers wanted him to. Nor did the vast quantity of meaningless assignments and his teachers' discouraging words help improve his writing. They only made him want to give up. By seventh grade, Shawn was complaining constantly of stress and boredom, and of how little he learned in school.

One morning, I found Shawn curled up in the recliner, frozen. We both missed school that day-he to vent, I to listen. Over a period of hours, his story dribbled out in small bits. Finally, his true feelings gushed out: "I feel so stupid when I'm at school. Everything I hand in is wrong. I try and try, but I can never get it right."

This from a young man who, in sixth grade, had an nth-grade reading level and tested above the 12th-grade level in history and science. Despite his intelligence, each day he marched off to school with a knot of fear and anxiety in his stomach.

But this day, unable to reach the bottommost depths of his pain, I finally suggested he draw a picture of how he felt. He drew an image of his school on fire. Later, we learned that, on that same day, two students armed with guns had stormed Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. They killed 12 people and then themselves. I couldn't help wondering if those two young men felt the way Shawn did. Had schooling become so painful to them that violence seemed the only alternative?

Between Shawn's picture and the horror of Columbine, my attitude toward my son changed. I no longer took the school's side; I took his.

My husband and I talked with Shawn's teachers, counselors, and the social worker. They all said the same thing: "There is nothing wrong. Shawn could do the work if only he wanted to. He just needs to try harder." But every time I asked Shawn how school was, he, too, said the same thing: "I died a little bit more today, Mom."

Eventually, the school had Shawn tested and discovered that he had a learning disability in written language that had been wreaking havoc with his education. But to even get him tested, we had to fight every professional in his school: all of his teachers, the counselors, the social worker, even the psychologist. None of them could believe that someone as bright as Shawn could have a learning disability. It took an outside evaluation, paid for by the school district, before Shawn could receive help. Finally, toward the end of eighth grade, he began working with a teacher consultant.

Later, I stumbled on some research about gifted kids with learning disabilities. All the literature agreed: The giftedness and the disability must both be dealt with. It makes sense. If, year after year, any of us was allowed to work only on our weaknesses and never on our strengths, we, too, would lose hope.

An Individualized Educational Plan (IEP), drawn up by Shawn's teachers and teacher consultant, dealt with his areas of weakness-spelling, handwriting, and organization-but not his giftedness. His participation in football made school tolerable, but by April of his freshman year, with football season long gone, school was once again a bad dream. Finally, he quit.

I had a gut-wrenching sense of failure as a parent. My husband and I, both college graduates, come from families in which education is highly prized and young people do not leave school. More out of desperation than desire, we turned to homeschooling.

I perused the Internet for information. My emotions soared as we realized our own power: We could teach to Shawn's strengths, not the next-door neighbor's, even as we strengthened his weaknesses instead of criticizing him for them.

My research turned up more: Homeschooled kids get better-than-average results on national standardized tests. They're more likely to be calmer as well as self-starters, more true to their own beliefs, and better able to relate to a wide variety of age groups.

When I hear people say, "I could never homeschool my child," I want to cry. To me, it's another sign that formal education has sucked the joy out of learning.

Homeschooling is not forcing your child to do meaningless work and complete grueling assignments. It is working with your child to find his or her interests and style of learning. A little-known truth is that all children want to learn, even the most recalcitrant. When the right techniques are used, no one has to "make" them learn; they will learn because they want to. Schools are in the position of having to force large numbers of kids to learn, whether they are ready to or not; the name of the game becomes coercion, the primary goal compliance.

The first homeschooling term I learned was decompression, which is also a term in deep-sea diving. Just as divers must rise slowly to the surface if they are not to seriously injure themselves, homeschooled youth must take their time in moving into their new activities and way of life. Gradually, absent the constant pressure of compulsory education and the coercion to learn, they begin to see the world around them as fresh and beautiful.

This is how Cafi Cohen, homeschooling mom and author of several books on the subject, explains it in Homeschooling-The Teen Years: "The first months, indeed the first year or two at home, most families with teens experience a period of adjustment called decompression, when they refocus their lives.... [T]eenagers' lives transform from competitive, coercive, and peer-group-oriented to collaborative, self-directed, and family-oriented."1

I researched this concept thoroughly and grew convinced that decompression was a necessary first step for successful homeschooling. But my research didn't allay my fears and insecurities. The concept of decompression seemed fine on an intellectual level, but it was hard to live with. Were we actually doing Shawn any favors in stopping the pressure to do, and instead allowing him to be?

It was disconcerting enough when I mentioned to friends and neighbors that we were homeschooling our son and their doubt stared me in the face. And when they asked about the curriculum we would use for Shawn, the whole concept of decompression seemed ludicrous, an enormous copout. Yet my research consistently validated the wisdom of allowing a period of rest before jumping heavily into academics. When a child breaks a leg, we can clearly see what the problem is, and so we offer the child enough rest for the leg to mend. A broken spirit may be harder to see, but a period of rest is just as necessary.

Our go-go, do-do society is so focused on learning, achieving, and working that sometimes resting is confused with laziness. But virtually all religions promote a time of rest. Many Eastern religions counsel meditation, and the Judeo-Christian tradition honors the Sabbath. Mark Epstein, MD, a psychiatrist in private practice and a clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University, studied the role that prayer and meditation play in personal growth. He found that turning down the noise, even experiencing loneliness, can help us discover our own voice.2 Isn't that what we want for our children? That they hear their own voices, follow their own drumbeat? To hear those precious sounds, they may need silence for a while.

But there I was, ready for field trips, science experiments, and math tutors-and trying to explain homeschooling to my mom, who was shocked, dismayed, and afraid that Shawn would not receive a good education as a result of being homeschooled. And there was Shawn, needing to sit and figure things out.

So we did not jump into academics. We signed up with Clonlara, an online school that works with families who homeschool their children. Rather than a heavily academic curriculum, we chose a more relaxed curriculum that is sometimes called "unschooling." Our Clonlara mentor worked with us to find Shawn's interests and learning styles. We agreed that there would be no TV or video games during the school day, and that he would follow through with what he started.

I lined up math and history tutors, gave Shawn a few weekly household jobs, and encouraged him to read. Otherwise, he was free to spend his time as he wished. He volunteered at a local children's museum, read avidly, rode his bike, and spent time with friends. He also tried his hand at juggling, canasta, building with Legos, and knocking golf balls around the backyard.

As Shawn wandered aimlessly from interest to interest while never digging his teeth into any, I continued to read up on homeschooling. No matter where I looked, I found messages like these: "Trust your child." "Take it easy the first year of homeschooling." So I bit my tongue, took my worries to my journal, and renewed my faith in my child.

That fall, when Shawn watched his friends buy new clothes, stock up on school supplies, and pile into long, yellow school buses, he was happy to be staying home. Our homeschooling mentor reassured us: "When he knows what he wants, he will go after it with a focused determination that will surprise you." As Shawn pursued his own interests, I dubiously waited for that focused determination to set in.

Eventually, Shawn moved through his decompression period. He decided to pursue his passion, football-which brought him right back to high school. This time, however, that focused determination set in. He got there every day, earned As and Bs, started as the team's defensive tackle, threw discus and shot for the track team, won all sorts of sports awards, demonstrated leadership in his youth group, and graduated with his class-all of which, just a few years before, had seemed impossible dreams.

Had Shawn's enthusiasm led him to take a different path-drawing, robotics, writing a play, learning a foreign language-I would have considered his period of decompression equally successful. It was the enthusiasm with which he followed his dreams, once he'd had the time to figure out what they were, that convinced me of its success.

But how had this miracle happened? How had my child gone from failure to shining star in just nine months? When I asked Shawn about it, he told me it was because we had supported him in something as outrageous as quitting school. The power and potency of our faith in him had touched our son deeply and brought about the change.

The role chronic stress plays in the development of the brain may throw more light on this. Carla Hannaford, PhD, a neurophysiologist and educator, researched this and wrote about it in her book Smart Moves: "chronic exposure to stress inhibits full brain development."3 She also says that "people who live with a great deal of stress may inadequately develop the neural pathways that form the foundations for new learning, reasoning, and creativity."4 So the stress of school had actually impaired Shawn's ability to learn. Release from that stress reinvigorated his enthusiasm and ultimately brought him success in school.

What I learned from the homeschooling movement was to trust my child. The desperation I experienced when he first left school has faded, replaced by a deep conviction that my son's path, no matter how twisted and convoluted it may appear to me, is his own. If he chooses that road less traveled, so be it. My job as a loving parent is to support, encourage, and offer wisdom, so that he might find fulfillment on that road. My job is not to force him into a mold that suits the children of my neighbors or friends.

I realize that Shawn's job is to discover who he is. It is not for him to provide me with bragging rights, or to please his grandparents at the expense of his sense of purpose, or even to be homeschooled, if that doesn't suit him. When Shawn trips or stumbles, he now has what it takes to get back on his feet-all our children have that. But from time to time, they just might need some quiet adult support. Then their own dreams-not necessarily the ones we might want to choose for them-will come true.

[Sidebar]

Between Shawn's picture and the horror of Columbine, my attitude toward my son changed. I no longer took the school's side; I took his.

[Sidebar]

Every time I asked Shawn how school was, he said the same thing: "I died a little bit more today, Mom."

[Sidebar]

A little-known truth is that all children want to learn, even the most recalcitrant.

[Sidebar]

What I learned from the homeschooling movement was to trust my child.

NOTES

1. Cafi Cohen, Homeschooling-The Teen Years: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 13- to 78-Xear-O/cMRoseville, CA: Prima Lifestyles, 2000), 59.

2. Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart (New York: Broadway Books, 1998).

3. Carla Hannaford, Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not Al/ in Your Head (Arlington, VA: Great Ocean Publishers, 1995), 132.

4. Ibid., 164.

[Author Affiliation]

Mary Valentine worked in public schools as a speech therapist for 30 years, and presently serves her district as State Representative. She lives in Muskegon, Michigan, with her husband, Phil. In addition to their son, Shawn, they have an adult daughter, Robin, who is studying political science at Eastern Michigan University.