Doing Less. Being More.

This week my seven-year-old Max taught me something. He did so gently and without sounding patronizing (a tone I too often hear in my own voice). I was looking at our bird feeder which we have used in part of the Cornell Feederwatch program. We did the program last year but then let the feeder go empty for a few months. Now that it is filled anew, I am astounded to see not just the same old song birds again. An Oak Titmouse makes an appearance among the Golden Crowned Sparrows. The Townsend Warbler can be seen trying to get an edge up on the Scrub Jay. And then, the other morning, I cooed “Ooooh! Look at those little baby house sparrows!” My son rose from his Star Wars Writing workbook with an edge of skepticism in his voice. “It’s not really the time of year for baby birds Mom,” he said. Curiosity piqued, we both looked at the bird feeder and the collection of three or four little “baby” birds. “Those are Chestnut-backed Chickadees.” I was excited to share in the discovery, but – being the tall person in the house – had to seek out some fact checking with a field guide. Seriously. How undelightful. Max was right. And I got to examine the differences between the house sparrow and the chickadee, give myself a little time to know our winged creatures more deeply.

This incident was a major coups in our homeschooling year. Thus far our homeschooling year has been tedious and painful. Now in our third year, Max still seems to be totally taken by surprise that each day might involve a half an hour writing and arithmetic. Plus now – oh joy of joys – we get to add the five-year-old sister into the mix. So our day became a half hour of fighting over doing the work before the work actually commenced. At least, that’s how it felt. And I was feeling burnt out. Burnt out of the struggle. Burnt out of hoop jumping. Burnt out of being both the parent and the teacher. I just want to play with my child, not teach him. And even if our arithmetic involves sword fighting while we do math facts, he’s still gritting his teeth. And I’m still gritting mine as I wait 20 seconds for him to answer the question, “Two plus three equals?” Here’s where the patronizing voice creeps in as I ask him to examine how many fingers he has on one hand.

Already I feel the insecurity creep into my voice (it’s probably elicits from the same source as the patronizing tone). Yes, my son knows how to add two plus three. So exactly why then are we going through this exercise? I hear the voice of Pippi Longstocking admonishing her teacher the one time she gave school – and plutofication – a try. Pippi’s teacher decides to test her to see what she knows already, by asking her what seven plus five is. And Astrid Lindgren writes, “Pippi, astonished and dismayed, looked at her and answered ‘Well, if you don’t know that yourself, you needn’t think I’m going to tell you.'”

Just like the author Lindgren, I’m exaggerating our situation. I am highlighting the worst. Our better days have consisted of art projects and bridge building and gardening. But at my lowest point – around the time of the “chickadee incident” – I was starting to wonder if I was doing any better than Pippi’s sweet spirited but less than holistic teacher. I seemed to be going through an internal struggle of whether to embrace unschooling Ben Hewitt style or to keep going with the growth mindset approach of mustering through the tough stuff – focusing on the process rather than the product. It’s challenging to praise a process that’s so ulcer-inducing, cortisol raising, and at the same time, lacked depth and meaning.

I’d love to tell you all this has been resolved, but that is far from the truth. The truth is that when I leave my children alone I see tons of evidence of learning that is imaginative and free and that warms the cackles of my heart. And the truth is that I still sit down and work through the process of writing and arithmetic and that it has gotten easier and more enjoyable, but I still feel a question in my heart as to the necessity of that process. I’m certain that my children will need to read and tell time to get along in the future world even if that future world is full of the insta-facts to be found on our iPhones. But the times that I feel like my heart says “good job” is when my child can tell me the name of a Chestnut-backed chickadee knowing that he didn’t learn that by sitting at a desk and filling in a multiple choice test (as a matter of fact, many other nature mentors are responsible for that). Or when Max sits down and riffs on his guitar, eyes closed in the feel of what he’s singing and playing. He’s not going over any scales, he’s just noodling. He’s just noodling his way to knowledge. Or even better and more recently, when we play guitar and have those moments together. At those times I wonder “If this feels so good, why can’t I seem to do more of this doing less thing?” It’s in those spaces that there are moments where the dots of all of us connect and I know we did some heart biggering, something so overlooked in the world of brain biggering.

These days part of my week involves teaching children besides my own. I am honored to instruct for the Riekes Center Nature Awareness program at our Monterey site. Part of the guiding curriculum involves a period of “the wander.” That’s right, we actually schedule in a time of (what looks like to most people) doing nothing. We’re not going to plan identifying a plant (although that could happen), or filling out a worksheet, or making a natural bird feeder. We’re just going to schedule some time to let the children show us where the spark is.

It’s interesting that scheduling this time can feel challenging. There’s so many fun lesson plans and ideas and teachable moments. But our big purpose is to connect these fledglings to nature, by helping them fall in love with it. How do you fall in love with it? You play with it. We may plan a game or two, but most play is not planned. It simply arises. The days that are too planned, we get the feedback from the children…. they start straying, inching their way towards the woods. We watch their little limbs itch and strain, starting the wander themselves to the edge of the woods. They are answering the call.

So we commence. Let the wild rumpus begin. As we leave our plans back at our camp site, there is a collective exhale. We do more of this doing nothing thing. An uprooted tree becomes a place to drop dirt from. Someone finds a frog. We hide and seek – making sure not to hide in a patch of poison oak. While we’re hiding, we might have an opportunity to be really, really quiet, no small task for a three-year-old (or a thirty-year-old for that matter). We gather to watch a Cooper’s Hawk watching us. Since these are three and four and five-year-olds we have lots of opportunities to solve conflicts and practice peace-making skills. Is there a way you can get passed your friend on the log without pushing them off? Is there room for us all? And after we figure that out, we sing some songs and discover that the world has an abundance of drum-making material.

As tummy-rumbling starts, we make our way back to our site to refuel. The children need to fill up, but I find that my cup has been filled and I find myself again wondering how to schedule more doing less into our days back at the home school. Can my children stumble into constructing a paragraph the same way they stumbled into knowing the face and the name of the Chestnut-backed chickadee? What will it take for my heart to embrace a truly heart-centered approach to…. not learning, that smacks too much of what our bodies are railing against… but discovery. How do we consistently set out to be receptive to discovery? How do I create that environment for my children, other children, and that willingness in myself?

What I find is that I cannot will myself, but that the world must teach me this again and again. I recently experienced this teaching when preparing to leave for our weekly journey to Santa Cruz for nature class – an outing that involves early rising, meal prep, and layers of clothing. Let’s just say the administrative tasks for mom on that day go way up. On this particular morning, I was letting go of my job as task master to become peace maker as we worked our way thoughtfully – and painstakingly – through an argument. Conflict resolution seems to be a huge lesson that lacks any sort of evaluation from our educational system. And let’s face it, from the state of the world, I would say there isn’t a whole lot of evidence of learning around conflict resolution. This particular morning, I had to resist being on time. I had to do less so I could do what was best. Every sub-cellular particle in my being was struggling. Talk about growth. Finally, resolution came. I piled into the car with my children only to be sidetracked twenty minutes into the trip by my daughter who declared she felt like she was going to be sick.

So here’s the thing – my daughter has gotten sick in the car before. It’s not uncommon. She’s also very good at saying something to get what she wants, and there’s some struggle between her and I as my radar goes up on this – what feels like – manipulation. But this time, I relented. I pulled over. She opened her window and climbed out of it (with a very gleeful smile for someone on the verge of hurling). “Okay, she won,” I’m thinking. “But what’s the rush?” She bends over the ground, not trying all that hard to look ill. “Look at all that trash,” she says. And then she looks up. “Look! At the hawk!” And there it was. On the light pole. How many times have we whizzed by these raptors at highway speed? We see them sure. And make a little comment about it. I never actually stopped and looked at it until I was “forced” to. We got to witness it aloft from it’s perch and swoop by my daughter’s window. “Huh. Ok world,” I think. “You won.”

Like a wily coyote, life is just waiting for us to slow down and take notice. Sometimes, we’re just so stubborn it has to trick us into it – whether that’s in the form of a manipulative child, an illness, a loss of some sort. If life itself is the big instructor, I could imagine it getting patronizing with me. “How many times do we have to teach you to slow down? Haven’t you learned how to not get stuff done already?” And yet, life is much too creative to adopt such a tone. It just sits with a sly smile and patiently waits.

So when – in my role as instructor – am I going to trust my process? When am I going to allow my son to trust his process, to allow him to feel his way into this world, rather to think his way into it? He knows in his bones that it’s not the time of the year for baby birds. Standardized testing doesn’t evaluate bone-knowing. My challenge is to value that inner knowing myself, for my role as teacher to look less like a task master and more like a coyote. These days, after some years in the nature connection programs, I’m more apt to look up at turkey vultures circling, doing their wobble in the sky. And as I do so, I feel my own heart circle into this knowing and wobble, circle into this knowing and wobble, shaky in its resolution to be the coyote.