Midnight Goddess

Awhile back Marty gave Memphis the opportunity to earn money for crushing the soda cans that we save. He jumped on it. He proudly did it almost every day when I would hand him a plastic bag of 12 or soda cans. Towards the end he started to slack off. He didn’t actually stop doing it. But he wasn’t always willing to stop what he was doing to crush cans. However, I never forced him to do them. I just reminded him that he always has the choice to stop. The consequence was that me and Marty would keep all the money.

This morning, Marty had a small window of time to take Memphis to the recycling center to get paid for his work. Marty wanted to do this because it would give Memphis the incentive to continue crushing cans. But he wasn’t awake yet. He normally gets up between 10 - 11 am, depending on how late he stayed up the night before. So I went into his room and gently woke him up. I told him what Dad wanted to do with him. At first, he didn’t want to get up. But then I mentioned that he was going to get paid for the cans he crushed. That helped him get moving a bit more.

Less than an hour later they came back from the recycling center. Memphis was beaming as he showed me his money and told me he earned $33. I was so proud of him. I think that this should help him continue to crush cans now that he has proof that he can earn money from doing them.

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The other day Marty went to the balcony and started crushing cans for recycling. Memphis saw him do it and decided to go help his dad. Later I realized Memphis was doing it on his own with Marty looking on. Then he came in and told me that he gave Memphis a new job which involves him crushing all the soda cans. In return, Memphis gets to keep all the money from recycling the cans.

The beauty of unschooling is showing little by little. Memphis was actually excited, thrilled and proud of himself for having a “new job.” He told me and Jasmine all about it. It’s only been a few days but he hasnn’t gotten sick of it. I won’t force him but I’m proud of him for accepting his job.

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We’ve gotten Memphis a few games in the past. But he’s always been extremely partial to electronic games, mostly video games. Hence, the reason why he’s so infatuated with his DS, Gameboy and Wii. He’s a typical boy in that sense.

As for board games, he’s got Disney Memory game, a few Scene-It games (he was hooked on those games for a very long time), Hungry Hippo, and a few other games. But he’s never really played the games properly because he didn’t quite understand the basics of how to play them despite me taking the time to explain the instructions to him. That’s ok.

When we were all at Aunt Cris’ house on the 4th of July for Mom’s surprise birthday party, Memphis and Raven were in one of the rooms playing the Game of Life. That game has always been a personal favorite of mine. I was quite surprised that he was interested in playing. But I don’t think they were playing the game correctly. However, I just left they be to play the game since they were getting along so well at that time.

Memphis announced yesterday that he wanted his own Game of Life or Monopoly, but the Spongebob version. So before we headed out to dinner at Round Table with Sean, we detoured to the new Toys R Us store and quickly snatched the Spongebob Game of Life. My grandma had given both Jaz and Memphis $20 to spend on whatever they wanted to get. I figured that they could share the game because Jaz is at that age where she doesn’t have a particular thing that she wants, besides getting into Memphis’ stuff and playing with anything that has wheels. She’s not really big on girly toys yet.

To my pleasant surprise, the game was only about $14 after tax.

By the time we got home last night, it was past Memphis’s bedtime. So I told him that he can play the game as soon as he gets up in the morning. I had no idea that he’d be up at 7:30 am today.

I was so groggy as I sat down and helped Memphis set the game up. We tried playing the game but I realized that we were playing it wrong. I didn’t know that we were supposed to get paid every time we land on or pass “Pay Day”. So we started the game over and played the right way.

I had a great time spending quality time playing the game with Memphis. I think he slowly learned how to play it the proper way. I think, without realizing it, he was learning about life in general just by enjoying the game. He learned the importance of knowing how to count money, earning money, waiting his turn, not cheating, reading instructions, paying for expenses, and a number of other things. I think he would thoroughly enjoy Mall Madness, a fun electronic shopping game that I loved playing when I was a kid. I’ll have to look into that.

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So me and Jaz were playing an impromptu game of “up and down” with her small John Deere tractor and the wall. Memphis was watching Spongebob in my room.

Jaz was running the tractor up the wall so I said, “Up!” And when she drove the tractor down, I’d respond with, “Down!” We did that for several minutes. It got the point where she would announce up or down before she would do the respective action with her tractor.

I joined in with her and I guess she didn’t want me to do that so she got in my face and loudly said, “Shut up!” I was stunned. She either learned it from Memphis telling her to shut up (he’s done that before and got in trouble with me) or she may have heard it on a show like Spongebob. Either way, she learned to say shut up and knew how to use it.

I know that I would never say that to either of my parents at that age or any age for that matter. The closest I got to that was when my dad’s sister Rose said something to me that I didn’t like. I went into the bathroom and yelled to her “Shut up.” My mom was furious. She made me go up to my aunt and apologize for saying that.

Anyway, I gave Jaz an upset look, tapped her on the cheek and told her, “Don’t say that to me.” Then I walked away. I know that years ago when Memphis was that age, if he had ever told me to shut up, he would have gotten a stinging smack across the face that would hurt for a while. I made a lot of mistakes with my first child back then and I’m choosing to learn from them and not repeat them anymore.

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Me and Memphis haven’t done anything that looks remotely like homeschooling (or school at home as unschoolers call it) in probably over half a year. He doesn’t know it but Marty and I had agreed that unschooling him and Jaz was the best approach for us as a family. It’s been a pretty rocky road in the sense that it hasn’t been easy. My mind keeps screaming at me that unschooling isn’t teaching our kids what we had to learn in a tradition classroom setting. There are no grades, tests, or curriculum that we follow. Plus, I’ve also adopted unschooling as our lifestyle as well as our parenting. It’s been tough because me and Marty have been raised the old school way. Memphis had been disciplined, yelled at, and spanked since he was a year old. And we thought it was justifiable because we were his parents and we didn’t want him to grow up to be an uncontrollable person.

Disciplining Memphis the old school way was detrimental to him as a person. I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to do away with the traditional disciplining and use unschooling instead. I haven’t raised my hand to him since then. I’m very proud of myself. Granted, it was been very trying and difficult, shredding my patience to pieces at times. I haven’t stopped yelling at Memphis but it has been greatly reduced as I learn to use other more peaceful methods. It’s been a great learning experience.

Instead of yelling and spanking Memphis, I have learned to do things like talking it out with him or distracting him with other things. I’ve also “grounded” him from things like the Wii or the computer when he has done things that have upset us. Yes, this is going against unschooling but it sure beats physically or verbally harming him. I’m sure in the near future, “grounding” will not be used any longer. I’m taking things in steps.

Memphis had gotten into trouble last night because first he stuck his foot in the toilet right after he had peed in it. Yes, very gross and unsanitary. And then he and his sister were pouring water in and out of the toilet during their bath time. Again, gross and unsanitary. Marty flipped out because of the fact that his niece and nephew had been in the habit of going to the bathroom and not washing their hands. That in turn caused almost everyone at Mike and Robbie’s house to get very sick, vomitting constantly and being sent to the hospital. Unfortunately, even Memphis caught it and suffered the vomitting bout and staying the night at the hospital.

Marty didn’t spank Memphis but he did tell me what happened. I angrily yelled at Memphis but didn’t lay a hand on him. Instead, I grounded him from going outside or using the computer for 7 days. I know it was a drastic punishment. However, it was all I could to prevent myself from spanking him.

So today, when Memphis was announcing that he was bored, I offhandedly suggested that he could do some pages from his kindergarten workbook. I figured that if he didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t press the issue. After all, I was going by the methods of unschooling. Surprisingly, he agreed and got out his workbook and crayons. It had not been opened up since we bought it at Walmart months ago.

He sat down next to me at the computer desk and set to work doing the first several pages. He asked how many pages he “had to do” and I just told him do as many as he want to. When we were “homeschooling”, I insisted on him doing 20 pages. Come to think of it, whenever I homeschooled Memphis from the ages of 4-6, it was a constant stressful battle which would leave the both of us angry and in tears.

Instead, Memphis flew through 22 pages quickly and without the slightest of issues. He understood the directions, wrote the numbers very well, and answered my questions regarding the pages he was doing easily. I was very proud of him. I took some pictures of our “session” and will post them up soon.

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