Ki o tsuke!
Calls sensei, and twenty children snap to attention, facing the front and awaiting instruction. All but one young man: my son. He is standing at the end, facing the wrong direction, his gi practically falling off and swinging his belt as if it were a lasso. There is a long pause as it becomes obvious that he neither recognizes the verbal command nor the social cues that his behavior is inappropriate.
It is difficult for me to watch. Part of me wants to jump in and direct him, give him the extra attention he needs to be successful, or maybe just protect him from the impatient stares of the entire room. Strange thing to protect him from, since I am clearly the only one of the two of us who has noticed. But that is part of why we signed him up. This class has the physical activity and physical games he loves with a little of the sitting still, standing at attention, and listening to verbal and social cues he struggles with.
Over the years my daughter has been involved, I have seen other children like him who just don’t seem to get it, and perhaps more aggravatingly don’t seem to even notice they don’t get it. I’ve seen their enthusiasm despite regular corrections, seen their excitement as they slowly gain rank and seen their more eccentric behaviors gradually decrease as they grow and mature.
More remarkably, however, I have seen a room full of children from the age of four to sixteen who simply accept these quirky children for who they are. The brown belts spend a little extra time helping them with their gi, tying their belt and redirecting their attention, but no one seems to actually mind the ones who don’t fit in, who make the class stand at attention while they spin in circles or who ultimately are responsible for the entire room doing push ups.
These are your dojo brothers.
Sensei emphasizes, and he doesn’t allow anything but respect.
It is an environment I felt was safe to put my son into, although I knew it would be challenging for him and those responsible for teaching him. It is somewhat sad to say, but I have not always felt the same about our church, or his involvement with the programs he so much wants to be a part of.
Still, he is my son. I don’t really want to sit back and watch him “grow out of it.” I want to “fix” him, make him “normal,” help him not to experience the social stigmas he doesn’t seem to be aware of anyway. Sometimes I even try, and we spend hours battling each other as I try to take this little square peg and force it into a little round hole and get frustrated with the little peg who somehow should respond to the hammering some other way.
I am getting better at letting him be himself. At not being repulsed by his saliva covered hands. At taking comments like “For him, he was good…” as a compliment worthy of praise for my young man. At setting my expectations somewhere he can reach rather than where I think he should be.
But as I sat and watched him in karate last night, an odd thought popped into my mind…a new label for my son.
Weird, unsocialized homeschooler.
It doesn’t matter that he is only two months into kindergarten. I see him someday as the subject of other people’s conversations and I hear all the comments I’ve read in the numerous “Yeah, but…” concerns regarding homeschooling.
I knew a homeschooled kid once. Sure he was smart, but he just didn’t fit in. He was weird. He just didn’t get the social cues.
Coming from a quirky family, having not fit in especially well in school and being married to a man who most assuredly did not fit into the school enviornment, I have always wondered whether such comments say more about homeschoolers or the public/private school graduates passing judgment.
The fact is, since he is homeschooled, that will likely always be blamed for any social deficiencies which persist in him until adolescence and beyond. It doesn’t matter that while he doesn’t seem to “get” sitting still, his sister is leading class. It doesn’t matter that while I’m brainstorming ways to make it possible for him to participate in game time in AWANAs, my three year old is getting praise for her vocabulary, listening skills and maturity heaped upon her. It also doesn’t matter how far he has come over the years and the fact that he has come from unmanageable to merely weird in just five years.
Society has a single standard, and since he doesn’t have any obvious and visible disabilities, I fear his “otherness” will always be blamed on his parents’ educational choices. And that leaves us with a dilemma. Mostly I fret alternately about how to force my little square peg into his little round hole or at what kind of damage I’m doing when I try too hard. But I can no more make that hole square than I can the peg round.
So where does that leave us?
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And don’t forget this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling!
Once upon a time when my oldest was 20 months old and I was worried about her not “getting” potty training like my mom thought she should be, a dear friend of mine with children the ages mine now are said, “This is not worth worrying about. She will not still be in diapers when she is 20.” And every time I start worrying about some lack of maturity on the part of my kids–when my 7 year old clings to me rather than visit with complete and total strangers, when my 9 year old draws on the wall or rips up bits of paper and doesn’t notice she is doing it, when my 10 year old flips out because I ask her to do the dishes or some other perfectly common household chore that any other day she would do without noticing, I remember what Bea said. If we are training them up in the Lord then He WILL take care of the rest. So what if others think we are weird. Bea, the mom of that wonderful wisdom now has high school and college age kids–and they all turned out very sane, very good with people, and very capable, despite their oddities at various ages.
Oh, and nowadays with so many public schooled kids on drugs for add and adhd it makes those who are not look bad, like they are not normal to want to run and play instead of play along like everyone else. And, I am afraid I was the kid who had no clue what was going on, totally oblivious, happily turning cartwheels on the soccer field while the ball whizzed by. I just wasn’t ready for that sort of thing and wasn’t ready for it at all until late high school
It leaves you homeschooling. When I worked in the school system, I saw many square pegs squashed into round holes. It wasn’t pretty.
I’ve watched my own homeschooled square peg chisel out a very nice square hole for himself, and it’s a lot nicer fit than the round one would have been.
Think Bill Gates, think Albert Einstein, think Thomas Edison…not bad for a group of square pegs, eh? If you want my advice, just let the child be. He’ll get there.
Yeah, chiseling away at kids usually doesn’t do much for them.
Wow, so much of this post resonated with me.
I have a little boy who has been in karate since he was 4. We put him in for a lot of the same reasons that you have. His progress has been slow, but he has progressed. Now he’s 8 and he’s actually starting to resemble the other children, somewhat. This has also happened in group violin class, which we engage in for similar reasons.
I can remember thinking, “This will force him to connect with reality. Surely he will not be able to live in that internal landscape he inhabits, when people are shouting and kicking and flailing around right in front of his face.” Then seeing him spinning, humming, oblivious and feeling like there would never be friction between the wheels of his mind and the road of other people around him.
It’s getting better. Our challenge has been unison behavior. Syncing up. I’ll let you know if I figure out anything magical! For now, I just wanted to let you know I really liked your post, and that there are others of us out here who are thinking these thoughts. I know that my older child would be “weird” whether he was homeschooled or not, and I know that my younger one would “fit in” whether he was homeschooled or not, you know? The truth is that homeschooling makes it easier for both of them. My beautiful, smart, socially adept daughter will never be a “mean girl” in a high school clique. And my strange, unfocused, brilliant son will never be surrounded by bullies who are calling him “freak.” Their friends see them as individuals — do you notice this with the homeschoolers you hang out with? The kids deal with each other in single units, not as categories or groups.
Okay now I’m off topic. I feel for you and your karate guy.
I have sat in that seat so many times.
Thanks, Lydia. And I have noticed that among the other homeschoolers we hang out with. The group has a couple of “those kids” who you know wouldn’t fair well in public school, but they don’t seem to realize they don’t “fit in” and no one else seems to, either.
I also noticed that they don’t segregate off into little groups, leaving one or two kids standing off by themselves.
Last week, they played dodge ball. He loved it, and still talks about how great dodge ball is. The funny thing is, he really didn’t play. He was way too overstimulated, and spent most of the game doing wind sprints and leaping in little circles while he whooped. Not once did he pick up a ball to throw at the other team, and he was too oblivious to what was going on to dodge the ball when it came at him.
But it was the best day of his life, as he told us afterward.
I have a couple siblings who always seemed to be the square peg. None of them were homeschooled. I agree with the sentiment above that it would be worse if he was in public school, but I also understand the feelings about him being seen as the weird, unsocialized homeschooler. As hard as it is to ignore what others’ opinions, your son is getting exactly what he needs from you, acceptance of who he is and not trying to make him something different. Easy it is not, but then again, we’re parents. What is easy?
Being the square peg in school it’s hard to be surrounded by all the rounds trying to force you to fit. That’s probably one of the best advantages of homeschooling, he can be the “weird, unsocialized homeschooler” and it’s OK.
Comments that others make most often say more about them than the person toward whom the comment is directed.
…which makes me wonder what my words say about me.
Very thought-provoking.
~Luke
As a fellow parent (and former child learning–or not learning– to fit in), I just want to say, “Thanks for this, Dana. A lot.” Some things cut across all sorts of boundaries.
My DH is still skeptical about HS, and just a few weeks ago he was complaining that he thought it was making our DD “socially awkward”. Now this is the child who is little miss outgoing and certainly has way more social savvy than I did at her age, so I probed deeper.
It turns out his real concern is that she is extremely high energy and doesn’t sit still the way he thinks she ought to. That has everything to do with temperament (many of my relatives are the same way) and very little to do with whether or not she’s in a traditional school. In fact, it’s just as well that she’s NOT in a traditional school because they’d probably insist on Ritalin even though she does not have ADHD (she has no difficulty focusing for long periods of time when something interests her).
DH just doesn’t understand her because he’s got a very different temperament- introverted and inclined to be sedentary. So because he’s already dubious about HS, naturally that’s what he blames for the “problems” he sees in her.
Wow I needed this today. As a mother of an 8 year old square peg who is feeling pushed to figure out why he’s not so round, I needed this today.
I need to be my son’s advocate, to be there to help guide him as he finds his way. ADHD drugs may help, but do I need to do that for a boy who is a brilliant learner but can’t “settle” into group social situations without being the loudest one, the one facing backwards, the one disrupting. I battle daily the want for him to fit in and “be normal”, to not be disruptive…Why? Because I don’t like the looks, the comments?
It is a daily battle, and today I needed to feel not so alone. Thank you.
Thank you, Angie. And if you ever just want to chat, feel free to email me.
As a Mom of a square peg who tried to fit her Daughter into the round hole of public school for 7 years, I so relate.
After two years of homeschooling she’s still socially awkward but she’s no longer “forced” to try and fit in. And she’s happier.
At home she’s allowed to be weird, different, outside the box.
And now when she is in social situations that require a level of conformity (as some inevitably do), she is much more confident and able to learn from them because she is not overwhelmed like she was when she was in school.
Thanks for this post.
even though she does not have ADHD (she has no difficulty focusing for long periods of time when something interests her).
One of the symptoms (of ADD, admittedly, more than ADHD), can be the ability to hyper-focus. To focus so deeply on one thing that every thing else disappears. This is not a pro- (or con-) medication statement, however. Everybody should do what is best for their children.
He’s a boy! It will be okay.
This is so very true. It amazes me how people against homeschooling only seem to see the child who is quirky, odd, or maybe even behind by their standards.
Who is to say that this quirky child would have done better in a government school? I have seen what happens to quirky children there… and it’s usually not pretty.
Homeschooling is often the best environment for these little ones because they are able to be themselves and mature naturally, whereas others would probably seek to change him and make him feel that the personality and gifts God has blessed him with are not acceptable or praise worthy.
I often have restrain myself from trying to “fix” my children in these areas too…. try to force them to “get” it…
Then I realize.. maybe they get it.. and I don’t.
I took a break and came by to see you. This is my first time visiting your blog. Although I have seen you a lot on “twitter”.
This post really touched me. I want to write more but can’t.
I vividly remember the day my oldest started baseball and the players had run off the field and he was still out there looking at something that had taken him far far far away….
I love how you express yourself and enjoyed reading your post.
Thank you for this fabulous discussion. It is good meat to chew on. If I had only one square peg, I think my confidence in our HS would be greater, but all four seem to be weird, unsocialized homeschoolers!
I have three children. I have experienced public school, private school, and homeschool for the last 32 years of my life.
My oldest (32) graduated from the University of Florida 11 years ago, (he experienced all aspects of schooling), my middle son is in his third year of college, (homeschool and public school) my daughter is finishing her last year of homeschooling (never been in a school, has a job and attends to her own studying).
In my observation, there are no square pegs, no are no round holes to fit them in. So what is there? Children that society feels it’s their job to label. Don’t do it. Don’t label. Just love and keep going.
I could almost swear we have the same kid, ‘cept mine’s a little older (almost 7) and is in taekwondo. And the geographical location, of course.
Sammy was similar, but had also dealt with speech apraxia. His taekwondo, while almost painful to watch initially because of his awkwardness, has really helped transform him physically and socially. Give it time…it’ll help your kiddo out too!
Thanks, Scott. And he was so proud of himself last Thursday because he didn’t go to time out even once as he proclaimed to us after class.
I concur with a lot of the statements above, but I also admit that sometimes we would rather just fix them than let them grow into the unique individuals God made them. I watch my oldest son, who is still public schooled, struggle with being the ‘easy target’ for girls who giggle and tease him at church, ’cause they know he’s a gentleman and won’t tease back. Same for my middle child, who is so self-confident even when everyone around him is scratching their heads wondering where his logic is going.
For me it’s a balancing act. Like the Bible says, we are in the world, so we do have to be aware of society norms, but we’re not of the world, so we work to influence it, not be conformed to it.
Thanks for your openness. I helps to know we’re not alone.
First of all, let me say that I am particularly fond of your post title.
And, I guess it leaves you right here with the rest of us moms, trying our best to help our kids learn to navigate this world with as little damage as possible, loving them for who they are, and teaching them to love themselves.
Have a great week!
What quirky family?
Oops, I forgot. We are the normal ones. It’s the rest of the world that doesn’t fit in…
Whenever people tell us in an impolite way that they think homeschooling is weird, I ask them if they’re conformists or something, unable to think for themselves. I ask them if everything they do is driven by what their neighbors do, and, if so, how pathetic it must be to live like that. I don’t see why I should be the one defending my actions.