learning all the time

I am a firm believer in the theory of trickle-down education. As my homeschooling career has progressed, or regressed, over the years I have found I spend less time with my younger children than I did with their older siblings at a similar age. Much less. It's a problem I share with every other homeschooling mother I have ever met. The younger children have to pick up a lot more on their own since their parents are too busy driving older kids to sports, music lessons, jobs, drivers ed, etc. We all, to a woman, feel guilty over this situation, and worry that our later children will fulfill every NEA prophecy and turn into the village idiots.

So, I am ever so happy to se any evidence of precocity on the part of my five year old, although I know she owes little of it to me. Watching and listening to her older siblings she has picked up an amazing amount of information, most of it actually useful. One day when her little friends wanted to do a play of Peter Pan, a respectable classic in its own right, my five year old was agitating for the legend of Icarus and Daedalus instead. When she arrived at the pond beach another day she rushed over to her dam-building friend, brandishing a shovel and shouting, "Do you need assistance??" Today when I was running out to the grocery store I told her which of her older siblings was in charge. Wishing to cover all her bases she asked about the next child in the pecking order, "Does M have authority over me while you are gone?" Have authority over me??

What else trickles down at our house? Taste in movies, for one. Although our eldest children never saw anything more frightening than Beauty and the Beast until they were 9 or 10, our younger children are fans of Ocean's Eleven, The Patriot and AirForce One. My five year old loves old I Love Lucy shows and can even appreciate much of Hogan's Heroes though the humor is aimed at adults. She will even watch Monty Python in a pinch.

Taste in music seems to trickle down, too. Our youngest sings songs from The Phantom of the Opera and Wicked as often as she regales us with Raffi or Sharon, Lois and Bram tunes. She recognizes Santana playing at the grocery store and will happily listen to old Beatles music in the back seat. I have been glad to see that good taste in clothing seems to be catching as well. Playing the SkyBreeze online dressup game today she rejected several articles of teenage clothing as "not very modest." I doubt if she could define the concept, but she knows it when she sees it, (don't we all!).

But seriously, it is reassuring to see that what I have always spouted as the homeschooling company line, that children learn all the time, still appears to be true. Though Miss Independent doesn't want to practice her handwriting when I finally do guiltily drag out a workbook, she has decided she likes to copy words off the globe; today she presented me with a page reading "Botswana" and "Namibia" and asked what she had written. She's gotten pretty good at finidng Malaysia, as well. When my eldest was her age we were earnestly beginning piano AND violin lessons, but the baby of the family has not taken a music lesson. She has, however, learned how to play the melody of the old country song "I'm Not Lisa" on the piano. No, it's not Mozart, but it is recognizable.

So amidst the moving boxes, doctor's visits, trips to the airport, phone calls from Dad, constant visitors, and drives to ballet she continues to learn. I'm not spoonfeeding anymore; some days I just leave the brain food lying around the house, but somehow it finds its way into her inquisitive little mind. Will wonders never cease.