Choosing (or Not) to Play the Game
This year, as some of you know, my older daughter is in a distance-learning program. It's been a struggle in many ways. But the biggest difficulty has been my girl's impatience with a system that sometimes "doesn't get it."
By this she means, the balance of inside and out has sometimes not been well-understood or successfully addressed. Being home-educated her whole life, this is a shocking experience. The rhythm of our lives has always been to cultivate what's inside the girls with appropriate outside helps. The balance has been (mostly) simple to achieve.
There are days when I almost despair over how simple it *has not been* in this new situation, though the distance-school has tried to (mostly) be accommodating.
The other night I told my girl that this is how it is in life. She'll encounter people and systems who "get it" and those who don't. And she will have to choose whether to play their game or assert her own game. I told her stories of times I've played the game and times I determined I could not. I want her to know she has a choice.
Labels: distance-learning, home education, TheHighCalling.org
posted by L.L. Barkat at 9:39 AM
2 Comments:
Such an important point you've imparted: that there is a choice and that it can be exercised after considering the implications of deciding one or the other way and being comfortable with the consequences of the decision. Choice opens the window of opportunity.
She is lucky to have a choice. Most young people do not.
I hear often from parents that their children have to learn to play the game, and it angers me. I've always told my dd that she doesnt, that she can make up her own game, advance through the world on her own terms. But maybe I should consider that sometimes it is easier, or actually better, to choose everyone else's game. The key is in having that choice.
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