1) I have always been under pressure as a kid, always in competition with others, always afraid to fail, always reminded that only high grades can get me to a good University and then to a good corporate job that is going to help me have all the money and happiness I need. Well, after 18 years of hard study I got to a good University, to a great HR manager job. I was underpaid, overworked, always tired, no time for myself and my family, demotivated, long hours at work and at home, traveling in Europe but spending late nights in the office. I got to really see Krakow on vacation not on the long 3 planes there and 3 planes back trips to Poland. I was really unhappy and didn't get the point of all that work and study when some people sing and get in one night the money I got in 3 months.
So, no competition and no pressure for the kid to study hard, perform and get a good job. I don't want him to be employed anywhere like I was. I was unhappy and got too little for the time I offered from my life. So the education we are giving him is not aimed towards having a good job. We want him to be independent - either a freelancer, a nomad or an entrepreneur. Having control over your time and life seems very important and from my experience most money is not made by employees. They are just caught up in routine and don't get any time to plan their life and find better income sources because they are so tired and overworked. Should our son want to see what it's like to be employed, it's his choice, but I am sure that being used to freedom he won't want that for too long. I prefer to teach him about Robert Kiyosaki's assets and liabilities than about being a great employee.
For my parents me becoming someone important was crucial - they would have been ashamed by society and their friends if I hadn't. So their image in society was more important than me being happy. For us...well, we don't care what our son becomes as long as he's happy. I am fine with YouTuber, fisherman in Jamaica, singer, nomad designer traveling the world, gamer, whatever he chooses. I don't care as long as he's on his own, able to support himself and make something of his life on this Earth. I have learned that if we don't pressure him towards something he is more confident in making his choices. We just trust him and support his choices. He's responsible enough even if he's only 9. Don't get me wrong about limits - he has those, but whatever he likes to learn , he is supported. And when he choses something he likes he puts a lot of effort and passion into that. He likes learning and no pressure works. We are more than happy with his academic level. Today, he gave me his third story in English, written for children all by himself, about 10 pages for me to publish on Amazon under his name. To me, that's a great achievement, so yes, no pressure works.
2) I have always beed pushed to get diplomas from elite schools. I did. Then I became a recruiter. I did that for about 10 years as HR specialist and then HR manager. Guess what...the job requirements made me chose most of the times those people that had obscure diplomas or didn't graduate. I had to recruit Portuguese speakers, German speakers of advanced SAP programmers. I turned down someone with a perfect score at the University because he was completely useless in a practical job. All he knew was learn and get high grades.
So, a lot of the times diplomas didn't count too much. We ran a lot of tests and people got accepted according to those. And a lot of them had learned what we needed by themselves not at the University, just because they were passionate about something. So, in 10 years in Human Resources I have learned that passion is much important than diplomas. So, we don't care about diplomas as parents...at least so far. Our son is in an online school in the States, their diplomas are OK so far. I don't know if we will care about diplomas later, he will be the one to choose. So far we have the primary school diplomas and diplomas from courses he chooses to graduate - like Digital art on Krita that he's doing right now by his choice.
3) In terms of learning the basics we didn't have to push anything. He spends time by us and sees us working from home, so he understands the need to read, write, speak English at a fluent level (he sees us communicating with people abroad daily), he saw me working on the PC and he spent a lot of time by my side learning Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Canva, audio processing software just by looking at me and repeating what he saw on our house desktop PC he was allowed to use from time to time, creating his own projects.
Then his dad brought him a used laptop and he was forced to make it work if he wanted to have a laptop. He tried for about 3 days to install Windows on it with the help of his dad from time to time. And he succeeded after reading toturials and installing over and over again. He used that junk laptop for about 3 months and then we got him his own new laptop. He had his own money received from grandma on Christmas and his birthday and with that and what we gave him he was able to buy a good laptop. Since he paid for half of it, he takes care of it better.
Then he saw his dad with electronics parts creating circuits and installing solar panels and batteries and soldering and doing all sorts of stuff and he learned that too. So the basics he learned by looking at us and understanding why something is useful. Things that he doesn't see us doing are very difficult to make him do. Like handwriting. That's a burdain because he sees me writing on the computer a lot, so he doesn't understand why handwriting is so important. He learned that, but we had to push a bit, his grandma and his aunt pracise with him when they come visit; otherwise, he hates that because he doesn't understand the need.
He used to like manual work when he was little - he liked the hammer, nails, he liked to build. We encouraged that. Now, not anymore, and we don't push it. His dad asks for help from time to time and he helps but he's no longer passionate, so we don't push it. He has his own tools, real tools like drilling machine and screwdrivers he uses. When his dad is not at home and I need to use the electrical screwdriver, he helps. I don't bother to learn because he needs to feel that these skills are needed from time to time in the house. His dad tries to involve him in various projects like building a new door - he comes but we see he's not passionate anymore. That's fine.
4) I like to read a lot and I read a lot to him as a child. That's how he learned to like books and that's how we started learning English. So now he associates reading time with nice time spent together. So he likes reading - not all the time but often enough. We now finished Geronimo Stillton, the Nikolai Nosov series of Habarnam and we just bought the first 6 volumes of Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter; we work in doing summaries - he hates that and I try to make time to read together and make summaries together so he gets the idea of what a summary is. I wouldn't bother if him being able to get one important idea of a piece of text wasn't important for his life.
5) In terms of maths he watched us do various calculations - for example he saw me calculating offers for clients and understood why that was important. So he learned to add, subtract, multiply and all simple maths. I am not going to push any advanced maths unless he finds it useful and likes it. I didn't use a lot of the things I learned in school so I am not going to teach that to him unless he feels attracted to it. At all. I used to learn vectors, limits, matrix...no use at all. So unless he feels attracted to any of that at some point, we will skip it.
6) History - we don't bother so far as I am not convinced myself that what we are taught in schools is completely real. I talked to him about the dacians, our forefathers but he's not very interested, so I will skip it for later. There are things that need to be learned later to be understood. For example I was forced to read books in highschool, at 16 or 17. I hated them as I didn't understand anything. Well, guess what: I started understanding them when I got at 40. So...things must be taught when they will be better understood. So I use my knowledge and skip what he wouldn't understand for now.
7) Knowledge of the human body - I know New German Medicine and whenever we have an illness and conflict causing an illness in the house, I talk to him openly about it, about the cause and about a specific organ. He's mature enough and understands.
Here are my blogs on that subject:
https://new-german-medicine.blogspot.com/ translation of articles from Romanian in progress...
8) Nature, animals and climate studies he learns by the fact that we live in the countryside, we have a lot of animals, a large garden. No, he doesn't like working in the garden and we don't push it. Gardening was interesting when he was 4. Now it's not anymore. But he loves cats and we talk a lot about them, he likes to read about cats, we talk about a cat's body, out cats had kittens so learn by observing.
9) Technology - this is the great challenge we have. Children nowadays are born with technology all around them, they know intuitively how to use it. I've heard of parents that forbid it because it's bad for their children. Well, we don't do that but our son has clear limits. He has a laptop, tablet, smartphone. He's recently received an IPhone as a gift as well and we approved it. He's allowed on TikTok to be in contact with a few kids from around here and follow each other, he has Gmail and we communicate on Gmail Chat. He uses Zoom for courses and has access to YouTube and a few others. I've noticed that kids nowadays tend to use technology more than normal when they are bored or simply want to escape from daily routine if the boredom or pressure is too much on them. It's their safe and nice world they can go to when they don't like reality. Is that OK? I have no idea, I used to bake mud cookies when I was his age. I learned to open a PC when I was 18, so I have no clue if it's OK or not. As a parent I have to learn as we move along.
But...I've noticed that using technology for too long is draining his energy. He becomes angry and agitated when we limit the use of technology. I discussed with him about his anger - it's his way of getting his energy back - remember James Redfield and his 4 ways of people stealing other's energy. The intimidator is angry and I've explained to our son that being angry after technology drains his energy is his way of stealing our energy to compensate. So this is why technology must be limited. And he understands. When I tell him to go outside and play with the cats, he does. And if the limits are not respected over and over again we have punishments like no laptop for a week. And we did it once and it worked...for a while. We have to be always on the lookout, and I hate being the police but we have to.
So, technology is good if used for good. We allow him to use it for learning and for communicationg with his friends otherwise he would be considered weird, but we ask him to take breaks every 1.5 - 2 hours; every 2 weeks on Sunday we all have the "No screen day" where nobody in the house is allowed any screens, not even us the parents for 24 hours and I've notices everybody being calmer and more creative and full of energy. Our son accepts no screens day as he sees us doing it too. He is somehow attracted to the activities we did as kids, but always comes back to technology and we have to deal with it. We can't put him in a locked tower. We have to accept the trends of his generation.
So, what do we do to discover his abilities?
- spend a lot of time together and just see what he likes, what he wants to learn, what he is interested in fom the things we do daily;
- allow him to try various things and if he doesn't like it, don't force it; there are so many unhappy doctors and lawyers in this world that would have been happy as painters; in my opinion, our goal on this Earth is to be happy so for a parent finding out what makes your child happy is more important than your fame as the mother of a doctor or lawyer;
- try to encourage him in what he wants to do even if to me it is all so boring - for example he likes video editing and keeps showing me all sorts of videos that he filmed and edited; I get bored and annoyed at some point especially that most videos include cats, but I do my best to support him.
- try to do our best to buy him the stuff he needs to support his passions - for example we bought a digital piano (it was for me to relax) and when seing that he likes learning piano by himself and he is attracted to it, I did my best to also buy him a subscription for a piano app to help him learn. Also we bought him electronics learning sets or books. We do our best as parents to support what he wants to do and learn with material items;
- we allow him to take part in free demo webinars and if there's something he likes we do our best to allow him to take a specific course - he liked Digital Art in Krita and we registered him to take it;
- we rarely push him to learn something he doesn't like - there are a lot of things I don't see useful in my life from my school curriculum, so why would I push him if I never used them in 40 years; there's always Google or books for small questions, why bother memorize all stuff just in case?
- allow him access to YouTube, but supervising what he watches, allow him access to various applications on his phone, but checking from time to time what he does, allow him access to TikTok but checking what he watches and posts, discussing with him openly about malicious acts on the internet that can happen to kids so he has access to new things, apps, software, ideas but under supervision;
- talk to him a lot about anything without shaming him or being angry at him when he does something wrong in order for us to be the first people he comes to when he wants something or has a question;
- explaining in simple words why he can't have something he wants, like a gadget. He doesn't accept it, but he understands the explanation;
- making lists and discussing with him from time to time about what he likes and what he would like to do and learn in the near future, what profession he would like; and no, he doesn't say he wants to be an astronaut :) Most of the time he's not sure what he wants, but we support him in all the small steps he wants to take to figure that out.
- read books on different subjects together and see what he's interested in learning more; offering him the means to discover more as we have learned that no pressure and passion in a subject helps accumulate the most information and in the fastest manner;
What is our schedule? How do we organize it?
Well, we don't organize too much. We do spontaneous learning, mostly evenings. We allow a lot of play and free time during the day - more than half of the day is play and free activities inside the house when it's cold (laptop, smartphone, books, electronics games, cats are allowed inside from time to time, they get filmed a lot and placed on TikTok) and outside (playing, running, the trampoline, more playing with cats, some work in the garden, some chores like bringing wood inside the house, bringing water to wash the dishes, bringing ingredients for the kitchen from the cellar). We try to make at least half of the day play and free time. Laptop and smartphone time is limited to 1.5 hours followed by 3 hours of break. If not respected, laptop is off for a week. We did that but only once as it wasn't necessary more.
So, academic activities like reading, maths, English, Spanish in the evening, some chores during the day (he doesn't like those obviously, but we teach him that we are a team and each member of the team needs to contribute to the house activities) and the rest of the day free time and play. We have never forced him to wake up at a specific hour and we allow as much sleep as he needs.
And strict schedules...we tried that. I created a scredule for a month where he would have all activities planned daily - academic and chores - feeding the cats and dogs every 2 days, taking the ashes out from the stove, reading, calligraphy - he got bored after a week or so. No way I could make him follow the schedule. He prefers spontaneous tasks...so I do that. I ask him to do something and he does it and that's it. Sometimes I have work to do and I am not available, so spontaneous is better for everybody.
I really hope this post is useful.
Love, Geo