I don't spend a lot of time worrying about this, because I'm too distracted to spend a lot of time on anything, but occasionally I do fear that I forgot to pass something important along to my children — especially, but not exclusively, the homeschooled ones.
It comes on you as you get older, I think, and lose that wide-open optimism that you can do it all, or at least the sense that there's a checklist somewhere. When I mentioned it to Rosie, she said that Ann, her mother-in-law (and my homeschooling buddy long before she rose to that august position) had recently sent out a message to her children, apologizing for not covering cloud formations adequately.
Exactly.
Here is the list of things I can remember that randomly rise up to bite me with remorse over not having done a good enough job teaching. Maybe I will remember more things. Maybe not. (NB — they seem to fall into two categories: geography and fire safety. And seem to be useful really only when doing crossword puzzles. Other than the fire safety stuff, of course.)
1. Cloud formations. I remember having to memorize cloud formations in school. I know nimbus (which I call “nimbulus” in my mind and just looked up and no, it's nimbus) and cumulus and cumulonimbulous cumulonimbus. And stratus. So important!
2. Stop, drop, and roll. A while back I read a terrible local history of a woman in the olden days whose skirts caught fire from the open hearth. She ran, with her baby in arms, around the house, burning it down around them. So sad!! She didn't remember to stop, drop, and roll, but boy, Bridget got a lecture about that.
Going to school doesn't seem to confer this knowledge reliably, so it's not like that's the solution. And Rosie says that in third grade, when she was actually in school, the fire-safety lesson gave her nightmares. That's not the goal, obviously!
My dear friend Nancy, when I told her that I had also given Katie (who happened to have the misfortune of visiting Bridget when that lecture feeling came on me) this lecture, recounted a story.
Once, after a long and tiring day, she had been resting in the lovely bath her husband had drawn for her, complete with candles on the edge of the tub. She's normally sensible and actually, rarely bathes rather than showers. But.
Her hair caught fire from a candle, and rather than simply handily dousing it in the adequate quantity of water provided, by the simple means of slipping down into it, she jumped out and ran out into the bedroom, screaming. Fortunately her fate was not that of the olden days lady!
Moral: Don't count on school to get you off the hook.
3. Also in the fire-safety category: Don't attempt to put a grease/oil fire out with water. A commercial during last night's game reminded Bridget that I have taught her this. I think she brought it up to ward off a lecture, but I was actually counting stitches in my knitting and missed my cue!
The ad people didn't seem to know this rule. Tsk. Bridget's on it, and maybe now I can let go of this one? Maybe not.
4. Tundra. Deep in what Dorothy Sayers calls the “Poll-parrot” stage of my education, I also learned the land forms. For some reason tundra and taiga really stuck with me. I worry that my children don't know what perma-frost is. I really worry.
5. Oxbow lakes. Did you know that lakes form for different reasons? And that a river can just jump out of its normal bed and take an entirely new course, leaving a lake behind? Someone had tweeted a photo of an oxbow lake possibly in the throes of formation, and that led me to send Bridget an email with the wikipedia article on the phenomenon and an apology for not doing a good job on certain things.
This was her gentle response:
“Thanks mama! I think we already have been over this ;)”
I am sharing all this with you for two reasons.
And second, so that if they already have, and you are stuck on the endless treadmill of five things you need your children to know, you will be comforted that you are not alone. Or else, I'm the only one! Oh no wait, there's Ann. 🙂
Mary (Owlhaven) says
Grammar! That's what I apologize to my big kids for not covering well! That and other world-views and religions…
The poor things…
Mary, momma to 10, ages 8 through 25
Wanda says
Oh I love this! At almost ## years of age, I find myself making these mental lists of things thinking, ” did I tell the girls that?” Most of them faith issues, since I did not homeschool, but this so resonated with me.
Ann says
Ann here. Since I found the youtube video, exceedingly and delightfully silly, I finally enjoy labeling clouds. And isn't it fun to combine those words? “Cumulonimbus”, just rolls right off the tongue. Much to my dismay, I learned more from the video than did my 10 year old, though she liked it, too!
And “oxbow”, that one passed me by, but now I know why the Oxbow Wildlife Preserve, that I drive by regularly, is called that. You are doing a better job than you realize, Leila.
kimberlee says
Ah, but if they learned to sing Waltzing Matilda (and being naturally curious homeschool types) they would want to find out what exactly a billabong is that the jolly swagman camped by and thus learn all they need to know of oxbow lakes.
Regarding sanity, I often tell my children to enjoy their brains whilst they are young because when you get old – oy!
Great post, dear Leila! You are always comforting indeed.
Jen says
We had a priest on our college campus who used to sing Waltzing Matilda all the time. You're right, if you have any natural curiosity, you will learn a lot from that song!
Sophie says
In our town, they have an annual fire safety day where you get to go to the fire house and do things like ride of fire trucks and shoot water out of fire hoses and practice calling 911 and other amazingly fun things. One of the activities is a stop drop and roll drill, which, if you do it successfully, you get a plastic fire hat for. For years, my little sister would respond to the question “What do you do when your clothes catch on fire?” with “Stop! Drop! Cover face with hands! Roll! Get fire hat!”
Donna L. says
*First, so that you are adequately warned that things get worse, sanity-wise*
Oh my goodness! I am ever so glad I was not drinking my hot tea when I read this! Laugh out loud! I am so glad I am not the only one who feels this way! I gave all of my sanity to my kids, incidentally, so at least its around here somewhere!
When I read one comment above, with my eldest behind me, reading too–I nodded at Grammar…and my daughter piped up with a goofy accent and said–“Grammar? We don't need no stinking GRAMMAR!” So, I'll be e-mailing them later in life about this, for certain!
Anna Yager says
PERFECT – “I gave all my sanity to my kids”. So comforting, and so true!
sibyl says
Xylem and phloem.
Names of bones in human body.
The metric system.
And so on.
Lori says
We've got fire safety totally covered — The Husband and all three adult kids are volunteer firefighters — but I think one result of homeschooling for our kids is that they must be resigned to the reality of receiving these semi-regular bulletins from me: “Oh, I'm pretty sure we never talked about…”
That's ok, Mom. We got it.
My dad used to say when we were in our teens: “I feel so strongly that our time with you is almost over and there is still so much to cover!” I guess it's universal.
Briana says
Wait there a minute, you mean I can't accomplish everything, even with a list? Dreams dashed, Auntie Leila, dreams dashed. 😀
Rachel says
I am sooo glad that you said this. I really did think it was just me!
Anna says
Tundra- we regularly visit the tundra, so I think we're covered there. However, I am sure I've missed a discussion of some sort of Eastern States geography! And the guilt will be ever so much worse because I've lived there and they haven't.
sjohnston522 says
As long as they know that New England is a region and not a state you are ahead of the game. I know of at least one mid-western girl who learned this fact at college freshman orientation. From me. Our school was in Boston. Oy.
DeirdreLMLD says
Gasp!!!
(and I'm bad at geography!)
Ashley says
So, I will say that I learned this long before my freshman year of college, but as a child in California, it's really easy to mix up New Jersey/New Hampshire/New England, especially if you've never been east of the Mississippi!
Anna says
And I, from Illinois, couldn't keep those square states out west straight until my husband brought me here.
Lesson learned: Geography is much easier when you've gone to visit, so travel often!
RubberChickenGirl says
I just asked my kids recently if New England was a state or a colony?? Like, those New England Patriots….don't they have to belong to a state or city?! I'm from Nevada for the record (said Ne va Duh NOT Ne VAH duy–geography lesson exchange, east v west. ;O)
RCG
Kate says
Skipping. I signed my little boys up for Saturday tennis and one of the exercises was skipping across the court. They couldn't do it! Neither could my friend's homeschooled boys. I never thought of skipping as a skill needing to be taught. Isn't there just a skipping gene that activates when needed?
Cary says
Apparently there is not a skipping gene. Just now, I made my 23, 18, and 16 year old children skip for me, as I had this panic attack that they could not. I'm sure the 21 year old will be very happy he's away at college and missed this. The troubling thing is that the 18 year old son couldn't skip. Oh, dear! But, we've all had a great laugh for the day watching him try. 😉 Skipping lessons will commence.
Anitra says
Thankfully, it's easy to learn. Hop twice on one foot, then hop twice on the other. Speed up the hopping, and eventually, you're skipping!
priest's wife says
I 'flunked' skipping in Kindergarten…I remember being so frustrated in 1st grade when I learned to skip on my own- WHY didn't the kindy teacher tell me to hop twice on a foot and then alternate? 😉
Elizabeth says
When I was in kindergarten we were taken out in small groups every few weeks for half an hour for “Body Management” classes. We practiced things like skipping, walking on a balance beam, bouncing a basketball, etc. The name still makes me laugh though…body management.
Alice says
Hah! A dear friend of mine was sent to private Catholic schools (and ended up converting to Catholicism) because the public school system failed him on his Kindergarten readiness test when he refused to skip on demand. Apparently skipping is serious business in the child-development department.
Lisa says
Good thing it's not “Skip! Drop! and Roll!”
Lacy says
That's hilarious! I was public schooled and also failed to learn skipping. The issue came to light once more when I was taking Music Ed classes and my friends and professors discovered that I couldn't skip. Of course, it caused a great deal of hilarity, and at age 20, I had to repeat my kindergarten skipping lesson. It failed to take both times. I thought I was the only one!
RubberChickenGirl says
Took me years to teach all five to pump their legs on a swing! We mostly had one car so never made it to parks to play. Why did we open this can of worms. The holes in all educations are limitless really. Just some are more glaring.
RCG
Anna says
Pumping, I just figured this out. Stand in front of the swing and hold out your hand. Tell the child that the moment his hands hit your fingers, bend his knees. It's a start, at least.
Ann-Marie says
Language,
Spanish, French, doesn't matter, I feel as if I should have prepared them better for this world.
But…My daughter was a Spanish major in college and is fluent.
My son has lived in Ukraine for the past year and is conversationally fluent in Russian.
So…guess I didn't have to do it all, afterall! Isn't God good!
Rebecca says
I have a friend who teaches kindergarten. One day as she was heating up something during lunch time there was a small fire in the classroom microwave which she was easily able to extinguish.She was obviously not watching her class closely during this event. Afterwards one little boy raised his hand and told her that when he saw the fire he had remembered to stop, drop, and roll. 🙂
Jenny says
How funny! I was driving with my oldest, 7.5, on Sunday and she was asking about the cloud formations. I told her that all I remember from school was cumulus and cumulonimbus and these weren't those. She is very interested so we will have to look it up.
I can say they definitely cover fire safety in our local schools. The seven year old is always talking about how to get out of the burning house.
Susan (DE) says
Hilarious.
So true. Especially about the sadly declining brain cells. Or concentration. Or something.
I did think: oh, NOW I see why it's so great to have lived so long in Pennsylvania, with its many subjects you must cover. We got the fire safety down. Yearly. We had to. 🙂
And on the cloud formations, I don't remember EVER talking about that, but my son self-taught, became a meteorology major in college, and is on his way to a doctorate in the same! SOMETHING happened, and I'm sure it wasn't ME.
Susan
Ellie says
Oh this made me laugh. Bless. Thank you.
(My homeschooled kids are 11-24).
Roseanne says
Just last week, at the age of 33, I learned what an oxbow lake is, and I was private and public schooled. I truly believe that the point of homeschooling is not that we will teach our children everything (Impossible!) or even everything we think they ought to know (also impossible!), but that they will have the skills to teach themselves, love learning and never stop exploring life and all its tricks and skills. I came across the term oxbow lake in a book I was reading and thanks to the dictionary, I am now better informed about lake formation. But, I just discovered that my 3 year old can't skip. Time for a trip to the park. Need more skipping room. 😉 Great post. Thanks so much!
Claire says
amen.
Amy M. says
First of all, oxbow lakes are the coolest!! (I study/work with rivers on a daily basis, so when I saw this as a blog post title in LMLD I got very excited 🙂 Second, being an unmarried 26 year old with no children, take the following thoughts with a grain of salt. I think every family culture passes down different things. Do we want to give some thought as to what those things are? Yes, and that's part of why mothers consider what they teach, why a place like LMLD exists, et cetera, but we can't teach everything. I feel like if you teach what you love most and what you know best, everything else just sort of shakes out, and it's part of what makes your home and family unique. If this all sounds completely overoptimistic, please tread gently on my illusions 🙂 Happy Tuesday all!
Alice says
Well, I didn't know what an Oxbow lake was until today, and I'm 5/6ths of the way to a PhD. 😉
I do wish I'd been taught more about money management/budgeting– and that I'd taken some introductory Economics classes in college so that I could understand the news. Likewise statistics, because I always feel manipulated when people quote statistics at me.
On the “safety” list, I keep meaning to take a CPR/first aid class.
… and my favorite way to keep my geography sharp as an adult (particularly as a procrastinating PhD student) is to play around with the quizzes on Sporcle.
Becky says
I adore this post and will likely re-visit it often.
If you would like to feel slightly more worried about fire safety… We had a fireman talk at one of my mother's groups and he addressed grease fires. I had always felt confident in my ability to dump baking something on it and all would be well. However, while baking soda suffocates the flame, the baking POWDER will cause an explosion. Plus, I can never keep the 2 straight at the best of times (I ALWAYS have to double check the recipe), I'm sure I will be a complete mess in the face of actual emergency. I am now always slightly paranoid that I will be the woman that not only sets her bacon on fire but also manages to pour the baking powder on it, too.
Camille says
My husband and I were just discussing all the useless information we learned in school. I mean, knowing cloud formations is nice, but I'm pretty sure I've never, ever used it in life. So many more worthwhile things to learn! 🙂
Michael says
Oh I am patting myself on the back (yuck yuck) because I know what an oxbow lake is! Lol! But it won't serve me very well, so what's the point? I needed a good laugh today about all things homeschool. My 14 yo is going to a private school next year and I am quickly adding up a list of what I HAVEN'T taught her! Ugh! Thanks for making me laugh!
armyofseven says
This post is great! My eldest is seventeen and I'm panicking a bit at all the stuff I DIDN'T teach her – and we're almost out of time! How much can I squeeze into her last year of homeschooling? 🙂
momco3 says
Thank you!
Helene says
This post is great and hilarious and true, as usual. I generally take comfort in something I read once in Karen Andreola's book “A Charlotte Mason Companion.” She talked about our children's education as a strong net we weave for them at home. There are bound to be holes, lots of them, yes. But so long as the net is there it will be strong enough to hold and carry them through! Nice thought.
Sue says
This post absolutely made my day!!! And if that wasn't enough, the skipping comments got the tears rolling again. I know I'm going to be chuckling all day at the mental image of Cary's grown kids skipping around. Whew! You just have a way of putting my mind at ease, dear Leila, and apparently I am not alone!
Beth says
Wonderful post! Language was a lack, I felt, but I now have one child fluent in Arabic, one in French, and one studying Greek and Hebrew and currently living in India and learning Hindi. Hmmm, I guess they got something – perhaps the facility to learn if not the actual foreign language vocabulary and grammar. I'm afraid, however, that most of my children still do not know their cloud formations, but I suppose that's not really my problem anymore : )
Claire says
I also adore this post. No matter what, motherhood sends one on a daily guilt trip- If you buy the sugar cereal you worry about being a bad, unhealthy mom. If you buy the healthy cereal then you worry that you are a boring health nut of a mom. You can't teach them everything, but I decided I should have been more active in verbalizing the things that I thought they would pick-up from my example- Just the little bits and pieces of gracious living that our culture is losing. You are a treasure, Leila. And yes the sense of sanity slips away, but as the mind and body seem to soften the spirit is strengthened so it all works out!
Decadent Housewife says
Just this evening, I had a conversation with one of my former homeschool students who said, “I'm glad you didn't [teach us cloud formations,] but showed us how to find that information by ourselves.”
He proceeded to tell me about a series of radio broadcast, university lectures and debates he has been taking in, after his brother and old homeschool classmate told him about them.
Loved this post.
Marcia says
Oh, Auntie Leila, what a comfort to read this. Roman numerals are on top of my guilt list 🙁
Joy in Alabama says
I'm sitting in the quiet house this morning, laughing like a hyena at your post!! Thank you, Aunt Leila! I'm 53 and have those terrible panic moments when I send links to the kids about this or that. Mine mostly have to do with some science fact because that's the area that gives me the willies in the middle of the night!
Joy says
You are definitely not alone! My poor youngest child gets all of the “I forgot to teach your brothers this” talk all of the time. My consolation is that I taught them to read and think and to look up anything I didn't remember to stuff in their heads. I know I missed tundra but we did do clouds. 🙂
@mamajen4 says
You know what I realize mine don't know all the time? Games. Like Red Rover, dodgeball, etc. I worked on songs a lot when they were little, but I don't know if those stuck.
Betsy M says
It is so nice to start out one's day reading a post like this. Thanks.
Habou says
Speaking of geography one word I love as well as the formation is Fjord. When a teenager I read a book about some Norwegians undermining Nazis while going down a Fjord. Can't really remember the story or the title but I loved it. Pictures of Fjords are so beautiful.
Christina A says
There is a historical drama series about this! It’s called “The Heavy Water War,” and it is excellent.
Sue says
Oh, Auntie Leila, you are so completely my favourite! I've just refused Henry's offer of a place in Reception Class (kindergarten) in September. Exciting times!
julie says
Ah, and here I feel in the company of friends. At times the fear that I will miss something in my children''s education making successive dolts,one amazingly ignorant child right after another, almost paralyzes me. I need thisplace to encourage me to do what I can day after day, and to enjoy the fact that even at my age, learning is still happening.
Judy says
Scanning poetry. I know I missed this with my first one because he later told me that it would have been helpful to know it already when he got to college literature. The embarrassing thing is that I was an English major. And I know we studied Shakespeare. How ever did we miss scanning? All the younger ones have had/will have thorough lessons!
Thank you for this post. You made me laugh in the midst of a somewhat stressful day.
Sara says
One of the things that my homeschooled kids DO know is the word “lacuna” which my husband says, loudly, when he discovers something the children should know, but don't. Plural: lacunae. 🙂
_Leila says
Oh no, Sara! I didn't even realize this was the word I needed for this whole post. Argh.
melaniebett says
I've checked out two different books on cloud formations from the library and read them diligently and yet still can't identify clouds. I don't know why it's so hard for me to keep them straight.
_Leila says
Melanie, see {bits & pieces} and you will have a song for it. 🙂
Pippajo says
Catching up on blog reading so I'm commenting rather late.
I'm having one of those beat-yourself-up nights, homeschooling-wise, so the things I'm panicking about not teaching Calvin are things like multiplication…fractions…penmanship…spelling. The boy can diagram a sentence in his sleep, has the vocabulary of a 20-year-old, can discuss both Henry V and The Iliad with you, and bore you senseless with facts about marine animals but doesn't know his times tables or how to write in script.
Even more guilt-inducing, he's going back to public school next week. So now I not only have guilt about putting him back in school, but also about the huge holes I'm convinced his teachers are going to find in the education his hare-brained mother tacked together for him.
Sigh. What were you saying again?
Mary says
Leila, you are too funny……..and so real! And so like us! And I thank you for this post! Your comment about an Oxbow reminded me that the rural area of the county in Illinois where I grew up was called an “oxbow” and all the people who populated it were referred to by my grandmother as our Oxbow neighbors! My list of things I hope I passed on to my kids? Well, it’s long………but it’s good to know that other moms wrestle with this. Makes me feel less alone…….. God bless you!