Graduations

 I am so proud of my son!  - Well, both of them.  However, my eighteen-year old son is graduating this year.  He has accomplished so much, which I will be blogging more about in the coming days.  I cannot wait for our three-day celebration of him, his interests, and his talents. 

I see so many homeschoolers say their children are "not ready" to graduate. They're "holding them back" until they are ready to do their school work. This saddens me. That standardized mindset has no place in homeschooling, in my opinion. That is the mindset of traditional schools, who believe their way of learning is the only way of learning.  

Then I see others say, "What makes the difference when kids graduate?  Who says it has to be at age eighteen?"  I can get on board with this mindset. At the same time, I ask those parents to consider the feelings of their children.  Imagine being twenty and graduating when all one's friends - indeed, the entire world - graduates at eighteen.  I think these individuals, also, miss the point of thinking about their children's feelings. 

As an unschooler, I believe the real point of a graduation is recognizing accomplishments.  It is celebrating young adults for who they are. It is a time to say, "Great job! Keep going with who you are. Not who I think you should be. Not who the world says you should be. Keep going with who you really are." 

I am probably jaded in this mindset. I graduated from high school all the way back in 1993. Of course, I was homeschooled. I planned my graduation.  I was one of those who was "supposed to" graduate in May of that year. However, because I was working more than full-time (from the age of fourteen) to help pay my family's bills, I got "behind."  I graduated in September rather than in May.  

I graduated with a 4.0 GPA.  I should mention that my family was not the keeper of my grades. A Beka Video Homeschool was. They were the ones who gave me a 4.0, which, by the way, I did not know until I applied for college in 2007.  

I did not know because my mother hated my academic mind. That may sound upsetting to some, but it is the honest truth. There were few things we argued over more than me being "book smart," but having no "common sense." In truth, my mother wanted me to be just like her.  I was not allowed to think differently than she thought. (I was not a pretender. She didn't like that I would not hide my disagreements). 

My mom left school in seventh grade.  She worked cleaning houses and businesses (which is what I did, in addition to delivering newspapers, magazines, and anything else the company we worked for required).  There is nothing at all wrong with that type of employment.  However, it was not what I wanted for myself.  I could not advance, however, because of my mother's narcissistic, controlling temperament. I would never, as long as she was alive, be able to go beyond her. If I tried (for example, when I did freelance writing and self-published a magazine, it led to arguments until I was miserable with doing it. With music, I could play instruments all I wanted. However, I would never be allowed to take it any further to play professionally, even though all my teachers recommended it), there were screaming matches. 

This applied to my graduation as well.  I planned everything for my graduation.  My mother wanted that. She wanted everyone to see that I had learned (i.e., that she had not been wrong in homeschooling me. She had chosen right. She had done a wonderful job). Everything was fine while other people were there to watch.  Once everyone left, however, my mother insisted we go clean the windows of a neighbor who had hired us to clean them. Now, it is important to note, this neighbor did not care when we did the windows.  She said whenever we had time.  But, it had to be that day - my day. The day of my graduation was it!.  

Being the rebel I was, I wore my skirt; my favorite white, fringed, Western-style shirt; panty hose; and cowboy boots to clean windows.  The problem was, the neighbor's yard was covered with mosquitos. Wearing panty hose, I got a lot of bites.  I was punished for it that night.  Those mosquito bites led to a huge argument about how stupid I had been to wear those clothes and to "allow" mosquitos to bite me.  The problem was not that I wanted to have my special day to myself.  The problem was not that I wanted to celebrate my accomplishments and who I was. The problem was I had let mosquitos bite me. 

This my sound like a whining post.  It's not.  It's a lesson for homeschooling parents.  Stop making your kids' graduation about what you want, what you think they should be. Celebrate who they are. Do they have an academic mind? Fantastic!  Do they not have an academic mind? That is fabulous as well!  Celebrate their accomplishments, their individual gifts. Allow them to grow and spread their wings.  Don't hold them back!  Learn from the mistakes of others. Otherwise, your young adults may associate graduation with painful memories, as I do.