Beef and Cursive Writing: Together at Last!

The wild goose chase continues.

Homeschooling is a deeply non-linear adventure.

Some weeks, I beg my kid to spend five minutes practicing his writing, then internally reprimand myself for pushing him to learn things I care about when we’re supposed to be following his interests and helping him rediscover the joy (the goddamned joy!) of learning. And then I reprimand myself for not being the kind of carefree, not-at-all-high-strung-or-stressed-out mom who can come up with joyous ways to teach him to write lowercase letters.

And other weeks (like last week, for example), the kid comes downstairs and declares he’s going to learn cursive writing, pulls a Dr. Seuss Cursive Workbook off a shelf (which has been mouldering there for two years), and spends 48 hours practicing, not even playing a single video game, not even asking for the iPad, not sneakily trying to turn learning cursive into an opportunity to watch more YouTube because surely there are instructional videos. He just sits at the dining room table, learning every uppercase and lowercase letter, and then spends days saying “give me a word,” and when you say “surprise” or “periscope” or “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” he sets about writing it in cursive, and within a week he is so proficient that when he writes a note to a friend, the friend says “how are you so good at this? You don’t even go to school!” (He has a 12-year-old homeschooled pal who is learning Latin. It’s wild what kids will decide they want to learn when you don’t force them to learn anything.)

Rewind to two weeks earlier. Our Wednesday started out rocky, specifically because I suggested we spend five minutes practicing writing. His response was to scream “no” and start full-body twitching, as if his entire being was rejecting my proposal with such vehemence that he lost control of his limbs.

“Maybe we could do math instead?” I proposed, like the world’s most desperate and delusional idiot.

He was so upset about my suggestions that he refused to go to his afternoon activity that day. I am not always the easy, breezy, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, pivot-on-a-dime, take-lemons-and-make-a-meringue-pie sort of mom who can turn a bad morning into a great afternoon. But, on that fateful Wednesday, I pulled it together.

We flipped through the cookbook he got two Christmases ago. I pointed out a couple of recipes he’d been eying with curiosity. We wrote a list, and went grocery shopping. I laid out the ingredients, utensils and dishes that we’d need, and propped the cookbook up on the counter. Then, something magical happened.

The kid measured, mixed, peeled and chopped. He made gingery carrot soup, BLT wraps, and chocolate chip cookies, with minimal help. My job was to put things into a hot oven, and to occasionally ask “what’s the next step?” when he got distracted.

The result was a delicious dinner, and a kid who glowed with pride and self confidence for days. A week later, he taught himself cursive, and made another dinner, a really excellent beef and broccoli stir fry. He even velveted the beef.

The “you are interrupting me to take a picture again” face.

When Colin told one of the kid’s favourite art teachers (at a nearby studio where he does classes and summer camps) about all this, she said “beef and cursive, together at last!” She too was homeschooled for most of her childhood, as it turns out.

A few days after that second dinner, I turned to the kid and said “hey, I’m really impressed with how well you taught yourself cursive, and how much you’ve been cooking. You’ve worked really hard at both of those things, and it shows.”

“Do you think any of my friends know how to cook?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You should ask them. Or you could invite some of them over and make them dinner.”

“Yeah,” he said. And then, in his most casual tone, the one he uses when we’re grocery shopping and he’s trying to sneak another bag of Takis into the basket, he said “maybe we could do some math soon too.”

What? Sure, and make me a coq au vin while you’re at it.

(In the days since, his enthusiasm has waxed and waned. On Monday he said “can you believe I used to not like math,” but by Wednesday, the full-body twitching was back when I asked him to practice telling the time on an analog clock.)

I am wary of one-size approaches to anything, especially parenting. But while I have been a bit red-pilled by the homeschooling experience, I’m not an evangelist. Kids who are thriving (or even just managing) in school should stay there. If it ain’t broke, and all that. Meanwhile, we’ll be over here chasing today’s goose.

I hope Will McPhail forgives my edit. It feels especially true these days, as it always has.