In Defense of Diagramming

A few days ago, while I was going over the introduction to the Declaration of Independence with one of the kids, and we were trying to memorize it together, we got stuck on some of the more complex phrases. So I got out a pen and paper, thinking that diagramming might be helpful, which sent my young study partner scurrying. Fortunately for him, I soon got too wrapped in my project to call him back, and for the next few hours, in snatches of time while watching two preschoolers, answering questions and filling needs for older kids going to and fro, in and out, and later while making dinner, I worked on diagramming sentences from the Declaration of Independence. I had actually been struggling with anxiety throughout the day, and as I started working, the diagramming proved to be rather calming and therapeutic. Aimee came down at one point and said, "Mom, you know this isn't normal, right?" And later, when I mentioned on Facebook the irony of this being calming, one friend commented, in effect, that there was no way diagramming could be helpful in any regard, since it serves a language that is disorderly.

Well, perhaps it isn't a usual sort of therapy, but that's okay. I think it's perfectly reasonably to challenge myself and give my brain a workout now and then. In this instance, I really did start out helping the kids study the Declaration of Independence, which, for any citizen of any age, is certainly worth reviewing from time to time. So there's my excuse. And I do think diagramming helped immensely in that endeavor, as I think it does serve a purpose in general, despite what my nay-saying children and cynical friends may think. (Note: if you just think the English language is a hopeless cause, there's nothing for you here.)

Firstly, in the instance of the first sentence of the Declaration, diagramming it helped us get down to the bare bones of the sentence. The skeleton of that very lengthy sentence is simply, "respect requires," which is quite telling. The Declaration is stirring and exciting, but it is not the work of wild revolutionaries who just wanted to buck a system for the sake of it. It is a thoughtful and respectful document, describing the proper role of government, and how the current government was overstepping the bounds of that role and violating the principles of liberty. Because these violations formed such "a long train of abuses and usurpations," it was required, in respect to the cause of liberty, that a declaration be made to "dissolve...political bands", and at the same time, it was also in respect to the current leaders in Britain that the reasoning for this dissolution was carefully outline. After all, this was not to be done "for light and transient causes."

Secondly, diagramming a sentence of this length also serves to determine whether the sentence is constructed in a balanced and purposeful way, which can further an understand of the meaning. What describes or modifies what? Is a particular phrase useful in supporting the skeleton of a sentence? Someone else, in regard to my project, mentioned that the first sentence of the Declaration probably would not be tolerated by English teachers these days because of its length and verbosity. That may be true, but what is wonderful about this famous sentence is that each clause and phrase clearly supports another word or phrase in the sentence. It may seem lengthy and winding, but it is actually structured quite well. Hopefully a good English teacher would recognize the difference between a sentence that is long and wordy just for the sake of it, and one that is well crafted. The length shouldn't matter, as long as it can support itself. Good teachers and discriminating readers shouldn't need a diagram to indentify a good sentence, of course, but the beautiful thing about a diagram is that it can offer a visual of what the ear should be able to hear in a well-balanced sentence. I truly love that. Take, for instance, the following sentence: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object envinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security." This isn't simply a long train of words. It is beautifully balanced and carefully constructed.

Thirdly, for the most skeptical of critics (i.e. my children), diagramming is an exercise for the mind. It isn't something one will use in practical applications, admittedly, but critical and orderly thinking is, and diagramming demands such thinking. And for a real workout in this kind of exercise, one can try diagramming one of Jane Austen's sentences. My goodness. I have to say that getting to the above points for one of her sentences can get tricky. Often, the bare bones of the sentence does get lost in her incredible verbosity, and some of her sentences are far from balanced. I had to use two pages for the sentence below, and I'm not even sure about some of the phrases. I'm still working on it! But we love Jane Austen anyway.

These papers are rather crinkled, since I had to carry them around with me as I was working on it. Crumpled paper is not very orderly, but I'm not writing this out again, because the sentence is as follows: "Emma could not feel a doubt of having given Harriet's fancy a proper direction and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good purpose, for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr. Elton's being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners, and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of creating as much liking on Harriet's side, as there could be any occasion for."

I wonder what a modern English teacher would have to say about a sentence like that from a student! But there's the thing about good writing, and perhaps what the detractors would fault the world of English for most - diagramming may provide some rules and order, but even when a collection of words seems to step outside that order and convention, they can still be beautiful and entirely correct. That is rather therapeutic in itself.

Being Free to Be Free

I am sitting here this morning thinking that coffee is not going to be enough to get me really moving. In addition to a night of restless sleep, I have almost no motivation to drag the kids through a day of school. Theoretically, our school year concludes at the end of May, but usually as the days lengthen and the temperatures rise, we look at things and decide what we would like to accomplish in order to conclude our year instead. And even then, there's a point at which I am right there with the kids in thinking, "Lets just be done now. Forget end dates or checking off lists."

That feeling has been mentioned as a downside of homeschooling - that we don't have any outside influences to dictate the end of our school year or to enforce getting those last-minute assignments done. I sometimes agree, as my motivation and energy seriously flag and I find myself putting very little effort in keeping the kids from spending all day playing with (fellow homeschooling) neighbors in the sprinkler and engaging in mock swordfights in the backyard. But in these past couple days - and mind you, this could be the lack of motivation talking - I've been thinking that maybe it's completely natural and even good that our formal learning tends to end this way. After all, we lean toward a more natural style of learning, allowing the kids to learn in ways and times that best suit them, if possible, and allowing the day to flow in a natural routine rather than a schedule. While I'm certainly not advocating only doing things if we want, and shrugging them off if we don't, I do think perhaps it means something when every subject and assignment becomes a chore that everyone, including the mother, dreads doing. And I think it means it's time for a break.

In a few weeks, the kids will probably start getting restless and wandering around the house aimlessly at times. It will feel like a good time to reintroduce a little structure. We won't have to wait for a specific date or a specific set of books to arrive - we'll just know it's time. I think the same holds true here. So I'm still fighting with myself a bit - there are still a few things I wanted to finish, and I think I'll try to weave those things into our next few days. But I think I can also free myself from a sense of guilt about just being done. Let's face it - we're done. We're not slaves to a system, to a particular learning style, or to curriculum...so why should we be slaves to a calendar?

Just Some Reminiscing on Mother's Day

My mother became a mother when she had me, in the middle of December over three decades ago. I'm sure that when she was so very young and just beginning on the path of motherhood, she had no idea what to expect of the years ahead! But as those years rolled on, she had three more girls and lived in a few different places all over the South. She was a pastor's wife, and I know that wasn't the easiest role all the time. And she was a nurse, but after my very earliest years, she was a stay-at-home mother (only that's probably a bit of a misnomer for my mother, who has always liked to be on the go!). Then when I was in third-grade, she added the role of homeschool mother, something that was still rather new at that time. My mother and my friends' mothers were pioneers in the modern homeschooling movement, so it was a much scarier prospect, with much less support. So my mom, with a friend's mother, started a homeschool support group a couple years into our adventure. With her fellow homeschool warrior mothers, they planned field trips and cooperative learning experiences, put together annual Thanksgiving dinners (which was one of my favorite memories from our homeschool years, and I think there's no way a group could pull it off quite so successfully these days).  and end-of-the year programs.

It was somewhere around that time that my parents decided it would be helpful for my mom to return to work very part-time for a little extra income. (So let's add working mom to the pastor's wife, homeschooling mom and homeschool group leader roles). Shortly after that (and because of that extra income), she was able to go the doctor for a visit she felt she needed, and she was told that she had breast cancer. I think she was 34, with four children, the youngest of whom was just a year old. I remember when my parents told us that she was having surgery just a few days later. We were having our morning devotions, and my dad mentioned that we needed to pray for her because was going to have surgery that Friday (I think it was a Friday - I could be wrong). Even when the next day, while I was setting the table for dinner, she explained that she had cancer, it didn't really register. My reaction was a rather blissful fog for the next several months, and I know that was my way of coping, but I also think it was because my mom's demeanor around us in regard to the whole thing was a relatively calm one. So she had surgery in the fall, and a couple months later, she did a round of chemotherapy. And guess what? We still homeschooled that whole year. That entire year. I wonder if my mom even considered that it might be too much. If she did, I was never aware of it. In fact, we even did some dissecting that year in science,which was a bit hard on my mom's chemo-battered constitution, and now seems really funny. I don't think anyone would have blamed you if you had put that off a year or two, Mom!

She weathered that, and we grew older, and she mothered us through the uncertain teen years. And when no one was really sure how to do homeschool high school transcripts, she did it, and worked to get us some scholarships to boot. And then she planned a few weddings. Somewhere in there she took a medical missions trip (or two?). When she became a grandmother, she came to help with each baby. She even caught one of mine, then curled up in bed with us right after and slept until morning. It was just that time that she weathered a really terrible life storm. She could have created a new life for herself, but she chose to fight for those she loved instead. It was a hard battle, and a dark time, but came out into the light at the end of the tunnel. I think she's living in it now. Oh, and never one to rest easy, she went back to school recently, in addition to working nights as full-time nurse, and she just recently completed her courses and secured her B.S.N. (with excellent grades in each class).

So, there's my mother - a go-getter, a trailblazer, a super-smart professional, a giver, and do-what-needs-to-be-done-er, and one who takes care of those she loves. There's just one real problem with my mom, and it's that I think she's just a little bit crazy, because she thinks she's not all that special!

A Study in Contrasts

We were at Chipotle Wednesday night to celebrate Dave's recent promotion at work and also to avoid having to clean up the kitchen on a busy night. And also just because it's out favorite place to eat and we jump at any excuse to go there. (Why yes, that is a grammatically incorrect sentence! But I'm sticking with it.) We were sitting at tables near the ordering line, which usually gets pretty long there and is an excellent source of people-judging people-watching.Just as we began our dinner and had a moment to commence judging watching, a family came in and the mother immediately snarled at her two young children. "We're in line no, so NO talking, NO pushing," etc. Basically they were to do absolutely nothing but breathe and move forward in the line behind their parents.

So of course... after a minute or so, they ran out of the line and began doing laps around the restaurant.

I'm not exaggerating! Laps, punctuated by squeals of laughter (which granted, in Chipotle doesn't really matter, because it's quite loud). The mother, for all her harsh words, looked highly annoyed, but did nothing at first. Then her patience ran out, and she went after them, leaving the rather passive father still waiting in line. As we watched this unfold, Dave said under his breath, "Uh-oh!," because indeed, this nicely dressed, apparently well-to-do woman looked positively dragonish as she prepared to descend on her unruly brood. And then...she did absolutely nothing. I think she snarled (again) at them to stop, but then returned to the line, still looking annoyed, but without her children, who were out of control and narrowly missing collisions with other customers.

So that didn't go so well, obviously, and there appeared to be several red flags about the dynamic in this family. I doubt that the unruly behavior and complete lack of response from the children toward the parents is only due to the completely unreasonable expectations and demands from the parents, but I'm guessing that's part of the reason.

Consider, for example, the next family in line. There were two parents and a young boy, and while they waited in line, the father joked and laughed with the boy, and they rough-housed just a bit, pretending to put each other in headlocks and mimicking punches. They didn't disturb anyone else in line, and weren't too loud, but the father, whether consciously or not, appeared to understand and respect the boy's natural need to move around and to make physical contact. Occasionally the mom sighed and looked a little worried that what they were doing was disruptive - and I completely understand that - but she didn't interfere, and the family made it to the counter to order. And I hope she was able to realize later what Dave and I saw so clearly - that what went on between the father and son was just the opposite of disruptive!

It reminded me of another parent/child scene I witnessed at Kroger a few days prior. A woman was checking out with her daughter, who was three or four, and apparently the little girl was not being particularly helpful, because at one point, the woman snapped, "All you have to do is stand there and do nothing! Is that too hard?" Hopefully this young mother was just having one of those "off" moments. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was just tired and that she made it up to her daughter later. Because yes, is is too hard for a little person to "stand there and do nothing." I think there are few adults, actually, who would be able to follow someone around, without saying a word or without wanting to participate in what that person was doing. Would you? And these little people have so much life and energy. So to you parents who recognize the good in that life and energy and who channel it in positive ways, like the father with his son, keep it up! And to the harried mothers who just want to get out of the store, breathe deeply and know that in the grand scheme of things, it's more important to be kind to those precious people who love you and trust you than to get through checkout smoothly. And to the parents who just don't want to be disturbed ever - well, I'm not sure what you should do! But I feel badly for you and for your children, because you're squashing a really wonderful part of life.

P.S. Writing this probably means I'm due for a humbling library or store moment!