It's nearing the end of your home day schoolwork. As your child begins cleaning up their work space, Mom starts checking over their work making sure everything was understood and done correctly. 

You notice that she missed a couple of math problems so you circle them and call your child back. "Honey, great job on this math. I circled numbers 2, 7, and 13 that you got wrong. Can you come over here and correct these?"

What happens next?

Tears, exasperation, drama, and a melting down child because the answers are wrong, or because they have to fix them. 

Sound familiar?

Try this instead.

"Hey sweetheart. Great job on this math paper. I circled numbers 2, 7, and 13. You may want to look at those. I need to go get started on laundry. If you need some help or clarification, come get me and let me know." AND THEN WALK AWAY.

What we typically do as parents when our children get wrong answers on their schoolwork or have to correct something, we stand over them. We stand over them, and hover, often nitpicking their work, being overly specific in how we want them to fix it, and we frustrate them because "this should be simple and I know you already know how to do this." For our emotional, perfectionist driven kids, and our strong willed kids, this response makes them dig in their heels. 

This would be similar to you being at work all day and you prepared a company budget or put together a product launch presentation and your boss walked into the room. "Hey, this is good, but some of your line items are off, and you didn't present this information well enough in this section. Can you fix this?" And then he stands there. He puts his hand on the back of your chair and watches as you type and work to fix your mistakes. As adults, we would not handle this well. Our kids don't handle it well either. 
You need space and they need space. 

Another reason our kids don't do this at school is partly because they aren't within the normal emotional comfort of their parents (which is good and normal), but also because teachers don't tend to hover. The classroom environment naturally gives space. When you have a class of students teachers tend to point out areas that need improvement and move on, leaving the students to work out the mistakes. Then as needed, students ask for help or clarification. But this isn't what we tend to do at home. We emotionally charge the situation by being overly sweet and trying to build confidence (which at the moment is not what they are usually needing) or by getting upset at their meltdown. Both ends of the spectrum often don't work. 

Instead, bring their attention to what needs to be fixed or worked on, and walk away.

When you walk away you are giving them space to deal with their own frustration. Their frustration isn't necessarily bad and not even something they can directly just "not feel." So instead of fighting them on it, give them space to wrestle with their own emotions without you standing over them. Give them space to own their own reactions. 

The other thing giving them space will do is help your reaction. We cannot control our kids emotional reactions (as much as some parenting gurus want to make you believe you can). But what we CAN do is control our OWN reaction. We know we don't want to fight or wrestle with them, so space  takes us out of the immediate emotionally charged space. When we control our own reactions, it makes us more calm to deal with what's in front of us, and it helps our kids to calm down. 

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What is The Classical Academy? The Classical Academy is a classical, Christian, university-schedule school that brings the style of university education down to K-12. We provide a full, private school education utilizing professional teachers and dedicated parents. Students attend classes 2-3 days a week with teachers and peers, and work at home on the remaining days under the guidance and tutelage of their parents. Check out our Best of Home AND School post. Interested in learning more about the Academy? Our next info night is April 15th. 

This brings us to the obvious question- where are students growing their database of linguistic patterns? Your typical child's main source of language is through TV, movies, internet, media, and same age peers. It won't take long observing our current culture to realize that if media and peers are the main source of linguistic patterns we are in big trouble! Parents, teachers, and other adults are also means of linguistic patterns, but most of our conversing with our children is not exactly on a sophisticated front as we tell them to, "Please put your clothes away." "Did you get your schoolwork finished?" etc. 

This is why we have such strong convictions about reading not just any book, but good books, to our children and students. The quality of books your child reads and hears is essential to their development of language patterns. 

But is that all there is to it? Read and hear good quality literature? While reading and hearing sophisticated language patterns in consistent, large quantities helps build a repertoire of sophisticated language, all too often schools and parents neglect the other essential piece- memorization.

Andrew Pudewa continues, "Memorized (or "by heart") language was a mainstay of education for almost all of recorded history until about 60 years ago, when misguided educationists began to promulgate the idea that memorization, along with other types of 'rote' learning, was harmful to children's creativity, understanding, and enjoyment of learning. Perhaps one of the most damaging doctrines ever to invade teachers' colleges, the concept that memorization was at best unnecessary and at worst downright harmful, is now handicapping another generation of students, who, because of the sad state of the popular media, are most in need of the linguistic foundation that memorization provides. 

What are other benefits of memorization?

• Pride and pleasure in recitation- how many of us remember nursery rhymes or poems from our childhood and feel pride and pleasure in still being able to recite them? Have you ever seen your child get really excited to show you what they memorized? Children take great delight in storing and delivering all kinds of information! 
• Builds confidence- reciting poetry takes a specific attention to detail. It takes work to memorize and recite precisely. When student accomplish this feat they gain confidence and realize, "I can learn anything!" This carries over into learning math facts, history timelines, phonics and grammar rules, and Latin vocabulary.
• It gets easier- the more you memorize, the easier it gets! Just like muscles, memory is improved from exercise. 

Why poetry specifically?

• They are good training grounds for memorization because they are easier to remember than prose.
• Poetry has forms of chosen rhythm and rhyme, which means they require sophisticated words and grammatical patterns above our normal exposure or conversational usage. 
• Poetry has richness of meaning and concentrated thought and therefore provides ample opportunity for questions and reflections. 

This point alone brings us back to, "You can't get out what you don't put in." When we fill our students hearts and minds with truth, goodness, and beauty, and we give them a rich and full database of linguistic patterns, we suddenly see these language patterns come back out in students speaking and writing. Memorization is the most complete form of internalization, and the best way to intimately know something is to know it so well you can communicate effectively, fluently, and artistically. 

So what does this practically look like? Do we actually see the benefits pour back out of our students from memorizing good poetry? We do! 

One of the poems our 1st graders have memorized is "Who Has Seen the Wind" by Christina Rossetti. One of our students was working on this poem with his mom. She used the poetry as a teaching opportunity and told her son, "The wind is like the Holy Spirit." 

Then, all on his own, he spontaneously began to say his own poem, modeled after the concept and linguistic pattern of Christina Rossetti's poem that he had internalized. He wasn't taught how to do this. He wasn't asked to write poetry from scratch. It's a natural outpouring of filling their minds and hearts with truth, goodness and beauty. 

Who Has Seen God
By: Reuben

Who has seen God?
Neither I nor you:
But when you believe in Christ
God is passing through you. 

Who has seen God? 
Neither you nor I:
But when the Holy Spirit comes
​God is passing by.

Take an example from an older student memorizing a portion of "Overcoming Fear" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

We name the One who overcame fear and led it captive in the victory proces­sion, who nailed it to the cross and committed it to oblivion; we name the One who is the shout of victory of humankind redeemed from the fear of death—Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Living One. He alone is Lord over fear; it knows him as its master; it gives way to him alone. So look to Christ when you are afraid, think of Christ, keep him before your eyes, call upon Christ and pray to him, believe that he is with you now, helping you . . . Then fear will grow pale and fade away, and you will be free, through your faith in our strong and living Savior, Jesus Christ.

Why is it important that this rich and beautiful prose is permanently resting in his heart and mind? In times of despair, worry, or anxiety, this student will have a feast of words, along with Scripture he has memorized, to draw on, to fill his mind with truth, and to encourage his heart. Not only that, he will have a repertoire of language and concepts on which to draw as he speaks and encourages others in times of difficulty. This doesn't mean that students start weirdly reciting things from rote memory to themselves or others in times of trial. What it means is that his brain and his heart have internalized the concepts and language patterns and those things begin to pour out. You simply cannot tell what you do not know.

Students at The Classical Academy have the common experience of committing to memory a wide range of sophisticated poetry, prose, Scripture, and great speeches and having the opportunity to present their pieces at Recite Nights throughout the school year.  These nights are the exact opposite of dry, boring, drill and kill memorization. You wouldn't believe the wonderful pieces our students from PreK all the way up recite. It's one of the best loved programs at the Academy. 

Interested in seeing what it's all about? Contact us to attend our next Recite Night, or come find out more about The Classical Academy university-schedule school at a parent info night.