social guy

This is reprinted from a magazine article.

My kids have better social skills than I do. That’s humbling, but not really unexpected. Its one of the reasons I wanted to keep them out of school in the first place – neither I or their dad learned any useful social skills from school. I’m often smug about my 5yo daughter’s social skillfulness for this reason and can easily believe that unschooling has given her opportunities to develop and hone skills that she wouldn’t have otherwise. My stepson, however, challenges me to see the whole issue of social skillfulness from a different perspective. Unlike my daughter, he has endured school-at-home and public school and has only recently become an unschooler and full-time resident in our unschooling home.

Before we started unschooling and before he came to live with us I had a hard time seeing Ray’s social skills for what they were. In a blog entry, shortly after he moved in, I even commented that “interpersonal intelligence” must surely be different from “extroversion”. Ray has always been an extrovert, but in a world of schoolish expectations, his extroversion was problematical outside of very constrained boundaries. Ray always seemed to be outside those boundaries. He questioned and challenged and had his own opinions. Not satisfied with the small amount of attention granted him by his parents and step-parents, he clamored for more. Not content to be disregarded by a room full of adults, he demanded center stage at every party or social gathering, even if he had to explode to get it.

Looking back on those days from an unschooling perspective, I can see a boy with high social needs valiantly striving to get those needs met, and frequently succeeding. Unfortunately his success came at the price of his self-esteem. In order to be noticed, he had to be “the bad kid”.

It is interesting that the person who first got to see Ray’s very real social skillfulness was his grandmother, Janet, who sent me an email in response to my first blogged concern. He had spent a week with her for the first time with none of his parents along. Here’s what she had to say:

“The week Ray spent with me this summer was without any of the usual behavioral issues. He was charming and friendly and thoughtful the whole week. There was one dinner party we went to where I was a little worried since it was mostly older folks. But Rayan was mellow and polite. He had a joke he wanted to tell that was pretty political, so he ran it by me first to make sure it would be okay for that group. Then he waited for an appropriate moment in the flow of conversation to tell it and got a good laugh. I was pretty impressed. “

Its worth noting that the incident she describes occurred almost six months before Ray began unschooling. Its tempting to think that unschooling could have “produced” his skillfulness. But Ray had always had the raw ability and had been learning the skills despite the many obstacles we laid in his path. At his grandmother’s, away from parents and school and on vacation, Ray was able to step outside his “bad-kid” reputation for once and just be Ray. And shine.

I think this is why new unschoolers are often presented with the suggestion to “act like its summer vacation”. I had dull summers as a kid, so the statement was baffling to me for a long time, but living with Ray it makes a lot more sense to me. Even many non-unschoolers can see Ray as Ray in a “vacation” context. It’s a matter of expectations.

From my back porch, I can see two trees, the colors of whose leaves, if they were a blouse and slacks, would clash horribly. Yet I look at these two trees and don’t see a painful example of un-coordination, but a tranquil and lovely view of nature. Expectations.

For years we expected Ray to be a blouse and slacks, as it were. He wouldn’t, couldn’t capitulate – why should he? Why should someone who is vivid and alive behave like an inanimate object? Now that we can see Ray as a whole, living, colorful person, we don’t need those expectations. Unschooling gives us the context to see Ray.

In an unschooling context, since Ray isn’t expected to place others’ interests before his own, he has the freedom to look beyond his own interests. No longer expected to listen, for example, Ray is free to converse. That in itself has made a big difference in his ability to explore and learn on his own terms. When Ray is able to exchange information in an easygoing, conversational manner, he learns almost effortlessly. More than that, knowing that I and his dad don’t expect him to listen deferentially to adults (us or others) Ray has a far easier time shrugging off the kind of normal adult rudeness to kids that used to set him off. Free from the expectation of deference, Ray is gracious.

In the nine months he’s lived with us full-time, I’ve had a number of opportunities to see Ray’s innate graciousness shine out. This spring, in particular, we had a group of guests who seemed to believe that they should teach Ray something every time they saw him, albeit gently.

These sorts of situations are challenging to me. I can see the power differential, the imposed expectations and the outright injustice, but don’t always have the skills, myself, to diffuse things. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that Ray does – provided he feels supported by an adult he cares about. He doesn’t even need all that much in the way of support, if anything, just the realization that I’m not jumping in on the side of the other grown-up or indicating that Ray should listen up and pay attention is enough to give him the confidence to deflect or ignore the “lesson”.

Maybe its because he’s seen me fly to his rescue only to metaphorically trip over all my left feet in the process. He knows he’s better at this stuff than I am. As I said before, its humbling.

Seeing Ray outside of (my own) schoolish expectations has also allowed me to see his “boisterousness” in a new light. Now that attention is being offered him, and he isn’t having to literally jump up and down and yell to get his connection needs met and there’s no expectation of deference to adults, I can see Ray using his own physical skillfulness as an adjunct to his social skillfulness.

I saw this more than once with our guests. Ray would do or say something casual, and the guest would take that as an invitation to tell Ray about “the ways of the world”, maybe shame him a little, all for the purpose of teaching him a lesson. Rather than returning words for words and getting in an argument, Ray would jump up and do something dramatic and physical, some trick or stunt that would stop the conversation for a little bit, shift the energy of the group, and change the subject all at once.

The most impressive thing about this particular strategy, is that adults don’t see it as anything but a kid doing a trick. It took me a couple times to realize the “trick” went beyond the physical.

Another area we get to see this interplay of expectations and social skillfulness has to do with younger children. Ray’s mom considers him a disaster with younger kids, one of the reasons she finally acquiesced to his moving to our house permanently. She and I don’t communicate with each other very well, but we do have some mutual friends who have often painted a picture for us of Ray’s “problems” with his younger brother and a few other local children. The stories are pretty consistent and follow these lines:

“Ray refuses to set a good example for the younger children. He won’t ever accommodate them, he hates to play with them, and he still thinks he should be the center of attention!”

Quite a load of expectations there. Funny to see that he’s really dealing with these children the way he was treated at the same age. When a kid does it, everyone can see just how ugly that sort of behavior can be, but its normal adult behavior towards children.

Contrast this with a phone call I received just recently from a non-unschooling family with a younger child who sometimes take Ray waterskiing:

“Ray is so much fun! And he’s just great with our little girl. He’s kind and thoughtful and really helps out a lot. He’s an absolute darling. Is he as helpful with your daughter (Yes, as a matter of fact, he is.) Well, you’re very lucky to have such a fabulous kid.”

Aren’t we, though? Luckier to be able to see, at long last, just what a fabulous guy he is, and be able to work with him to find more ways to help him shine.