Good Help is Hard to Find, and Sometimes Give

Getting good help has been a perennial problem in the world.  I have had several people ask if I need help with homeschooling.  I am sure that I do, but I really don't know what help I need since I have never done this before.  The other hitch is that most of the folks that are offering help are thinking in different terms than I am.  They want to help me with the hard subjects that my high school kids are taking.  Those children are good students, and I have enough confidence in my own education that I think we can figure out most problems.  My concerns are not so much for those kids as my younger kids that are struggling.  I'm not an expert in phonics and early grammar and I want them to get a firm foundation.  The other challenge is how to get my adopted kids that have holes in their education patched up and motivated.  I think my biggest challenge will be helping them understand why they need education and what the reward for working hard in this area will be for the rest of their life.  These are not the areas that most folks are thinking of when they are offering tutoring or planning help.

Which is the problem with trying to help other people.  When I look at a situation from the outside and interpret it with my particular set of values and experiences I perceive that they need help in areas that they really don't want help in.  For example I have many people who would help me with Latin.  I quite frankly am not sold on the need for Latin, but would love for someone to come over and teach my kids to cook, while speaking to them only in Spanish.  I may be wrong, they may need Latin, but this is something that will take some relationship building for me to change my mind.  I live in a very academic community which is wonderful in many ways, but I'm not trying to educate my kids to get into Harvard.  We can afford UofI and that is the plan for us.  My aim is to meet their admission requirements, and to create a love of learning so that they can pursue what interests them.  I also want them to learn some basic living skills which they haven't had time to learn while they have been off doing sports, or working part time while going to school.  I want them to learn to manage their time and fit in driving siblings to classes, cooking for the family, and serving their neighbors.  I am all about a thorough education, but  not at the expense of living life in a community.  That puts the kind of help I need in a different light.  I need help living in community.

It is much easier to see what is really needed when you actually get to know people well.  This gets back to my previous post about really getting into other people's lives and stepping on toes.  I have been a young mom with lots of little kids running around under me and no close family to call when I need to get to the grocery store.  I know what it feels like to try to get your group of little ones to behave long enough to get the basics and get out of the store before all of us melted down and started crying.  One of the hardest things for me was to eat dinner with my little people when my husband was out of town.  The work of preparing dinner, only to have the food critics less than encouraging, while firing questions at you two at a time with no time to even nod that you had heard the first question, knowing the whole time that you still had two hours to clean up the kitchen and try to wrestle them all into their beds before you stopped moving and instantly fell into a weird trance like state because the warm body that is usually next to you isn't there.  Sometimes you just need another adult to talk to while trying to keep your sanity in rearing little ones.  Often that was all the help I needed, but I didn't know who to ask.  I didn't want to be the mom that was always looking for someone to help her with the kids.  I did have friends, and still do, who seem to know when to drop by and help with dishes.  They were mostly older moms of large families who have been down that road before me.  I had one friend who would watch my kids for 30 minutes three afternoons a week so I could go for a walk.  My friend Michele is still faithful to listen to my plan for the day, and know which days to offer to bring over dinner.  I know which friends are my closest because they let me go into their laundry room or garage.  These are places that you keep the average acquaintance out of.  The people who were the most able to help were the ones that had been through the same hard places and knew when to come alongside and help out.

It is much more difficult to help people who are in situations that are unfamiliar to you.  It takes a lot more time to listen and try to understand someone's perspective when you have no experience in it.  Maybe it is someone from another country, or another region of the US.  Maybe it is someone older than you.  Maybe they have had a completely different life experience than you have.  I think those relationships are the most difficult but have the most potential for you to get out of yourself and learn to be humble.  There is a lot more potential for toe stomping in these relationships.  I have found that just admitting up front that you feel really uncomfortable can be very freeing.  I have a good friend who is disabled, and occasionally when we are out together he will fall.  He wants to be able to recover himself without my help, which is really hard for me.  I told him that I was really uncomfortable watching him struggle and just standing there.  He told me it was OK, he needs that independence.  He has helped me in many ways to understand that not all relationships are equal, but that being willing to be friends with folks that are not just like us allows us to have much deeper and broader relationships all around.  I have learned to be willing to help, but also to be willing to watch people struggle patiently until they ask for help.  Sometimes the helpful thing is just to acknowledge that life is a struggle and we aren't in it alone.

A total side note here.  Sometimes when my friends read my blog, they get the impression that I really don't want to hear their differing opinions.  I want you to know that is not at all true.  I love the diversity of opinions in our community, and I hope that my spouting off can be a conversation starter as opposed to a conversation stopper.  Feel free to comment either here, or when you see me around.  I love to learn from other people.