Forget the experts

With the start of a new school year, I see posts, articles and advertisements about all the activity options for children.  People may lament the cost of all of these "extra-curricular" activities, or the fact that such activities are offered at younger and younger ages, or just the intensity of classes or leagues.  They may talk about pressure to sign up for various activities, about being too busy and over-scheduled, or about finding balance.  The offerings are endless - every kind of sports, scouts, arts, music, nature, academic enrichment, manners/etiquette, cooking, sewing, robotics, programming, and on and on and on.  There's nothing wrong with any of these camps or classes.  But now every type of learning experience or skill acquisition seems to be offered as a commodity.  

This is not just a school-year issue, but a summer issue also.  I'm always astounded when parents tell me about signing up for summer camps starting in January and February.  I understand that camps fill up quickly, and you can miss out if you don't sign up right away - but I simply cannot be thinking about summer camp in the winter, plus it's probably not in the budget anyway.  Certainly, my kids have participated in some summer activities - camps or classes.  Yet the sheer number of experiences offered boggles the mind.  And the idea that summer should be filled with structured activities frankly saddens me.  I wrote about this in the article "Bike Camp: it's better when it's DIY" in Home Education Magazine, May-June 2014.  The article is about a group of families (mine included) who planned, participated in and thoroughly enjoyed our own week-long bike camp two summers in a row.  Here are a few quotes from the article that are specifically about doing things ourselves rather than relegating them to others:

"The problem is the idea that we can't provide some of these experiences for ourselves.  That everything has to be a commodity that is paid for and provided by a so-called expert.  When we realize that we don't need the expert and when we do things ourselves, we are truly empowered."  

"Sometimes we need to gain confidence and trust in ourselves, because we don't think we have the knowledge or experience to meet our children's learning interests or needs.  More often than not, we can create or facilitate the experiences our children want or the experiences we'd like them to have.  And we all - adults and children - gain so much confidence by doing things ourselves."

The idea of turning everything over to experts or specialists came up in the book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An antidote to the college admissions mania by Frank Bruni.  As I mentioned in my summer reading notes, I'm not really the target audience for this book.  In the book, Bruni writes about the proliferation of independent college consultants.  Apparently, these are people whom parents hire to get their children into elite and Ivy league colleges.  In regard to this phenomenon, Bruni writes:

"Many people seem to believe that there’s no problem, from a belly’s sprawl to a child’s sloth, that isn’t best fixed by throwing money and a specialist at it.  Anything can be delegated.  Everything can be outsourced."

Think personal shoppers, personal trainers and the like.  That's not to say that there aren't situations when it makes sense to hire a personal trainer.  However, the idea of outsourcing more and more parts of life becomes somewhat ridiculous.  My husband even saw a television news story about people who hire someone to teach their children to ride a bike!  

 

This little girl learned how to ride her bike mostly by herself with a little help from daddy.

Before you feel like you have to sign up your children for a class to learn a skill, think about it.  First of all, think about what skills you feel are most important to learn.  And then consider what skills and interests they have.  Don't worry about what other people are doing.  Do what's right for your own family.  With many skills, we can indeed teach ourselves.  There is a wealth of information - at the library, on the internet, with YouTube videos.  In our family, we've taught ourselves many things:  appliance repair, car maintenance, candle-making and other crafts, website design and other computer skills, piano-drum-guitar skills, many cooking and baking techniques, and so much more.  Also, you can always check if a friend or relative has the skills you want to learn and ask them to share their expertise.  We've been able to swap and share skills with friends many times.  As parents, our own example of resourcefulness in learning new things is particularly important.  Hooray for lifelong learning!    

*****

While we certainly would never have considered hiring someone to teach our children to ride a bike, we have benefited from the specialized knowledge of experts many times.  We will be eternally grateful for the surgeon who performed open heart surgery on our two-week old son and saved his life, for example.

I am definitely not against experts, but I don't need them to manage every aspect of my life or teach my children all the skills they need or want to know!