NOCTURNAL (LEARN NOTHING DAY)

Learn Nothing Day started today at 12:00 AM (I know, because I was there). Less than an hour later I had totally blown my chances for the year by watching a detective show, from which I accidentally learned a few things about guns and submarines.

Meanwhile, River was teaching himself things about how to build better lego monsters. Seriously, they were much more realistic than the last ones I saw. Is that technically learning? I'm not sure. It was a demonstration of knowledge acquisition, but it's hard to say exactly when that learning took place.

That is kind of like one of the biggest things I'm learning right now, too, which is that we need to be more flexible about sleep around here. It has been sneaking up on us for a while. Really, we are all sort of nocturnal. Before kids and regular employment, James and I used to go to bed around 4:00 AM. When we had little babies they adjusted to our schedule pretty easily, though it was somewhat earlier than it used to be.

They're not little babies any more, though, especially River, who has aometimes been wanting to stay up later than we do for about the past year. It's been a gradual thing. at first the rest of us would lie down and watch a movie and he would stay up to watch a video or two of his own before joining us around when we went to sleep. Eventually we noticed that it was getting more extreme, though. Sometimes he seemed full of energy at night, while at other times he just seemed determined to stay awake in the face of exhaustion. Since early spring, he has often been staying up most of the night.

Some part of me would like to say that we supported this right away, but we didn't. Instead, we tried pretty much everything we could think of, from a structured night-time routine to installing a program that cuts out melatonin-reducing blue light from River's computer. On the few nights we did get him in bed early, he still lay awake tossing and turning, sometimes for over an hour. Mostly we tried waking him up in the morning (with his consent) for the many day-time activities he enjoys. This went on for a surprisingly long time (weeks?) without any noticeable night-time effect. What we did notice was that he got more and more exhausted - droopy, grumpy, and eventually nearly impossible to wake up.

And so, after many conversations and consultations, we've decided to let him sleep. Today was a pretty average day, and he got up around three. most nights now James and I trade off staying up with him for at least a couple of hours after our usual night-time routine. It's certainly not an ideal schedule for us, but it may be the best compromise at the moment - and there are benefits for all of us. When River is well rested, he is much more cooperative, engaged and affectionate. When I stay up with him, if I'm not too tired, we have fun drawing, building with legos, and talking about all kinds of crazy stuff. In the mornings I get some alone time with Violet, too, when we can have a leisurely breakfast, play toddler games, and get some housework done. It is a big adjustment, though.

There are plenty of unschooling truisms like "you can have structure without having rules" which, while technically accurate, leave out the dirty semi-secret that this structure often has a way of occurring in the wee hours of the morning, and we've struggled more with this than with any other unschooling issue so far. Wouldn't it be better to just put River to bed over his objections, for his own good? The thing is, he seems to be doing just fine as long as we let him sleep enough, even if it is usually during the day. And although it's not what we might have chosen, the rest of us can be too, especially if we concentrate on meeting our own needs (for down time, getting out of the house, and so on).

I guess it comes down to the fact that we believe in unschooling not just politically (it's rarely right to force another person to do anything against their will), but also pedagogically - much like you just can't force someone sleep if they're not tired, you also can't force someone learn something when they're not open to it. On the other hand, even on learn-nothing day, there doesn't seem to be any way in the world to stop anyone from learning.