AlwaysLearning...

On teenagers and nightowls:

Just wanted to reply and let you know you're not alone. My ds is 15 and loves to stay up all night and sleep during the day.

This is what almost all teenagers would do, if they had the flexible and free lives that our unschooled kids have. It is built into their body development. Maybe it comes from putting young adults on all- night guard duty or something?

I work four days a week so I try to get him to sleep at night and be up during the day so I can spend more time with him on my days off but he gradually starts staying up later and later until he's back up all night.

Can you manage something different? Can you switch YOUR schedule to suit his? Can you take a long nap one day so that you can be up during the night with him?

It might also be that you have to face a fact of life that he might prefer his time online with his friends than additional time with you. That isn't so much a reflection of his relationship with you as the reality that he's emotionally getting ready to be more independent. Be sure that you don't take it personally.

He plays Guild Wars on the computer and talks to his friends with his headset. That's his social outlet.

My now-18 year old did the same thing—not Guild Wars, but online role-playing games—all her friends were online ones. She did theater activities (in real life) but didn't develop a social life through that. In the past year, she's made an effort to meet some of her online friends, in person—and that has been very cool. She's also made a large group of really good in-person friends (it has to do with her getting old enough to be able to hang out with the college-age kids) and she's turned into a social butterfly—stays out late, spends the night at friends' houses, has dates, goes to clubs and goes dancing.

Otherwise he's pretty much a homebody. It'll be interesting to see what happens when he turns 16 and wants a job.

This is a non-issue—my three stay-up-all-night kids have had no problem at all getting up for jobs or other activities that they've chosen to do in the mornings. I've known dozens of teen unschoolers who spent their nights online or out socializing—they've all been able to adjust, easily, to early morning schedules, when they wanted to do so.

He'll have to be up during the day then. Minors can't work past 10pm here on the weeknights, and midnight on the weekends.

Even if he got a full-time job, he might get one where he works at from 1 pm to 10 pm on weekdays. He could still sleep until noon. And he's probably NOT going to want to work full time, right? So he might work more like 6 pm to 10 pm - most jobs for teenagers are things like video stores or fast food or other retail jobs - those are more likely to be in the evenings, anyway.

There is some good scientific information about teens and sleep on the National Home Education Network website—look in the "Homeschooling Help" menu at the top and select "High School and Beyond." Page way down to the sleep information.

—Pam

On examples of kindness and helping create them:

Yesterday, Josh built a voice modulator from a kit, and he and Emily were playing with it. Rachel got frustrated because she really really thought it was cool and wanted a turn. She started off with whining and begging, and we kind of talked about how we liked to be asked for our stuff. So, she walked up and said "Josh, do you mind if I have a turn?" and he said sure. He handed it over and watched them and laughed a little about how funny they are (she was singing Domo Aragoto, mr roboto, while Emily did the robot dance). I bumped up against him and said, thanks bro, you're cool. He just kind of shrugged it off and said, I'll have plenty of time to play with it another day.

Today, Dan and I were playing with a shape-o ball, and and Sam kept racing to pick up the pieces. Dan got really upset, and was screaming. I reminded Dan to use words to tell people how we feel, and got Sam's attention (he's a little, hm, how to say? a little boy) and Dan said "It makes me mad when you play with those right now!" Sam said sorry, and handed the shapes over to Dan. Within minutes, they were both playing a game with the shapes, and played together without fighting for about 20 minutes, at which point Sam decided to go play video games with Emily. Then Dan handed the shapes over to Avari to play with while he plays sea creatures. Now I'm a shark and need to get offline.

—Melissa

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