Talking to children about murder

Thank you for all of the love and prayers in the comments.  You are the sweetest friends!  And another huge thank you goes out to those of you who have donated to help my brother's family lay their son to rest.  I cannot even find enough words to express how grateful I am for such a loving community.  We have had donations coming in from all over the world, and I am so touched by your support and generosity.

I've been up until the middle of the night most nights this week talking to my brother or other family members on the phone.  We've been crying and praying, trying to figure out what else we can do to help them from so far away.  It is unbelievable how much funerals and burials cost.  The national average in America is about $10,000 USD.  Talk about kicking someone when they are down.  It certainly makes me think about insurance.  Who among us thinks about the possibility that our children may be murdered?  As parents, it is our worst nightmare, but how many of us actually invest money specifically to pay for it in case it happens?

To be perfectly honest, I haven't.  I hardly ever let my children out of my sight, but that's not to say that something couldn't happen someday, especially once they go off to university.  Whenever the thought of something that horrific stirs inside me, I push it away.  It's unthinkable.  Unimaginable.  And yet... it happens all too often.

It happened to my brother's son.  KC was your average American teenager living in a small town.  A 30 year old man preyed upon these teenagers, and my nephew stood up to him and was brutally murdered for it.  His friends say he was protecting a girl.  They say that he had a big heart, and if something wasn't right, if something was unjust, he wouldn't stand for it.  He was no angel himself, but he felt a moral obligation in his heart to stand up even in the face of danger.  He was a lot like my brother in that way.  I remember my brother standing up for me when we were young.

During one of these phone calls with my brother we talked about having to explain to our children what happened.  It's hard enough to tell our teenagers, but our younger children... they have so many questions.  They have questions about death anyway, but somehow when a person is old or sick, death seems to make more sense.  When the person who dies is young and healthy, when it's murder, it is so much harder.

How can fighting with someone make you die? 
       Why are there bad people in the world?
               Will someone make me die?

I don't know how much my brother's youngest was able to understand, but he had plenty of questions.  My kids had questions, too.  I shelter them from the news, media, and videos.  I even preview books before I let them read them. My teenager still hasn't been given permission to read all the Harry Potter books, much to her chagrin, let alone those Hunger Games books her friends back home are talking about.  So my children, probably much the same as yours, don't have much context to work out the ideas of murder.  And when it's someone they know personally, their cousin... it's somehow scarier.

I sat them down and told them in the simplest terms I could think of.  Your cousin died.  He was protecting a friend from a bad person, and the bad person hurt him.  After they pressed me for more details, I told them there was a weapon involved-- a knife.  I didn't dare tell them where or how because I can't even say those words aloud to myself, the details are so terrifying and unthinkable.  But I did have to say that by the time the police arrived, he was already gone.  His soul had left his body.

It was an absolutely heartbreaking conversation, but I couldn't help to think how fortunate it is that our Waldorf homeschooling lessons don't gloss over some of the more terrible aspects of humanity.  From the time we begin teaching them the fairy tales, they learn that bad ends come to bad people.  Murder is something sort of mysterious and magical though, that can often be undone-- like in the Grimm's tale of The Three Little Men in the Wood where the queen gets tossed out the window into the river and turns into a swan.  To bring her back to form (i.e. life) the king has to swing his sword over her head three times.  If only it were that simple!

In grade two we teach them stories of saints and heroes, some of whom meet an unfortunate end.  But how many of us actually tell those ends?

In grade three we begin teaching the Old Testament.  To me, this is where we really hit upon ideas of violence and murder with Cain and Abel.  I remember telling this story to my girls and their eyes were wide in horror.  I think the strength of the story serves a purpose at this age, but clearly I had no idea just how much I would need that story to be something they could call upon and examine so soon.  We also have the making of knives by Cain's son, the theft of a knife, and how it's used to murder someone.

My girls both remembered this story, and they grew very silent thinking about it.

The tales of murder and destruction only increase from there.  The Old Testament stories are rife with them, as are the tales from the ancient mythologies, Rome, the middle ages, and surely the reformation.  The underlying message is that people who stand up for their beliefs, stand up for truth and righteousness, often get killed for it.  We admire these people, they are heroes and martyrs.  But it doesn't change the fact that they get murdered, often in cold-blood.  It doesn't make it any less terrifying to think about.

Moonshine, thinking of how her cousin died, reminded me that the Norse believed it was better to die in battle than in your bed.

But perhaps most fortuitous of all, this week I had started telling Moonshine the story of Siddhartha, the Buddha, for her ancient India study.  Siddhartha was a prince completely sheltered from all sorrow in the world.  When he finally encountered the old, the sick, and the dead he was so troubled that he became a hermit and meditated on how to reduce suffering in the world.  In the Kovacs' book Ancient Mythologies, Siddhartha asks the question: How can people and their souls become free of evil?

A demon comes along and tries to lure him away from his meditation by telling him that his son will die unless he goes to him immediately, but Siddhartha isn't swayed.  He answers: All men must die sooner or later.  I must find consolation for all sorrows, not only for my own...

Eventually, he receives an answer to his question, and he is transformed into an enlightened being.  People and their souls can become free from evil through compassion, kindness, love, and pity.  Through caring for each other more and more.

It's a strong but simple message, one that hopefully brings my children peace.  Continue on loving and living and caring for others, even in the face of sorrow and hardships.

You've really brought that message alive for me this week.  And I thank each one of you with all of my heart.

India, as promised

I don't think we've ever done a more enjoyable block. We loved everything about India, especially the rich stories. We could have spent ages on it, but I think we ended up with just the right amount. In the end we filled half of a main lesson book. We'll finish out the other half in a couple of months when we study Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.

I'm continually wowed by Sunburst's artistic growth, and this block really showcased how much she has grown and what she's capable of doing when she puts her mind to it.

Here are a few of my favorite pieces she did:










This last one is the Gayatri mantra, which we just devoured during this block. It was like food for us. Sunburst figured out how to work my ipod touch, and she enjoyed playing this mantra over and over until it became habitual inside of her. And in the rest of us, too. Our favorite version is 108 Gayatri Chants by Srihari.

For those of you who are wondering, I let Sunburst trace the Sanskrit lettering. I tried drawing it by hand myself, and whew, was it difficult. She traced it with pencil and then went over it with ink. I think it turned out beautifully.

Of course I did my own drawings along with Sunburst. Sometimes they were the example, and sometimes we picked an image off the internet that appealed to us. In the case of Buddha and Krishna, Sunburst came up with her own idea. With Buddha, we just happened to have the same idea, but on different sides of the tree. I wonder what that means?!?

As always, here are my drawings below, as well as the pastel drawing of Savitri and Satyavan at the top of this post. She and I got a great laugh at how my drawing of Krishna with the cows looks a lot like Michael Jackson. Click on it, and you'll see. I hope it gives you a good chuckle, too.






And Sunburst's beans, do you remember? At the beginning of this block I gave her seeds and she planted three of them. Only one sprouted, and she has been tending it with great care. Here's what it looks like now:

Everything cows!

We're still finishing up our zoology book from last year. Now that we're practically living on a farm, it makes it a much easier task.

From our studies of Ancient India to the lowing out in the fields, everything is suddenly turning up cows!


Our weekend trip to the Swiss mountainous countryside coincided with the Swiss cows coming down from the mountains for the winter. Apparently the goats came with them.




These cows are currently pasturing behind our house, and the girls have been making daily visits to a newborn calf in the stable next to us.




Since we don't eat cow, we celebrated our appreciation for them with some artwork (mine and Sunburst's):





My attempts at pastel cows:



and Sunburst's, including a poem she memorized awhile back:

Discovering Atlantis

Sunburst and I are thoroughly enjoying our study of Ancient India. I'm finding the Kovacs book, Ancient Mythologies, to be superb.

I like to start out each year with a symbolic marker. This year, since we were beginning with the destruction of Atlantis and Manu's voyage to India, I presented Sunburst with a few beans. Fifth grade is just brimming with new lands, new people, and new ideas. To me, they're like seeds. We plant them and see where they go.



She was a little bewildered when I told her to keep them safe, that she would need them. She pestered me on and off about them and was dying to know what they were for. Wait and see, I said.

And then we discovered Atlantis.



I had this rough idea for making a little Atlantis out of clay. I presented the vision of Atlantis, described by Plato as an island of concentric rings, and Sunburst just took off with it. She immersed herself fully in it and worked on it for a couple of days. It's regular pottery clay worked on the bottom of a pizza pan covered with parchment paper, and her creation far surpassed my expectations.

When she's ready we'll fill it with water, which will essentially destroy it... It seems a shame to trash something she took such care on, but isn't that kind of the crux of Atlantis itself? If it's true, it was supposedly an amazing, advanced civilization. In Kovacs' book he describes the Atlanteans as being capable of magic-- making cows small or men into giants. It seemed a bit far-fetched to me when I first read it, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if he was referring to science. We're doing some pretty wacky magic these days ourselves-- cloning animals, putting fish genes into our tomatoes, and I'm sure we don't even know the half of it.




When I told how the god Brahma brought Manu out of the flood waters to India with the seeds he had saved from Atlantis, Sunburst was also given some soil. She planted three of her beans, and luckily, one of them sprouted. It doesn't matter how many times we plant seeds, its always feels miraculous to watch them grow. We'll be exploring botany in the spring, and watching this bean unfurl sort of sets the mood for that. And after a story of destruction, it seemed important to have something tangible begin growing out of that.

Another year, another new beginning.