Gearing up for School: Creating an “Academically Stimulating” Home

In an ideal world, in a venue in which teens make their beds without being asked and in which they seek to encourage, rather than to mock, their siblings, teens would derive from cognitively and affectively stimulating homes. That is, those adolescents would grow up in nurturing places where their senses are rocked, where they are taught to be creative and critical thinkers, where their social intelligence is strengthened, where their kinetic aptitude is improved, where they dwell in a spiritual haven, and where they come to understand that a significant facet of “love” is “acceptance.”

I indulge in such fantasies as often as I indulge in chocolate; both are illusionary perks; they drop kick one’s gut longer than they elevate. Simply, my teens are growing up in a real home in the real world.

In terms of our home “rocking their senses,” sure, our oldest son is learning to play chords on his bass. Sure, our youngest daughter creates hair art that rivals most contemporary stylists’ experiments, and, sure, “cooking magic” is the rhetorical spin our oldest daughter places on dishes concocted from uncomplimentary ingredients. On the other hand, my family: dislikes musical harmony (often singing the same song, at the same time, in two different keys), believes only denim clothing is worth wearing, and thinks rice is better chow than is soufflé. 

Part of my little lawyers’ ability, to articulate their preferences, comes from their proficiency in critical and creative thinking. Although their mother once taught rhetoric and their father still commands great legions of software architects, the kids reason that their clear think harks from their ongoing need to overcome double binds and the other types of linguistic paradoxes since they were raised in a house where the hand, the strap and the paddle were outlawed, but the “mind mess up” was often used.

As per our home’s enhancement of social intelligence, our kids are regularly exposed to the entirety of the processes attendant to ordinary discourse, in contexts ranging from running after the mailman (to retrieve the correct envelopes and to return the wrong ones), to having to explain to visitors why our imaginary hedgehog colony only submerges on weekdays. Our children have been tutored to expect and to evoke age appropriate, situation dependent mayhem. Only preschoolers are permitted to toss four footed guests out the window; older children have to auction off intruders.

Kinetic intelligence, likewise, is fostered in our home. Most evenings, freestyle competitions take place. The events we host range include the “run-away-from-any-washing-machine-signaling-it’s-ready-to-be-changed” sprint and the “avoid-the-dishes/leave-the-trash/forget-to refrigerate-the-leftovers” triathlon.” Among the extra workouts we afford our offspring are bending and lifting (to hide soiled clothes, incomplete homework and illicit foodstuff in bedroom nooks and crannies) and swimming (through the aforementioned piles). 

Any home in which so much energy is focused on children’s developmental well being is spiritual haven. In these circumstances, young adults feel free to stick their chewing gum on hidden spots of their siblings’ beds, to steal each others’ clothes, and announce, only at such times as when siblings’ vulnerable relationships are being negotiated, that said siblings have awkward personal habits. My husband and my unexcited response to such goings on is proof enough of the miraculous quality of our homestead.

Finally, in terms of learning that love is acceptance, are children are well endowed. Although they are aware of the human foibles around them, they articulate and practice affection without limit.

Happy new school year!