I wish I had a dime for every time a well-meaning Charlotte Mason Veteran offered this pithy encouragement when things weren’t turning out as the six volume set assured me they would. Truth be told, the “trust the method” mindset almost caused my to abandon CM altogether, because “the method’ simply wasn’t working for my youngest son. To be perfectly transparent, most of the time I felt like the method was failing him. And in turn, I was failing him…I loved the method but I loved my son more.
Remembering a moment of rare candor, after I had admonished him for not paying careful attention to whatever we were reading at the time (based on the premise that he couldn’t narrate it after one reading). So I casually flung in a sorrowful, if not annoyed, voice: “I guess you just don’t get to know what happened.” Yes, I had read somewhere that one way to secure the attention of a daydreaming student was to prompt them to listen by depriving them of knowledge. Not exactly my proudest moment. I reminded him that the goal was to narrate after only one reading. Youngest retorted in voice rife with frustration, “Well I think those Charlotte Mason people are wrong!” Ouch. Intuitively, I knew he had hit the proverbial nail right on the head. Something had to give.
In October of 2018, we consulted an educational diagnostician who administered a battery of tests. The testing took two days, 4-5 hours each day and youngest boy was cooperative and quite the trooper. I knew we were in for it when the first day she reported she had never in all her twenty years seen a child with such a huge gap in between their strengths and weaknesses. Two weeks later my husband and I sat in her office with a 20 page report in front of us. The results of the testing definitively confirmed her suspicions: our son was not only highly gifted but also significantly learning disabled. ‘Twice exceptional’ kids are especially challenging within the traditional school setting because most school simply don’t have the resources to provide the level of customization required for 2e students to thrive. I was grateful we were already homeschooling but overwhelmed by how to help his special needs.
But sometimes clouds do actually have a silver lining and this one really did shine, though it took time to surface. Learning of youngest son’s neurodivergence gave me the permission I needed to adjust the method to suit his personhood, which is after all Mason’s first principle. It not only made me a better educator, it made me a better mother and in all seriousness, it made me a better person.
In subsequent posts I will discuss more of the changes we made, but for now, suffice it to say that it turns out our whole family is presumably 2e; while youngest has the only official diagnosis, we all show many signs of excelling in some areas while really struggling in areas beyond the realm of normal. Meaning that though the polymath is the exception rather than the rule, our weakness requires special assistance whether that be from another family member or an outside source.
So while the Charlotte Mason philosophy we adhere to is indeed beautiful and worthwhile… it was never meant to be static. With neuropsychology flourishing, and with the knowledge that CM was keenly innovative, I believe she would have stepped up to support neurodiversity rather than relying on principles she crafted at a given point in time and then sitting back and resting on her laurels. I do understand the reluctance of some to attach a label to their child…I was there myself for many years. But I needed help to reach youngest and we refuse to allow diagnoses to define who we are. It simply allows us to tailor instruction in ways that nurture strengths and support weakness.
“Children are born persons.” We must respect their personhood above all other principles. Huh. Maybe I do trust the method after all… go figure.
Decidedly Different 