Home Education Magazine

January-February 2003 - Articles and Columns

Homeschooling With the Cartwrights - Mary Kenyon

"The Cartwright's would love this!" my eight-year-old son, Matthew, exclaimed as we looked for the price tag on a toy shopping cart full of miniature boxes of food packages. I'll admit I felt a quick stab of doubt and worry about my son's socialization just then, not at the prospective purchase, but at the fact that my son wanted to purchase it for the Cartwright's.

The Cartwrights have lived with my family for almost three years now. I'm not exactly sure where they came from but I suspect they were invented by my then-13-year-old son, Michael, in a desperate attempt to entertain his younger siblings.

It started with videotapes from the local library, of the old "Bonanza" shows, and escalated when we discovered a daily dose of "Bonanza" on our local family-oriented television station. Being in the last months of my seventh pregnancy, I was ecstatic to have Michael giving "Cartwright" shows each afternoon while I lay on the couch for a rest. Before I knew it, the four youngest children were playing "Cartwrights" (the name of the family on Bonanza) every afternoon, using beanie babies and stuffed toys as characters.

The shows Michael produced pretty much resembled the actual "Bonanza" shows they had watched, with the same characters. Admittedly, the father, Ben Cartwright, was a Big Bird beanie, Adam was a chicken, Little Joe was a goose, and Hoss was a large banana (originally in pajamas, but soon Ben was wearing them). Day after day, the story evolved, with new characters arriving as their imaginations soared. Another goose, with a loose neck, became Joe's cousin, Josephine. A Cookie Monster beanie became the blue man, of unknown origin, but I think he cooked for them until Hop Sing, a collectible Lucky Charms cereal premium beanie, arrived on the scene.

By the time baby Katie arrived, each of the children knew the voices for the ever-evolving Cartwright family. Not only that, but whenever we went to thrift stores or consignment shops, my children seemed to find something the Cartwrights just had to have! By this time, the Cartwrights only vaguely resembled the family from the "Bonanza" shows. They had moved into an apartment, frequently shopped at a local store where they ordered meat (blue blocks wrapped in white paper), and they needed all of the accessories associated with modern life, including a car, which we located in the form of a Barbie car for 25-cents at a thrift store. The family had expanded dramatically. After watching a movie about a hump-backed man living in a campus clock, "Bob" joined the fray, in the form of a fast-food toy depicting the Hunchback of Notre Dame. A Trix cereal rabbit became the adopted son Kit, but only after his appearance was changed dramatically with a permanent black marker. When the first Kit disappeared and I located another, Michael wasted no time in changing his appearance with the marker until he was identical to the first one. It got so it was no longer safe to dispose of toys from the toy room floor as I used to. After the first time I heard the anguished cry, "Mom, you donated Little Joe's mother!" I learned to ask, "Is this a Cartwright?" before cleaning up a mess. For a long time, the only toys that were played with in our house was this growing pile of Cartwright family and paraphernalia.

Of course, my children did move onto other interests, but the Cartwrights were never abandoned as I had assumed they would be, and now even the two-year-old can identify the voices of each of the characters!

I am continually amazed, and often amused, by the scope and the power of the Cartwright's and their imaginary world in my children's lives. There have been those brief, serious moments of doubt, however, that this imaginary family and world is healthy for my children. The day Emily approached me at her cousin's house, scoffing because her little cousin didn't even know how to play Cartwrights, comes to mind. The aforementioned episode when my son coveted something for the Cartwrights instead of something for himself is another instance. It is those times I suddenly wonder, "Were they right? Were those family members and friends who nine years ago questioned my decision to homeschool, correct about the harm I would do my children keeping them home?"

Then I look in the playroom and watch my 15, 14, 9, 6 and 2-year-old children playing Cartwrights together. I see them carefully labeling blocks of meat, taking turns being storekeeper and adding up the purchases. I watch them learning, living, and yes, sometimes fighting together, and I think of my older public-schooled son and how he avoided his younger siblings after school, preferring a peer or even homework to interaction with his brothers and sisters. I think about when I was fifteen or even thirteen, and how, at school, my main concerns were getting a boy to notice me, or figuring out the best way to pass tests and get good grades when something didn't even remotely interest me, and promptly forgetting everything after a test. In school, I strived to be as like everyone else as I could on our limited income. During the summers, away from school and my peers, I morphed back into the girl I truly was, who loved nothing more than reading or writing for hours. The one time a classmate stopped by unexpectedly, I was mortified to be caught outside at the picnic table wearing a brightly-colored loose caftan I had inherited from a woman I'd cleaned house for.

My children don't worry about what they wear. If they want to read and write for hours, I let them. We don't grade any of their work and we rarely test. We both know when they do or don't understand something. My fourteen-year-old daughter is still more interested in her animals than in boys, and my fifteen-year-old son spends more time with his dog taking walks than with any human friends. But by the time they are eighteen I expect they will already know what they want to be and do, unlike so many of their schooled peers who will spend years in college and thousands of dollars trying to figure out what they want in life. Like their older homeschooled sister and brother before them, they will have spent hundreds of hours discovering what they are good at and where their real interests and talents lie.

Some would say I am isolating my children from the "real world", living in the country and homeschooling. I say if the real world entails early sexual activity, drinking, swearing, and experimenting with drugs and smoking, then hurrah for isolation! I cannot relate to any of the books, articles or television shows depicting the "typical" teen angst and rebellion that leads to teens dying their hair, multiple piercings, wearing revealing clothing or engaging in early sexual activity. There are still those who insist my teens will imbibe in these behaviors, if not now, then when they leave home, as if these negative behaviors are inevitable. I will never forget an older sister warning me how my daughter, Beth, would turn into a total stranger when she turned thirteen. She related how her daughter, like the typical teen, started swearing at her, slamming doors, staying out late, dressing like everyone else, and smoking. When my daughter Beth showed nThese typical teenage symptoms at age 13, the warnings changed to, "Just wait until she is 16," and again, when she reached age 16 and still refused to fit the "typical teen" profile, I heard, "Just wait until she leaves home." I'm still waiting. After graduating from homeschool three years ago, Beth went to Florida for three months to nanny for a pen-pal of mine. She worked at Target for a few months, and last year got married to a long-time pen-pal of her own. They recently celebrated their first anniversary and look forward to having children of their own someday, and homeschooling them!

Yes, like any homeschooler, like any parent, I sometimes question if I am doing right by my children. I worry about their "socialization" at the same time I question just what kind of socialization school children are imbibing in in their peer-dependent classes. I worry about their academic achievements even as I revel in their obvious enjoyment of delving deep into subjects that interest them. I occasionally have the 3 a.m. insomnia that plaques me with questions about math, about late readers, about friendships missed, about career possibilities for unorthodox thinkers. There are those days, and every homeschooler has them, days when the doubts surface and the idea of going against the mainstream seem daunting. Days when "playing Cartwrights" seems more than a little odd for a normal teenager.

But then, what is normal? Is it normal today to give birth to seven children, to sleep with babies, practice extended breastfeeding? Is it normal for an adult to carry around a pad of paper everywhere she goes so she can jot notes down when inspiration strikes? To compulsively hunt down clearance aisles and maintain a well-stocked cupboard of health and beauty items, as well as stocking a closet full of Christmas gifts, starting the day after Christmas? To read magazines and books voraciously, attend all book sales within a 50-mile radius, never missing one, and in fact, arriving an hour early to stand in line? Is that normal adult behavior? Do I really want my children to be like everyone else when my own identity is so tied to being different?

We didn't buy the shopping cart that day, even though my son insisted the Cartwrights needed it. He decided that if he had to spend his own money, they didn't need it that bad! A couple of weeks later, I surprised even myself at just how much they needed the new family member I discovered at a thrift store, a tall stuffed chicken wearing blue tennis shoes. "Just look at this!" I yelled to Matthew and Emily, as I held up my find, "It's Aunt Josephine, little Joe's long-lost aunt!" I barely noticed the other customers in my excitement, and as my children ran over to me, the pure delight in their facial expressions said it all. It might be different, it might not be quite normal, but for our family, the Cartwrights are A-ok.

© 2003 Mary Kenyon

Top

January-February 2003 - Articles and Columns

HEM General Information

Subscribe to HEM