Bit of a challenging week - but a very successful unschooling week. We've had major computer troubles, so we've completely rebuilt and swapped around all the computers - well, not Bubba's (and I say we loosely, as I have been mostly Step and Fetch It and running the office because compared to Dave, Bubba and Kyle {the resident geeks}, I am rather computer illiterate - although to most of the moms I know, I am rather geeky - life is contradiction). So, we've been flashing the BIOS and reformatting and wiping and reformatting and removing hard drives and installing harddrives and installing video cards and sound cards and then partitioning drives and reconfiguring and wow, I am getting worn out just typing this. But, now, success.
The computer at the office is all set up and operating perfectly (yes, that is a bit of an euphemism when one is dealing with the Evil Empire, Microsoft) - we took the old HP bought in 2001(read obsolete) (which used to be the office computer until the power supply died several months ago) , replaced the dead power supply, swapped out the hard drive from the newer computer (which used to be Kyle's - Kyle having gotten a new computer when we needed to take his for the office when the HP died), brought the newer computer home and put the hard drives from the 2003 Dell(read obsolete) (which used to be our home office computer) into it so it would be our at home work computer. Then we took the Dell and set it up for Jesse, as she has been computerless (and very vocal about that situation - 'tho, to my annoyance, has had no interest in putting any of her money toward remedying that situation - clothing, ice cream and anything horse being much more important uses of her earnings), but Dave, ever the Dad, felt badly for her and wanted her to have a computer. I'm sure that the many evening arguments between the girls over whether or not Jesse could push Abby off of her computer so she could look at pictures of saddles and boots and read online comics had nothing to do with his decision. And you may wonder why Kyle and Abby have their own computers? Well, Dave feels that they need to be very familiar and comfortable with them as they would be severely disadvantaged in their adult lives without that knowledge base. He feels the future belongs not just to the computer literate, but to the computer savvy - which makes that rather large luddite part of me shiver - but, I have learned to trust his instincts, which almost always turn out to be eerily accurate. And to that end, they were very involved with the formatting and wiping and hardware and software swapping and loading and deleting and all that. Kyle, at points was running the formatting completely on his own. Abby has no qualms about opening up her cpu, removing one video driver and installing another one. And, they both have figured out how to hack into their own computers to do things like remove parental passwords set up so that the computer can't be used until seatwork is done (which infuriated me, but made Dave very happy - although he never let them know it) or to figure out just where spyware or BHOs (browser hijacker objects) were hiding after failing to remove them with the cleaning programs. So, that took up the last four-and-one-half days and quite a large chunk of the nights as well. But, knock on wood, all systems seem to be running well. I just have to get my desktop shortcuts and email account set back up on my user account on my computer (the work at home and spousal sharing computer).
One would think that children having their own computers would lead to them spending extremely large amounts of time - too much time - on them every day and doing nothing else of value. I, at least, was very concerned - but keep in mind I was also the one in this relationship who wanted to get rid of the tv when I got pregnant with baby number one and remove all refined sugar from the house. I lost on both points because of Dave's overwhelming logic. After the first week of what seemed to me to be non-stop computer usage, the children lessened their time on the computers substantially with each passing week. Many days go by without them ever getting turned on. They do a lot of research on them as we have a very small country public library. Abby is quite thrilled that she can find entire books online which she cannot get at our library (like the complete Grimm's Fairy Tales). Yes, there are days where Kyle, a typical teenage boy, would like to spend the entire day gaming as well as days like today where Bubba, engulfed in the seemingly bottomless enoui which comes with being 16, spends much of the day drawing on the computer, but those days are not that often. They are more likely to be found outside or practicing their katas or reading or cooking then on the computer. And, I guess, at the heart of it is also my belief that they will have to learn to manage their time, their responsibilities and their resources at some point in their lives - and if they figure it out now instead of when they are thirty - well - that'll be good for them. Because, in the end, I think most parents want their children to have a better life than they had - and that does not necessarily mean financially. But that's a discussion for another time and this post has been more than long enough.