(for the past three days, i have hardly slept, so enthralled am i by the concept of a radical unschooling lifestyle; i have read hundreds of pages, talked myself dry many a time, and my mind has been constantly churning, arranging and rearranging bits of the world, so that it all falls together in the most amazing rainbow i have seen since i began on this homeschooling journey two years ago. with the insights and the 'aha!'s also come the questions, in equal supply it would seem. it is all so much, i figured i would use this space to write down some of my tentative conclusions, to try and help myself understand what i understand and what i don't (yet) understand.)
The whole thing, as i understand it, is based on the following premise: children are people. No, really. Not as in ‘sort of people’, but as in ‘people like you and me'. From this incredibly radical position, the following seems to follow:
I treat my children the way I do the adults I cherish and love in my life, which means that I
- trust their capacity to choose for themselves;
- trust their capacity to take care of themselves;
- trust their capacity to learn all they need to learn;
- trust their wisdom;
- give advice and help only when required;
- listen when they talk;
- respect their opinions, and consider them to be completely valid, even if I happen to disagree;
- respect their right to choose things that might not, in my opinion, be optimal for their mental and/or physical well-being;
- humbly learn from them.
Behaviours I have indulged in that seem utterly nonsensical from this perspective:
- telling my children that they were tired
- telling them to go to bed now, and not come out again, or there would be no story
- telling them when to eat
- telling them what to eat
- telling them how much to eat
- telling them when to learn
- telling them how to learn
- telling them what to learn
- interrupting my children because an adult speaks
- telling my children to never interrupt adults speaking
- refusing them food when they were hungry (not the right time for a snack)
- refusing them sleep when they were tired (not the right time for a nap)
- forbidding them to watch tv when they wanted to
- forbidding them to eat candy when they wanted to
- forbidding them to use the computer when they wanted to
- forcing my children to go out when they wanted to be in
- forcing my children to stay in when they wanted to go out
- forcing them to wear A when they wanted to wear B
- selling some of their possessions, or sneakily giving them away, and then lying about these things being lost
- refusing to buy something for them which they really wanted, and i could afford, using the phrase ‘I don’t think it’s a nice book/toy/game’ as a justification
etc. etc. etc.
If I were to do any of these things to my husband I don’t think I would have a husband for very long (actually, I have occasionally tried some of it on my husband, obviously his response was not terribly enthusiastic, I can’t say this kind of thing ever really improved the atmosphere in our house…)
The important, basic thing here is, as far as I can tell, the paradigm-shift to actually
trusting my child’s
innate ability to take care of herself, to trust her self-preserving instinct, her growth instinct, her learning instinct, her self-actualization instinct, all of which means that left to her own devices, she will not, as predicted by skeptics, self-destruct, but instead turn into the amazing woman she was meant to turn into.
It also means there is nothing I or anybody else can ever ‘
teach’ her, although there are zillions of things for her to
learn. Learning cannot be induced, nor can it be stopped: It is automatic. In that sense, it is exactly like
breathing, which can be modified, regulated, etc., but by its very nature can neither be induced nor stopped, except by, respectively, birth and death. If I let this truly sink into my system, I can stop worrying about
‘my’ role in
her learning, and about her learning full stop. Away with the gnawing anxiety that she is 'not learning anything'. Away with the guilt trip about doing too little, too much, too soon, too late, too much like A and too little like B.
‘My’ only role is to get out of the way and let her. Breathe. Learn.
Respecting that although she always
knows what is best for her (or rather is always in the process of finding this out), she may sometimes choose not to
live that knowledge.
Acknowledging and
respecting that she has different ideas/interests/learning styles/priorities/ideologies from mine. Yes, already now. And that mine are no better or worse than hers. In fact, i could learn a lot from her.
Having said that, I still have questions. Many questions. Philosophical and practical ones. So there will be other instalments.
(for the past three days, i have hardly slept, so enthralled am i by the concept of a radical unschooling lifestyle; i have read hundreds of pages, talked myself dry many a time, and my mind has been constantly churning, arranging and rearranging bits of the world, so that it all falls together in the most amazing rainbow i have seen since i began on this homeschooling journey two years ago. with the insights and the 'aha!'s also come the questions, in equal supply it would seem. it is all so much, i figured i would use this space to write down some of my tentative conclusions, to try and help myself understand what i understand and what i don't (yet) understand.)
imagine:
... and by the time afternoon came, the sun had come out, the fevers were all but gone and we took the new twirly skirt for an afternoon spin on the beach with friends.
the bumble-bee summer caught up with us in the end. instead of going to Paris, i went to bed with the flu, and stayed there not quite a week, gorging on bits of blue from the sky, fluttering curtain breezes and 18th-century women's biographies (this and this). as i moved in and out of uncertain and confusing dreams ('consider all dharmas as a dream'), i slowly lost my usual demarcation lines and imagined myself ill with a flu in an 18th century cottage or mansion (depending on the ever varying quality of marc's bedside service...). i am in awe of the way illness can, in just a day or two, completely loosen all those silk-thin spiderweb strings that i mistakenly think of as 'my solid life'. in the space that arises, terrifying and unchartered as it is, i can feel my way into a multitude of alternative lives.
