Unschooling Support from Within

Well, to be honest, it's not the unschooling that needs support, it's the parents' nervous systems. We can't really just break out of the system we grew up in without a serious amount of fear, so... we come up with solutions that help us grasp at the nothingness of our plans without steering the kids too much.

Yes that's right. I said the nothingness of our plans. We have no plans. We just have kids.

That's what's so bloody scary!! We were raised on plans! We need plans! Alan Watts ☮ had nothing on our plan-toting teachers and their threats of loser-hood and failure!! So, just to soothe our sorry selves a bit, here are some of the things we do. Of course, they're not so much recipes as new ways to look at things, and organizational choices that help us feel less neglectful. But they works for us. At least they do when we get it right and do these things before panicking.

Disclaimer:

These are our ideas. They`re what work for us, because they come from our hearts.

Your successes will come from your hearts.

Libraries
We love our books. We have piles of them. Literally 3 libraries full: kids fiction, adults everything, and kids non-fiction, which is slowly becoming so interesting to us parents that it's basically the most frequented library, now... We don't feed our kids the books, or even 'strew', as I understand some people do, but we do make an effort to buy interesting books when we come across them.

And there they are. Cool books. It is amazing to me how many times the kids can read the same book. Tal has read a couple of his favourite novels about 5 times... but just when I start to worry, he seems to have broken into his father's programming books, or old comics, art textbooks, or obscure books from the recesses of our forgotten shelves. And these books spark the most interesting curiosities and adventures!

I don't have to do anything about this, of course. The books begin the adventures and the kids finish them. But I admit I love to join them for the ride, sometimes.

Art Area
Every home should have an art area. For us it was the dining table for a long time; sometimes the kitchen floor, but recently we've managed to make it part of Rhiannon's bedroom, which means a LOT more freedom, since it doesn't have to be cleaned up so often, for meals.

The key to a good art area is having an open space with free-range and plenty of good supplies. And by good, I don`t mean expensive, I mean well-chosen. Good supplies are open-ended. They're materials that can be used in any way, and that don't limit the imagination. Bad supplies are things like colouring books, stickers, and other gimmicky things, which basically inject too much of the manufacturer's imagination into our creation. Good supplies are practically anything. We have an entire shelf of different types of paper (LOTS of discarded office printouts on white letter paper from Pappa`s work), cheap felt for sewing, origami books* and other such inspirational things. In a drawer we have a bunch of extras, including strings, sewing supplies, tapes, and some of the messier things like paints and modelling clay, and in a rotating caddy in the middle of the big table we have a really huge assortment of felt-pens, pencils, rulers, scissors, glues, etc.

The kids aren`t the only ones who make use of this excellent area, and when their inspirations take them further than their supplies or area will allow, we either move outside or into my professional studio, where the rules are stricter (to protect some of my equipment and half-finished art) but there`s some access to different supplies.

*I think origami books, while they are still instruction books, can be good if we lead by example in taking the instructions and playing with them, so that they're more a jumping-off-point for discovery, than a recipe to a particular end.

Equipment
We do have a fair amount of equipment - useful tools for open ended creation and exploration: shovels, rakes, hoses, aquariums, microscopes, telescopes, cameras, pots, bowls, and pitchers... etc. It's important to have the basic tools. Some people have access to these tools through learning centres and other such organizations, but where we live is a bit rural, and we find it useful to have these things at home. We don't spend much money on things like new clothes, toys, or dining out. We spend it on good quality used equipment that can help us with our exploration.

Rhiannon helping to build the new porch joists

Work and Rewards
We have the usual amount of house and yardwork, I think, and I`m honest with the kids about it. I don`t like being the one who does all the work, and I expect them to help out with the garden, the housekeeping, the animal care, the cooking, etc. It doesn`t always go the way I hope it will, but for the most part I think they understand that a family is a group effort, and the the lifestyle we all love is our mutual reward. Like strawberries. Yes. Strawberries. Those are worth a whole lot of weeding and watering! Hugs from the dog? Worth feeding her. Having clean clothes worth doing some laundry. These are real rewards. And often just sharing time working together as a family is a reward in itself.

TV and Movies
We don`t have a TV, actually, but there are some seriously good shows out there, and we have watched a few of them online. Same, of course, with movies, documentaries, and YouTube channels. When we find things that we like, we watch them, and, unless we`re having 1:1 parent time, the kids are welcome to join us. Sometimes we even join them for their shows!! We learn the most interesting things about the world, this way... things we`d never have ventured out to discover on our own.

Take The Kids to Work!
Not everybody happens to have an artist for a parent, but most parents have some sort of shareable interest, "hobby", or work, and I do believe that bringing the kids along for the ride - letting them see our own inspiration and process - is one of the best things we can offer them.

One beauty of this is the physical work we do, as parents, but another is the ideas we share with them. I can't describe how irritated I feel when people tell their kids they're too young to understand, or that certain topics are 'grown up things'. I don`t shelter my kids from ideas - no matter how complicated. And yes, some things go right over their heads, and others are upsetting. But I like to think that if they asked me the question, they deserve to receive the best answer I can give them. I take my son to university lectures when he wants to attend them. Sometimes the topics are completely over my head, and I'm sure he has very little understanding of what`s being discussed. But he loves them. And that's what matters.

Rhiannon at her guitar lesson with Corbin.

Outside Influence
Obviously we don't want to be completely isolated in our journeys. So we take our kids on social adventures, and also enroll them in programs. This not only gives them some input from non-parent community members and a chance to experience organized group activities, but it also gives us all time to experience the world apart from each other... which is very important for our personal development and relationships! The activities/programs that seem to work for our kids are, of course, child-directed, taught by inspired and thoughtful people, and chosen by our kids. The two mainstays are music mentoring (which I've written about, before), and their acting school, where the teachers favour process over product, and guide the kids through theatre games and the development of a play to performance, so that they really take ownership of their work and contribution... as well as their journey. In addition to this they participate in various field trips with local community organizations, and sometimes another group or class that interests them.

To-Do Lists and Would-Like-To-Do Lists
To do lists are for me. They give me some structure and help me remember what needs to get done. They also help the rest of the family see what I do with my time, and they help me feel accomplished as I check things off. I've suggested the kids make them, but they haven't really jumped on the idea.

Would-Like-To-Do lists, on the other hand... those are cool.
Yes, they're my suggestion, but the kids enjoy them, and frequently take me up on this suggestion. They don't even always keep them, but writing them out is inspiring, already, and helps them process their ideas of what is important and interesting to them. And when they do keep them, and look back at them (sometimes months after writing them) they're both an interesting glimpse at a time past, and an inspiration to get back to some things they'd forgotten about. And sometimes... just sometimes... they come in handy when the bored-nothing-to-do monster is hanging around.

Tali as Toto in the Wizard of Oz

Giving Up
Oh I just give up on my kids, I say nonchalantly. (Ha ha ha...)
As in... "What? You want me to help on this costume, and you haven't done anything yourself? Sorry. I'm busy." Yes, I abandoned him on the costume he had to make for his play, when he'd left it to the last minute, and had no idea how to make a dog mask. And neither did I.
So, Tali grumbled away to the art room, got out the white felt and cardboard, made a truly awesome dog-mask, and finally came to me for help with the ears. He'd been much more imaginative than I think I would have been, and also came up with some seriously good-looking facial-features, as well as a well-fitting base. And he made it himself.
Sometimes parents giving up gives kids the freedom they need to go do something great.

Giving up control is, of course, the main tenet of our unschooling path. As Alan Watts says,

"Let's see what you're going to do."

HOMESCHOOL, UN-SCHOOL, FUN-SCHOOL... it's all COOL.

This is a guest-post from my dear friend Suki Kaiser, who is currently living on a sailboat on the pacific ocean with her family. She describes the journey from public school through homeschooling to unschooling so beautifully! Do go check out her blog, The Wet Edge.

Let them lead the way...

This last term, we ran an experiment on our kids.

I know, you're not supposed to actually ADMIT it,

that you don't know what the heck your doing...

that even though you may love them with all your unconditional heart, 
parenting still seems to boil down to a whole lot of finger crossing and best intentions.

If you really want an acute dose of this feeling... 
take up homeschooling.

HOMESCHOOL:

Just mention the subject at a party, and observe how it immediately puts people who would otherwise get along, on opposite sides of a (nonexistent) fence.

Of course, we all know, that no ONE method of teaching is perfect,  the same thing can't possibly work for every individual...

So why does everyone get so flustered about it?

Easy. No one wants to mess up their kids.

Everyone wishes their child will grow up, bright, curious and well rounded, with enough skills to carve out a successful future.

We fret that our cherished little people, will also survive the war-zones of elementary and high schools and emerge with their fragile self-esteems in tact.

Every parent wants these things.

The issue with homeschooling is, there is no set-in-stone way to do it. Naturally, this breeds uncertainty and self doubt...

and geeze, isn't that a fun place to parent from!

The second you start to take responsibility for your child's education,  you have to actually THINK about how to teach them.

This is a really, intimidating prospect. Highly educated, PHD- wielding professionals have spent whole lives devoted to researching and experimenting this subject...

and even THEY haven't worked out all the kinks, yet.

So how on earth, are YOU not going to blow it?

Jon and I,  have experienced all of these feelings and more, during the year and a half  we've been experimenting on our poor, unsuspecting children.

We're not experts or anything but I gotta say...Holy Cow.

It has been an eye-opener.

When we first looked into withdrawing our kids from school in California, it was the middle of the year,

Kai was halfway through fourth grade and Hunter was in second.

They had always gone to public schools and could read and write and were good socially...so we knew we had that going for us.

When I looked up HOMESCHOOLING  on the internet, the first thing that came up, was how illegal it was in the State of California if you went into it willy-nilly. We needed to go through a whole bunch of red tape and this "tape" required us to reinstitute them into another system of education, immediately.

-but we weren't even sure what we wanted yet or what would work for them. We didn't know the first thing about how to teach our kids, never mind teach them on a sailboat...

For, that matter, we didn't even really know all that much about sailing a boat to Mexico...
it was a lot to take on.

So, we did what seemed safest.

We signed up with other home-schoolers, loaded up on books and downloaded curriculums based on their grade level.

Safety in numbers. Stay with the herd.

Luckily, we had friends who were already blazing the home learning path-and we even knew a few, radical folks who were into this wacky-sounding"UNSCHOOLING" thing... 

A"new-age"-sounding, learning style, which gave me mini-spasms of fear, because it just seemed NUTS to stray that far from the path of what is 'known". What kind of tye-dyed wackos lead a child into an abyss of Do-it-your-own-way, with no state-run-testing-or-formal-structures-to-guide them?

-I have since been converted, wholeheartedly, to this learning concept but we all must leap before we fly :).

We started out by sailing and schooling, sticking to the familiar structure of certain hours of the day devoted to various subjects.

We compared notes with every cruising family we met, 

(and secretly compared our children to theirs; "are they smarter? Do they keep more regular school hours?)

Monday to Friday, spelling tests, math pages, Rosetta stone, grammar, write in the journal every day, projects for social studies, science and art...

We worried incessently, that they might fall behind.

We were strict. Well, we were ridged, really...

which was a bad fit for us. 

The result was... 
we fought all the time,

with the kids, with each other, 

and homeschooling became a nightmare.

We tried all kinds of fixes.

There were "star charts',  reward systems,  "Buddy systems" 'Special days"...invariably, we ended up dolling out reams of "consequences" more often than prizes.

It all sucked.

We felt like we were failing....

the two most important people in the world, to us.

So, eventually, we did what any good parent would do;

we gave up.

No, really. We gave up and decided to try this "other" kind of home-school notion...

the one that also included that sneaky, patchoulli-smelling "unschooling" thing.

Here we were, out in the wild blue, doing all this crazy stuff.

Jon and I were always busy and learning ourselves, 

so why not trust that kids would, too?

We leapt into the unknown...

dragging our kids with us.

Which brings me to these end of the year report cards;

For the past four months, we have kept no regular school hours.

We never made the kids crack a text book-unless it was something they wanted to do and were feeling curious about.

What we did do, was provide as much support as we could for whatever interest they were showing the most enthusiasm for.

Discipline was enforced. 

We live on a boat and there are chores galore and the kids were expected to share a fairly hefty part of those.

They were taught to preform tasks that were within their abilities  --and we expected them to do these well.

We counted on them as crew and gave them responsibility.

Work ethic. Responsibility. Completing tasks-

this was homeschool.

If they chose to do schoolwork instead of cleaning the dingy, that was fine but they would still have to do the dishes and sweep the floor. 

The boat stayed reasonably clean we finally had help( and weren't so stressed out ourselves) and the kids learned how to do a lot of mature boat tasks, like care for a dingy and it's engine, provision water and fuel, and bake and cook some things for themselves.
"Cool. Responsible. Tidy" 
Words we all felt should exemplify a boat-kid.

Kai and Hunter felt pretty great about their accomplishments-and so did we. 
We told them how much we appreciated all their help-all the time.

They learned how to be better sailors WITH us.

When we looked up things in books, they were right there, over our shoulders, reading and learning and experimenting.

We made them part of the conversation, whenever possible and when it wasn't possible to engage them, we told them to beat it.

They crawled into their bunks and read and read and read and read and read....or watched a movie on their computer.

( which is not a bad thing, so stop sweating it, if you are. Just let them watch better stuff, so they can talk to you about it, after)

They wrote facts about the ocean for the blog during the crossing and discovered that they really liked to write for an audience.

(and there was no more fighting about doing journals)

Manners, chores, reading, activity, quiet time and limited exposure (but not NONE) to electronics...

We set them free to absorb everything they wanted, as they wanted...and we let them be.

There was much less fighting.
Everyone had a good time.

Then came the report cards.

Honestly, we were so proud of them and all the amazing things they had accomplished as people this year; crossing an ocean, learning to scuba dive, speaking new languages...

even despite the usual growing pains that we all expect from pre-adolescence (lippy, lazy, slobby, surly, catty), they were both awesome, hilarious, caring, gentle people that we love to be around.

Yet, there was a niggling fear about how they would measure up with those pesky grade tests, because that part wasn't the KIDS responsibility any more... 

it was totally on us.

Gulp.

"Your report cards are due..." said We, in ominous undertones.

"since we haven't been doing school the 'normal' way, we were just wondering, how do you guys feel about your progress this year?".

The kids looked to one another, uncertain.

There was a chill in the wind, maybe it was a trick question.

"Ummmmm? Ohhh-kayyyy,  I guess?" said Kai, raising his eyebrows, in a hopeful plea.

(my stomach was breeding 'bad-parent' butterflies, at this moment)

"Should we take the end of the year tests in the curriculum books to see how you do?". 
It was just a suggestion.

The kids looked a little worried.

'Don't worry". 
We assured them.
"We take full responsibility for this. If you don't know something, it's OUR fault. We will teach it to you. But at least we will all know where you are, in relation to other kids in your grade."

This took the pressure off the kids and once they knew this, they took it as a sort of "challenge"-in a good way.

We spent a few hours a day, for three days doing all the tests in their grade books.

It ended up, that we chose a few tests from the middle of the book-where they had left off- but they did those so quickly and with no problems, so we jumped them to the final tests.

We were shocked, frankly.

The kids did amazingly well.

We can't take any credit, for it either.

Everything that we have been doing for the past year had sunk in.

Their amazing brains hadn't just figured out how to do fractions by baking and times tables (because it was occasionally fun to work on them) or grammar and spelling and reading comprehension ( all  a breeze because they do it all the time anyway and read so much),

and science, is a joke because they already know more than I did, when I was in college...
they ALSO picked up everything that went on around them in their daily life;

navigation, understanding where a storm cell might from, repairing the heat exchanger on a diesel engine, figuring out why the fridge won't work and how to fix it-which means you learn about the difference between alternating and direct current-learning to shop, live and make friends, in a foreign country-where no one speaks your language-converting imperial to metric, studying wildlife, reading poetry, playing guitar, rebuilding the second stage regulator on a scuba tank...

it was ALL in there and more.

Taking away the stultifying, bullying, daily-bludgeoning-session that had become our  botched attempt at structuring  homeschool like 'conventional' school..

and they blossomed.
They bloomed.

Our kid's minds were free to explore and a few months into it, they were CRAVING information and seeking it out.

We watched carefully, for clues of what they were into and then pounced on the opportunity to teach them what they WANTED to learn...but we did it with soft, fuzzy mittens-not boxing gloves.

Our kids did their grade tests WILLINGLY.

In fact, they got off on it, because they liked that they knew so much. Kai and Hunter even took it upon themselves to relearn anything they felt vague on.

Jon and I carefully looked through everything they were supposed to know for their grade level-they had learned all of it and so much more. Totally shocking. Wasn't expecting it...

But that is what happened.

We wrote them out honest report cards with honest grades and sent them to our home learners program.

This was was a week ago.

Since then, they have been so monumentally impressed with themselves and their leaning abilities, they have been downright obnoxious.

They have spent  evenings quizzing each other ( and us) about subjects we didn't do much of.

US history, algebra(?!) 

When Kai got a consequence for not remembering to recharge his Nook ( living on solar is a bitch sometimes) he picked up SLAUGHTER HOUSE FIVE.

"That's a good book" I said.

Kai turned it over.

"What's it about?" he asked.
The world "SLAUGHTER" has potential, for an eleven-year-old boy...

"It's about this guy, who goes back and forth in time and sometimes he's in a really awful war and sometimes he's living with some aliens that kidnapped him..."

(bless you, Kurt Vonnegut, for making a masterpiece with a a log-line that good)

Kai read it in a day.

When his Nook was finally charged, he didn't want to go back to his other book.

He passed up watching a "kid-movie" with his sister, to finish it.

When he emerged from his room at eight that night, I asked him what he thought about it.

He said he liked it a lot but some of it was confusing.

Then he talked about it for two hours, about the second world war and how writing can be simple and deep at the same time.

He asked us what other good books there were that were like that.

Hunter( who has gone farther than any of us in her a Rosetta stone programs because its what she does for fun) got sick of all this discussing something she hadn't read and wanted to know if we could have a spelling contest.

So we did.

This was our experience.

These are kids we're talking about though, 
so in a month, the game could totally change....

and when it does, we will, too.

Whatever works.

So the next time, someone says..

"How is homeschooling going?" 

and you feel like you want to throw yourself on the floor sobbing?

We totally, feel ya.

You are not alone in the fear that you might screw it up.

It can be scary out here, 
on the dimly-lit path of homeschool, un-school, fun-school...

but just keep reminding yourself,
"there's no brighter light than Love",

trust in it to guide you...

and keep your fingers crossed.

Riel

Just in the pines on the heather. (And grass!)

My father's family has a cottage in Riel (Google satellite view). It's flanked on one side by heather fields, where ancient post-ringed grave-mounds rise up out of the mists in the mornings, and dune-grasses slowly invade the heather's territory, giving way only to the dwarfed pines that pop up here and there, and the ever-widening paths trodden by horses. The little house, "Hoefke 5", is flanked on the other side by a darkly colourful forest of beech, chestnut, oak, pine and rhododendrons, tended over generations by the family. This is where the family's treasures were buried, during the war, and the reason that some treasures still exist, among us, now. We like to

...eventually Hoefke 5 got a portable phone...

think about this, while exploring the often-dry pond, the fox-dens, and the little craters left by the bombs. Oh. And the neighbours. Many of them farmers, they visit the little Maria Shrine at the edge of the woods, peer towards the windows when they notice somebody's home at Hoefke 5, and generally don't converse much. During my childhood, the closest neighbours had a pig farm. Rows of inedible pig-corn lined the brick road to the heather. Their poultry woke us up in the mornings, and their sweet friendly faces welcomed us home when they noticed us arrive.

Oom Just, Grootmoeder, Sander and Jeroen at het huisje.

Cousins Just and Adrian, hanging out in het huisje.

Hoefke 5 is an old hunting cabin, with thin wooden walls and red/white/blue shutters on the windows. I love the job of going around to open the shutters, upon arriving at the house! There are low counters and a potato box under the kitchen floor. There is a big fireplace and a collection of games, and paintings of dead hunted animals, of course, too. There is a shower-room big enough to dance in, and a little WC with so much thick white paint on the walls that it nearly feels padded. There is a smell of old furniture and damp leaves; of pine trees and sand and soot. There is a warmth left by generations of our family, finding ourselves.

The van Lidth de Jeudes are an interesting family. And by this I mean the particular group of van Lidth de Jeude's who are descended from my Grootmoeder (the cottage in Riel comes, after all, from her uncle, Gerrit Kuijk). Maybe we're unusual in our humour and propensity for speaking frankly (not always a good mix), but we're also adventurous, and thoughtful. There's a strong interest in working with or traveling on the land, as well as an intellectual side. There has also been some attrition from the homeland of the Netherlands, but very little where Riel is concerned. In the van Lidth de Jeude family there is a deep authenticity; a rejection of class and stereotype. Well, in fact, there are certain uncles (and to some extent my own father) who like to strut about in their noble heritage, smoking pipes and serving cookies on ancient delft plates; wearing sweater-vests and drinking jenever elegantly. But these men all seem to suddenly shed their shirts (and sometimes everything else) when the opportunity to use chainsaws, burn brushpiles, and just generally get dirty in the woods presents itself. And it finally occurred to me that this may come from Riel.

Floris' teepee.

I was chatting with my cousin, a few days ago - the one whose life has meant that he, like I, only lived in the Netherlands at all for a couple of years, and now makes his home in Africa. But, as usual, Riel managed to work its way into our conversation. We cousins - all of us - have deep connections. We're all so close to our own siblings that we choose to get together whenever possible. And cousins like to keep connected, too -- even without words, somehow. I linked to one of those Dutch cousins on LinkedIn, and he replied "but we're always connected, of course". Exactly. For those of us on different continents the visits are rare, indeed, but the connection is still there. Some of this connection may come from our Grootmoeder's -- and now our many parents' -- efforts in keeping the family connected. But Timon and I think that some of it comes from Riel.

Heather: Maya, Emily, Just, Floris, (Allard & Marianne in the top right corner).

Riel is a place where we celebrate life: We play ridiculous games and rituals that feed into our lovely family sense of humour, and we lie down in the heather fields. We run through the sand and the brick roads and the forests. It's a place to drop the pretenses of European society. And Europe has a lot of pretenses. Maybe that's why my father escaped in his early twenties into the BC forests, coming eventually to this island on the pacific coast. I suspect he came here to get out of the pretentious European lifestyle, with its classes and customs and expectations. He came here to be real. And Riel is still in him. His humour is intact, and his relationships, and... he has a veritable rhododendron species garden.

And lucky for us of the next generation, Riel's acorns and chestnuts and beechnuts have planted themselves in our souls, too. We can't live but to look for the changing of the seasons, and to celebrate everything. We play the ridiculously silly games of Riel all over the world, now. When I once asked my 3-year-old cousin, Sander, when his birthday was, he said he didn't know, but he would know it was coming when the snowdrops bloomed. What more is there to life, really, than this?

Riel is a place for people to be authentic; to connect with the family and the land and life, without pretenses. We try so hard to make everything seem shiny... but sometimes in the bare authentic little gatherings of people just being themselves, we find real happiness.

Look deep into nature,

and then you will understand everything better.

~Albert Einstein

This is the legacy of Riel.

Unplugged

There's talk, as there often is, about mothers experimentally unplugging for a couple of hours. Many people seem to think I can't "unplug" because I already don't own a cellphone1. Technically I suppose I unplug every time I walk out of the house. But I can do better than that.

Unplugging matters. And cellphones, iPods and computers are not the only screens that need to be unplugged. At some point my father said to me "your kids don't even know what their mother looks like; all they see is the camera on your face". I glibly told him that I don't often hold it in front of my face, and that the blog is part of their memory-bank. They enjoy these photos! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. When I'm behind my camera, I'm wearing my design-hat; thinking about the aesthetics of the situation; the eventual look of my photo and potential uses for it (Should I put him in the top right corner so I can use this for a blog background? Should I zoom in on the details and use it for Nature Club purposes? Should I over-expose this so I can use it for a poster??) And I miss my kids' joyful experiences. I miss the energetic connection that happens when they look into my face to show me something. I miss our relationship.

There is so much information about the importance of unplugging2 and attachment3 in parenting babies and very young children, but, although the research is broad, we often write off the importance of attachment in the later years, including with our spouses. When I come out to the living room in the evening and find my husband sitting glued to a screen, I usually go back to my own screen. If he looks up, leans back, and speaks to me, I feel attachment. If he turns off the computer I come sit with him. That same feeling is, I am sure, what my 8- and 11-year-old children experience when I'm using a screen. They need me to care, and they need me to express that I care. They need me to respond with my own ideas, and they need me to consider their thoughts in the way that I hope they would respond to me. Because, as I seem to mention all the time, their greatest teacher is the behaviour of their parents. Screen-time is an addiction, and if I'm going to help them walk away from addictive substances and activities, I need to be strong enough to do so, myself.

There are many arguments for carrying technology; for being non-present with our families. But my work depends on these photos! My career depends on my being reachable, so I need to carry my cellphone! I have to answer this email, now, or I could lose this contract! Well what were we doing setting ourselves up to be on-call 24-hours-a-day in the first place? Or even 10 hours, if those happen to be the same hours we spend with our families? I had children so that I could be a mother; not just so I could say I had children, and carry on with some other non-family pursuits. So damn it, I'm going to have to make sure that my pursuits somehow feed into my mothering. When my husband easily got a job with a cover letter that opened with "my family is my priority" and went on to explain that he would leave work every day at 4 and would work a maximum of 3 days/week in the city, I knew there was hope for our family. There is hope for all of us. We just have to set our priorities.

As I'm writing this, my daughter calls out "Mama, when will you be done?" I've promised her that today we can do some sewing, together, and this is one of her special Mama-time-activities. And while I know that me-time is healthy -- that it's good for the kids to see me have my own pursuits -- I also have to make sure that when this screen-time is over, I dedicate myself to her. I will turn off the computer.

What I already do: 

• I try to keep my screen-time to mornings, while the kids are busy with their own activities, and evenings, after they've gone to bed. Sometimes I need a whole day to get my work done (graphic design, volunteer activities, art management, etc.), but I tell my kids that I'm going to be quite a while on the computer, and generally, because they are older, now, this is not a problem. They do understand the concept of parents having work obligations!
• When I'm finished my morning email/computer/screen-time, and am not waiting for specific email-communications that effect the day's activities, I turn off the computer.
• Even when the computer is on during the day, I try to remember to turn off the speakers, so that I don't hear emails come in, and don't feel the urge to go check them.
• I take my camera on selected adventures, only - about 10% of them, I think, and this allows me much more time and opportunity to actually connect with my children.
• When I'm with my kids, I'm with them. I am not reading my own book, beside them, or talking on the phone, etc. 
• When I'm doing my work, I let them know I need to be left alone, so that I can get the thing done more efficiently. 

What I could improve on:

• I still answer the phone whenever it rings, and make time for whomever calls, for whatever reason. I have let food burn, because I didn't have the guts to tell somebody I couldn't talk. I have spent an hour on the phone talking to some unexpected (and probably well-loved) caller, when my kids had been expecting my attention. Obviously this has to change. 
• I often stretch-out my screen time, when it seems to be taking longer than expected, or something exciting comes my way. Not good. And especially not good for setting a good time-management example!
• I turn to Google for many things that we have very excellent paper-resources for, at home -- like species identification, music, health research, etc. I'd like to show my kids more variety in resource access. We have these excellent resources at home -- a library full of them -- as well as a local and a downtown library... and I need to make use of those.

Resources:
1My own article on electromagnetic radiation and why we don't have cellphones, cordless phones, or other such devices: http://rickshawunschooling.blogspot.ca/2012/12/why-we-dont-have-cellphones-cordless.html

2Cellphone use during Pregnancy can seriously damage your baby: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/03/cell-phone-use-during-pregnancy-can-seriously-damage-your-baby.aspx

3Effects of mothers' screen-time on children's psychological health: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/9280194/Mobile-addict-parents-guilty-of-child-neglect-warns-psychologist.html

3Helpguide.org's article on Attachment Parenting and Bonding: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/bonding_attachment_bond.htm

And finally, a hokey-sounding but really wonderful informational video about reasons for and methods of creating secure infant attachment (22 min):

Happy Mothers' Day!

I'm re-posting this from my earlier post at the MAMA Project website:

Thoughts

In my work creating and touring the MAMA Project, I’ve had the opportunity to interview, paint, and speak with hundreds of mothers about the significance of our role, and the importance of our awareness of that significance. I have spoken with mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers of many varied descriptions. I have recorded countless hours of their memories, fears, and dreams; have held them while they cried and have laughed with them until our jaws ached. I’ve had my own mothering validated in the knowledge that the wisdom and regrets we share as mothers are somehow beyond words, but also in the absolute certainty that our knowledge must be shared.

So in reaching for that sharing space; in attempting to support each other and - even more difficult - to be supported, ourselves, we talk about EVERYTHING. Yes of course I mean EVERYTHING: pee, poop, menstrual woes and accidents, the intricate details of rash pustules, infestations, and abnormalities on our children’s (and husbands’!) bodies, the things we think are hilarious and the things that bring us unfathomable horror. We share these things because it’s in the sharing of these things that we learn to mother. And because these conversations are like study groups for working through the memories from our own first mothering courses: our being mothered, ourselves. And grand-mothered. And somewhere in the sharing we usually are reminded that we are the grandmothers, ourselves; that our children’s, our grandchildren’s, our great-grandchildren’s futures are being written in the things we carry down from our own ancestry.

We joke about how so-and-so’s son swears just like his Mama, and how our neighbour’s 3-year-old has the same nervous hand-gestures her aunt does. But these things are no joke. They can teach our kids all they want in school; at Brownies and Scouts; in University, even, but the lessons our kids learned when they were 18 months old and spitting food in our faces - those are the lessons that will determine the outcomes of all the others. Did we smile with compassion at those orange blobs flying towards us and tenderly wipe them off our faces and back into baby’s mouth? Did we shout? Did we roll our eyes in disgust? Did we hit our child or congratulate her? The answer probably depends greatly on what we experienced, ourselves, when we were 18 months old and spitting food at our mothers’ faces. And it determines how our children will respond to their own children, too. And when our children go out in the world to learn from others, how will they then make use of those learning experiences? Well that, of course, depends on how they‘ve watched us learn, in our lives. These are the mechanics of inheritance and legacy. The way we argue with our husbands in front of the children, or hide away (they children will know, regardless), whether we resolve things or sweep them under the carpet, and the way we help the kids figure out their issues? Yeah. Those are the mechanics of peace for the next generations.

And when we’re aware of this - just how deeply important our every action is to our children’s future, and to the culture they will inherit and build upon - then it becomes essential that we assess and reassess our every decision and action. And we do that by sharing.

~~~~~~~


you told me you lost her before you were old enough to know the meaning of mother

you told me you lost her before she was old
enough to be born

you said she abandoned you
said you abandoned her
hated her
you told me your love knew no boundaries but she couldn’t hear
you

you broke her trust and you
still cling to her


you wanted him to grow up strong and brave
gentle
you wanted to protect him but now you’re eighty six
and you still cook his meals
drive him to work
you wanted him to know he was wanted
you wanted to be wanted, yourself
you wanted him to let go
and you wanted never to let him go

you wanted her to grow up strong
independent
kind
you wanted to help her
raise her babies, but
she doesn’t know herself
a mother
she carries you
in her pocket
like a pill
you wanted her to know she was wanted
you wanted to be wanted, yourself
you wanted her to let go
and you wanted never to let her go


to mothers
I’ve listened to
comforted
cried to

to you who have given up
given up hope
your children, even
and given up your dreams
yourselves
your fears
for all you have given up was not in vain

to mothers who have lost something
someone
everything
hope
your children, even
yourselves
for all you have lost was not unfound

to you
for giving
forgiving
giving
everything
you have
and are
and know

to you
to us
to knowing
our work is rewarded in knowing
that we have the blessed occupation

~~~~~~~
There is nothing particularly special about me. I am like billions of other people in the world: I am a mother.

And yet,

I am a mother.

I hold the lives of my children in my hands, on my breath I validate their dreams, and my intentions and mistakes determine their futures and their children’s futures. Retail, investment and service industries market to me; my interest is a hot commodity. And yet I have very few real resources, because those industries don’t benefit from my triumphs; they benefit from my needs.

You know who benefits from my triumphs? My children. Your children. Our children’s children. Every single generation to come benefits from every single time I get it right. And that makes it imperative that I take my job seriously and get it right.

We need to take responsibility for our children! As our children soak up every word we say; every hand-gesture, every movement of eyes and facial expression, are we living the life we want them to emulate? How many of us just sit back and allow our kids to play games (online and otherwise) without engaging them in conversation about what they are playing, and the ramifications of it? When my children asked me what rape was, I told them. We talk about wars, and politics, and sex and drugs and mental illness. We pause movies and games when things need to be explained, and my kids soak up the explanations (and questions) sometimes with more enthusiasm than the media itself. I can't stop them from participating in what is now popular culture, and if I did, they'd only want it more. But I can lead by example, and so can you. We all can. We have to. It's our responsibility. We didn't bear our children out of necessity; we chose this path because we love children. And children grow to be adults, to inherit our world, and to have more children, themselves. So it's our responsibility to raise them with integrity and awareness, that they go into the world full of questions and willing to look around, but also with a conviction to find their own truths and their own right paths.

There is no time to waste. And the smallest things make a difference; the random comments from my children remind me of this. My daughter once said, "I can't wait until I grow up so I can have pimples and wear cover-up, too!" My son said "I hope my wife doesn't think I want her to shave herself. That wouldn't be nice of me." Once my daughter reprimanded her father for some grammatical mistake and then turned to me with pride in her eyes. Oh no - did I teach her that? Of course I did! And it will take a lifetime to undo. Not everything we pass on is what we hope for. It matters very much not only that we lead by example, but also that we teach our children - from birth - that their own opinions and questions matter; that any question is valid, but that we also don‘t have all the answers. It's important that we reach for the best possible version of ourselves, because that will be the standard our children measure themselves against, and it will effect every single generation to come.

It is not OK for us to condemn violent video games but to watch violent movies, ourselves, or to wish death on politicians, talk trash and laugh about the emotional trauma of celebrities. It's not OK for us to practice attachment parenting but escape our children for a night at the bar. When they find us in the morning and discover that sour old booze smell on our breath they will learn that that is the smell of being with friends, and all the threats in the world won't take that lesson away from them when they're 14 and their friends are offering them cheap vodka under a bridge. It's not OK for us to tell them to be nice to each other, but to put our own community members down, to gossip, and to blame. Our children will learn more from our acknowledgement of our mistakes, and the lessons they’ve watched us learn than they will from the threats and consequences we’ve doled out to them.

We are mothers, and our demonstrated values and behaviour are the greatest teachers our children will ever have. We are mothers! We must take the importance of this incredible occupation very seriously, because there is nobody who can make a bigger change than we can, in choosing how we raise each new generation.

Spring

time for wishing

babies (these have come to our pond for refuge with their two remaining goslings, this year)

the quince gods have blessed Rhiannon's tree with bountiful fortune

insects have returned

and flowers

and islanders who spend their winters in Mexico but return home to hang out in their shacks in the warm season

and our 'special' local fauna, of course

ground pine

herb robert by the docks

happy barefoot children by the docks

millipedes

salal

wild strawberries

appropriate sunny day attire

appropriate sunny day hang-out spot

maybe inappropriate but definitely wonderful hang-out spot

sunny days are still intermittent

and the ocean brings us all sorts of bounty

Play

This post is inspired by recent conversations with various people, but especially this beautiful comment from Chris Corrigan. I've posted an article on play, before - one written by my wonderful child-development-expert mother - but this post is written more from my perspective as an unschooling adult and parent.

To preface, here's one of the educationally playful things my family does, lately. We watch Kid Snippets! And I find this one quite suitable, today:


Work sucks. Play is fun. 
We all know this. So why work?

"Waiting in line at the supermarket feels wasteful unless you play with the other people in line."
- Sydney Gurewitz Clemens
...from the article Time in Community Playthings' booklet The Wisdom of Play.1

We know we have to perform certain tasks, acquire certain skills, etc. that we don't feel inspired about. So how do we strike a balance that doesn't involve a whole lot of drudgery? Taking "play times" in between "work times" is, in my opinion, like feeding an addiction2. We begin rewarding ourselves with play times, and the play times become a sort of binge of happiness, before we return to the work. If we play too long, we feel ashamed, and probably more miserable about the work. Then we need more play times. We need comfort foods and relaxation therapies. We call ourselves by the name of the "work" we do (nurse, doctor, programmer, teacher, etc.) and after work seek to soothe ourselves from the drudgery that defines our lives. But why?

I would like to define my life by what I love. To redefine both "work" and "play" so that they are the same thing! I would like to love my work so much that it feels like play, and to watch my children learn and grow by playing.

To a certain extent this requires making careful choices about the activities I do, but some activities are unavoidable, and some unpleasant activities come packaged with the things I love to do. In these cases I need re-envision my activities and myself. If I have to clean this bathroom, I am going to enjoy it! I'm going to use a cleaner that makes me happy; and delight in the clean space when I'm finished. I'm going to experiment with new cleaning methods and different systems -- because experimenting is fun. I'm a housewife; I don't particularly love cooking 3-4 meals/day, but in experimenting with inventing dishes and recipes I manage to find enough "play" to make the act of cooking rewarding.

Lifestyle Choices

Play: Working out communication & relationships.

There's a lot of talk these days about helping kids and parents to handle stress - because our lives have become overloaded with it, and many of us are imploding from the pressure. But why should we learn to handle it; why not just reject the lifestyle that causes it; reject it entirely? It's in moments of stress that adrenaline takes over and we act without thinking. I've seen my children become unable to answer the simplest questions because of fear or confusion. It is through play that we find happiness - endorphins. It is through play that we discover and find understanding, even of situations that might otherwise have been stressful.

So it may be obvious why my husband and I have chosen to unschool our family, but it's also obvious to me that the cycle of play-and-shame-and-work is nevertheless being passed on to our children. We're accustomed to thinking of activities in terms of learning value, and this learning value usually has a high (subconscious) correlation with drudgery. I once heard one parent describing the difference between our local Reggio Emilia preschool and the local Montessori preschool to another parent: "Well... at the other preschool they just let the kids play all day; at the Montessori they actually teach them to read and do math."3 Keep in mind that the "other" preschool being described here was the preschool my mother (who wrote the article I referred to at the beginning of this post) taught at. Obviously, there was a great deal of misunderstanding in this comment, but unfortunately I think it relates a commonly-held misconception both about the methods and values of the different educational philosophies concerned, as well as about the value of play. And it doesn't come from sheer ignorance on the part of those who don't understand; it comes from many generations of a culture that values rote repetition and mimicry over inspired explorative learning. And yet, if we were to make a list of our culture's heroes - our "great thinkers", it would read like a list of the who's who of unschooling:

On the contrary, look into the biography of nearly every great thinker and innovator and you'll find a lack of formal schooling or a hatred of same. If you're an American, start with our own.  Mark Twain, one of our greatest wits and writers quit school after 6th grade.  Thomas Edison was expelled from school after a few weeks of second grade and was home schooled—he became the greatest inventor in American history.  Ben Franklin: one year of grammar school, one year of tutoring, no formal education after age 10.  George Washington attended school irregularly.  In England, Michael Faraday practically created modern electromagnetics.  He performed all the seminal experiments that Edison later repeated.  He never attended any school.  I could go on and on.  Einstein stated that schooling almost destroyed his interest in knowledge...    

                                                --Henry Lindner

Playing with blocks imaginatively doesn't seem to hold as much value as following a prescribed pattern with the blocks, and achieving satisfying results. A child's enthusiasm for simply looking at books doesn't seem to hold as much value as that child's ability to quickly and fluently read the words in the books. And yet, it is the playing and the imagination that lead us down the paths to discovery, and we often are more enthusiastic about what we discover ourselves than what we are taught by others. It's enthusiasm that leads us down the paths to our passions, and it is our passions that define our futures.

I'll leave the last words to Chris (from the comment I mentioned at the beginning):
"There is no such thing as practice...
"There is only playing."



Resources:
1 Community Playthings' Excellent Articles on Play: http://www.communityplaythings.com/resources/topics/role-of-play-in-learning
2 Shame and its relationship with addiction relapses: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/the-shame-of-the-alcoholic_b_2166182.html
3 Why play is important in preschools: http://mobile.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/03/why_preschool_shouldnt_be_like_school.html

Tali's telescope!

Due to the generosity of some local residents, our astrophysicist-hopeful now has his own telescope.

Unschooling Ourselves: Enjoying the Journey

It all begins with and returns to the family.
It's no news that maternal blood and tissue carries the DNA of the mother's child for up to decades after the child's birth. Pregnancy is just the beginning of the long relationship we have with our children; a relationship that is give-and-take-and-give. We grow so much from our gained understanding of love and humanity, when we have children, and as we parent them. All of us are on a journey of growth, trying to find better ways of parenting our children and our spouses and ourselves.

When we love, we teach our children to love.
When we trust, we teach our children to trust.
When we love ourselves, we teach our children to love themselves. 
When we unschool ourselves, we unschool our children.

So why unschool ourselves?
Because many of us were raised in a school system, where we learned to follow the pack, to attempt at all costs to fit in, to make the grade, and to measure up to what was expected of us by others, without questioning, in our early years, what we expected of ourselves. Now, as parents, we are the people being looked to for help, but we've become very good at passing the buck. Or we've become very timid at taking responsibility. It's much too easy to go ask somebody else, or, increasingly, look for answers on the Internet, without reminding ourselves that every single opinion we are given is just that: an opinion. It may be an extremely educated opinion, but in this globalized society, it is one of many different educated opinions, and we're often unequipped to navigate these varying opinions, without also educating ourselves about the issue (and the people) involved. So this navigation is our empowerment; it's part of unschooling ourselves.

I'm not saying we shouldn't trust. Of course a certain amount of trust is necessary to live in peace. But putting too much trust in the opinions of one person or entity just leads to blindness. Unschooling is about learning to navigate a massive web of information and truths - life - many conflicting truths - and learning to follow gut instinct on this journey. Unschooling is about the journey. It's about all the beauty that unfolds from the pathways we find ourselves on; not the places they lead us to. It's about the surprises. After all, each new place is just the beginning of another adventure.

Big Adventures: YES
When I was 17, within a single week's time I graduated from highschool, traumatically broke up with my first serious boyfriend, and moved with my family out of my lifelong home and community and into a big farmhouse in a completely new-to-me part of our province. To say I was in shock would be putting it mildly, and I remember feeling unbelievably alone and terrified. So I asked my parents to send me to Holland. And I happened to ask them in front of my pseudo-uncle, Jon. Jon triumphantly exclaimed "Yes!" And I knew my parents' doubts and fears would be moot.

I went to Holland. I hung around with my beloved family, there, argued with my grandmother about how often was reasonable to wash my hair, got lost in Amsterdam with my cousin, and learned to ride on the back of a bike. I also took my portfolio to the Royal Academy of art, got accepted on the spot into second year, learned to get around a foreign city alone, watched my cousin perform the lead in an opera, and fell in love, to boot. These things were so distracting that I didn't realize until later that it was during this time I cemented my truly wonderful relationship with my grandmother. And none of these things were what I expected. I never saw any tulips. I didn't learn to speak Dutch (despite my young cousins' desperate attempts). But my life changed.

The next year I returned to Holland again (for that second year art academy entrance). I thought I would return three years later with an art degree and a fiance. Instead I returned two years later -- kicked out of art school, feeling like a failure, broken-hearted beyond belief... and with a rather unexpected fiance -- who is now my husband. Nothing was as I had planned. My parents were disappointed, to say the least. And that particular adventure was an unbelievable success!

Telling children facts or giving advice is like showing them a picture of a destination, with a nice little description beside it. That advice is not going to be what they remember, and it may not even be valuable to them. They have to make their own journeys, and while they're young, we have the privilege of tagging along for the ride.

So we learn to navigate. We learn to enjoy the journey. And we learn that we cannot teach our children by giving them advice. We can only take them on big adventures.

Oh... and didn't I say...

Our best predictions have nothing to do with the journey.

It all begins with and returns to the family.
Well here I am. My family has moved back to the property we left when I was 17. First I came with my husband and had children here. Then my parents returned, and my brother with his wife. Nothing is quite the way we expected it to be. But here we all are, three generations of humans living out our various divergent and convergent journeys, and glad to have each other to share them with.