A LIFE WORTH LIVING....: Drawing drawing and more drawing

Wednesday 12 December 2007

Drawing drawing and more drawing

Over the last few weeks Emily has been drawing prolifically, each drawing has gradually been getting more and more detailed.She draws whatever takes her fancy be it Harry Potter characters or her puffles from her penguin website with all their play equipment.Sometimes she draws similar things over and over again each time adding something different or refining some aspect of it .
I have been amazed at the variety of things she has been drawing and the character that is in all of her pictures.I see her personality in the art, a uniqueness ,a quirkiness that I hope continues.
We have a range of paints available watercolour, acrylic etc but at present she is using pen and crayon another time she will choose to concentrate on a different medium.
My only input has involved finding a couple of books for her she wasn't able to find . They are by Usborne called I can draw animals and I can draw people.They have simple step by step drawings .
I have in the past not been so clever and have (god forgive my stupidity!!!) butted in and made a suggestion as to what to use or what to draw!!!! You live and learn and nine months into this life I can see how that took away her spontaneity and enjoyment and stopped the self directed growth process I have seen over the last few weeks.It has seemed like a passion, every spare moment she chooses to draw and I know that when she has done what she needs to do for now that passion will pass onto something else or may just pass onto a period of reflection and rest.This seems to be how Emily works and although she will probably still draw it won't be with the same intensity.
When we first took Emily out of school she had stopped drawing and rarely picked up a pen she was frustrated with any attempts to draw and would scrunch them up and throw them away her confidence was so low. It has been a gradual change and although there may be the odd time she is frustrated with her attempt it is not the meltdown it once was.There is no pressure on her she can draw when she wants and what she wants and her confidence has grown in her own ability.
I have been around whilst she has been drawing, perhaps reading to her if she is not listening to music or a story CD . I have asked her about her drawings and on one occasion she showed me a drawing she had done of the back view of a girl with long hair , as soon as I saw the picture I was interested in where she was going and asked her and from that and with me just asking questions she began to make up a story verbally and without prompting drew the pictures to go with the story.Other times Emily will ask to do a book and I will write her words and she will illustrate, both of these things are done when she wants to not when I request them.

At times since we started home ed I have got scared about the lack of motivation from Emily to do anything, surely she has had enough time to deschool now? I questioned if an autonomous approach would work for us and I have tried to kick start things ,you know lots of suggestions about projects we could do and things I just knew she would enjoy and getting things out ready to make or do , 99% of the time it failed miserably and I felt resentful and angry that she wasn't wanting to do what I wanted , I am sad to say on occasions I would force the issue and it very often ended in tears, hers at the time and mine sometime later when I re-lived the scene trying to see what went wrong and realising I was what went wrong!!!
I needed to step back and just be there and although it took a lot of faith I now know that was the right thing to do. She has blossomed and I feel confident she will continue to spread her wings and grow at her own pace.
It is natural to have concerns and I am sure there will be more on the way, but I truly believe Emily knows best what she needs and I have to be brave enough to let her do what she needs to do. Sounds easy doesn't it? Maybe I should write that down and put it somewhere I see it regularly because it is so easy to believe it when we are going through a very visible growth period not quite so easy when she is more keen to watch TV......
This whole experience started with Emily coming out of school but this journey we are on is about so much more than her education.

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This is me.....

There comes a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel, love the way I love! I am a whole complex package. Take me... or leave me. Accept me - or walk away! Do not try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don't fit your idea of who I should be and don't try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.When you are strong enough to love yourself 100%, good and bad - you will be amazed at the opportunities that life presents you.” Stacey Charter.

Why we Home educate

( Slightly edited from a blog post I did when we started out) In the end the actual decision to take Emily out only took a matter of days but before that it had been around a year and a half of talking about ti and reading books, Free range education by Terri Dowty, Educating your child at home by Jane Lowe and Alan Thomas were two that had a real impact for different reasons. Free range education has lots of examples of real life home educators and I think I can say that it was this one that convinced me the most that we could do it. We are two very average people ,neither of us left school with many qualifications, we went on to do quite well in our chosen professions and had no need to think about the education system at all until Emily came along.

I knew about home education and when Emily was born considered it as an optionbut always felt my lack of education would be a problem and that I wouldn't be capable of providing her with what she would need.Looking back with hindsight it is easy to see how wrong I was!!

School never really suited Emily......After the nursery year at a very highly rated, high achieving school we knew that particular School wasn't for us and took her out. We enrolled her in a lovely village school with only 70 children in the whole school .The ethos of the school was totally different, the children didn't wear uniforms and there was much more emphasis on the children being individuals.The head was a sensitive and principled man who wanted the best for the children. We thought we had struck gold.Over the reception and year 1 Emily gained confidence and really started to bloom. It was at this time she was diagnosed with dyspraxia( we had had to go down the diagnosis route as our observations of Emily's difficulties were not enough to enable the teachers to tailor things so she was helped and given less work in class) but she managed quite well in the more relaxed play orientated early years.Year 2 with more emphasis on academic activities got progressively harder for her. She is very sensitive and it wasn't just the academic side it was the embarassment of having to put her hand up for the toilet,seeing others being told off and worrying in case she did something wrong and got the same treatment, panicking because she couldn't do the work and the teacher never had time to sit with her (alot of this did not come out until she had left school) her behaviour at home became worse and worse she was so angry and obviously stressed . At this time we began to seriously consider taking her out but held back because of my lack of confidence in my ability to provide her with an adequate education ,my health being so poor was also a major stumbling block.

Then in year three it became blatantly obvious that something needed to change .She was struggling on all levels and we couldn't allow the school system to damage our daughter anymore.She became ill with a bug that was doing the rounds and she was off for two weeks , during that time I had a conversation with a friend who home educates her two children and I was so upset I couldn't make a decision and she said just go with whats in your heart and that really helped me to shift my thinking and stop worrying about what I couldn't give her and focus on what I could give her.

We never sent her back.I still get emotional when I think of that time , the look on Emily's face when we told her she would never have to go back to school was priceless,the immense sense of relief that we were off the treadmill of school life and the excitement of the time ahead and to be honest the fear of the unknown......

So here we are four years on and a lot of reading and researching later I feel comfortable with what we are doing . The changes that have happened so far have been helped along the way by the many wonderful blogs out there.They are so varied and there are so many different approaches , I have found ones that I can identify with and have read a lot of archive material that has been written in each and found answers to so many of the questions I have had that they have helped me to sort out what will work best for us .As much as I wish we had done this earlier and saved Emily from the distress that she went through I do believe things happen for a reason and that the time was right for us to take her out and that looking on the bright side one of the benefits is that at least she has had a taste of school and now we all know without a doubt that it is not for us !!!!

It is very liberating to be making decisions based on what works best for us as a family and not what society expects.

Let your child be a child.

No child was ever spoiled by too much love.

Be authentic with your child.

Listen openly to your child’s needs.

Believe in your child’s good intentions.

Find the humour.

Look past the behaviour… what is your child feeling?

Have fun with your child today!

“There is no reason why we cannot say ‘No’ to children in just as kind a way as we say ‘Yes’.” - John Holt

“Play is really the work of childhood.” - Fred Rogers

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” - Oscar Wilde

Children thrive in a peaceful and loving environment.

A child needs love most when things go wrong.

Children reflect the treatment they receive.

A few qoutes I like....

Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in, broadside, thouroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly shouting, 'WOW'.... Beth Moore

The perpetual testing of public school children is like a gardener constantly pulling his plants up by the roots to see if they are growing....(unknown)

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instuction...Helen Kellers teacher

I hear and I forget I see and I remember I do and I understand...Confusious