A LIFE WORTH LIVING....: A house to myself and time to think....

Monday, 21 January 2008

A house to myself and time to think....

I have the house to myself, no dog, no daughter, and no husband!!!
I have to admit to having a ball,I keep thinking I should feel guilty and be missing them more but to be honest it is such a rare occurrence to have more than a couple of hours on my own that I am making the most of it.Beauty has gone to the vets to be spayed and Alan and Emily are spending the day visiting relatives.
I visited wistful wanderlust this morning and was introduced to 10 other blogs so managed to check them out as well as visiting the other blogs I read regularly.I did then feel a little guilty that the morning had nearly gone and I hadn't done anything else so I got up and as the bath ran quickly tidied Milly's room and made our bed ,then relaxed in a hot bath.
Down to run round the downstairs with the hoover and onto lunch( nice and easy no cooking involved a leftover rice dish warmed up in the micro)whilst watching the last part of Loose women on TV.

I have got into the habit of coming down on a morning and reading e mails and blogs with the intention not to go back until the next morning but I can't,I think I have blog addiction!!! I know I am still looking for stories to give me confidence along the autonomous road and to see that people are going through or have been through exactly the things we are going through.I also have to admit to being incredibly interested in other peoples lives, does that make me nosy???? The problem is that I feel it is starting to take over and must make a conscious effort to limit myself.

I do feel more confident about moving to full autonomy in Emily's life.
Once my mind is made up I am the type of person who wants things to happen quickly,but this is a major change in lifestyle and is not going to happen overnight, I have to gain confidence and I have not yet got all the tools to keep it going and need regular top ups and tips to keep the wheels on.

On the actual educational side I have not got as many issues with letting Emily choose and can now see with lots to interest her and options to do new things she will learn, she couldn't fail to.I have accepted Emily's interests and the way she does things is not the same as others and have come to understand the way she works.We are allowing her more choice in setting bedtimes and although she has always had a lot of freedom to coose we have given even more freedom to choose what she eats, now that we are not guided by school times we have also found that there are less rules about when we eat, where we eat has never been a problem,I never had great expectations to eat every meal at the table and we often had picnics under the table amonhst other places when she was small and although going the whole way to radical unschooling is the way we are heading it is still a way off happening. This has all taken time to sink in and is still a work in progress but perusing many a blog to find evidence of it working in others lives has been invaluable.

I think the next lesson I have to get is much more to do with the parenting side and not using coercion as a means to control her behaviour, this I am having difficulty with.When I am having a good day it is much easier to hear her and understand what is causing her behaviour and find a way to deal with it, other days I immediately fall back on coercion and then feel bad about my inconsistency.
We have always been gentle with her and have never smacked her.With the knowledge we had then, we used disrtraction when she was younger and as she got older and that no longer worked as well we used coercion and gave her choices rather than resorting to smacking.This seemed to work and we can only do the best we can with the information/tools we have at the time.Having found joyfuly Rejoycing and Sandra Dodd We now have new information , I wish I had had this information earlier but it seems that for us this is a better way to move forward as Emily grows.

So thinking about it logicaly it is not a waste of time reading the material I do as the info I get is changing our lives so reading the blogs will continue because they have helped enormously and I am sure still have lots to offer to enable more change to happen, but perhaps now that my confidence is growing I don't need to read quite as many quite as often!!!

4 comments:

Colleen Paeff said...: Isn't it great to have the house to yourself!? I love it! When Jerry was about two Warren started taking him away for a three day weekend once every year. I tell you, I looked forward to that weekend all year long! Now that he's bigger I find I don't need it the way I did when he was little but I still love the luxury of an entire day alone. Especially when I can do whatever I want without feeling guilty. I'd say your day of blog reading was well-deserved! I'm looking forward to checking out all those blogs myself. :); 22 January 2008 at 16:17
Lynn said...: The day went so quickly and before I knew it they were home and the house was full of joyfull energy!!!Oh and a rather sore and whimpering doggy...
The idea of having time away together is something Alan and Emily have done once or twice but I think the idea of a regular trip each year is a lovely tradition to have, with lots of special memories.I have always loved time to myself and think it is something I am neglecting, after enjoying yesterday so much I will endeavour to make it happen again.XXXX; 22 January 2008 at 17:35
piscesgrrl said...: I get lost in blog-land too, but it acts in lieu of support groups (hard to find out here in the cornfields!) so I try not to feel guilty about it. :)

It's great to read about your unschooling evolution. I learn so much by reading others' stories.; 25 January 2008 at 18:27
Lynn said...: Good point,I hadn't really thought of it in that way.
It's great to think that even seasoned unschoolers are still learning.I like the idea of lifelong learning and personal growth alongside our children.xxxx; 26 January 2008 at 08:40

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