A LIFE WORTH LIVING....: Changing phases.

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Changing phases.

Home ed group today, had a nice chat and the kids had a good play.Then off to my friends house with a couple of the other mums, we have got a book club going and discussed titles to read over the coming months.I prefer to read last thing at night as I find it difficult to switch off during the day( if by any chance I got a spare moment to pick up a book !!) and as my little bed mate is usually asleep I will have to get myself one of those little lights that fit on a book and I will get into the habit of reading a little each night again.

Milly has asked to do some science on Friday so I have just looked up some simple experiments we can do that are quick to set up and it won't matter if she changes her mind as I have not had to go to great lengths to prepare.It is a long time between now and then and things change so quickly and it may be that Friday comes along and something else will be favoured.Friday is the only day we have the time to do anything as we are out again tomorrow for lunch and a trip around the aquarium with a Friend and will probably end up spending most of the afternoon with her.I am hoping the school strike doesn't mean hoards of people will have the same idea about visiting the aquarium.

Milly and I started the day by having a cuppa and a read in bed which is something we haven't done for quite some time and then we got up and Milly put the TV on as I made breakfast.The programmes she normally likes to watch were on but after a few minutes she decided to watch a DVD instead, she was talking about the Dr who DVD we had on the bookcase and I thought she was going to watch that one but then I heard the music from The Way things Work and was pleasantly surprised.This DVD has been watched a couple of times last summer and has sat on the bookcase in the sun room or has been strategically placed by me to encourage her to view it again, cos of course it is "educational" as well as entertaining,needless to say my placement of it has always gone unnoticed and I gave up and accepted she was learning whatever she chose to watch and here we are today, she got it down because she wanted to watch it herself and she enjoyed three of the stories and although she had said initially she was going to watch all of it she then turned off the TV and came through to sit with me at the table, where I adapted the fastening on her bag so she could fit her journal in ,her bag was made with my sister on one of their Thursday sewing sessions and now goes everywhere with her and has her most treasured possessions in.

Some time ago I posted about the amount of TV Milly was choosing to watch, I felt confident based on past experience that if I left her to choose she would go through that phase and move on and it seems that is now happening,she is still watching some TV but is choosing more often to do other things and TV is not an issue because she knows she could watch it whenever she wants to.I love giving her the freedom to make her own choices and as time goes on I feel myself relaxing more and more and not worrying about the amount of time she spends watching TV or listening to story tapes, even though it seems she is neglecting other areas.When she is ready she moves on.

We have no set rules about bedtime and have gradually allowed her to make decisions about when she goes to bed.Initially she had some late nights and got very tired and we had some challenging times and behaviour but gradually we have got to the stage where late nights have lost their appeal and Emily knows when she is tired and at present,except for when friends sleep over she usually chooses to go up before 9 and on quite a few occasions is asleep for 8.

Allowing Milly more freedom over her food choices is harder for us and we still haven't been able to fully let go of control in this area.Change has happened and I see a gradual loosening of the reins,rather than a total letting go immediately, probably more for our benefit than anything to do with Emily,but that is the way we feel comfortable and for this change in lifestyle to work properly we all have to feel comfortable.The move from traditional Parenting/schooling to Radical unschooling (to use a label)doesn't feel as far away as it did a year ago.We have managed to do it at our own pace and are growing into it and it feels good.Now obviously any change and growth causes moments of doubt but instead of panic setting in about what we are doing, I now see these as opportunity's to assess where we are going and to see if we are still on the right path and so far the answer has been most definitely yes........

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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