Tag: fear

my journey in choosing homeschooling

Desere

For years I have immersed myself in the world of homeschooling. I read the works of Dr. Peter Gray and Alfie Kohn. I joined all the local homeschooling groups. I befriended many homeschooling families and met home educated children. As a former educator in the public school system and a mom, I have pretty strong feelings about how I believe children learn.

I was pretty convinced that I would follow this path and homeschool my own children when the time came.

But that didn’t happen.

Last January when the emails started pouring in about school registrations and when my friends began touring the schools around our homes, I joined in and began researching the schools in our area.

I was tired. At the time my boys were 5, 3.5, and 1 years old.

I really didn’t think that I could stay home and offer what I would ideally like to offer, if I were to homeschool my boys. I started to believe that my oldest, who would be entering kindergarten, would be better off once I send him away.

He would get to be with other children all day, every day.

He would have access to so many materials and resources.

He would go on field trips.

Furthermore, the schools around us are pretty great schools. I feel privileged to be not only in an area with so many high achieving schools, but also with the opportunity that I can school choice and attempt to get the school I like the most.

And the tours… well they did their job. I was sold.

So I enrolled him.

He happened to get in, by lottery, to the magnet STEM school in our district. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was, how great the school was.

So for 6 months I kept telling myself that.

Meanwhile there was a pit in my stomach growing. I was feeling anxious as the days crept on. I knew in my heart that I didn’t believe this was the best decision for us. But I kept on because I was afraid.

The fear of homeschooling.

The fear of being tired with 3 little ones all the time.

The fear of failure.

The fear of judgement if I chose to homeschool.

The fear of my family’s reactions.

Fear of the unknown. School is known. I went to public school. My husband went to public school. I taught at a public school. I KNOW what that looks like. Alternative learning… that is completely new to us.

Fear.

And if you have read some of my other posts you will know that fear based parenting stems from how we view children, and the inability to innately trust these unique little individuals.

Fast forward to this fall and school starting. Franky was entering his 3rd week of kindergarten and each day brought more and more doubts. I understood this was a new transition for him. He went from 6 years of having almost complete freedom of choice for where we went, how he played, how he moved his body, when he ate, etc. to a pretty rigid schedule. We had to go to school every day from 8:00am to 1:30pm. The bell rang and he had to wait in line. He was told to be quiet several times throughout his day. He was told to sit a certain way, and write a certain way. Even play with blocks a specific way.

To my son who was given a lot of freedom, this was incredibly jarring.

And I understood that this transition would be hard. I also trusted that he had the tools to master this transition. He wouldn’t always be tearful at drop off. He wouldn’t always look relieved to be coming home. He wouldn’t always have a full lunch box when coming home because he chose to play instead of eating. These things would pass the more we went and the more we got used to this new state of our lives.

My mentor teacher was telling me that he could master this situation and he could adapt. She told me even though his body is reluctant to enjoy this new situation, that he does have the resilience to persevere. He is testing the waters and seeing “who am I in this new place”. He will rise to the occasion.

He will own this new experience.

But that was just it.

I realized that I don’t WANT him to get used to this.

I don’t want my son to master this situation. I don’t want him to adapt. I don’t believe this is the best environment to cultivate learning.

So I pulled him out.

And now I sit and write this out to the world because I want others to see the tornado of emotions that can accompany a situation like this. I want others to know its ok to make a decision and then change your mind.

There are no big mistakes.

I know now that maybe I needed to send him to school, and to sit in as a parent volunteer in his class, and to sift through emails about homework and chromebooks… maybe I needed to have all this happen to lead me down this path of final awareness and clarity of what I want for our family.

I have stumbled and fumbled toward this path and I am excited to see where it leads. I am hoping to use this platform, one that I previously used to spread my understanding of the RIE approach to respectful parenting, to now spread my understanding of experiential learning.

What will my days look like with self directed education?

What am I hoping for in terms of my family?

Stay tuned…

who are playgrounds for?

Desere

playground

[pley-ground]

noun

an area used for outdoor play or recreation, especially by children

Playgrounds are for our children right?

Have you been to one recently? Go. And tell me if your observations match mine.

I see parents micro managing their children’s ‘enjoyment’ of the playground.

“Climb up there.”

“Go down the big slide.”

“Why don’t you play over here?”

I see care takers on their phones the entire time.

I see moms walking their toddlers up the structures.

I hear parents asking their kids if they can go home because they (the parent) is hungry.

The swings are a love hate relationship.

There are directions for which slide to go down, and how.

Does reading any of this sound bizarre to you?

Playgrounds, of all places, should be a place for your child to have complete ownership. They should do as much, or as little, as they want. They should be able to play in the sand the entire time without glancing at the play structure. And they should be able to go down the same slide over and over, even ‘backwards’.

Why then do parents feel the need to control this experience?

Here is what I think:

1) fear

I know it is scary. But when you let your child explore the play structure in their own way, they are way more careful than you think. And if they aren’t, you don’t have to stand a mile away! You can stand there to make sure they don’t fall from any unsafe height.

I usually let my son climb the structure on his own but I stay nearby on the ground. I stand by any big openings. Occasionally my son comes to check out the openings and I tell him it is a very big drop. If he tries to come through, I stop him. But he has never tried.

2) mistrust of child’s capabilities

I find it astonishing when I see toddlers who are fully walking, being led up the play structure hand in hand by their parent. Even when your child can crawl, let them crawl up the structure alone. Giving them this space and trust is what will help them in turn learn to trust their own bodies. This is called body knowledge, and it needs to be learned.

Furthermore, your child needs to fall. That’s how they learn what it means to fall. I fully agree with Magda Gerber that “learning to fall, getting up again and moving on is the best preparation for life.”

The problem is that a lack of body knowledge is a consequence of never letting your child learn about their bodies. If for their entire life, you have been there aiding your child to sit up, stand, walk, go down steps, etc, then you have officially become an enabler to your child. They feel like they can do these things because they have always had your hand and help. Unfortunately this means they never fully learned their own body’s capacity of doing these things on their own. They haven’t fully mastered balancing. They haven’t felt the gravity push them down each step. And because of this, they probably won’t be very safe on top of play structures. In that case, I can see why a care-taker may want to hold a child’s hand and be next to them every step of the way.

But that sucks. It sucks for the child. It sucks for you! Don’t you want a break?

3) inability to let go

I was at the park the other day and my son was playing with a bunch of toys in the sand. Another little boy walked over to play and his dad immediately stopped him and said “we didn’t come here to play in the sand” while leading him up to the structure. But doesn’t that just sound so absurd? His son wanted to play in the sand. Is it really so hard to let go?

I hear parents complain all the time about being tired, about running out of things to do with their child, about not knowing how else to entertain their 2 year old. None of these things need be an issue if we just learned to let go a bit. I go to the park every morning. Why? Not only does my son LOVE being outdoors, but this is also the best break ever! I get to sit under a tree or walk barefoot in the grass while my son does whatever he wants to. Sometimes he is climbing, sometimes he is sitting in the sand and not moving, sometimes he walks around, and sometimes he is next to me for a long time. No matter what, I am at peace.

I think that is the hardest thing for some parents, because being at peace means letting go. Let go of any preconceived ideas of ‘how’ children should play. Let go of the idea that if you don’t lead them they won’t get the most out of the experience. Let go of the stress.

Your child IS getting the most out of the experience, regardless of what they are doing. Trust them. Trust yourself. You are enough.

 

fear based parenting

Desere1 Comment

Hi readers!

It has been a long (LONG) time since my last post, and I apologize. But I’m back and ready to discuss more parenting aha moments since we last spoke. There has been a lot.

Today I want to talk about fear based parenting, an idea we discussed recently in my RIE class. We were talking about observing other parenting styles at the park, and how parents are so quick to react when their children get upset.

Ironically, an exact example of this happened today while on my daily morning park excursions with my son.

My son picked up a toy that belonged to another child. The toy was not being used by the other child, just laying on the floor. The child noticed my son taking the toy, rushed over, and began saying “Franky no Franky no” while trying to take the toy back. My son held his ground and did not let the other child take the toy. He held on tight and kept walking away. After this continued for some time, the child trying to grab the toy and my son walking away, the child began hysterically crying and looking at her mom.

The mom picked up a similar toy and tried to give it to her child, but the child only wanted the one my son was holding (understandably). The child continued crying and getting incredibly emotional. So the mom went to my son, took the object in his hand and gave him the similar toy to take instead. The mom then gave the desired object to her child and said “here just stop crying.”

Just stop crying.

This is a fear based response. This mother was so fearful of her daughter’s outrage, of her daughter’s emotions, that she would do anything to stop it from continuing. And I guess it worked? But what does anyone learn from this?

What does my son learn from this exchange?

Well being the easy going guy he is, he just sort of let it all happen. However I think he was mostly confused. He also has a lot of respect toward adults, and I think that is why when the adult took the object from him and gave him another one, he took it without a fuss. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t want that other object. He wanted the one he picked up from the ground.

But the mother didn’t care. She was too fearful to care.

Thankfully my son knows I would never act this way. And I look forward to talking to him about this exchange later today to see if he has any feelings to release about it. He might not and either way we will both move on.

But what does the other child learn from this exchange?

The other child learned when you really want something just cry and look at your mom, and she will fix it for you.

This child also learned that you can manipulate your parents using your emotions, because the mom would do anything to get her to “just stop crying”. This also means she learned that crying is bad and should be stopped immediately.

Oh and this child learned it is in fact ok to take toys from other kids when you want them because that is after all what she saw her mom modeling with my son.

And the reason I wanted to write about this example is because there is a huge idea underlying the differences between fear based parenting and respect based parenting.

It’s all in how we view our children.

Most parents view children as mini representations of themselves, but not necessarily as beings who are capable of intellectual thoughts and feelings. So when a child does something bad like hit another child, or has a meltdown, the parent reacts out of fear. What will the other parents think of me? How do I make this stop?

Respect based parenting is about viewing children as whole beings, beings who have ZERO impulse control and who have strong emotions sometimes. Our job is teach children how to feel those big emotions, safely of course, and know that they will get through it. It’s called holding the space. 

In the example above, the mom’s job was not to fix it. The mom’s job was to hold the space for her child to feel what she was feeling. To let her child know she hears her and is there for her. To let her child know that she sees how much she wants that object, and that Franky is holding it. And then leaving it there.

This is not the case of my son taking the object from this girl. Even though I have similarly strong feelings about that type of scenario which you can read here.

Anyway I don’t know. The whole thing really bothered me. I wish more parents can begin seeing their children as amazing and complex human beings who are just as worthy of their emotions as anything else. And sometimes those emotions are anger or sadness and that is ok too.

And not to get too political or anything, but maybe if more parents (especially parents of boys) held the space for their children to feel, we would not have so many men in our society who clearly cannot handle strong emotions and therefore do things like sexually assault women or shoot up schools… just saying…

Clearly I am emotional about this… I can feel it as I am writing. Maybe it’s because I am pregnant. Or maybe I just use this blog as a way to release my own feelings about it. Either way, thank you readers, for holding the space for me to do so.