Friends

29 February 2012

According to Will Rogers "A stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet".  Making friends is vitally important to all of us.  It takes time and effort but the rewards of making a good friend make it worthwhile.  You certainly know who your friends are when you have a crisis.  Some social networking sites have misappropriated the word friend.  These are not 'friends' in the true sense of the word, they are acquaintances, a friend is so much more.

When your life changes such as having a child or moving to a new area, it can take a long time to meet people who will become your friends, acquaintances can be made easily and quickly.  It is important, though, to have both types of people in your life.

When I talked to friends about the possibility of home educating my eldest they all asked virtually the same question 'what about the social side of school, where will that happen?'  It got me thinking, was that important, how were my children going to make friends if they were educated outside the school environment?

I thought back to my own experiences.  I have one friend who I was at primary school with, who I am still in touch with and see on a regular basis.  But she was not in my class at school, we became friends through interests outside of school.  I lived in the same house whilst growing up but once I left home I moved around a lot before settling where I live now.  During that time I made many friends and acquaintances but as my values and life have changed over  time I have 'moved on' or lost touch with most of them now.

When you are in an education environment such as school you are (in most schools) likely to be in a class and generally surrounded by children of the same or similar age.  Even though you are surrounded by all these people for so much of your time it does not necessarily follow that you will make many or any friends.

If you are home educating you have to work harder at giving your children opportunities to make friends but I do believe that the skills needed are more of a reflection of those that will be needed when making friends later in life.  So do I think that the social side of home education is found wanting?  No, I would argue that it is more reflective of life outside of education.


We have been mainly..........

27 February 2012

outside this week, which makes a change.  It has not been particularly warm, just dry!

We started the week with our usual pilgrimage into the local town for shopping, visiting the library and running errands.  There was a group of school children in the library and my eldest watched them in fascination.

We had our regular play date at a friend's house the next day.  As it was a sunny day we were all outside.  The group, ranging in age from 2 to 11, played in a nearby field.  The game had rules that were totally mystifying to the watching adults, but fun was being had by all, and all the children were included in the game.  Once little legs started to tire we moved inside to make pancakes for all.  We stuffed them with fruit and many were consumed, a perfect end to a fun afternoon.

The day after dawned grey, cold and wet.  It rained all day!  We had wanted to go out, but in the end had a highly enjoyable day inside.  We read books together, watched March of Penguins DVD together, put on some groovy music and danced with musical instruments and played a co-operative game.  Whilst I was cooking tea the children commandeered the hall as a 'den' it entertained them for ages, there was lots of tidying up to do at some point!

We managed to get out every day for the rest of the week, Thursday dawned clear and bright, far better than forecast (not that the forecast is ever that accurate where we live).  We went for our monthly walk in a local woods it was a beautiful day.  We met a friend at the start of the walk who had been hoping to do a walk herself with friends who had not turned up, so we invited her to join us.  We saw many birds, badger activity including hair on plants and paw prints in the mud, talked about moss and leaves, threw stones in the river and made many stops for food.  We all arrived back at the car tired and happy.

We visited the garden centre the next day to buy seeds, onion sets, garlic and seed potatoes for the garden.  The following day we spent in the garden, weeding and sowing garlic the children dug trenches and planted the garlic, 80 cloves, hope they all come up!

Daddy came home on Sunday morning after two weeks away, the children were so pleased to see him.  My youngest spend the rest of the day at his side, it was strange not to be subject of her attention and affection.  We only have his company for 24 hours before he is off again, only for a few days this time, but it was a good ending to our week.

Confidence

24 February 2012

I have always been interested in what makes a person confident or not.  However it is only since I have become a mother that I have realised how confidence grows within us as we are growing up and that the environment we are growing up in has influences this. 

When I was at school I could never understand why some children really wanted to be liked and be part of a group/gang of the 'popular' kids.   I couldn't see what the attraction to this type of person was.  What, of course, I did not realise at that time was that most of those children probably lacked any confidence in themselves and were looking to other children to help them, as their home environment was not enabling their confidence to grow.

Within the world of work, as I was given greater responsibilities, met more and more people with a lack of confidence and usually self esteem I had to manage them with great care and attention.  I misguidedly thought that I could help them to overcome their lack of confidence and build this important skill.  What I did not appreciate is that, although my great care and attention was probably what they did need in a manager, trying to build on their lack of confidence was not something that could be developed that easily.  As we follow our path through life it is harder to build on our confidence if the building blocks for this skill were not started when we were a child.

As parents we are responsible for creating the environment for our children to grow and flourish into adults.  If we expect our child to live up to our expectations of them, please us, or do what we think is right all the time then they will need to take care to weigh their own thoughts and actions which, if they are not sure if this will lead to us being pleased, leads to anxiety and doubt in themselves.  We are placing conditions on our love for our child and manipulating them to behave how we expect them to.

If we love our children unconditionally they do not need to meet unknown expectations or have to guess at what we think is the right thing to do.  We behave how we expect them to behave in front of them, but do not expect this behaviour from them.  In their own time and at their own pace, they will do likewise.  They are safe in the knowledge that they can express themselves as they wish, that their needs are taken care of, that you trust your child and meet them on their terms.  This I believe is the environment that a child needs to grow their confidence and self esteem.  It is not an easy environment to provide all day of every day, but who said child raising was easy?


The Journey so far

22 February 2012

It started about eight years ago when I became pregnant with my oldest child. At the time I had few friends with children, most were young, free and single. There are loads of books offering advice on raising your children I decided that I would not read any of them, I wanted to trust my own instincts in raising my child.

After a shaky end to my pregnancy and a horrendous delivery my child came into the world.  The whirlwind of the first few weeks seem a distant blur now.  There is nothing that anyone can tell you that will prepare you for what they will be like, but I do remember being supremely happy.  I did not care if the housework was not done, or that I was often not dressed until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  I spent my days looking after myself and my baby, breastfeeding on demand, baby wearing and co-sleeping and anything else that felt instinctively right.

Sadly for us both, (and for my husband) I became very ill after eight weeks.  I was not able to keep any food or drink down for two weeks and ended up in hospital.  I had to stop bf which made me very sad.  But my child gave me my first lesson in motherhood at that time, it didn't matter, as long as I was there to give unconditional love.

After nine months I made the decision to return to work, three (short) days a week.  My child went to a nursery for those days and we had four days together each week.  My work was busy and challenging and for three years I loved it.  Then a change of management changed the culture of the organisation and my love for the job dwindled.  This was a time of much soul searching, why was I going to work to do a job that I no longer enjoyed?  I loved the organisation and did not want to burn my bridges and leave the job, in case I wanted to return in the future when the culture, I hoped, would've changed.  And then, bingo, my dilemma was answered, I got pregnant!

Around the same time we needed to make a decision about schooling for our oldest child.  I had been spending a lot of time in the year leading up to this researching local schools and the national curriculum.  I went through the school system before the national curriculum so had no experience of this myself.  I was horrified.  The more I learnt the less I wanted to embrace the school system.  But what was the alternative?  I had no idea.

I cannot remember how I discovered the wonderful world of home education.  But I do know that I am so glad that I did, when I did, as I knew that the school system would be totally the wrong environment for my child to learn.  I didn't register my child into the school system.

I had a very easy second pregnancy, went off on maternity leave and had a thankfully, wonderful birth with my youngest child.  I breast fed on demand, and still am, baby carried and co-slept again.

A few months later we 'officially' became home educators for our oldest.  We are now a few years into that journey and it is so exciting.  Every day you get up not knowing quite where the day is going to take you.  What questions are going to be asked?  What games will be played?  What books shall we read?  Where should we go and visit?

Having two children has its ups and downs, they play, they argue, they make up, they play.  Getting out of the house, well that will fill another post!  They are so completely different (apart from one boy, one girl) that they rarely compete, maybe that will change as they get older, I will wait and see.

Oh and I handed in my notice at work nine months after my youngest was born.