Reflections

I recently celebrated my eldest's birthday since then I have been reflecting on my journey over the last eight years as a parent.  It has been a time of joy, of sadness, of frustration, of bewilderment and of immense pleasure.  I never thought being a parent was going to be easy, it is hard, damned hard and it is all the time there is no walking away.

If you want it there is masses of advice available to parents.  A quick search on amazon in books, parenting gave me over 64 000 results some of those may be duplicates of the same book, even so that is a lot of books.  Why is it that there are so many available these days.  Could it be because we live so differently now to fifty or hundred years ago.  We live in very different communities.  We have smaller families so the older siblings do not learn any parenting skills which are acquired by the younger members of the family observing older siblings as parents themselves.  I had no older siblings to learn from, I remember my cousins as babies but did not spend long enough with them to remember what looking after a baby was like.  I read no parenting books before my eldest was born and even if I had I cannot believe that they would have prepared me for the whirlwind that is the early days of becoming a parent.  A baby is dependent on us to meet its every need, even when we have no idea as to what the need is that we are trying to meet, fitting our own needs into the day becomes hard.  Life, as some would have you believe, does not return to normal, whatever normal is.  I was working full time before my first child was born, I was under no illusion that I would ever return to that possibly part time, but never full time.  Those parents who try to return to normal must feel like they are pushing a full cart up a hill, permanently.

As my baby grew older and started to explore the world away from me through crawling, toddling then walking I had to learn to trust, and I did right from the beginning. As a parent I believe that it is important to ensure that your child does not come to harm, but is allowed to explore.  If a child is not trusted they are exploring the world through someone else's boundaries not their own.  They cannot make sense of new situations as they do not know where the boundaries are so parents have to intervene.  If more trust is given as the child gets older they may come to harm as they have not been able to make their own boundaries.  I realised that I was able to trust my child as my mother had trusted me.  If we are not trusted ourselves how can we place trust in our own children, we have not been able to learn these skills properly at the time in our lives that we needed to gain this vital skill.

As a parent I believe it is important to respect children, I have been shocked at how little respect children are given in our society.  I am not taking about legislation to protect their rights or safeguarding them from harm, I am talking about treating them as individuals in the same way as you would adults.  If my children are hurt or upset I don't deny them these feelings by saying oh you'll be alright or it's not that bad.  How could I possibly know how they are feeling, to say this is to deny the child any feeling or lead them to question the feeling they are having and wonder if they are wrong to feel that way.  If my children tell me they are hungry I believe them and give them something to eat, unless I am about to serve a meal.  I don't say you can't be you've just eaten etc.  I speak to my children as I would expect to be spoken to myself, or as I would speak to anyone else and how most parents speak just to other adults.  I find this immensely disrespectful and it jars with me every time I hear a parent speak that way to a child.  We seem to still expect our children to be seen and not heard, much like the Victorians.  If you try to take a child out for a meal after 5pm in so many places it is not possible, if my children are quiet and sit still I am told they good,  if my children are being noisy and boisterous I get withering or pitying looks.  I want my children to be themselves, to work out for themselves when is the time for being quiet and still or noisy or boisterous not when the rest of society deems it appropriate.

Children have an immense capacity to learn.  When I think back to what they learn in the first two years of their life alone it is remarkable.  As a parent I am learning too, each and every day.  It is a journey that never stops, it is exciting and exhausting.  I am preparing my children to venture out into the world by themselves.  We spend more of our lives away from the family home than we do in it, but they are some of the most important.  They are the time when we are learning values which will shape us into who we are as adults, those foundation blocks give us a stable platform to go out and continue to learn.  If there are gaps or cracks in the foundations we will struggle.  One the biggest lessons I have learnt from my children is to relax.  If I take my time and go at their pace I am a more relaxed mama.  I don't try to do too much in one day as it leaves me frazzled especially if I have to be places at a specific time, for me life is too short for rushing.

This is not my advice, this what I do and what I believe in now, tomorrow that may change, in a year that may change.  My parenting is fluid.  I am not perfect, I have lots to learn and I look forward to the future because of this.  I don't beat myself up when I have a bad day I try to work out why and change things if I can.  I am enjoying it as I only get one chance.

Apples

Yesterday we spent a lovely day doing all things apple.

Our Wednesday friends, a family that we meet up with every Wednesday to do stuff with, arranged for us all to go to the house of a local lady who is something of an apple expert.  We would both like to plant apple tress in our gardens so we were going to use the opportunity to work out which variety of tree(s) would be suitable to plant.

We started off tasting apples, my youngest thought this was great she loves all fruit but most especially apples.  It is now quite late in the apple season so we not able try any early fruiting varieties and some of those we did try we were told did not taste quite as good as they would have done earlier in the season.  It was still interesting to experience the huge variety of taste and texture between the apples we did try.

Apple varieties have such wonderful names, many of them have been raised by gardeners of wealthy landowners and the variety named after them.  Whilst tasting we particularly like Laxton's Fortune, Spartan and the wonderfully named Cockpit Improved.  We talked about where each variety had come from and how old they were, how the names can reflect the shape for example the Pearmain varieties have a pear like shape or the Russets which describe the skin, usually slightly rougher and with greeny- brown or yellowy-brown colouration.

We were then taken to her orchard a collection of about 200 trees.  Some of the trees were growing as standards, a traditional tree shape, and some as cordons a single stem at a 45° angle.  She also showed us the wonderfully named family trees where there were three varieties of apple growing on one tree ideal for those with a smaller garden.  Apples are not in the main self fertile, they need other apple trees around for pollination and therefore fruiting, some are even sterile and will not fruit at all without other apple trees growing nearby.

The lady herself made the day so special.  She was knowledgeable, interesting, engaging and wonderful with children.  She did not force them to listen or make demands of them at all.  She sensed that my eldest was not comfortable around those he does not know and quietly asked me what he was interested in.  Later I heard her engaging him in conversation about that very topic.  She not only gave us her knowledge and her time and also her apples.  There was a tree still bearing fruit in the orchard another one with a wonderful name, Catshead, we left laden with fruit.  She also owns a juicer which she generously told us we could borrow if we would like to juice these apples.  We leant how to make cider and vinegar from her so some of those apples may end up in demijohns!

Looking

Why is it that all the males in my life are utterly rubbish at looking for things.  I remember when I was a child if my dad had lost something we all had to stop what we were doing to help him look.  As I got older I realised that he was at a complete loss as to how to go about finding anything.  My husband is pretty much the same.

When my eldest was born, I vowed to ensure that he was not the same.  I have tried really hard to provide an environment for him to learn these skills, I though I was doing ok with this until recently.  My youngest, a girl is far better than him already at only three.  I am not going to give up but I have been thinking about why this should be.

So far my observations are (no pun intended) that my youngest seems to be much more aware of what is going on around her, she notices and processes things in such a way that it is more observant.  Whereas my eldest is much more focused, that is not to say my youngest isn't, but in such a way that what is happening around him is not observed in a way that he notices what is beyond his immediate environment.

I may be completely wrong on this one of course, I am aware that males and females brains are totally different which is due in part to the way they are wired when we are young.  Nothing I can do will change this wiring, but I am not going to give up on nurturing a looking ability in my son.  If you have any thoughts or observations I would love to hear them!

Autonomy

When I embarked officially on our home educating journey in September 2009, I tried some structured learning time. Over the course of a month I managed this about twice and then gave up. It was not working for either of us. I didn't have a plan B and I had not, at that time, heard of autonomous learning or unschooling. So I carried on as we were. Reading books together, doing stuff together and, just as importantly, independently but in the same room too.

I would be lying if I was at all doubtful that putting all learning in the hands of a child would lead to results. I hung onto the fact that up until now learning had been happening, he had crawled, was now walking, had signed and was now talking. Part of me was doubting but it was a small part and the doubt did not last long.

My role soon became clear to be there for support, to answer questions, to read to him, to take him out and explore the world beyond our house, to provide an environment within which he felt secure and safe so that learning could happen. And happen it does.

He learnt some of the letters through asking about them in books, signs, anything with words, from this reading developed, and he now reads books independently. I would not be able to explain the exact process of development and neither have I any desire too. Some folks I speak too are baffled that it could just happen. We are too ingrained that it must be taught.

He learnt to count to ten at an early age, but his interest in numbers beyond that has only developed more recently. He can now read numbers in the thousands and knows that there are numbers beyond that but has not mastered them yet. He can add up and take away. Again we have not taught this, merely engaged in his interest and answered his questioning to the best of his understanding.

We have explored many subjects or topics and I love how they can develop. We found a book on Castles in a charity shop which sparked a long period of investigation into castles. He read and we read together many books on castles, knights and life generally during that period in history. We looked up castles in our area and visited many. Drawing after drawing of castles and battles were drawn. At the moment we are investigating World War Two, this came about after a discussion with his Grandma about rationing during and after the war.

I have mentioned already the drawings. Not a day goes by without a drawing of some sorted started, completed or added to. Around the age of five he had virtually given up on drawing. He felt that his drawings were no good and they kept going wrong. I racked my brains for ways to support him, to build his confidence. For Christmas that year my husband made him a big blackboard which is mounted on the wall in the dining room at his height. He also got some chalk and he was off. For the next year the blackboard was covered in elaborate drawings. It was easier to rub out and correct than pencil and paper. The blackboard gets used less by him these days. We have bought him a set of good pencils and paper is his preferred surface.

I have had two affirmations this week that we made the right decision to home education and do so in the route we have chosen. He has read a complete story book on his own through the course of a day. One evening this week after settling my youngest to sleep, I came downstairs to find him and my husband adding up very long numbers, I think they had got to about eight digits, after each sum he would ask for another until he announced he had had enough and was off to bed!

I am so grateful that our situation has enabled us to home educate. I am aware that for some this is the path that they would like to follow but are unable to or choose not to for their own reasons. I have never regretted our decision for a moment and look forward to many more weeks like the one I have just had.

Camping

We have been camping this week with another home edding family and despite the weather forecast had both wonderful weather and time.

Our trip got off to an auspicious start. We were to be joined by an old friend who was visiting from the far east, living so far away we do not see him that often, every two to three years. He and my husband sat up late into the night, in fact into the small hours, catching up and drinking whisky. The next day, nursing a hangover my husband was struggling to get out of bed. I got up, had breakfast, finished the last bits of packing, started to load the car, had lunch, he still had not got up. Finally at half past two I gave him an ultimatum I was going to leave by half three at the latest. He suggested sleeping some more and coming over later in a separate car, not a good idea I felt as he may be still over the limit for driving. In the end we did manage to leave at half three and arrived at the campsite just after five, better late than never I guess. I ended up putting most of the tent up myself and cooking tea, I fell into bed exhausted, hoping the next day would be better. At least the weather had been good, warm and sunny with no rain.

The next day dawned dry and warm, with some cloud. We were going to spend the day on a steam railway riding up and down. The campsite had its own stop on the line. It seemed to take ages to get ready, after the previous day I didn't feel I was firing on all cylinders. The railway was great fun as always, we had several trips up and down the line, and spent some time at one end exploring a museum of the history of the line and the village. The morning was dry but as the day wore on it got wetter and wetter. It did not spoil our enjoyment of the journey.

We were undecided about spending another night under canvas as the weather was forecast to get worse as the week went on. The day dawned bright and sunny, so we stayed and the warmth stayed with us all day. The children and their friends played and played and played on the campsite and were having such a good time that we did not make any plans. As the day wore on and it got hotter and hotter we walked to the nearest village for ice creams. We did not take any waterproofs with us and the rain came down, really hard, we sheltered under a tree, well the adults did the children ran around in the pouring rain! Whilst we were cooking tea the rain poured again and we had a thunderstorm which was exciting, well I thought so the children were not convinced. The rain came down so hard that it created huge pond like puddles on the campsite in various places, thankfully not near our tent. The children thought these looked great fun to play in so they stripped off and jumped in, spending abut half an hour running, jumping, splashing and falling into then. They fell into bed tired and happy.

I took plenty of clothes for the children, as the forecast has been for rain every day I was sure they would get wet. Luckily the very dry day ensured that most of the clothing and shoes that had got wet dried out, they did wear everything that I took at some point. It rained hard as we packed up and for the journey home, it cleared to allow us to unpack the car, but not long enough to start hanging stuff up to dry, that is for another day.

Unschooling?

There are many many reasons why parents choose to home educate, like wise there are also many and varied approaches to the 'delivery'. Some choose to have structure perhaps using topics, lesson plans or directed learning and may follow a curriculum such as Steiner, Waldorf, Montessori, Charlotte Mason or the National Curriculum itself to name but a few. Others choose to have no structure at all or maybe somewhere in the middle mixing both approaches.

To have no structure at all may seem like a huge leap of faith especially since a school environment is highly structured in comparison. We are a society that measures and compares. We have league tables and targets for so many aspects of public life. Taking an unstructured approach makes measuring progress difficult or well nigh impossible, it has no place, and for those that choose this route that is the intention. The learning is wholly child centred, it can happen at their pace, little if anything is taught. If this seems like an unattainable direction think back to your child starting to walk or talk, did you teach them these skills? Having autonomy over your learning and the direction it takes, allows confidence to blossom, you will never be put into the position of being expected to learn something that you are not ready too. You are always engaged whole heartedly with what you are doing. Perhaps this seems utopian and unrealistic, I disagree. If we view particular tasks and activities as negative and a drudge every time we do them they will forever remain that way, especially if they are something that we need do on a regular basis. I have always viewed this approach as an autonomous one but I was talking recently with another mum who is home educating about radical unschooling. It seems that this is another way of labelling an autonomous direction, one which was coined in the States, but does not really seem to have been embraced in the UK. There is a wealth of information out there about it, including forums and blogs. Like autonomous home education it is a way of life which you embrace as a family.

When we started our official home education journey (at the time that my eldest would have been starting school) I tried the structured approach, I lasted only a few days before I realised that my eldest did not want to be taught by me, and would prefer that I returned to being just mum. I have not looked back since. I did have a few wobbles in the beginning when I worried unnecessarily about the whole 'measuring' and comparing with other children of the same age. But I soon realised that there was little point in worrying, learning is going on all the time in our house, I am learning too! So to return to radical unschooling, it sounds like an interesting ideology one which I will now devote some time to investigating. Do you have any knowledge of radical unschooling to share?

Home Education

Parents have a legal responsibility to ensure that their children are educated.  Most parents choose to delegate this responsibility to a school.  The law states:   "The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable;  a) to his age, ability, and aptitude, and b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise."  It is the last two words of this statement that entitles parents in the UK to lawfully home educate.

Deciding to home educate is a big decision for a family and one that is taken for a variety and complex set of reasons.  This may be because you feel your child is too young to start, they may be at school and being bullied or have particular needs that are not being met, you may feel that the environment in a school will not enable you child to learn, you may not like the idea of your child being tested at a young age.  Whatever the reason it is not one taken lightly.

Home education can and does take many forms, as parents you have autonomy over the way this is delivered, you can choose the method most appropriate for your child(ren).  You my decide on a structured approach for some or all the time with lessons and workbooks, or a more autonomous approach, which means that the child takes charge of their own learning.  Although this may seem like a riskier path to take it is exactly the path that your child follows until they reach school age.  We don't teach out child to sit up, to stand up. to walk or to play they learn this by their own means.

In most school environments, children are taught much of what they learn.  The subjects are taught using the framework of the National Curriculum, a set of guidelines which outlines what should be covered at each 'key stage'.  How a school chooses to follow the National Curriculum varies greatly.  Some take a topic lead approach.  and then apply each area of the National Curriculum for example food, in history you could look at what people were eating 100 to 200 years ago, geography what food is grown in different parts of this county and the world, science how and what plants need to grow and so on.  Others will teach each subject in isolation with no cross curricular activity at all.

Whatever you think of the National Curriculum and how your local school applies it, a child has little or no autonomy.  If they are not interested in a particular subject or topic and find themselves switching off, you have to hope that they will switch on again when they are interested.  If they don't learn to read at the age set down in the National Curriculum will they get extra help later and will this make it harder for them to engage at later key stages?

Allowing your child some or complete autonomy may feel like a huge leap of faith, so why do we feel like that?  Have we become conditioned to believe that they only way to learn now is by sitting in a room at a desk?  That all the learning taking place needs to measured regularly to ensure that learning is actually taking place, that we cannot trust our teachers to enable this?  There are so many ways of learning, if that happens entirely outside of a school, the route is tailored to the needs of the learner as opposed to the education establishment, where they are governed by the teacher(s) and the ethos of the establishment.  

For our family we decided that home education was for us.  I worked for a while in a local school primarily to get to know more people in the village and whilst I achieved this aim, I also got to know the national curriculum.  I completed my own schooling before this was introduced fully, so had no personal experience of it.  For me, the National Curriculum, the monitoring and the testing was not a framework or method that I could reconcile with at all.  I had assumed from what I had read and heard in the media that it is child centred and that each child can and will be able to learn at their own pace.  My own experience in my local schools was that this was far from the case.  The emphasis was on how the children could be taught to improve or sustain good results for the school.  So what else?  My issue with the local schools was the National Curriculum, there were no schools near to me that used any other curriculum unless I was prepared to travel 40 + miles (one way) to our nearest Steiner school.  I knew that you could Home Educate, I had had a friend whilst at school who was home educated and I had met children where I live who were home educated, so I set about doing some research.  I looked on the internet for local groups, for useful websites, for information on how other families went about it.  I discussed it at length with my husband.  I would never have taken this path if one or other of us had any doubts, it was very important to me that we both on board 100% from the start.  I did decide first that I wanted to follow that route, rather than suggesting this to my husband this was the route we should take, I opened the discussion as to what path our children's education should follow.  I didn't present him with a fait accomplit.  We follow an autonomous route at the moment, this could change as the children get older, for now it works for us.

If you are considering home education and you have concerns, fears and questions they will be valid.  Write them all down and do some research, if does not allay your fears and concerns maybe it is not for you and your family.  If your family is two adults and your children, do discuss it!  If you do decide to follow that path then I hope that it will be an inspirational and enjoyable way.