fact or fiction redux

Someone was "asking about non fiction stuff like news or science stuff" with regard to when children start to "realize that some of the stuff on T.V., while not physically present in the room, could indeed directly involve them?" This was my reply:

Do you have a young child who likes to watch that sort of thing? If so, it may
be more helpful to observe the reactions of your own child than to look at
out-of-date studies of children living a different lifestyle with a much more
limited access to programming than your own child ;) Most little kids don't want
to watch the news unless it's the best way to spend time with a parent - and
"science stuff" is often too dry for a young child unless it's pretty heavily
jazzed up.

And then there's the whole issue of relativity in "non fiction" - endless
arguments are held on how this incident or that has been portrayed to change the
perception of "news" or "history". In the US there's an ongoing debate about how
to use our Constitution which stems in part from a disagreement over history,
and how to interpret history.

And science... ye gads, there are whole competing paradigms of scientific
thought in more than one area! What's real and what isn't on the subject of
(hmmm, which hot topic to pick...?) obesity? vaccination? evolution? climate?
electromagnetism? psychology?

On top of that, there's a little matter of human nature which adults share with
children - we Learn from a Variety of sources, including fictional sources. I
know gobs about the Napoleonic wars from reading cheesy fiction. I've learned
all sorts of things about science watching Star Trek - and so have my kids. My
daughter learned a lot about tidal waves by reading a book full of
fire-breathing dragons, and a whole lot about animal behavior from a series
about werewolves. Is everything she learned about animal behavior True? You
might as well ask if everything you read in a non-fiction book on dog training
is true - some of it will be repeated by other sources, some not, some
verifiable by direct experience, some not. That's a big part of how people
decide what kinds of information is trustworthy and which is not - not true of
false, because so much of that is relative, but worthy of consideration as fact.

Schools promote the idea that there's A history, A body of science, A cannon of
literature - but none of those things are true and people who are interested in
learning more will find that out, by looking for other sources of information.
Unschoolers get to do that from the start, not on the sly or for extra credit,
but whenever a subject intrigues them. Tv gets to be part of that process - part
of how they learn and explore the world - and it doesn't Have To Be categorized
by someone else as fact or fiction to do that. It's just one more source of
data.

resources for dads

2/23, Brie wrote:

> For Michael, my husband, the biggest step he made toward unschooling was recognizing that he didn't have to be a hard ass to be a good dad and that he could, with every choice, STOP being the asshole dad his father had been.

That could so easily describe George. It's such a relief for him to know he doesn't have to be an asshole to be a good dad.

It might help to think about all the baggage that comes with the expression "a good mother" - men have just as much baggage about being fathers, although of a slightly different sort. They can sometimes need a lot of reassurance that all this kindness and softness isn't going to "ruin" their kids in some way. Connecting with other unschooling dads can help, but gosh its hard to get dads together and talking about something touchy-feely like parenting - even the touchy-feely dads can struggle to put it all into words until they start to feel competent about it.

> Sandra's the Big Book of Unschooling is great too, especially as a planted bathroom read, because it is mostly short one-page essays.

Also consider printing out parts of Joyce's website - her logical, organized style is reassuring to a lot of men.

http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/

Some unschooling dad blogs:

http://justabaldman.blogspot.com/

(Jeff Sabo - lots of mom appeal, too)

http://pvmaro.blogspot.com/

(Frank Maier, doesn't write a ton about unschooling, but devoted to it. He's both cynical and wittily articulate, which will appeal to some more than others.)

http://www.thebarkingcow.com/

(John Gold - mostly older posts, and a wild, wicked sense of humor)

http://thewonderfulhappens.blogspot.com/

(Rob in BC - mostly a photo blog)

http://uncommonranting.blogspot.com/

(Alex Bradstreet - includes several recent essays on "deschooling society")

http://unschoolingfather.blogspot.com/

( Tim Gutteridge - Breakfast with diamonds. Another smarty pants dad - well written and articulate. Gosh these unschooling dads are clever fellows.)

http://theparentingpit.com/

(Arun's blog - they're not unschooling at the moment, due to health issues, but some very good posts over the years)

Bob Collier's "Parental Intelligence Newsletter" doesn't only focus on unschooling, but does explore a wide range of issues related to learning and parenting, including a great deal about natural learning:

http://www.parental-intelligence.com/

---Meredith

not instilling anything

A big part of the problem a lot of parents have around the idea of setting limits on food or
anything else comes down to this idea of "instilling" values. Instilling runs
into the same problem as teaching in that it's about the actions of the
"instiller" rather than the experience of the "instillee" - and just as with
teaching, what parents are trying to instill is often not the same as what is
actually learned. You can't control what kids take away from the instillation
process.

It helps a lot to step back from thinking in terms of instilling values or
principles and instead work on living by them - but to do that it can take some
effort to "unpack" what your principles really are, especially where scary,
intimate, vaguely defined issues like "health" are concerned. As
counter-intuitive as it may sound, it's often more helpful to kids when parents
step back from focusing on the kids' health and focus on their own - focus on
being joyfully health-filled rather than grimly health conscious. For many
parents, especially moms, that's tough. Many of us have grown up surrounded by
women (our mothers, sisters, aunts, teacher, friends) trying and failing to
control their bodies (weight, size, shape) and the newest trend is to frame all
of that control in terms of health, so we carry that into our own mothering,
along with all the rest of our baggage. And so kids can end up learning our
baggage rather than what we'd far rather instill about health.

The big fear which can rise up out of that baggage is that if we don't teach (or
the kinder, gentler version: instill) the right things, then something else will
do the job and ruin our kids (sugar, advertising, video violence, Barbie...).
The heart of radical unschooling involves facing down that fear and seeing how
learning works Without teaching or instilling - even around seemingly
all-powerful forces like Barbie and sugar - not by "hands off" parenting, but by
living and learning alongside our kids as partners, offering information and
creating an environment which fosters thoughtful choices - thoughtful, as
differentiated from "good". And to make thoughtful choices, there need to be
real options - not red/blue sweater choices where the "right answer" (wear a
sweater) is already given.

dietary issues and social situations

Things to keep in mind regarding dietary issues with young children:

Kids change.
That's a big one. Their bodies and needs change - including sensitivities over
time - but even more importantly, their minds are also growing and changing. So
what "works" with a toddler won't be as helpful with an older child.

Learning is about the person doing the learning.
From an unschooling perspective, that's just as big and important an issue to
keep in mind. You can attempt to guide and direct, but that doesn't guarantee
kids will learn what you hope they'll learn - and a Lot of learning is
experiential. Kids are motivated by one of the most powerful of all human drives
to explore and discover on their own terms. That's not to say they don't want
your help, but they want More than just your help. That's part of what makes
parenting scary! They need us, need parents, but they need us to be advocates
and facilitators more than they need facts and cautions.

 I am uncomfortable with forbidding and limiting foods because I don't like the
dynamic it creates between him and me.

That's an important observation! Limiting can make hash of a relationship -
which reduces your effectiveness as a source of information. Limiting sets kids
up to trust parents less, over time, And it makes whatever is limited seem more
valuable and desirable. Luxury is defined by limitation.

I would like to not have to forbid or limit foods, however, the consequences
of eating gluten, dairy, etc. are really tough to bear as a parent (much more
work and stress for me) and I can tell he feels awful and out of control of
himself. This isn't a big deal a lot of the time since we don't keep stuff
off-diet in the house, but in social situations it gets hard.

It will get better as he gets older and has a greater sense of perspective. A
toddler has a hard time considering causes and effects which aren't immediate
and obvious, but kids don't remain toddlers ;) In the short term, you can
consider limiting social situations rather than deal with the fallout from the
foods. You can also bring food of your own, but that's going to have mixed
results, so it can help to keep in mind that the goal isn't for him to make
"good" choices so much as it is for him to gain experience making choices period
and explore causes and effects. That means Planning for a rough time after a
social event! I don't mean you should "expect to fail" but you should be ready
for your child to behave like a little kid, curious and interested and wanting
to explore his world on his own terms.

Planning ahead in that way can actually make things less stressful, since you're
not fighting against logic and probability. It's like... if you bring your child
to my house, it makes sense to bring boots and a change of clothes because I
have this wonderful little creek, just perfect for splashing around in.
Sometimes kids manage not to get wet in my creek, but I don't count on that -
*I* have extra clothes to offer visiting children whose parents forget. You can
plan for parties and outings the same way, and relax into the knowledge that you
may be dealing with a "hangover" of sorts for the next few days.

That kind of planning, too, makes it easier to ask "do I Really want to go to
this party?" Don't ask that question with the hope that everything will be fine,
ask it with the assumption you'll have a sick kid afterwards.

When Ray was little, the issues were social and emotional and not related to
food, but I learned to go through this same process - is it Worth It to deal
with the probable melt-down at the party And the day of recovery? And over time,
as Ray got older, the answer became more often Yes.

There's a myth kids need to be put in complex social situations over and over in
order to learn to "handle them" and it's just that: a myth. When social
situations are overwhelming in terms of offering kids too many complex choices
(social choices, food choices) kids Can't learn from them very well - so it's
actually counter productive to put kids in those situations. It's one of the
reasons some people leave school with no social skills. Setting kids up to
succeed on their own terms helps them learn.

The catch is, kids sometimes define "succeed" differently than adults. That's
another important point to keep in mind - your child's agenda isn't the same as
yours.

We talk about the connections between the times when he has the food he's
intolerant to and the behavior/symptoms afterward. I feel like he's receptive.


If he seems receptive, keep offering those bits of information. If he's not
receptive, it's sometimes possible for parents to talk about their own issues
and how they've dealt with them as a way of sharing the same information, or how
other people deal. "Some people find that gluten makes them sick and try to
avoid it."

Still other kids need time to draw their own conclusions. My daughter is like
that - I can offer tiny little bits of information when she asks me a question,
but often she won't hear what I have to say Unless she has asked a question.
Until then, I'm just blowing hot air for no reason, as far as Mo is concerned
(and she's kind enough to tell me ;)).

Family acceptance?

One of the ongoing issues many home/unschooling families find is that our way of life doesn't always make extended family relationships comfortable. It's an issue which comes up often enough I thought I'd save my most recent comments on the subject, sparked by a question on the Radical Unschoolers Network:

I'm generally one of the first to exclude myself from relatives - although over the years I've experienced some exclusion from friends, and living around communes I've experienced ebbs and flows of group dynamics which include excluding people - sometimes me or my family - for a time. It helps to accept that I can't change other people, I can only change myself, and then consider if whoever's mad at me has a point. That's hard. It's hard to dig down and try to see someone else's perspective when you're hurting, to look into the dark corners of your personality when you most want to be reassured you're right and fine. In my case, it may be that I've been inadvertent or careless - spoken my mind when I should have been more thoughtful and sensitive. I struggle with that! And communities (family or otherwise) often exist in layers of courtesy and unspoken avoidance. Sometimes that's too great a "cost" of belonging - the cost of belonging with my extended family on my mother's side (with a few exceptions) is to accept a degree of casual cruelty as part of the group dynamic. It's too big a cost for me, so I stay away.

It's rare for someone to be excluded from a community/family out of the blue, although it can happen suddenly - divorces and other big life changes can trigger issues which have sat for awhile. It helps, in terms of seeing the others' points of view, to consider those past issues. You can't change the past, but knowing what's gone before can help you find a degree of compassion, which can help you heal your heart.

LA wrote: i hope someone here will have some good suggestions about how to get a conversation started in the family that can start the healing process.

Does "the family" want to heal? Or are some family members cutting off someone who's outside their comfort zone? That's a situation which has come up in a number of different ways in my extended family, as well as local communities, and I don't see it as something "the family" heals from so much as individuals find ways to heal, form new relationships, and move on. So my own preference is to start there, not with the family, but in helping the person who is hurt to heal. Sometimes when individuals heal the family as a group can start to heal, but not always.

Sometimes there can be subgroups within a family with a bit of come and go between them, and that's not necessarily a bad thing - like Laura and her sister, that's the kind of subgroup I mean. It may help to see the family as having natural groups defined by affinity rather than trying to maintain a Family as a kind of monolithic whole. Focus on meaningful relationships rather than arbitrary ones - the way you'd help a child find people who share interests rather than friends who are all the same age and/or gender.

Sometimes the Best thing you can do to heal family hurts is to step away from a dream of Family and live with the reality of human beings doing the (poor) best they can with (lack of) resources at their disposal. Some members of your family don't have the emotional resources to deal with you as you are - and maybe you don't have the resources to deal with Them as They are! If you did, you would have been able to be who they wanted you to be. I'm not saying you "should" be who others want you to be, but that doing such a thing is often the cost of family membership, if the family is to be a Family - a grand shining icon of itself, all differences put aside for the gathering.

"Catering" to children

Inspired by the following online comments:

Mom1:Me catering to his fears and whims did not help him.

Mom2:To me, this statement is very dismissive towards children. I hear lots of people claim that respecting a child's boundaries/fears/wishes/desires is catering to them and leads to spoiled children.

I added:

Or misanthropic children - in the sense that you can't "cater" to a "shy" child.

I see this fairly common piece of parenting "wisdom" as stemming from a misunderstanding of how people learn. It comes from the same mindset which begins "Children Have To Learn..." And if they won't learn at the convenience of adults, then they "have to" be coaxed and nudged a bit "for their own good".

This is a nuancy subject because sometimes people do need support and encouragement. And I think that sometimes parents can get confused when support and encouragement seems to "work" in the moment and don't see longer term effects. A very clingy 3yo, for instance, is building up a store of trust and support for the time he decides he's ready for a little adventure - but it's easy for mom to see the offer of an adventure as what "works" and ignore the months of cuddling which led up to it. Humans aren't very far-sighted when it comes to causes and effects, especially where children are concerned.

That all seems kind of vague, so I'll try to give some examples.

Currently, I'm learning to use a table-saw. I have a lot of fears - I see myself as a very fearful person as a rule and some of that has to do with having been a "shy kid". I didn't mind being a "shy kid" but I definitely got the impression that I "had to" be pushed into doing things or I'd balk at darned-near everything and my mom took a lot of credit for pushing me into things. In the longer run, I do none of the things my mom pushed me to do, but a great many things I've chosen to do despite my fears and the table-saw is the latest. I've spent years vowing I would Never Ever use a table-saw. I won't bother with my exhaustive list of defensive reasoning other than to say it was just too darned scary for me. Since changing jobs, I've been faced with the possibility of using one of the things, but reassured myself that I have decades of resistance to back me up, and I'm replete with skills for finding alternative solutions, including getting other people to do things for me. So I've been doing that for months - hey there, big guy, can you rip this sheet of plywood for me? You're so cool. But this week, I started using the table saw. It would be easy to point to the order which needed to go out and say "I had to do it to make a crate for that" - to see one thing as the impetus to try, but in the larger picture I've been building confidence very very slowly - almost geologically slowly! and now... well, there it is. It's not nearly as scary as I thought, now that I've chosen to do it.

Pushing kids to get over sensory issues is related to this and it bugs me on two levels. Firstly, because that's one of the ways I was pushed, but also because Mo has some sensory issues and I've seen her deal with them without "needing" to be coaxed or nudged. The thing is, I don't have my mother's perspective on "dealing with" or "what works" - I don't see Mo meeting some goal as the measure of success. If she finds a way Around doing something which pushes her buttons, then that's success on her terms. The idea of "catering to a child's whims" is dismissive not just toward children, but toward all human beings because it measures people in terms of outward successes. I am not a better person for having learned to use a table-saw than I was for having developed a dozen strategies for Not using one. A child who wants to be reassured for months on end is not less of a person than the sibling who derives more pleasure from jumping headlong into something new. One of the advantages of keeping kids out of school, is that there's no need for them to learn to do specific things at specific times. It may be easier to see that with academic stuff, but it applies just as well to things like separation and independence and security. The benchmark of unschooling "working" isn't children who are independent and adventurous and skillful in obvious ways -there are unschooling kids who co-sleep into their early teens, who need help on the potty at 8, who can't ride bicycles at 10, who don't read until 16. When parents are engaged and supportive, that's not a result of neglect, its the vagaries of human development.

Coming back to this:

Me catering to his fears and whims did not help him.

It's entirely possible it wouldn't have hurt him, either - whereas pushing kids beyond what they're ready for in the moment Does hurt them. Little hurts at first, but they add together and erode self-esteem bit by bit. One of the gifts of unschooling is that its Okay to help people around fears rather than through them and to see whims as desires worthy of consideration.

voice

I came across a slogan on facebook the other day: people, use your voice and it got me thinking about communication and personal expression. There’s another slogan – I’ve seen it on bumper stickers: children should be seen and heard and believed. Put the two together and you get an idea that sounds good: support your child’s voice, but actually doing that is surprisingly challenging.

Since behavior is communication, I’m going to stretch the idea of the “voice” to include actions.

I have a big “voice” in a lot of ways, even though I can be very soft-spoken in person. When I was first a step-parent, I used my voice in very authoritarian ways. In my understanding of the world, parents had voices and children didn’t – although honestly I would have been appalled and defensive if anyone had said that to me. I thought I was being a respectful parent, honoring the voice of the person I imagined my stepson would one day be.

One of the hardest aspects of parents learning to listen to their children’s voices is learning to hear “no”. It’s devastating. We hang a whole lot of our self-worth on the hope of being accepted and validated by our children – especially if we didn’t get enough acceptance and validation as children, ourselves. So being told “no” by a child can rock a parent to the core. No, I won’t accept that lovingly created gift of nurturing food. No, I won’t wear that beautiful hand-made dress. No, I won’t stop what I’m doing in favor of what you’re doing. No, I’m not you; I don’t like what you like. Ouch. It’s little wonder most parents kick and scream (metaphorically at least) and use their big voices to quiet those persistent nos.

The most common mistake parents who are trying to live peacefully with children make is thinking they can tell and explain, use enough words or the right words, to get children to do what they, the parents want the to do. It’s a mistake in communication, one that misses out on the most important part of communication: listening.