One word? When seven would do…

It’s been a funny few weeks. Lots going on with lots of it being the sorts of things which throw me off into periods of introspection, questionning, challenging and reevaluating. I’ve been involved in a long and wearying online debate about whether Home Education is indeed a lifestyle choice or simply an educational alternative; I’ve had a few real life chats with people – a couple of whom are childless and therefore have no corner to defend and both asked intelligent questions and saw many positives without me having to spell them out to them; equally I’ve had a couple of real life conversations with people who either have children at school or are teachers themselves so are coming at the debate from an immediate defensive point of view (as I imagine I was too). I’ve been super-sensitive too to lots of generalisations which have been winding me up – more on that later. We are currently debating and thinking and talking through all sorts of life choices and future plans and I’m suddenly more aware than ever of the ‘forever-ness’ our choices have consequences and effects on not just us, but our children too. They have dreams and ideals and it feels only right to be taking their opinions into consideration at this time when we are likely laying down foundations for our lives, maybe for the rest of our lives. I finished that book I’ve been talking about a lot ‘And The Skylark Sings With Me’ and that has given me acres of thought fodder, plenty of which I’m still ploughing through even though I’ve closed the last page on the book. And finally in a week when one of my children would have been starting school and the other turned seven I suddenly feel like parenting has stepped up a gear; in my own, in theirs and in other people’s eyes.

I’ve often said that I don’t much care what other people think of me. There are very few choices or actions I’ve made in my life that I am not happy enough with to defend and justify and rarely, if ever, do I feel the need to do that anyway. I’ve always been of the opinion that you should accept people for who they are and if being around them has a positive effect on you then you should be around them more and if their company brings out negatives in you then you should avoid them. I expect other people to follow the same discipline with regard to me and that if there are things I do, say, look like, act like or stand for that irritate or annoy them to avoid me and not get irritated or annoyed rather than feel the need to let me know about it. Until it comes to my children that is. Then I become hyper-senstive to everything that is said, thought or implied about them. I want to defend them, protect them and change any bad thoughts people have about them. This is not a reaction to anyone saying anything bad about Davies or Scarlett by the way, simply me doing lots of thinking.

One of my big things about parenthood is that I wanted to celebrate my children as individuals; as the people they are rather than what I, or others, expect them to be. To give them the freedom to grow into their potential, to be happy and fulfilled adults. To get what they want out of live and to spend their time doing things that they love. That is something I have strived for as an adult, and despite some stumbles and occassional wrong turnings along the way, most days I would say I achieve that. I can’t think of anyone I would rather share my life with than the friends and family I currently do. I would not have made any different choices in pretty much any areas and while we are not currently on track for where we’d like to be we are on track for making the next lot of plans to get there. I am proud of being different to ‘most’ people, of treading our own path, of looking at life through different eyes and deciding what is important to us and chasing that dream rather than sticking with one track and following it blindly through life, only to reach the other end and realise that it hadn’t been at all what you wanted after all. I hear too many older people – my own parents included muttering about ‘if I had my time over again…’ and a list of all the things they would and wouldn’t do, they wish they had seen and been and way too many if only’s. I think a lot of that setting us on a certain path takes place in childhood, with the expectations put on us by our parents, our peers, our schooling. I hope to allow Davies and Scarlett the freedom to have never had these shackles in the first place rather than have to break free of them along the way.

The veering away from deciding on their behalf what is important for them is a very big part of why we Home Educate, why we do it in an autonomous manner and why we have not pushed reading, writing, languages, musical instruments and many of the other things which sometimes get asked of me when I describe our educational approach. I have no idea whether this is right or wrong really. Most of the time I believe it to be right. I know that the things they do focus on and have passion for are not necessarily the areas that we have had a bias towards. I knew nothing about dinosaurs, film making or indeed many of the things that my children hold near encyclopedic knowledge on. But I have managed to answer questions, research and facilitate furthering their and my own knowledge, sort out field trips or find others who do know answers for them. There are things which I can see they have taken on as a result of direct exposure to them from me, but there are others which I couldn’t pinpoint their initial spark of interest in. Ironically in following Davies along his path so far I have rediscovered many lost by the wayside passions of my own such as art but I can’t think of anything they have wanted to know more about and I’ve not managed to help them in their quests. I imagine this will become more frequent in years to come and I look forward to the myriad of things they will drag me along with them to experience as we go.

But as a result of holding my lifestyle and choices up for scrutiny rather too many times in the last couple of weeks and not always articulating myself very clearly, or being tired, or defensive, or busy or simply not in the mood I have come away from a few conversations feeling a twinge of uncertainty, a glimmer of worry or simply not quite so brave or convinced or confident as normal of our choices. Ive long been aware that this is a big choice I’m making for Davies and Scarlett – first to Home Educate in the first place – to choose not to use school. This marks them out as different – for life. Likely one of the first pieces of personal information they will give about themselves to new people they meet will be that they were Home Educated and the older they get the more common this will get – already at least once a week or so Davies deals with this question, he is known at Badgers and Beavers as ‘the one who doesn’t go to school’. Will they grow to resent that choice made for them? I know the choice will be theirs to attend school in the future if they decide they want to but watching the children gathered at Davies’ party and later at my house and then comparing them to the children at the party who do go to school, and indeed when I watch the children at Badgers or Beavers or the park I am often struck by some sort of inate difference between Home Ed and schooled kids. This shouldn’t be surprising given how much of an influence I believe school has on a child and of course I perceive this difference to be positive, wonderful, proof of the pudding. But will my children? Will society?

Something that resonated with me very much in the Skylark book was a chapter about ‘typical children’ and how there is no such thing. In just the way there is no typical adult or even human, there is no such creature as the typical child who’s needs can be broadly met with a general provision. I struggle daily with some show of prejudice or stereotypying of people by gender or age – I have a real issue with phrases such as ‘being a boy’ or ‘what boys do’. I only have experience of one son but that is sufficient to tell me that he alone disproves many sweeping statements of what boys are like. I have seen more boisterousness, aggression, desire for rough play and all of the ‘slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails’ type nonsense demonstrated by my own daughter than by my son, let alone the daughters of friends. Similarly while Scarlett may well fit neatly into the pink and sparkly princess mould that she was ‘born to fill’ she also strikes out daily in her own one child feminist crusade blasting myths about what little girls are supposed to do and like and be.

I also get irritated by ‘terrible twos’ and other such age-specific categorisations of behaviour. I was shocked when my second child showed what were deemed to be ‘classic examples of what all two year olds do’ because my first two year old had never done so. He never acted like a 3 year old, 4 year old, 5 year old or 6 year old very often either. He always acted like Davies though. And when Scarlett is being difficult I don’t think for one minute it’s because she’s four, I think it’s because she’s Scarlett and this is her way of acting or reacting to what’s going on around her. I think writing it off as merely down to age or gender is doing that individual a great disservice. It may have a bearing on it, just the same as my hormones may make me react with less patience or indeed rational behaviour towards something the day before my period starts but that doesn’t excuse or explain it 100%. I have always loathed the intimation that I have a temper because of my hair colour; as though it undermines what ever it is that has caused my loss of temper and I try very hard not to do the same dismissing of my children’s emotions or characters by writing them off as merely down to them being a 4 year old girl or a 7 year old boy.

This is a post about not very much really, a collection of thoughts I’ve had swirling around and wanted to commit to a page. It records how I’m feeling just now and I may well come back to it and add more. I feel in something of a state of flux just now, wanting to ensure I am not missing opportunities for the children, while still maintaining that fragile balance of allowing them to find their own way. A bit of quite observation coupled with chatting to some close friends has reminded me of some of the amazing things about Davies and Scarlett which make them uniquely them and I’ve been thinking of ways to help them open out some new opportunities to assist them in learning more about the things that inspire them. So I guess it’s a bit of a watch this space, a lot of getting things down so I can reflect and read back myself next time I have a wobble about what we’re doing and just how crazy we really are and the need to dump some of this out of my head so I can get on with focussing about something else for a while instead. Cos you know, us red headed, female, 30 somethings, we need to be thinking about just the 17 things at any given time. Any more and we might just lose our tempers! 😉