Freedom

I just stumbled across this quote, and it really resounded with me, especially in light of my thinking about my 16 year old former self yesterday. I refuse to be a flea.

If you put fleas in a shallow container, they jump out.

But if you put a lid on the container for just a short time, they hit the lid trying to escape and learn quickly not to jump so high.

They give up their quest for freedom.

After the lid is removed, the fleas remain imprisoned by their own self-policing.

So it is with life.
Most of us let our own fears or the impositions of others imprison us in a world of low expectations.

~Andrew Hsu

Education

"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die."

– John Taylor Gatto

Quote of the Day

This quote from Jerry and Esther Hicks was in my inbox this morning, and it couldn't have been more timely. It's funny how you can hear the same thing over and over in different words, and it takes that 837th exposure, in exactly the right words, at exactly the right time, for it to really sink it.

Nothing new here, but it spoke to me, and I wanted to share it.

"If you decide to make someone the enemy and you're pushing very hard against them, you don't affect them at all, but you disconnect yourself from the Stream. If someone cheats you, they cannot diminish your experience. They only diminish their experience. You cannot be diminished by someone cheating you unless you get all upset about being cheated and push against them and use that as your excuse to disconnect from the Stream."

My Future Street Sweepers (or not)

So many people seem to view parenting as if they are workers on assembly line, trying to churn out a quality product. That envisioned end product would vary from parent to parent I suppose, but at its core it is the same thing: something the PARENT deems worthwhile. They want a child that grows up to be some of version of "successful." They want good grades, they want an athlete, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer. They want to be able to brag about honor rolls and dean's lists and signing bonuses. And they've got them on a conveyor belt long before that! It's a race to see who can walk first, talk first, read first. Sleep through the night, tie your shoes, do long division. MUST TURN OUT A QUALITY PRODUCT.

Everyone is so concerned with how their children are going to "turn out." My issues with this are multiple, but among the top few are: Who decides whether or not they turned out well? WHEN do they decide they turned out any way at all? When they're adults? What's an adult? 18, 21, 30? What are they until then, ingredients? Are they just a part of a whole, not really a person until they've grown up and checked everything off some mystical checklist? Who decides what's on the checklist, and why would that person be more qualified to do so than the child himself?

I'm not interested in raising cookie-cutter children.

My kids are people now, people deserving of respect, trust, and freedom. I'm not concerned with how they're going to turn out; I'm concerned with their happiness RIGHT NOW, right in this moment. I want them to know that they're valued and loved for who they are, not who they may or may not be "someday." I want them to be joyful, fulfilled, engaged, learning, exploring. I want them to be who they are.

And the future? None of us is guaranteed a future. But if I'm blessed enough to watch all my children grow up? I want them to be happy. I want them to be joyful, fulfilled, engaged, learning, exploring. I want them to be who they are.

My hope for all of my children is that they find what they're passionate about, and they DO IT, and do it well, no matter what it is. My hope is that they wake up each morning excited for life, and excited to follow their own particular dream. They will decide what path they'll take, and they will decide what makes them successful. My job is to provide, support, encourage, and get the heck out of their way.

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." - Martin Luther King Jr.

John Holt Quotes for 2/17

Thanks to all my unschooling e-friends for continually sharing!

"It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life."

"Education... now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and fans, driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves."

"True learning-learning that is permanent and useful,that leads to intelligent action and further learning, can arise only out of the experience, interest, and concerns of the learner"

"Standardized testing for children is the equivalent of a gardener pulling his plants up by the root to see if they are growing"

"The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners."

"All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted."

"Education – compulsory schooling, compulsory learning – is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can."

Independence

I read this on Facebook this morning, and found it timely and appropriate for this time of year, when everyone is sending their 5 year olds off to school. The "experts" will tell you that kids need school to learn to separate, that they need it to become independent. Just yesterday, I was watching The Doctors with Spencer, and the OB/Gyn was talking about how important it was for kids to learn to separate at a young age (of course this was in the context of extended breastfeeding, another post altogether) Clearly not an advocate of attachment parenting!

I still remember Spencer's speech therapist extolling the virtues of separation to me when he cried. She told me that it was good for him to separate from me, and that as his mom I just needed to "be strong" and let him go. He was barely three at the time. It's little wonder that that relationship ended, badly, a few months later.

I accept and in fact welcome the fact that my children are temporarily dependent on me, to varying degrees. This stage is so short and so precious! I am enjoying having them close, and being attached to them. I am likewise enjoying watching them gain their independence in their own time in their own way.

Independence is important, no doubt. But trying to force it? What's the price? It should - and will - come naturally and gradually - if you let it.

"It is the nature of the child to be dependent, and it is the nature of dependence to be outgrown. Begrudging dependency because it is not independence is like begrudging winter because it is not yet spring. Dependency blossoms into independence in its own time." Peggy O'Mara

Family Quarrels

I read this quote this morning and felt compelled to post it somewhere. It made me sad, mostly because it is so undeniably true. For all its sadness, there is something beautiful about it too... a reminder of the frailty of relationships, the importance of family, and the need to treat each other with respect. Words truly can cause "splits that won't heal."

"Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go by any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material." F. Scott Fitzgerald