I just finished listening to Sarah Parent’s podcast on unschooling sleep, which was great. I wanted to talk briefly about unschooling and sleep while it is fresh in my mind.
I think one of the most asked questions I get from mainstream parents is, ‘how do you get your son to sleep that long?’ or ‘…to sleep until XXX?’ My quick answer is always, ‘I don’t force him to bed at 7pm (or any arbitrary time).’ This seems like sound logic to me. The question askers either admit that it is crazy to be doing the insane things they do to try and force their kiddos to bed at 7, 8 and 9pm, just to turn around and bitch about having to wake up at 5am with them — Or they complain that they would never get anything done, or have free time/sex time or just fill in the blank with whatever-you-want-time!
Sometimes the people doing the asking have kids in daycare/school or are planning on having them enrolled in one of those in the near future and they can’t see how respected sleep cycles and structured institutions can mesh well. Well, they don’t mesh well. Yet another reason to add to your list of pros and cons when deciding whether or not to force your children into a setting they might not want to be in…especially when you have options (I didn’t say stress-free options) to not ‘have to’ force them into school/daycare. How important is subjecting a child to school, if they can’t even have freedom when it comes to their personal body and cycles? Maybe there are those out there who don’t see it as forcing, because they just see school as ‘unavoidable’, so their kids just have to get used to it.
Do you enjoy or would you enjoy someone else informing you when you are tired and when to go to bed? Are you currently in a situation where you ‘have to’ go to bed at a certain time, because you ‘have to’ get up at a certain time? Thankfully, children don’t ‘have to’ go to school.
Up until this last year & a half, I know that I was like most parents when it came to bed time. I rarely forced my son to bed, but it was clear that when I chose the time (which was not consistent) that was it. Now, unlike most parents, we are co-sleepers (only part-time since about 2 1/2 years ago) and I would have never let Elijah ‘cry-it-out’. I usually laid there with him until he fell asleep. It was still coercion, but better than most. Now, it’s been more of, ‘Now is the time for me to read to you, if you want me to read and for daddy & I to have some time alone. You can quietly play your Leapster or read/play in your room until you go to sleep. Here’s some water, a snack and some love.’
Does that mean I don’t still have nights where I am about to cry or scream, because E is so tired that he’s fighting it with every ounce of his body? No. But, I try to remember that it will pass and I try to help him get what he needs so that he can calm down inside. Trial and error some nights, but most are quite uneventful.
I know in the past on this blog someone mentioned in the comments that their child wasn’t able to regulate their own sleep cycles, because when the commenter ‘let’ her do it, she stayed up for many days in a row with no sleep and didn’t eat well and etc. Apparently, she ended up getting really sick. Now, I don’t know all the factors involved with this particular situation, but it sounds like what I have heard described by several parents as to what happened to them during the de-schooling or unschooling of sleep period with their children. Their children went from having bedtime be this truly painful event to completely rebelling against it, pushing past physically acceptable boundaries and then they did eventually come back down to their own autonomous sleep cycles. They were only able to find their own cycles, because their parents guided & supported them through this de-schooling period. Ridding one’s life of forced and coerced traditions, cycles and experiences is often painful, debilitating and scary as hell.
I have some more links to share with you about sleep, children and unschooling:
Sandra Dodd on Sleeping
Sandra Dodd on Bedtimes
What do you mean no bedtimes?
What are your thoughts on sleep? Do you have problems with sleep now as an adult, because of how sleep with forced on you as a child? Are you struggling through the rebellious de-schooling part of unschooling sleep?
trying to force people to go to sleep when they’re not tired seems like one of the biggest exercises in futility i can imagine. this reminds me, though, that i had a question about the food thing, which is harder for me. you’re vegan, right? do you/would you let elijah eat animal products? do you/would you buy them for him? i guess the answer to this question could vary by household (and we’re not vegan anymore, so it’s just kind of as an example) but what i’m getting at is whether it’s possible to draw a line around what is not just acceptable food, but food at all. for example, personally i don’t think anyone should be eating trans fats (hydrogenated oil, shortening, etc.) they are carcinogenic chemicals that aren’t supposed to be eaten by people, but they’re in so many processed foods. and sure, sweets or fats can be bad for you in excess, but at least they’re food. so, say it’s ok to eat shortening. is it ok to eat dirt? i do allow river to eat dirt occasionally (well, some cultures eat clay, and if it’s “clean” dirt, at least it could be worse, i think), but not cigarette butts, and really never ever would i let him drink bleach… this got very rambly, and parts of this question seem like they’d sort of resolve automatically with older kids, but for me it’s impossible to say that my kid can eat whatever he wants at all, and surprisingly hard to draw a firm line around what is actually food. i don’t necessarily expect you to answer all these questions, i guess i’m just curious if you currently feel the need to draw a line anywhere on this issue.
Comment by laura — August 23, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Thanks Laura! I think your question(s) is great! I’ll try to address it all with a couple of points.
I am vegan. William is a whatever is free, humane or available…so he’s vegan at home, unless you count the occasional fish I cook for him
. Elijah has been raised eating vegan foods since he began eating anything outside of breastmilk. He has issues quite similar to mine with dairy and is aware of them. He has eaten things containing dairy and been sick…he remembers this and weighs his options when he’s somewhere that might have tempting foods with dairy ingredients. He knows how it makes him feel and just like a lactose intolerant adult, he makes his own decisions and lives with the out come of them. He usually asks if foods are vegan or whether or not they have milk in them when we are at someone’s house or a potluck. If he was allergic to dairy proteins, then it would become a *safety* issue…possibly a life or death issue and in that case it would be presented to him in that light and I would draw the line at possibly hospitalization/death. Living a life without arbitrary limits makes this possible for him to trust/believe me on something like this, so he wouldn’t want to test the waters or ‘risk it’, like he does choose with dairy on occasions.
Dirt, grass, flowers and other stuff living or not (such as paint chips, nails, cleaners, etc.) are held up to that standard of *safety*. Will it kill him to eat some dirt, not likely and he’s eaten plenty. Can he eat grass…he has. Has he been informed that there are some plants in nature that can cause him to be horribly ill or die if eaten, yes and he knows to ask before just chopping down. Thankfully, E has always been around non-toxic cleaners for the most part and knows what their functions are and can use them correctly. I can’t imagine him ever thinking about drinking them, unless they had been hidden/locked away and forbidden fruit. When you arm children with information and you respect their ability to think for themselves, it’s amazing what they are capable of! As a result of not locking away my Dr. Bronner’s Soap and such, I have a kid who will happily clean something, rather than think it smells like a drink
As for imparting certain health/diet ideas…E knows why I am vegan. He knows that most animals that are killed and eaten do not live a peaceful life and are not treated with the respect that they deserve…after all they are going to be nourishing your body. He feels that it’s wrong to keep an animal deprived, caged and then brutally killed for food/clothing. He also is aware that it doesn’t have to play out like this and is happy to nibble a little on real free-range eggs on occasion. He’s eaten two scallops and a bite of chicken or two…wasn’t impressed enough with either to want to seek out more. If he asked for meat, then yeah, I would find the best grass-fed pastured beef or whatever he wanted and I’d cook it for him. It’s not my job to decide for him, but to present him with the reality of the situation and for me to respect his decisions.
I agree with you about trans fats, preservatives and so on. Once again, these are concepts that all along E has been told about. We’ve had great discussions about how he feels when he eats certain things that I would rather him not eat. He knows that many of the ingredients in things are there to trick him into thinking it’s fantastic, but in reality it’s not. He’s actually become quite the label decoder! If he asked for something such as Oreos, I would first confirm that those cookies look yummy and then I’d tell him that they contain some things that aren’t that good for you, but these Newman’s Own cookies over here, look like Oreos, taste better and aren’t loaded with too much ‘bad’ stuff — which one would he rather have…he’s a smart kid and usually goes for the ‘better’ choice.
You can’t just open the doors and shove the kid out…you have to guide them, provide them with information and then lovingly support the end results. Safety and information. I talked more about food in these posts and comments.
http://www.naturalattachment.com/wordpress/2008/08/02/unschooling-food/
http://www.naturalattachment.com/wordpress/2008/06/05/round-peg-in-a-square-hole-and-parental-venting-dont-read-if-you-are-easily-offended-when-it-comes-to-parenting-decisions/
http://www.naturalattachment.com/wordpress/2008/04/29/non-coercive-parenting-part-2-unschooling-in-perspective-part-1/
Comment by michele james-parham — August 23, 2008 @ 9:28 pm