Natural Attachment

November 25, 2009

Say What You Mean; Mean What You Say

Filed under: Education, Parental, Radical Unschooling, Religiosophy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 10:37 pm

So, I’m going to just be linking & leaving it up to you to decide what you read or if you read anything concerning the matter. There’s been a lot of buzz about what ‘we’ say & how we say it. Idzie wrote a little post about her issues with the word ‘teaching’ and then followed it up with another post here. In that second post, you’ll find a link to a post titled The Unschooling Police. I left the comment below at that post:

I think a lot people who are new to unschooling benefit greatly from avoiding words or concepts like ‘teaching’ or ‘rules’. It’s kin to packing up/throwing away/lending out all your packaged curriculum & textbooks until you are convinced that learning really happens without all that, lest you be tempted after a week of ‘nothing’ but Legos & Cartoon Network to start trying to use them again.

It’s easier to find the *need* for & Joy of classes while fully submerged in an unschooling life, than it is to find the *need* for and Joy of an unschooling life while fully submerged in compulsory schooling.

For those of us who ‘get it’, it can seem overkill to eschew certain words…but over seven years ago (before I was a mother) when I started hitting the discussion boards and being reprimanded or corrected for word usage & certain beliefs, I was extremely grateful for the wake-up call. Having the words I use & the meanings I attach to them challenged was a good thing.

I hate that I have been doing this for so long that I’ve almost become ’sloppy’ with word choice & communicating my Value Set of Anarchism & Radical Unschooling…conversations like these are necessary more for those of us who have been at this awhile than for newbies.

I know my son *teaches* me tons of things on an almost daily basis. I choose to listen & *learn*, because I am genuinely interested in what he has to share (usually).

The other thing I wish I had addressed was about the difference between Unschooling & Radical Unschooling. Some people in the community really say that Radical Unschoolers are the only true/pure unschoolers…I might secretly agree with them…

I know I’ve talked about Radical Unschooling before & how I realize how you ‘could’ have an educational or academic only unschooling, but that the very concept behind unschooling seems to say otherwise. I find it hard to believe that if someone fully embraced the concept that Life Is Learning, that every waking moment & decision made is Learning, that they wouldn’t naturally find themselves leaning towards Radical Unschooling or Whole-Life Unschooling.

Let’s take sleep for an example. At any age, our children learn tons about themselves, their bodies & human nature when they, for example, experiment with bed times & varying lengths of sleep/sleep deprivation. What’s more important, *they* learn how much sleep *they* need & when *they* need to sleep. Us forcing them to bed when *we’ve* ‘had enough’ or when we think they should be in bed doesn’t help them find their own sleeping rhythms, but they DO learn not to trust us about sleep & that bigger/older people can use force over smaller/younger people.

I was going to use Media as my example, but I hate long debates about media. Media is flush with innumerable learning opportunities & resources. To limit media is antithetical to unschooling — whole-life or not.

There are some people who really *need* to have things in their life that they can control…it’s understandable, especially if their childhood was largely OUT of *their* control. I know several academic only unschoolers & have had plenty of conversations with them about their ideas, principles & how they view unschooling. They are great people who *need* things to control. They are loving parents, but not always as respectful as most of the radical unschoolers I also know. Their relationship with their children tends to be strained in areas where it wouldn’t be if they could find a way to give their children back some control over their own lives.

Invariably, their need for controlling things bleeds over into their children’s education, their ‘unschooling’. This leads to ‘pushes’, “heavy encouragement” (not my words), forcing of certain materials/classes/practices and ultimately, a not-so-child-directed education. It happens with an almost unnoticeable force from the inside. One day either their children speak up about it or they realize their own unhappiness with ‘unschooling’.

Life goes from, wear what you want to you can choose between the red shirt or the blue shirt. *That* is NOT unschooling.

I (and SO many before me) have seen, experienced & learned that there is a way of parenting or way of seeing Life & our interactions with those we share it with that is beneficial for unschooling, almost imperative for an Unschooling Life to be as broad & open as possible.

Yes, one can be a traditional parent or an ‘AP’ parent & ‘unschool’ their children in an academic sense, but I can’t help but think about what they AND their children could gain from shedding parental control issues & living an over all more respectful & consensual life with one another.

June 30, 2009

Just Say Yes!

Filed under: Parental, Radical Unschooling, Religiosophy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 8:57 pm

One of the first pieces of advice parents get from other peaceful/mindful parents or unschooling parents when they are trying to release their need for control is, “just say yes”. The idea is to find a way to say yes to everything that you possibly can…barring those things which could cause serious harm. And when harm is a possibility, find ways to say yes to part of a request or offer a slight tweak in the idea/plan to avoid possible harm. It is always possible on some level to say yes I am finding (reminding myself).

Yes feels right. Fluid. Flexible. Adaptable. Yes feels loving. Light. Comforting. No feels wrong. Rigid. Unmoving. No feels defeated. Cumbersome. Finite.

I am usually a ‘yes-mum’, but lately, for unknown reasons, I’ve been saying some nos. I realized it today while looking back over the last few weeks. The days when I felt crappy and negative were the days with nos. The days that weren’t joyful were days with nos. The days I had old tapes playing in my mind, were days with nos. So, I thought that I’d bring some good advice for ‘newbies’ and myself. Just say yes!

Letting go of control

Just Say “YES!!!!!”

Finding the Yes

The most Hands On way of being Hands Off

Sandra Dodd on “Saying Yes”

“We can be our kids partner in helping them get what they want in life or we can be the barrier that opens or closes according to our whim.” Beautiful quote from this piece.

Saying “YES” to Children

Yes!

How are you saying “yes”? Can you commit to one day of yeses and then two and before you know it, possibly an entire week? Where could you go from there?

June 10, 2009

Drugs…Sex…?

Filed under: Education, Law, Life, Parental, Politics, Procreation, Radical Unschooling, Religiosophy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 3:20 pm

So, awhile back, Matthew C. left me a comment; in which he asked me about unschoolers and drug use:

Michele, I work in the field of drug and alcohol misuse.

I would be very interested if you could give some thoughts as to how an unschooler would handle the subject of drugs and alcohol.

There is a belief among many that education is the answer to getting young people to make sensible (?) choices about drug and alcohol use.

How would an unschooler deal with that subject?

This post has the aim to address how I (who happens to be an unschooler) handle/will handle drug use, but by no means do I speak for all or even most unschoolers. How one deals with drugs (and sex, figured I’d knock them both out) is a very personal decision and not one I can assume for others.

First, I feel like I have to address how I feel about drug use in general before I talk about how I feel about it and children. I am a huge believer in and supporter of cognitive liberty. I am not Me without the ability to alter or not alter my body & mind in the ways that I see fit. Obviously, I feel as though every man, woman and child is robbed of this liberty at birth, or rather never allowed to exercise this liberty autonomously from day one of their existence. Quite honestly, the fact that I am able to purchase acetaminophen or various cough medicines over-the-counter to take as I like (with the assumptions that I am using them as they are intended to be used), is a lucky fact at best. I alluded before on a past rant that about how drug ’scheduling’ is out of sync with reality and research when I talked about hoasca (scheduled 1) being scheduled as worse than cocaine (scheduled 2) by our current drug schedule. Let me NOT get started on marijuana or pure heroin and opium or for that matter most psychoactive/hallucinogenic drugs that have been used in ritual on this Earth dating as far back as we can go.

(Wikipedia article) Drug use is a practice that dates to prehistoric times. There is archaeological evidence of the use of psychoactive substances dating back at least 10,000 years, and historical evidence of cultural use over the past 5,000 years.[1] While medicinal use seems to have played a very large role, it has been suggested that the urge to alter one’s consciousness is as primary as the drive to satiate thirst, hunger or sexual desire.[2] Others suggest that marketing, availability or the pressures of modern life are some of the reasons humans use many psychoactives in their daily lives. However, the long history of drug use and even children’s desire for spinning, swinging, or sliding indicates that the drive to alter one’s state of mind is universal.[3]

This relationship is not limited to humans. A number of animals consume different psychoactive plants, animals, berries and even fermented fruit, becoming intoxicated, such as cats after consuming catnip. Traditional legends of sacred plants often contain references to animals that introduced humankind to their use.[4] Biology suggests an evolutionary connection between psychoactive plants and animals, as to why these chemicals and their receptors exist within the nervous system.[5]

I really love the comment about children spinning being indicative to our innate desire to alter our state of mind. I definitely see this in my own son on a regular basis — the dizziness only happens once he stops the spinning and is brought back down to Earth. He says he likes spinning because it makes his mind do ‘funny’ things. In his book, The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood (p. 139-140), Veerman quotes Holt on children and drug use:

In his own home an adult should be in a position to lay down the rules — for instance if he does not want smoking. But outside the home, the child’s choice should prevail. “On the whole I believe, ” says Holt “that people ought to be able to use the drugs they want. I don’t think we should ‘protect’ children against whatever drugs their elders use, and in a society in which most of their elders do use drugs and many use them excessively and unwisely. I don’t see how we can.”
Holt thinks that adolescents drink and smoke too much in order to look grown-up in a society in which there is no real and serious way to be grown-up. He admits that they are often driven to do this by social pressure from peer groups, but in his opinion this is a way to show their courage in a society in which their is no serious and authentic way to do so.

Wow! Children also seek relief from physical pain, emotional pain and stress, like all adults. We all make various and divergent choices on how we deal with, relieve or escape these issues — not all of them include chemicals. I am of the opinion that there is no difference between the proscribed anti-depression addicted (whether admitted or not) mother and the heroin addict on ‘the nod’ in the Denny’s bathroom or the Ritalin induced coma of an otherwise (previous to the Ritalin proscription) ‘normal’ 3rd grader. The only difference is that the heroin addict and the mother can choose to NOT continue on their paths in one way or another, whereas the 3rd grader has no say or rights — he can’t ‘go off’ his meds, because it’s required by the school, proscribed by an ‘expert’ and enforced by his parents (one of which is probably on anti-depressants). However, if he was caught smoking in the backyard in an effort to relieve some stress (or as an experiment), he’d be grounded, shamed or caused physical harm by some form of physical abuse disguised as ‘punishment’ — no wonder it’s that child who continues to smoke (and usually go on to ‘harder’ drugs) despite the possibility of more ‘punishment’.

I am not on this Earth to tell others how to live or what to do to their bodies. I CAN tell them how they might choose to live and what my experiences are, as well as what accurate and non-biased science has to say about their choices or proposed choices. Which is what I have done/will do with my child(ren). Being open and honest about your own experiences, choices, beliefs and current available research, is the only way to help a less experienced person gain the knowledge that *they* need to make informed decisions. Shaming, forbidden and punishing only make a person rash and act without truly being informed or as safe as possible.

I am at a quandary as to how to handle drugs in my own home. While I do believe that ALL drugs should be legal and regulated for purity sake and I believe in living as though the world already exists in the state you’d like to see it in, these two ideas conflict majorly with current reality. While I don’t want illegal substances in my home unless I am bringing them into my home knowingly and willingly ready to accept any legal ramifications, I also want my home to be a safe place for my children to experiment if they so choose to. I would much rather my son experiment with say, marijuana or LSD in my home with me as a sober (and experienced party) who is ready and able to keep him company during his experimentation and seek medical help if needed than for him to take a chance at a random party. However, the current law would only be harsher on me for trying to create the safest environment for my son to exercise his cognitive liberty than it would be if I was in the dark about his usage. Not only would he have legal action brought against himself, but I would suffer legally as well. I’d rather take that chance than to possibly passively force my child to seek out less savory or less safe means & places of experimentation.

Do not condone. Do not condemn. Seek to understand the desires & needs behind a choice (address and tend to those if possible). Supply information. Supply safety at the highest level possible given the choice at hand.

Now, let’s talk about sex. As you can probably guess by now, I am one of those ’sexual liberation’ people. Sense I am quoting Holt through Veerman, let’s not stop now:

The Right to Control One’s Sex Life. Holt pictures a society wherein sex is much less perilous for children than it is in reality. We should not view children as innocent and a-sexual beings, says Holt, but acknowledge and respect their feelings in this regard as well as in all others, including a possible refusing of sex.

Holt [Escape From Childhood] (p.213) “Some people have voiced to me the fear that if it were legal for an adult to have sex with a consenting child, many young people would be exploited by unscrupulous older ones. The image here is of the innocent young girl and the dirty old man. Here, too, we are caught with the remains of old myths.” Holt does not seem to acknowledge that children might nevertheless become victims of adults. Farson in his article Child Protection that Backfires, argues that parents rather than strangers exploit and mistreat children. Holt and Farson do not fear that adults who seek the friendship of children may want to abuse them. “The best way to protect children, ” says Farson, “is to give them the same legal rights as we give to adults.”

I know I am going to get swamped with personal accounts of molestation, rape, pregnancy and so on from readers who would disagree that children can and should be in control of their sex lives. I would counter that a lot of these issues stem from a general lack of sexual liberation of Western Culture and because we do oppress youth and their natural biological desires instead of giving them information and tools to safely and intelligently navigate a world of people suffering from various neurosis stemming from sexual oppression. I would also express great sympathies towards these persons, because I too have been a victim. I can also say that if I had been given direct, open and honest information and given this information much earlier than most would deem ‘appropriate’, I would have successfully avoided a few situations. I am willing to accept that children are capable of determining their own level of sexual exploration (and safely do so if given correct information) on their own terms and timeline. I fully accept that these levels, terms and timelines might NOT correspond to how I might make decisions for myself.

I do not support abstinence only. I especially do not support religiously based abstinence programs — but this is also because I believe that children should have the same Religious Freedom that their elders enjoy. I do not support a ideology that flies in the face of human nature and biological design. Telling a hormonal teenager that everything their body is telling them is wrong, because some “guy-in-the-sky (read, G-d)” might not ‘like’ for them to engauge in certain activities until they’ve entered into a legal contract (er, I mean, have been married) is just asking for all kinds of problems and is wrong on SO many levels I can’t begin to touch on here. A better approach is real, accurate and honest information about sex, sexual identity, sexuality and how to explore/experiment (if one chooses to) in the safest way possible given the decisions a person makes.

Obviously, I plan on being as open and honest as my children’s comfort levels guide me to be. My son has already seen (up close and personally) numerous births (nakedness, messiness and all) and he has a fairly good grasp on the ‘hows’ of baby making. Maybe not so much the actual mechanics behind it, but the science at least with correct names of body parts and so on. I don’t usually plug too many books and such on here, but I will recommend a fantastic book that covers all aspects of sexuality from what makes a family and partnership (pro/neutral homosexual), to how twins & other multiples happen (artificially & naturally), to masturbation (normal, NOT sinful) and hormones at work behind sexual desire. This book has been one of the best things I have ever bought for my child and I have spread the greatness of this book to everyone I can. The book is accurate, scientific, but yet done in a manner that is amusing to children and easy to understand. I believe it is recommended for ages between 5 & 9 and up to 12…we bought it for E when he was about 3yrs. and he had me read him the entire book (it is a huge book) from front to back a few times. He’s since taken it off his self and read various parts of it many times. We’ve talked about things he’s read on many occasions.

I believe one of the hardest things for parents is for them to trust their children. Trust them to really listen to their bodies and hearts and to make informed decisions that resonant with who they are — especially when their choices do not align with their parents’ choices. The trusting comes very hard, because most of us were told that we can not be trusted and to not trust ourselves when we were young. We’ve been conditioned to rely on the gospel of elders and ‘experts’ and do often ignore the sound advice that our bodies are telling us. To fully detach yourself from your children, to accept and understand that they are their own-selves is hard. I know that had I been allowed the confidence to believe in and trust myself growing up, I wouldn’t have made some of the horrible mistakes I made nor would I have fallen into some of the situations I found myself in.

I hope this answers your question Matthew and others.

December 29, 2008

“I need time away from my child…”

Filed under: Parental, Radical Unschooling, Religiosophy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 6:02 pm

Well, I don’t, but that’s what you hear so many parents (especially mums) saying these days.

“I need *me* time.”
“When will I ever get time to myself?”
“I don’t know how you can be around your child all day; I’d kill myself.”
“I give you credit, because I sure couldn’t do it.”
“I have my own life outside of Motherhood/Parenthood.”
“I can’t imagine being around them all day.”
“I was so thankful once they could start school/daycare/preschool and I could have some time to myself.”
“Don’t you want time for yourself?”
“The time I do spend with them is enough chaos for me already.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but…”

And so on and so on…things we’ve all heard and probably some things many of us have said at one time or another. The crazy thing is that in almost any circle of parents that you say one of these lines in, you’ll be affirmed with nods of agreement or smiles of understand or the occasional outburst of “oh, I know” or “I hear ya”. Is it wrong for parents to enjoy their children and enjoy being around them, sharing life together? Did I miss the memo about it being ‘uncool’ to be a mum?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy taking showers by myself and going to the bathroom by myself, as well as a whole host of other little things throughout the day in my life that I do or would rather do by myself. I have hobbies that are not connected to or centered around the fact that I am a mother with a 5 year old and I magically find time to do them both with and without company. Furthermore, I actually like being around my son all day…not that we’re together all day, because Elijah rarely (actually, I can’t remember the last time) sleeps with us and he spends at least a couple hours alone in his room on most days, as well as other bits here & there in the day where he’s not involved with what I am doing.

I enjoy my son’s company. He’s a really neat person and has interesting and often profound ideas about things. I love to see and hear about what he’s been creating and doing all day. Lately, I’ve been extremely fulfilled by sitting for more than an hour or two building with Legos with him…can you imagine how great it is to forget about everything around you for a couple hours (until your stomach starts gnawing on your backbone from ignored hunger) by just clicking together little plastic bricks?! We have fun together every day with very little pressure if any at all about what time it is or when we have to start or be done with certain activities. It is a life full, free and spontaneous. Oh and it is ‘Real Life’, maybe not the ‘Real Life’ that you’ve chosen, but the ‘Real Life’ that we’ve chosen.

While it might seem hard to contrast the life of a stay-at-home-unschooling-mum to that of a say, part-time-working-with-kids-in-school-mum, I have some ideas as to why the latter mum says one or all of the above statements about needing time away from her children. First, let’s consider the most obvious: child is away from parents all day at school/daycare and parents are away at work or at home doing whatever they do without child all day. Then, once school ends there is a (almost seemingly) never ending routine of hurry, rush, cry, beg, bribe, sports/music practice, fast food, homework, bath fight, tv fight, pyjama fight, bed fight and then collapse. I am going to do my best to address each of the things that I mentioned, as well as some of the deeper issues behind some of them.

Bed Fight: You can not force someone to sleep…let me rephrase this: You can not force someone to sleep without wearing them completely down mentally, physically or by drugging them and even that is not a guarantee. A baby/toddler crying in the next room incessantly, finally gives up on you and after complete exhaustion from physical & emotional exertion falls asleep…they start to give up on you quicker and quicker and resort to sleep as an escape from reality — I’ve studied enough psychology (both on and off the record) to know how sleep works as an escape for so many, including young children. When children (starting from birth) can regulate their own sleep cycles, they find a groove that suits them and it becomes much easier for them to adapt that cycle for things such as appointments and even school later on — especially if those appointments and school are their choice.

Pyjama Fight: Do I really have to stress how unimportant it is to wear certain clothing (or any for that matter) to go to sleep? Sure, if you know that your child sleeps better not wearing her jeans, then reminding her of this and helping her find something softer and less binding/bunching might be nice, but it’s not worth fighting over…ever.

TV Fight: There are so many ways this one can go, but if the fight is simply because the TV watching is holding up the next hurried section of the daily routine, then maybe the routine should be changed or reevaluated and not the TV time. If you are against TV, then don’t own one — it’s hypocritical for you to limit a child’s TV time and not follow the same limits yourself…you aren’t setting a good example. But, “all he does is watch TV all day [really, all day?]“…I am sure that he does watch TV every moment that you allow him to, because it’s being rationed out and limited. If you removed TV limits, he’d gorge on it until he realized that he really could watch it whenever he wanted to and he’ll then move on to other things…especially if there are other interesting things in his life (of his choosing) to move on to. Either get over the TV/computer or don’t have one…you freely chose to buy them and bring them into your home, right?

Bath Fight: Attention, this is a blog written by a ‘dirty hippie’, so keep that in mind. Unless a child is literally covered in mud and her school wouldn’t allow her to attend in such a state, then either finding a non-coercive way to bathe her (unless you are ‘okay’ bathing someone against their will when it isn’t a life or death issue) or calling her in absent are your options. You control your body and when it is bathed; you either like to bath once or twice a day or go for several days without doing so — guess what, children are the same way, except that they don’t buy into social standards of beauty & such and you will find that most (unless they are absolutely filthy) will not bath daily or even weekly. Unless a child has a natural love of water, bathing is usually something that they will NOT choose to do regularly until some time around puberty. Being squeaky clean daily in body and environment (your house) is something that most of us are conditioned to be/do, not something that we freely choose to be/do.

Homework: Well, it goes without saying that if your children are not in school or not subjected to school-at-home(schooling), then there will be no homework! Imagine a life free from doing the same worksheets, chapter reviews & ‘creative’ projects that even as a child you hated and didn’t understand (didn’t understand both how or why). There is far too much homework and it is placing much unneeded extra stress on families who are already finding it hard enough to connect and be civil to one another, without schools dictating what goes on at home after the last bell rings. School is pernicious and finds it’s way into & controls every fiber of your life as a family…it’s like AOL (America Online), you can never really erase it from your computer entirely!

Fast Food: It doesn’t take a genius to realize that eating ‘food’ from the ‘Golden Arches’ every day is not a healthy way to live, but at least these children are being fed something and I credit at least that much, because sadly some parents (even without economic hardships) aren’t even doing that much. I also realize that many people out there who are parents don’t know how to cook or rather loath cooking, but I know that almost everyone likes to eat. As parents, we have an obligation to provide the best food that we can for our children and I challenge anyone who is raising their children on ‘food’ from the ‘Golden Arches’ to ask themselves if that is the best that they can do or if that is the best that they want to do. Real food that is cooked at home costs less and much of it can be made ahead of time to end up being as fast if not faster than ‘fast food’ and cooking & eating it won’t kill you. Once again, you choose to have children, so you choose to provide them with food and they are kind of at your mercy on that one.

Sports/Music (et al) Practice: In general, we all are over scheduled and trying to cram yet another extracurricular obligation into our lives to add to our list of ‘look what we are doing’. Children don’t need scheduled stuff. They can have an interest in something and freely choose to take classes/practices/lectures/camps centered around their interests, but they don’t need their parents trying to impress grandma, neighbors, colleagues and possible future colleges with a laundry list of forced sports, dancing, instruments, clubs, scouts and community service time. Yes, we all want our children to be successful, but our definition of success and their definition might be worlds apart.

Parents & Children Separated Most of the Day: Unless a child is lucky enough to be with his parents constantly for his first 4 to 6 years before being sent off to daycare/school (and even if he was lucky), he longs for his parents, for love and for a home that is free from the oppression, rules and limits of school. Of course a younger child might be almost intolerably clingy in the evenings and on weekends. Parents are simultaneously full of relief that they are free of their children and guilty that their children are away…not realizing that it’s this constant separation that makes being with one another total hell. We miss out on so much when we aren’t with our children and this can play havoc on our conscience, not mention that we just don’t ‘know’ our children well enough to try and help them meet their needs when we miss out on the parts of their day that they are away plus when they are asleep. We are equipped poorly to deal with stressed out strangers. And let’s face it, it’s just not fun to be around people who are stressed out and boy are schooled children stressed out to the max! They leave school only to return to a traditional parenting home full of more oppression, limits, rules, punishment and so on.

Hurry, Rush, Cry, Beg, Bribe: Whether most people are willing to admit it or not, they equate a ‘good child’ with one who is not loud, always clean, uses social niceties, does exactly what you ask & when you ask and never behaves in a manner that you or society find ‘unacceptable’. This causes otherwise seemingly intelligent people to engage in odd & futile parental rituals of rewards, punishments & conditional love with their children — all in an attempt to produce to the world a ‘good child’ or rather a quiet, clean and blindly obedient shell of a child. If this is really how you think children should be, then please do your possible future children a favor…don’t have them, instead have a beta fish on your desk or some ivy in the bathroom. It is completely unnatural to view children like this and completely unreasonable to expect them to adhere to this misty-eyed made up picture of what a child should be.

Children are naturally messy, loud and oblivious of their impact on their environment* (furniture, wall & etc.) and naturally self absorbed to a degree.

 *an adult can stare off into space and unconsciously pick at the edge of a Formica counter top and when they wake up from their daydream, they tisk-tisk at themselves for picking at the counter and then find some glue or tape. When a (traditionally parented) child does it, they try to lie about it or hid it, because they will be punished for having no respect for their home and their parents’ hard work/time/money and when they are asked why they did it, they won’t have an answer, because they don’t know why they did it…they were oblivious to the fact that they were doing it.

Children are also oblivious of their impact (or not concerned with it) on other people when they are constantly punished for doing something ‘unkind’ or ‘unacceptable’ — the focus is on them and not the other person they effected. Their behavior then manifests into ‘how can I not get caught or punished?’ instead of ‘how will this effect others?’. I know first hand, as I was raised in a home that used all kinds of rules, limits, forced bedtimes, spanking, grounding and the like. My father always asked me, “do you just not think about anyone but yourself?” and it wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that yes, I didn’t think about anyone but myself, because that’s who I was taught to focus on by finding ways around punishment and how it effected me. I was solely focused on what I wanted and not what others wanted or needed. I wasn’t taught empathy or respect for others, I was taught to be self centered, to seek out praise and to avoid punishment and I am still painfully unlearning it. Children have no reason to lie & sneak unless we lie to them or they are trying to deflect the effect of pain from punishment. Because many mainstream parents are self centered (often through no real fault of their own), they focus on how their children’s lives effect themselves and not how they are effecting their children’s lives…they expect their children adapt to them and do what they want, without them ever having to work with their children to find consensual ways to live together and because of this, they make both their children and themselves miserable and continue the cycle of self-centered humanity.

It is no wonder most mainstream parents find themselves chanting “I need time away from my child…”. I wouldn’t much want to be around a child or adult who is obliviously self centered; constantly stressed from the oppression of being forced into school or work they didn’t freely choose; stressed, oppressed and depressed from being controlled by others with rules, limits and punishments; having their natural curiosity and inclinations thwarted at every turn and being repeatedly told how dirty, loud, rude, messy and bad they are.

I find more and more that being a mindful/authentic/peaceful/radical unschooling parent is the best ‘couch therapy’ around. The commitment forces the parent to look deeply into themselves, to remember and assess their own childhood, to question their personal & social obligations & standards, to learn to fully take on the perspective of another human being and see that person’s life through his eyes, to embrace the empowerment of deschooling his own life and mind of what he’s been force fed and to trust that his children will learn what they need and when they need it. By committing oneself to this way of thinking and living, one finds that her world is huge, rich and crammed with options that she can freely choose, whereas before or instead she would be oppressed and limited by self imposed power struggles, undue stress, judgments and forever trying to live up to a perfection perspective that is both unnatural and unreasonable.

If more than anything, most parents need more time with their children (the children definately need the time with their parents) and time that is free of rules, judgments and punishments. Go take some time or make it by canceling that soccer practice that your daughter hates anyways or do something even more radical and let whether or not to go away to school be your children’s free choice and then figure out what you can do to make it work for your family’s situation. When there is nothing but freedom and unconditional love, there is always a way.

December 14, 2008

Rules vs. Principles, again

Filed under: Parental, Radical Unschooling, Religiosophy — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — michele james-parham @ 6:18 pm

I am revisiting thoughts on living with free children and being an adult (more specifically a parent) who does not hold a set of rules or expected behaviors for my child or any children I choose to associate myself with. What does that mean exactly? I do not carry around on paper or in my brain a list of things that a child can and can not do, like “no feet on the coffee table”, “don’t say fuck”, “no ’sweets’ until after dinner”, “no playing on the stairs” or “you ‘have to’ give grandma a hug”.

Shall I talk more about the list I just made…
“no feet on the coffee table” — We don’t own one, but it wouldn’t be a rule regardless. If we were at someone’s house and either myself or my son had our feet on the coffee table, I don’t see why we would not honor our host’s request that we not have our feet on the table. My son might ask why and either our host or myself would say something along the lines of, “our shoes could scratch the wood or dirt from our feet/shoes might get on the table and make it messy”. No big deal.

“don’t say fuck” — I don’t feel as though there are ‘bad’ words, there are only words and some words effect some people differently…I freely use whatever words I feel I need to in the moment for clarity or emphasis and sometimes this means saying ‘fuck’ (or other ‘bad’ words). Can my five year old say the word ‘fuck’? Why yes, yes he can and a whole host of other words, as he has a very large vocabulary! Do I care if or when he says it? I don’t care if he says it, but it’s not a word that he reaches for and he has a much more fun time saying silly things like, ‘fishsticks’, ‘fishpaste’ and other more elaborate explicatives. I maybe sort of care when/how he says it, but not really..screaming it across a grocery store wouldn’t really be cool for either of us to do and if grandma has an issue with it, then he can choose to not say it so that grandma doesn’t get upset or he say it and realize that she’ll freak out when he does. Either way, when you make a big deal out of certain words it give those words much more power than others and the desire to try and ‘get away’ with saying them could turn into a constant thing. Oh, and if he did scream it across the store, I’d explain that in the future he might not want to do that, because the word upsets some people and it upsets most people when anything is screamed across a store.

“no ’sweets’ until after dinner” — Are you kidding me? This really has more to do with weird control issues concerning adults, children and food or possibly a parent trying desperately to cling to or recreate an unrealistic misty-eyed vision of the whole family sitting down together every meal or every night. I could write a book on autonomy, food and children. Bottom line boils down to this: if you (including children) are hungry, then eat and if you want to eat ice cream for dinner, then do so. If you have health issues that don’t allow for excess sugar, then look for sugar free or low sugar frozen delectables. Seriously, no one will want to eat ice cream for dinner FOREVER; it might only seem like that for a little while if you start actually letting your children eat what they want and when they want…until they trust that you aren’t going to change your mind about your release of control over food. So what if it ‘ruins’ their dinner…they can eat leftovers when they are hungry later on.

“no playing on the stairs” — Here’s one of those ‘could be a safety issue’ things. What is meant by ‘no playing on the stairs’? Does that mean that we can’t sit on the bottom steps and play a card game? Does that mean we can’t slide down on cardboard with proper paddings & strategically placed pillows? Does that mean we can’t skip steps when going up? Does that mean that we can’t toss/roll a ball/slinky down and have someone at the bottom toss it back up? I am reaching here for things that children do on the stairs regularly that is considered ‘playing’. Possibly, we could warn an older child to mind his younger sibling or young friend when ‘playing’ on the stairs, so that s/he doesn’t get knocked down and fall down a flight of stairs, but that isn’t forbidding anyone from doing anything and it is just reminding someone of the ‘Principle’ of Safety.

“you ‘have to’ give grandma a hug” — NO, actually you don’t have to do anything with your body that you don’t want to…even something seemingly as innocent as giving grandma a hug or kiss. It might put grandma off or even hurt her feelings, but the fact remains that no one should force you to do anything with your body that you don’t feel like doing. I hear tell of children who are never coerced into ‘the hug/kiss’ and who joyfully engage in such things, but other children whose parents insist on it, will scream, run away or just outright refuse — I don’t blame them one bit. Besides, aren’t we simultaneously telling our children to never let anyone touch them or force them to do something physical that they don’t want to do and forcing them to hug grandma?!?! What kind of mixed message is that we are sending?

So, that’s a sampling of some rules and expected behaviors that are common for Mainstreamers, but not myself. I also like to model social niceties (like saying ‘please’ & ‘thank you’) rather than expect and enforce them…especially gratitude, because forced empty ‘thank you’s don’t help a child grown up to be a grateful person. Actually living and acting in ways that reflect how you want to be treated, how you want your children to be treated and how you want them to treat others is the best kind of ‘teaching’ you can do. Actually living in ways that reflect your principles (principles like: Honesty & Safety) show children a style or way of living that is acceptable and that serves you and your interactions well. It is a total parental cop out (and not one that works) to say “do as I say and not as I do”.

So, how does a child who grows up in a house/community with no rules, make it out in the ‘real world’? First, children who are NOT locked away inside a school building 5 to 7 hours a day are living in the Real World and NOT a building with literature books, math word problems and multicultural studies pretending to emulate the Real World. If children are already living in the Real World, then they are learning to navigate that Real World with the help of their family and community. There are already rules and boundaries in the Real World that children have to make decisions about…why would we spend time making up and enforcing arbitrary rules and boundaries to get our children ‘ready for Real Life’, if in fact they are living a Real Life in the Real World? It is very plain and simple that the library closes at 5pm, so if we want to go there, then we have to leave far enough in advance to arrive at the library before it closes and if we decide to stop somewhere on the way, we are also deciding that it is okay to possibly miss out on the library today.

Every person has complete authority over themselves. We choose whether or not to give another person authority over us…be that an employer, teacher, parent, government or spiritual leader/G-d. When we choose to give another person authority over us, we also choose to deal with and often accept the issues that can arise from such a relationship and power dynamic. Unfortunately, most parents don’t even begin to pretend to accept their children’s authority over their own life and that children naturally give up a great deal of authority over to their parents and other people that they form trusting relationships with and with whom they can depend on to help them navigate through unfamiliar situations. Instead, most parents assume that they have complete authority over their children and that they deserve this authority or that it is like a right to have it — I mean after all it is the parents who are feeding, clothing, housing and paying for entertainment…once again though, parents choose to have children and to do these things for them out of love and legalities.

On a parenting Meet Up forum, I’ve been spending a great deal of time defending children and talking about living peacefully with them, as well as learning to accept & work with rather than against many of their behaviors, I was trying to find another article to convey some of these ideas and I ran across one that I had missed from a long while back. It deals with living with rules vs. principles and how there is no need to create arbitrary boundaries now to ‘teach’ our children how to respect or deal with real boundaries later in life.

A World of Rules?

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