*****This is a note from my facebook page. I am sharing it here just so I can have it archived in my blog since it contains so many of my favorite quotes. I just want to say that I no longer feel the same intense emotions I did when I first wrote this. It is water under the bridge.

I have spent the last couple of days stewing,fuming, and stressing over a negative comment about how we homeschool. It was made by some man(I use that term loosely) I don't even know. Not only do I not know him, he does not know my family and yet some how, according to his statement, because we unschool our children are foolish. If I didn't think I would deck him I would invite him to meet my girls and spend time with them. Instead I am going through quotes that speak to why we unschool. I don't give a rats you know what if anyone agrees with me. My husband and I have not just jumped into this without thought and prayer. We do not pass judgement on those that do things differently. We do this because it works for OUR family. We don't do it because we think we are better than anyone else. And unschooling doesn't make us irresponsible heathen parents with children that run around with utter disregard for the world and people around them. I like my kids, I think they are pretty cool PEOPLE.  I take that back I don't think, I know they ARE cool PEOPLE. They make me a better person everyday and I will never be able to thank them enough.

 

 

" Q. Will they have the opportunity to overcome or do things that they think they don't want to do?

 

 A. I'm not sure what this question means. If it means, will unschooled children know what it is to have to do difficult and demanding things in order to reach goals they have set for themselves, I would say, yes, life is full of such requirements. But this is not at all the same thing as doing something, and in the case of school usually something stupid and boring, simply because someone else tells you you'll be punished if you don't. Whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them. Struggling with inherent difficulties of a chosen or inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to superior force destroys it." ~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

 

"Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything." ~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

 

"Living is learning and when kids are living fully and energetically and happily they are learning a lot, even if we don't always know what it is. " ~John Holt ~ in a letter to Joan Pitkin, October 22, 1971From: "A Life Worth Living, Selected Letters of John Holt",Edited by Susannah Sheffer

 

"Children do not need to be made to learn to be better, told what to do or shown how. If they are given access to enough of the world, they will see clearly enough what things are truly important to themselves and to others, and they will make for themselves a better path into that world then anyone else could make for them" ~John Holt~, (1923-1985) American Educator, How Children Fail

 

Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way! —Joyce Fetteroll

 

The goal of unschooling is not education. It is to help a child be who she is and blossom into who she will become. Education happens as side effect. —Joyce Fetteroll

 

Let your kids be WHO THEY ARE, not who someone thinks they should be. Throw away the mold and let your kids LIVE. ** —Lyle Perry

 

"Unschooling has had an incredibly positive impact on our lives, and not only in an educational aspect, but in everything we do. It's changed the way we live, the way we think, and the way we look at the world in general." ** —Lyle Perry

 

Unschooling, in a very real sense, IS a mindfulness practice.:) Being in the moment with our children, trusting the flow of life, seeing our connections to them and to all of the universe etc... ** —Ren Allen

 

If you want to measure, measure generously. If you want to give, give generously. If you want to unschool, or be a mindful parent, give, give, give. You'll find after a few years that you still have everything you thought you had given away, and more. — Sandra Dodd **

Mindful Parenting Fail

 

Today was not a successful day in the department of mindful parenting. It all started with a battle of the wills between my six year old and my fifteen year old. Emi(6yo) was on the computer and wanted volume up while playing a game. Aly (15yo) was watching tv to try to find out what was going on in Egypt and couldn’t hear it due to the sounds coming from the computer. (I was cleaning my room and did not have a clue what was going on until later.)

Aly asked her Emi to turn it down and she did. However, a few minutes later she would turn it back up which frustrated Aly. After this back and forth a few times I was yelled for.

With full disclosure I will tell you that I was aggravated at being interrupted. I just wanted to be able to clean my room. I did not want to referee what was one of the same stinkin’ issues we deal with on a weekly basis in this house. I did not enter the scene in the right frame of mind or with any measure of patience. Wrong thing to do.

As I was trying to sort things out in irritated tones something happened. Both of my girls tuned me out. Neither of them was listening to me because, honestly who wants to listen to an irritated, impatient individual who is obviously ticked about being there?  At this point what I should have done was say “I’m overwhelmed at the moment, let me step back into my room, get myself together and come back in .” Instead, when Aly in her frustration with my frustration, turned the tv up even louder I lost it.

I threw up my hands and said “Fine, if no one is going to listen to me then no one gets to watch tv or be on the computer.” I turned off both and left the room and stayed frustrated and mad for a while. 

This one moment, this choice to give in to the frustration led to a whole lot of other battles and upsets for almost the rest of the day. I can list out a whole bunch of reasons why this happened. We live in a small house, the tv and computer are in the same room because there is no where else for it to be, the jack for headphones does not work on our computer, we are all suffering from cabin fever, our sleep patterns are out of whack, they changed the star signs and now we don’t know how to act. Ok, the last one is far fetched but it sounds good.The bottom line is that no matter the circumstances, I had better options.

I can now think of a couple different ways I could have handled the situation. I could have sat down with Emi at the computer and helped her adjust the volume so that both parties were happy.  I could have offered for Aly to come to my room to watch our tv.  Either of those approaches would have been better than the one that I chose.

And even if I did those things I realize that there is still the chance that someone would not be happy with the outcome. I would still need to maintain my composure. My kids are counting on me to do that. I know I am human and I make mistakes but it is important for me to work on being more successful.

In Everyday Blessings: Inner Work of the Mindful Parenting by Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jon Kabat-Zinn they have a list titled “12 Exercises for Mindful Parenting” Number 8 reads as follows:

“Learn to live with tension without losing your own balance. In Zen and the Art of Archery, Herrigel describes how he was taught to stand that the point of highest tensioneffortlessly without shooting the arrow. At the right moment, the arrow mysteriously shoots itself. Practice moving into any moment, however difficult, without trying to change anything and without having to have a particular outcome occur. Simply bring your full awareness and presence to this moment. Practice seeing that whatever comes up is “workable” if you are willing to trust your intuition. Your child needs you to be a center of balance and trustworthiness, a reliable landmark by which he or she can take a bearing within his or own landscape. Arrow and target need each other. They will find each other best through wise attention and patience.”

I should have read number 8 today. The bolded part is my emphasis. This is where I went wrong. I came to the problem wanting to solve it as quickly as possible in the way that I felt was best. It did not work out. And not only did it not work out it set off a domino effect of sour moods and tons of melt downs. If I had stopped and viewed the situation as workable I am sure things would have gone much better.

Tomorrow is a new day though. Tomorrow, instead of trying to jump into a problem full force I am going to wait, listen and view it as workable. With God’s grace I can become the mindful parent I want to be and the one my children deserve.