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Developing a philosophy of mothering

I’ve never received more comments or email than I did for the On Being a Mother entry. I wrote it quickly, without much revision, as a way to affirm to myself the value I felt in being a mom despite all its obvious hardships. That piece drew a lot of support. Loved hearing from all of you.

There were comments and emails too, though, from those who are on the outside looking in, feeling that mothering really is a hardship, that they don’t enjoy the company of their children, and worse, feel guilty about it. Guilt for something you can’t control is the worst feeling you can possibly have. I have no intention ever of adding to anyone’s guilt! Sorry for that unintended side-effect.

I’m all about nurturing ourselves and our kids
through our pain to health and vitality.

That’s the whole Brave Writer modus operandi! Moms who struggle are certainly as invested in their children, love them as much, yet feel they are missing the genetic material to help them have that energy and joy in mothering that they hear about from their friends.

Their experience is a bit like never having had an orgasm and having to hear how great sex is! You feel instantly shut out from the “universally glorious experience” and you can’t imagine what you’d have to do differently to get to that blissful state of being. Believe me, I get it. (More than you know!) All of us have had that “outside-looking-in” feeling in some area of our lives.

In no way do I want to minimize the pain and bewilderment that women feel when they are handed an 8 lb. bundle of limbs and told “Go, therefore, and mother.” The crucible of total responsibility up against very real human limitations drives most of us into an emotional collapse at some point in our children’s lives (and more than once!). That’s why it’s so important to embrace this “more than full-time” job with the expectation that you can find tenderness, connection and love, or you won’t make it! Chronic stress and disappointment in your life is the stuff of which midlife crisis is made.

My goal in the parenting journey is to experience pleasure with my children. In other words (and here, the sex metaphor really is apt!), I’ve deliberately cultivated happiness as the chief aim of parenting. Not discipline. Not character-building. Not training. Not even education. My main concern for my kids and for our family has been to create a happy, peaceful, honest, nurturing, attentive-to-each-person’s-peculiarities environment so that our relationships with each other would be about connection, not about tolerating or managing each other.

It’s my belief that in a space of joy, humor and kindness, education, love, and satisfaction thrive. Relationships become a source of strength and refuge from which to live the rest of our lives rather than an obstacle filled with frustration and pain. I’ve often said, “Joy is the best teacher.” I’d add, “Peaceful relationships are the foundation of a joyful life.”

Lizzy asked in the comments:

I wonder, Julie, what or who it was that helped you develop your perspective. Was it your own mother? Was mothering a dream you’ve had since you were a little girl? Are you one of those folks who has read ‘all the books’ for inspiration?

These are great questions with longer answers than I can do justice to here. But let me tackle it this way. I never thought about having kids (didn’t like babysitting, couldn’t figure out why babies were “cute”). I come by my passion for children through mothering, not through any inherent maternal drive. My mother is incredible, though. She was the one who threw “back-to-school brunch” parties for my friends in 7th grade. She’s the one who patiently typed my essays in high school. She’s the one who has shared her very real self with me and has always listened to my pain without editing it. She’s also the one who lost her marriage to an affair and checked out emotionally for several years of my young adult life. Her deliberate recovery and prioritizing of emotional health has had a huge impact on me as an adult.

I also had the privilege of being mentored in homeschooling by an utterly free spirit of creativity who showed me the value of picnics over math pages, and dress up clothes with face paints at 10:00 in the morning on a Tuesday. As I’ve given myself to mothering and have paid attention to the writing process as it’s worked out in parent-child relationships, I’ve discovered that people thrive when they have space to be who they are, when their pain is taken seriously and when both are addressed with compassion and creativity.

That goes for both moms and kids. If we get too lost in our children, we become withered, unhappy, grouchy adults. If we are too consumed with our adult selves, we lose sight of our kids and overlook their needs for devoted attention.

Between these extremes is an awesome middle ground;
it’s the space where what you do as an adult
can be shared with your children and vice versa!

It’s the space where you tune into your own needs (I have to get out for a haircut or I’ll scream) and also keep an eye on what’s happening with your children (they need naps). If you love Mary Cassatt, you share her paintings with your kids. If they love Wii Dance Revolution, they get you to compete. There’s a give and take that includes touching, eye contact, sharing interests and problem solving. It’s a mutual admiration society that is fed by time together where all members get something from the shared experience.

In other words: joy in mothering is directly related to ensuring that you do things with and for your kids that make you all happy. Really.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Family Notes, General, Homeschool Advice, Unschooling | 12 Comments »

Tired of Writing? Make a List!

Writing wears kids out, have you noticed?

Children may get that burst of linguistic energy working for them (when the inspiration strikes, they’re hard to stop!), but when they’re done, they’re done. Sometimes after a successful writing project, all anyone wants to do is lie about doing nothing.

While taking some time off, or while your kids aren’t quite proficient enough to write lengthy passages of prose, you might try writing lists. Lists can be an incredibly therapeutic way to interact with language. For one thing, there is no shortage of topics for lists.

Here’s a list (ha!) of what you might list:

birds
roller coasters
Lego sets
favorite lines of poetry
seeds to plant in the garden
items to purchase for a bedroom redesign
hairstyles to try
funny jokes
not-so-funny jokes
words that rhyme with…
famous lines of Shakespeare
the original old English vocabulary in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (with translations)
items in a junk drawer
all the vocabulary needed to sew a quilt
favorite TV shows
past American Idol contestants and when they were voted off
types of tanks used in WWII
American Girl trousseau items

As you can see, there is no limit to what can be listed!

Lists allow your kids to continue to work on handwriting, vocabulary development, categorizing, ordering, and information gathering. They also offer a place to house disparate thoughts or ideas or fantasies. It’s nice to keep a list of all the things you’d buy if you had $100.00. Cheaper than spending the dough-re-mi!

Lists can be kept in notebooks, on white boards, on sheets of paper. My daughter kept a list on her bedroom wall (all the friends she had and something funny about them).

Lists often mushroom into sub categories too: birds in my backyard, birds I saw on vacation in Florida, birds I saw at the zoo, birds that live at the beach.

So get out a notepad and start a list.

P.S. I love the little moleskin notebooks that fit inside a purse for listing, jotting down words, keeping my thoughts together so that anywhere I am, I can write them down. Your kids might like that too – a portable list!

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Copywork Quotations, Games, Homeschool Advice, Language Arts, Nature Walks, Unschooling, Words!, Writing Exercises, Young Writers | Comments Off on Tired of Writing? Make a List!

By spring, unschooling

By spring unschooling

I used to tell audiences that we had a three-pronged approach to home education: Sonlight, Charlotte Mason and Unschooling.

In Autumn:

We’d follow the Sonlight curriculum with its scheduled novels, fast clip workbooks, and history immersion. Fall brought energy and focus. I could prepare lessons, stay on top of a schedule, and take advantage of my kids’ love for crisp unused materials.

In Winter:

After the Christmas break, when bare trees, grey skies and snow took away our chance to head outdoors consistently, we moved into Charlotte Mason mode. The cozy house lent itself to fires and read alouds, candles and poetry teatimes. We’d watch birds, study pine cones, take brisk walks in barren parks or go skiing. We’d also delve into the arts: we’d visit the art museum, watch classic films, and learn to knit. Schedules felt wearying and workbooks, frayed and tired. Poetry teatimes and hand crafts, literature and the arts, nature and conversation.

By Spring:

After all that great academic effort, we’d collapse into unintended unschooling. Seemed our energies for organized education would suddenly evaporate under the glare of sunshine, spring sports and theatrical performance! We’d follow the educational muse wherever she took us. Spring turned into “party school” where we’d organize a big Gold Rush dig or we’d invite a gaggle of girls over to immerse themselves in what we’d learned about India (complete with foods, henna and saris). Field trips were so natural and easy in spring.

Today:

Now that three of the kids aren’t at home, schooling along with us, my younger two and I don’t follow a particular schedule or style. The two at home mostly wake up at about 12:00 noon. I do my work in the mornings and we have the routine of “school work” in the afternoons. Yet all those lifestyles live in me and in our home. We can and do follow a more disciplined approach to some subjects (math with a tutor has created a routine we can all sustain more happily than if I just expect the kids to learn it as they go). And we are utterly free with others (history is no longer tethered to a spine; we typically watch movies and read literature and allow history to find its way into our lives more organically; though we do use Story of the World as a good solid reference). We have lots more time and space (no more toddlers, only two sharing one computer). Conversations are deep, long and satisfying. Poetry teatimes are still a highlight.

Having grown up in our family, the younger two seem to naturally self-educate in a way that the older ones didn’t (or at least, they didn’t come to it as naturally). I’m amazed at the way each of them tackles what they want to learn. For instance, Caitrin (12) is vegan. She started as vegetarian and due to the influence of her “away-at-college” older sister, she decided to take it further. Veganism has led her to study about how food is produced in America, what conditions animals are raised in for our consumption (warning: it’s pretty graphic and ugly once you get into it), what it is to be healthy (she’s spent hours learning about nutrients, which ones she needs, how to get them), and how to cook! She’s taken over dinners, using her magazine “The Vegetarian Times” to help her produce very tasty meals for all of us.

There’s space and time for all of this because I don’t feel panicked about her education, because we don’t have toddlers, because I recognize a great learning trend when I see one. I didn’t always feel this way. I remember panicking, chasing toddlers and nursing babies, and I remember doubting that something like veganism could really lead to a quality learning experience.

What I like to say to moms when they ask me about unschooling or child-led learning: it’s all a process for you too. You’re in your own learning process about what it is to homeschool, educate, nurture and lead your children. Be patient with yourself. Affirm the good, gently let go of what doesn’t work. Over time, you will find the rhythm that is right for your family.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice, Unschooling | 5 Comments »

Why I Gave Up the Unschooling Label

Why I gave up the unschooling label

The themes of this week’s email: Help! I want to be more relaxed but then I worry that I’m not doing enough and besides, I know there are requirements for the future that must be met and after all, my kids are struggling with learning issues…. how do I know when to push, when to hold back, when to follow a course of study, when to let kids lead the way with me running along side cheering and supporting? And I had no idea you were such an unschooler.

Let’s start right there. Unschooling.

That word conjures less consensus than the correct waist-height of mid-rise jeans, and generates far more passion.

Pair it with “radical” as in “radical unschooling” and the waistline drops about four inches. And get real. Who can wear low rise jeans after four kids?

That’s pretty much how many moms feel about radical unschooling – Looks sexy, but who can get away with it?

While I love many things about the unschooling philosophy, one thing I don’t love is the label. When the definition of a word becomes more important than the nuances of your particular life, you run the risk of becoming a slave to upholding an ideology rather than a responsive mother. Let me just add that the purists (those who are genuinely committed to an unschooling lifestyle) often are tuned into the nuances of their relationships (which is one easy way to define unschooling in its ideal form).

Unfortunately, to get there, many moms twist themselves into pretzels trying to fulfill an imaginary ideal of unschooling rather than imbibing the philosophy that might change them one bit at a time.

In our home, I’ve given up the labels. They stopped helping me. I felt I was being called on to critique or defend the notion of unschooling rather than being known for how I live with my children. So this morning, with a little time on my hands, let me give you a window into how I see learning and family.

Relational peace is a priority in our home.

That means when a child is in distress, we move to eradicate the source of the stress (we don’t resort to punishment or rewards to overcome it). I take seriously pouting, dawdling, eye-rolling, tears, moodiness, and resistance. These indicate to me that there’s something wrong with the world for that person/child.

My aim is to find out what it is through empathy first. Then we work to create a context that relieves the source. Sometimes that means dropping the day’s activities. Some days it means eating protein before whatever the activity is. Other times it means wading into emotional territory until a level of relief makes it possible to continue with the pre-planned activity. It never means forcing a child to do a task for the sake of “teaching a lesson.”

Learning takes two.

While relaxed, eclectic and un-schoolers all promote the idea that a child’s interests make for the best learning opportunities, I’ve also found that a parent’s personal educational trajectory is equally important to the family lifestyle of learning. Too often moms spend a lot of energy trying to figure out what their children want to learn (wringing their hands hoping a “real” interest pops up) while they themselves have no idea what they would enjoy knowing or learning. Whenever a mom expresses anxiety over her kids, I suggest she take up knitting. 🙂 Really. Pick a hobby, area of study, or latent curiosity and pursue it with genuine vigor (even if it takes away from your homeschool schedule).

Live your interests before your kids. Watch the DVDs of the “Story of Painting” right in the middle of your homeschool day, listen to the Lord Peter Wimsey books on CD while making lunch, set up the easel in your dining room and paint during the afternoons while your kids play the X box, hang bird feeders and count the birds that come to your backyard for Project Feederwatch. Be an interested learner with passion for life and your kids will benefit from the run-off.

Drop what you can; do what you must.

One challenge for those wanting a more relaxed lifestyle is that when moms squelch their anxiety and let go of the reins, they freak out a few weeks later when it looks like their kids are laying around with the TV remote and not doing anything of observable value.

Let’s apply “one-thing” to this scenario. Let go of one thing at a time. If up until now your kids throw hissy fits over a particular practice (workbook, math drill, grammar lesson, sitting in the kitchen rather than lounging on the couch), let one of those go. Just drop it. You can always come back to it.

Today – say to your kids, “We’re putting math away for awhile since it’s going poorly.” By the same token, if you feel concerned about grammar, turn that concern into practical action. Focus on it. Find ways to make it meaningful. Become the student of grammar you hope your kids will be. Incorporate it into all of your lives through conversation, observation, identifying typos, reading a humorous grammar book, practicing sentences in a foreign language, playing grammar games.

Both attitudes matter. You can let go of what is trying and embrace what causes you anxiety. The letting go may even be temporary and the embracing may turn out to be easily satisfied. In both cases, you are honoring the emotional temperature of your family. Pay attention to both your kids (what they need, hate, love, want, cry about, resist, crave) and to yourself (what you fear, need to satisfy, hope, wish, imagine, overemphasize). Somewhere between these two is an education that you will find satisfies you both.

Drop the lingo. Unschooling is just one more word. Focus instead on reality in your home.