Unfurling learning – the unschooling way

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April 8, 2010

When I began unschooling Nisarga, he was two months old. I was often told by veteran unschoolers that it was too early to think about schooling or unschooling and to simply enjoy my child. Yet, experiential learning is a way of life with me, and I wasn’t adopting unschooling so much as I had found a name for what I was doing, and a community to help me find ways to do it better. I couldn’t have stopped.

At the same time, I had bought in completely to the opinion expressed that at this stage what I was doing would be attachment parenting, plain and simple. And it was. Yet, I experienced the living proof of what I say countless times – “We begin learning from experience from birth and stop at death. Its like breathing. We may consciously influence its quality, but we can’t stop.” And so it was.

Nisarga was learning a whole load of things, and my awareness of unschooling helped me apply the principles to support his learning at his level.

He is rather young, so it isn’t really about projects and things, but simply discovering the world, creating meaning out of experiences, learning to use our bodies (and I mean the ‘our’ – my own body has discovered many new ways it can be used in this process). I pretty much let him do what he wants. He wakes up, sleeps, plays, interacts or not at will. I let him guide me as to what to do. My chief role at this stage is loving him to bits (he’s one cuddly love-sponge).

He is slightly late developmentally in reaching milestones, so a lot of my responsibilities involve protecting him from unintentional and well intended training that makes him uncomfortable (‘making’ him bear weight on his feet, pressuring him to roll by constantly jangling stuff at him, etc). On the other hand, I am trying to balance ‘getting him to do’ things with providing him with opportunities he enjoys and it has resulted in some very new ‘games’. Currently, his chief toy is me. Followed closely by DH, MIL, an exercise ball, a swing, four foot ‘hit me’ dolphin and absolutely anything he can lay his hands on.

Unschooling provided me the concept of trusting him that helped me discover that I don’t need to make him do exercises to develop his motor skills. If I offer them in a way that’s fun, he prefers them over other things. If he doesn’t want to do them, its not the end of the world. He has taught me (by being excited) to create our own exercises by simply breaking down the movements he is trying unsuccessfully into smaller doable bits or supporting him through the bits he is not able and he enjoys these more, since they are what he wants to do in the first place. I found this AMAZING. He doesn’t need a pediatrician to tell him what to do and this way we always have variety and increasing movements than those ‘recommended activities’.

We intend to go out everyday, but he’s not too much into it. So we don’t, unless he’s in the mood.

He loves spending time on the floor and is currently obsessed with eating his feet and the feet somehow keep escaping. So he rolls to catch them and finds himself rolled over, which is new and interesting. But he doesn’t have the strength to do much from this position, so he yells for me after a while. Depending on his mood, I may pick him up for comforting (fed up) or I may hover him over his toys so that he can pick them up and throw them around the room. He loves this. He taught me this by simply being delighted when I took him over the first time. Another version is when he sits in my lap and plays with toys and I take him over to pick them up himself. He likes being bounced, so I bounce him whenever he asks (which is immediately every time he is in any bounce-capable position). He loves me, so he gets a lot of me. Absolutely unlimited attention, any time he wants it.

We are discovering that he is fine going out in the evenings for a short time if he has had a good nap and enjoys the busy market bustling with people, bright and curious things and moving vehicles. I have started seeing the miserable place as interesting through his eyes. I am learning to be tuned in to him and it is an intimacy I have never experienced before. Its just beautiful. he is a cheerful, expressive baby with a distinct preference for communication, and very little need to cry. Its not like he never cries, but its mostly physical issues like gas or burp, or someone not setting him down when he wants to pee – doesn’t like to pee on people.

I discovered (to my surprise) that there is indeed a way of unschooling a baby, which is unschooling and distinctly different from attachment parenting, or simply loving and indulging. He has interests and preferences. It is not only about being there for him and loving him, but actually paying attention to what he is doing, what he enjoys more, and offering more of the same. Respecting his wishes for what he doesn’t want. Pretty much what I imagine happens with an older child, but this is a baby and it works very well for his learning as well. He likes grabbing at toys. We got him more ‘grabby’ kind of toys. He likes movement, so we have a ball to bounce on, swing, plus a whole repertoire of throwing, swinging, rocking, etc that he enjoys. He doesn’t like rice cereal, so I don’t feed him that. He likes watermelon, so he gets that often. Its a whole load of things we do that we wouldn’t have before beginning unschooling, and I’m glad, because he is so happy, contented, energetic all the time. He takes most opportunities offered, which only makes me see how much more I can offer him. New ideas keep popping up, and life keeps getting enriched.

There is a long way to go, of course, but the journey is enthralling. I totally forget that this guy isn’t actually speaking, which is the thing I was most scared of before I became a mom – how would I understand the ‘tiny creature’?

It is difficult to say what exactly we do, since its pretty much based on what he wants to do in the moment, and in the last couple of weeks, no day has been like another. I guess he’s discovering more and more. My role is to simply make as many wishes of his possible as I can understand and offer anything that I think he may enjoy.

It is an unfurling, an opening. New possibilities emerge with each moment lived.

Would love to hear how other families spend their days.

Categories: Daily Life, Natural Parenting, Unschooling.

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The Unschooling Gods

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January 28, 2010

I had joined these online unschooling information communities, where parents from all over the world can interact. There are many knowledgeable people there as are many people just stepping into unschooling. It is an incredible space.

However, like anywhere else in the world, intolerance abounds. Or perhaps it is intolerance in me at listening to generalizations on how unschooling should be.

My current discomfort is with Sandra Dodd. Yes, her site is still on one of my highest recommendations for information on the subject, but I find that like any other human, she is rather set in her view of unschooling, which makes it rather difficult to listen to some of her opinions on unschooling.

I guess, what I will have to do, is start my own ‘brand’ of unschooling, which really is what every parent does, whether schooling or unschooling or other.

This post is about my belief in respecting a child. It is about not knowing what is best, and doing what I think would best support my objectives. I can only ever find out.

Two statements made by Sandra recently remain in my mind as hallmarks of how we can become rigid in our thoughts and how we stop learning when we begin “teaching”.

They are (there is no link to provide, as this was said in a group post at AlwaysLearning on yahoo Groupsburrowing into hearts):

“If she can’t give enough to make unschooling better than school, she should put the child in school.”

and

“If she can’t give enough to keep the child from being an absolute mess, she should give him up for adoption.”

I made a response to these on the lists, but I have no belief that it will be posted, since said Sandra also has the ability to block posts. It will take a person willing to reflect to actually absorb the response statements like this get.

I may lack experience, but I find this utterly crass. This goes well beyond unschooling as a practice and into the realm of telling a parent what to do with a child based on own judgements of what constitutes “good enough”.
Considering a mother newly getting into unschooling. Things are in a bad space for her. She is finding it difficult to keep supporting all an energetic childs initiatives can be, unconditionally. She is already questioning how her children behave and worries that things are not right. How do you think a suggestion for putting them up for adoption rather than messing them up hits her in this frame of mind? Being experienced is little use if it cannot be ssensitive.
Sandra, I bet you were right where we are in the beginning and didn’t actually begin knowing it all. How would you have felt when you didn’t know what was to come and things were rough, and some ‘expert’ suggested that your child would be better off without your contributions if you were not able to ‘crack it’? You still don’t know the future. What if they get messed a few years later? Will you give them up for adoption?
Or, in other words, I don’t know if I can make unschooling better than school. I don’t know if I can keep my child from being an absolute mess whether I school or unschool, raise him myself or give him up for adoption. All I know is that I believe that I am making the most respectful choice I can make for my child. By the time I am forced to accept that I did indeed mess my child up, it will be too late, since of course, I’m not intentionally messing him up. My child would also have some security in what was happening, however messed it was. Would he cope with whatever parents he would get through adoption? How do I know the adopted parents won’t mess him further? I will never see my child as messed, so I cant trust my own judgment. I want the best life for him, even if it means I should keep my toxic self away. So tell me, wise one, should I send him to school or adoption? By these standards, does anyone deserve a child at all?

It is not that Sandra doesn’t care about the well being of a child. I know she does, or she would never have made this phenomenal effort. I think, somewhere down the line, responding to so many questions, providing so much invaluable advice, working so hard to extend support to new beginners, she has lost that much essential space for self-awareness that makes it possible to keep our own selves nourished. When that space gets crowded out, our actions start being automatic based on what we usually say, and they take on a life of our own, while we still continue to see ourselves as sensitive and caring.

I have no doubt that she actually means this statement as well-intentioned advice to mothers who question the need to give their children the freedom to do whatever they want and learn from that. What she means is that if you grudge your children that, there is no point making this huge effort toward unschooling, because you will have ended up making all the effort, but with the same result as school. I also took it like that. I just think that it comes from a place of being God, and I resent her implication that she knows what is better for my child.

I still have a lot of respect for Sandra. Her words are invaluable support for someone beginning a journey, like me. I read them, I reflect on them and often they empower me to have a more enabling attitude toward growth. Mine and the others too. So don’t go, “Oh, I was reading her because you recommended, and now I’d better stop before she wrecks my self-esteem”. Read her, read everyone. Just trust yourself. Trust that you are doing the best you can, and that is always good enough.

It is also a learning on how there is no point idolizing a person to a place of infallibility and then being outraged when they turn out to be human. It is a lesson for me to see the humanity in me, in others.

Categories: Natural Parenting, Unschooling.

Unschooling Nisarga

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January 22, 2010

Okay, its world war three, and as usual, I’m in the thick of things. This time, it is the declaration that Nisarga will not go to school. This has sparked a minor wave of arguments. Many have shaken their heads wryly thinking that its yet another of my strange ideas. Those who know me better have started their own campaigns of explaining how school is necessary to a well rounded childhood (as though they have explored options), how it will be difficult to sustain year after year the strain of educating the child, and more.

I find schools overrated.

I have been in one as a child. While not traumatized, it isn’t something to write home about.

My reasons for deciding to unschool Nisarga:

  1. Schooling is a huge investment in time. Compared with the time I invested in it, I have got precious little back. That is not to say I didn’t learn anything. It is simply saying that much of what I learned is rarely useful in life, and many things I learned actually harm my well being in real life.
  2. Schools teach us to quantify people based on a standard scale. We don’t really need much of what we learn in school, and most of what we need to learn in life, we learn from life. Yet, kids start believing themselves as clever or dumb based on what some ambitious bunch of teachers decides as life skills.
  3. The education system has no real way to impart necessary knowledge. One may argue that maths, science, history, language, etc are the foundations of learning. One may argue that they are certainly not. The fact is that very few schools actually prepare you for life. With calculators all around, I see no reason for my son to waste some of the prime developmental years of his life learning methods to divide 679676876 by 5875. Been there, done that, and never done it in real life. Always used a calculator – on my phone, my computer…
  4. Many subjects of knowledge are not covered though we pretend they are. Art for example is a joke. So is language, where a student will actually be considered ‘less’ for using slang, or ‘street language’ which is really an important part of speech in real life.
  5. Students are carefully molded into prescribed human beings and measured according to their ability to conform. This is actual damage.
  6. Think of all the life experience that he actually can learn things of interest to him that he can fit in in the coming 16 years (basic schooling). Travel, experimentation, art, science, people skills, computers, television, whatever. Whatever works. Once we aren’t obliged to measure our worth from standardized and useless examinations, there remains no real need to limit ourselves to prescribed learning and tentatively dabbling in our real interests. I see no reason why a kid can’t play video games all day and then grow up to make a living out of it. Or to play with colors and become an artist. Or to take apart things, improvise and then become an engineer or scientist. Or to become all of the above because he wants to, or to choose something else altogether.
  7. I suspect that schools often serve the purpose of keeping the kids occupied for parents who would much rather not have the hassle of dealing with their growth. This is not needed for me. I enjoy growing with him

I am not planning on teaching my child anything at all. Let alone school. I will share what I find important if he finds it interesting. If he doesn’t, there is really no need for him to learn to do maths (for example) till he needs it and figures it out. Or to know about all the countries in the world or to read history only to forget it. The big thing I am going to do to support his growth is to stop interfering with my own ideas of what is best for him.

For all those of you concerned that I’m going to ‘ruin’ my child, I appreciate your concern, and share my trust that he is a person and if learning turns out to be essential, he is capable of making a choice to engage in it as much as he likes.

If you have read this far, and see some value in what I say, I’d like to share that I have also discovered that unschooling is practiced by many people over the world. That is how I realized that my “no intention of sending my child to school (since before I even married)” actually had a name, and my instinct was indeed leading me to something many involved and caring parents found value in. You may find out more on:

  • http://www.naturalchild.org
  • http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
  • http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole new world waiting to be discovered.

This is unorthodox. I know. But then I have never really been famous for following the rules.

PS: If you wish your child to excel in maths, this article is a must read.

Categories: Child, Natural Parenting, Unschooling, development, growth, learning resource, reflections.