February & March 2017 Monthly Moments

Obviously I am stunningly biased against schooling (in the favour of home educating) for this very reason but this is always great to see it being said again in slightly different words by someone new. In the age of robots, schools are teaching our children to be redundant by George Monbiot.

And here's another one The Secret of Happy Children - Get rid of teachers and ban homework. Again interesting ideas about why schooling is making children tired and things could be improved for everyone pretty easily.

Similar things have been said by Ken Robinson (some of them over TEN years ago) in his fabulous TED talks - Do schools kill creativity?, Bring on the Learning Revolution and my personal favourite RSA Animate video Changing education paradigms which everyone should watch for the fantastic animation alone!!



Interesting article about raising "good" kids which once you get over the "good" in the title is really worth reading.

And now onto something completely different for those crafty people out there:

I am trying to knit my first pair of socks with proper sock yarn at present and this wonderful page has demystified all the weird 'turn heel', 'heel flap', etc. stuff which is great. Then I am using this pattern and there is a whole tutorial which goes with it which is also fantastic!! I love the internet!!

Also here is a great reminder about how social media is taking over with a great Lion King parody by Dustin and Genevieve.




Recently I have found myself getting fed up with Facebook as there seems to be a lot of advertising courses but also because I can not keep up with the number of people posting. There is also the studies now that are showing that social media is now increasing loneliness and envy and reading the article in The Telegraph resonated with me. One of my resolutions for this year was to try and see the people I love face to face and really connect. I know that isn't easy to do but so far it is going quite well and I am enjoying the more intimate connection I get from that.

"Hey EVERYONE, leave those kids alone"

I watched this brilliant TED talk today - How to raise successful kids - without over-parenting - and Julie Lythcott-Haims had some very interesting things to say. It was great being reminded of why I home educate in the way that I do - where my children find their own path to their passions and stretch themselves when they are ready with mine and their Dad's support and love.

"With our overhelp... we deprive our kids of the chance to build self-efficacy which is a really fundamental tenant of the human psyche... Self-efficacy is built when ones sees that one's own actions lead to outcomes." Julie Lythcott-Haims.

This has come at a really interesting time in my family's home education journey as ds has just turned 15 and is starting to consider what he wants to do over the next few years. He has a wonderful extended family where there could be chances to travel and work in Hong Kong; work in a family-run shop down South; travel with a worldly-wise niece; work for exams at a college or just carry on having fun as he does every day. Like every parent I want him to do everything; try everything; experience everything and do it all now whilst he is young. However that might not be what is right for him and it is his live, not mine.

What I do know about him though is that he doesn't base his self-worth on grades (mentioned in the TED talk) because at present he doesn't have any!! What he has had is a childhood "built on things like love and chores." This comment by Julie again made me smile because both my kids have helped with household activities from an early age. In fact, one of my favourite childhood pictures of ds was taken with him when he was helping trim the hedge at 20 months!!

Neither of my children particularly like doing jobs around our home but we have had family meetings where dh and I have explained how the household works, including finances so that they can understand that they are part of a system that works better when everyone is involved, understands the system and helps out accordingly.

My children can go to school if and when they want and as mentioned above ds is considering going to college next year to do some exams. It is so much easier for a child to know their own mind (desires, capability, etc.) when they have always been allowed to make their own choices. Luckily going to school doesn't stop that happening but it definitely makes that harder. As Julie states "If their childhood has not been lived according to a tyrannical checklist then when they get to college...they'll have gone there on their own volition, fuelled by their own desire, capable and ready to thrive there."

I loved Julie's last comment that her children are wildflowers of an unknown genus and species because even though both my children have been born to the same parents and neither has been to school I can tell you that they are not only wildflowers of unknown genus and species but that they are both TOTALLY different wildflowers of unknown genus and species. And as such they need very different things from me as a parent (and from their Dad) to help them feel unconditionally loved and valued. This is one of the many 'lessons' we discuss in our family about how different dd and ds are as well as how different Mum and Dad are (see the 5 Languages of Love results from the 4 of us here as one example of our different needs) I also agree that "it's my job to provide a nourishing environment, to strengthen them through chores and to love them so they can love others...my job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support them in becoming their glorious selves."

I love this sentiment and I hope that is what I am doing for my children along with their father. However I do wonder after watching this TED talk whether that is enough?

What I wondered after watching it was by over-parenting do we actually make sure that our children NEVER grow into adults who can make their own decisions. Julie mentions that our children are growing into adults who need a "workplace checklist" because they can't think for themselves and implied in her talk it the need for praise and validation to build their self-esteem. As you may have read in a previous blog post of mine there is a theory out there that rewards are detrimental to everyone (read more here near the bottom of the post.)

Also in the blog post about mental health in children here  I stated that:

Mentally healthy and resilient adults are grown out of children who have such traits as: self-esteem, a healthy body image, positive self-belief, empathy for other people and the planet, a passion for life, an ability to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes, accountability for their actions, etc.

So what happens if these childhood needs don't get met? Do we then have adults who are still acting like children and can't take responsibility for their actions or decisions? Do we have adults who need constant validation and if they don't get it they blame those around them?

I think not over-parenting definitely, helps in this area and teaching our children about love is definitely a must. However, I think that our children also need to learn about not blaming and they need to learn about taking accountability for their actions (revisit Brene Brown here.)

I too often see that low self-esteem and low self-efficacy in adults leads to the blaming of others for things that those adults ALLOWED to happen to them. My children sometimes exhibit this behaviour and it is something that it really hard to teach/explain. I thank goodness that there are people out there like Brene Brown who show that blaming others and not taking accountability is not good (read more here -> blame is basically the discharging of anger)

We need to hold ourselves accountable for what we allow to happen to us.
We need to hold boundaries around what we allow to happen to ourselves.

Hopefully if we are brought up with unconditional love where we have the space and time to build self-efficacy, self-esteem (which I feel includes not blaming but holding others & ourselves accountable), empathy and positive self-belief maybe we can then move forward as an adult in an adult's body and not someone who needs external validation or to blame others when our life doesn't turn out the way we wanted.

A massively tall order I think and one of the reasons I write this blog: to remind myself of the huge task I have taken on being a parent and also the huge responsibility I have in being a wife, a friend, a daughter, a sister or just being a human being interacting with others on this planet!!!!

Anyway go and watch the TED talk -How to raise successful kids - without over-parenting - and consider watching Brene Brown about blame here and Natasha Devon about mental health in schools via my blog here.

Don't justify...just be happy!!! My home-educating and breastfeeding experiences...

My son and daughter have been educating themselves for nearly 13 years and 9 years 7 months respectively and I am one of the very few home educators who hasn't really had to justify why I think home educating is more natural than school.  The same way I didn't ever really have to justify breastfeeding even though my children both breastfed for between 3 and 4 years.  

To be honest I am not sure what I would say now if I was questioned about breastfeeding and home educating.  I know it would be different to what I would have said 9 years ago or even 5 years ago.  What I do know is that I really sympathise with people who write posts because they are so fed up of having to justify why they home educate without offending anyone, that they just get fed up and tell you the real reasons why they home educate. 

So here are some of my thoughts

Resilience
Children learn resilience from everyday life and learn it much more deeply when they are actively involved in resolving conflict or in dealing with whatever difficult situation faces them.  Bullying will NEVER fall into the category of building resilience unless it is resolved.  Seeing others get bullied will also not help children learn how to deal with conflict.

Maths - oh maths - don't get me started on maths.  I am a maths tutor, I love maths, I am a total geek but even I don't understand what the obsession is with maths.  All kids love to count.  It seems like it is built into their DNA: this desire to count steps, sort coins into like groups, collect stones and sort them into colours, or sizes or whatever.  Sorry to break it to you all but the maths your child learns at school seems pretty pointless to me unless they want to teach maths or go into a mathematical discipline at which point you are taught how to do it properly.

The fact that the powers-that-be keep changing the way maths is taught is very telling.  So is the fact that most of the time maths is taught as a separate subject taken out of context.  This makes it confusing and annoying to anyone who doesn't get maths.  Ken Robinson in his talk about Changing Education Paradigms sums it up well.  "Schools are still very much organised on factory lines...specialise into separate subjects.  We still educate children by batches.  Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are."  Watch the full talk here and he goes into much more depth than I do.  But you do have to wonder how can we have taken such a great universal language that ALL children love and turned it into a subject where more than half of children who leave school hate maths?

How children learn
The same goes for socialising and is mentioned by Ken above.  We batch children by their date of manufacture.  Why do we do this?  Why not height, physical ability, mental ability, social ability?  Why not batch them by different things depending upon what you want them to learn?  It is already well known, and has been for years, that children learn best from people who know just a bit more than them so actually do we really need to batch children at all or could we just let them be with whomever they want to be with?  That would be more natural: letting children pick who they want to be with, like we do as adults.  You need to be around people to learn how to socialise and unless you are keeping your child in solitary confinement they are socialising whether you want them to or not, whether it be at school (where they are batched by date of manufacture) or not (where they socialise with anyone they come in contact with.)

Going to school is just one way of being
I have never come across the idea that children miss out on opportunities if they don't go to school.  But turn that on its head - what opportunities are children missing out on by going to school?  The chance to learn what they want, when they want to and when they are ready to enjoy it?  The chance to really absorb themselves in an activity without having to break or move to another subject?  As far as I am concerned our education system is out of date.  Teaching facts, especially out of context, is pretty pointless. We have facts at our fingertips every day because most of us have smartphones.  The internet holds all the facts and computers do calculations really well.

This factual, shallow learning does our children a huge injustice.  We need to be teaching our children creative thinking, conflict resolution, permaculture design, sustainability, survival skills, typing, physiology (how their bodies work), etc. NOT just facts.

We need our children to have the opportunity to find their "element" as Ken Robinson calls it and we need to be aware that we don't know what the future holds with regards to what skills we need.  I am pretty sure though that we can all agree that facts are not skills.  Edward De Bono says that schools only teach reactive thinking which is also not going to serve our children into the future.  We need design thinking, creative thinking not critical, analytical and reactive thinking and we need our children to know how to treat each other with respect.

When she was younger, my daughter was occasionally being told (by some of her "friends") that she is stupid because she doesn't know maths facts or stuff that is learnt at school.  Or that she wasn't liked any more because she has done something that has been classed as "bossy."  I tell my children about the difference between a person's actions and a person themselves.  One of the foundations of many communication systems like NVC or PET is the idea -> judge the action, not the person.  These are fundamental ideas that ALL children should know.  "You did something mean" NOT "You are mean."  Then there is also the idea of communicating your wants and needs from a friendship instead of name-calling and manipulation.  Again NVC has a great set of "rules" as to how to communicate your needs:

"<name of child> I experience you as bossy.  What I need from you is to understand that I want to be heard in this game situation and want to have my ideas listened to too"

or in my child language

"<name of child> in this game you are being bossy.  I need my game ideas to be heard too before we play"

NOT

"<name of child> you are bossy and I don't like you any more" -> in this scenario no-one gets their needs met, people get upset and someone has been unfairly labelled as bossy.

These are things that I model to my children as best I can as I am sure others do, but this is not something that I am aware of being taught at school as is evident by my daughter's interactions with some of her school-going peers.

Here's the Factual stuff.

WRT home educating, watch the Ken Robinson video here, do some of your own research but most of all don't judge home educators without knowing the facts.  

• You don't need to go to school to learn to read - my kids taught themselves to read at 11.5 and 5.5 years old
• You don't need to go to school to socialise - socialising is most easily learnt in a natural setting where life is lived.  
• You don't actually need to learn geography, science, maths, English or any of the subjects that are taught at school - someone else decided that curriculum and they decided it a long time ago
• School doesn't teach you anything that you cannot learn at home

Most of us just want to left alone to bring up our kids our way without having to justify it or make you feel better about the way you are bringing up your kids.  If you don't want to know the real reasons why we do it (school is out-dated, school is 40% a waste of time, school forces kids to learn stuff too early, exams have become so dumbed down that they are pointless, etc) then don't ask because one day you may come across the person who wrote the blog I mentioned at the top or who thinks those things in the brackets and you might get more than you bargained for.

But please whatever you do, do your research.  Be happy that what you are doing with your children is the best thing for them and the right thing for you as a family.  And if you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else or trying to get them to justify their decisions about their kids to make you feel better, then you might be doing something wrong and should maybe consider re-evaluating your decisions.

None of this is meant to offend anyone although if that is your bag go forth and be offended (although also feel free to read my blog post about not being offended instead!!)  

WRT breastfeeding, breastfeeding is natural and anything else is a substitute with varying degrees of health benefits from expressing, wet-nursing, using other's breast milk via a bottle, organic formula downwards.  Breast milk is the only thing your baby is meant to have nutritionally speaking.  Less than 1% of people cannot breastfeed for medical reasons.  The rest either didn't want to or didn't know what to do because they were given bad advice by professionals, didn't research it properly, we're not given decent support from friends or family or didn't know where to access decent support.  The best way to be successful at anything is research, support and practice.  Breastfeeding is just the same.  

Again I was lucky.  Breastfeeding hurt like hell but then it got better as it usually does at around 6 weeks. But don't be fooled.  You are a mammal.  Mammals have mammary glands for feeding their babies.  If you want to know more facts go here and if you want decent advice about breastfeeding go to La Leche League(LLL), Association of Breastfeeding mothers(ABM) or NCT.

My reasons
If you are actually interested in why I full-term breastfed or why I home-educate here are just some of my reasons:

I breastfed my kids because:

• I am lazy
• It was easy
• It gave them comfort
• It was designed for them
• It helped me lose weight
• It stopped me getting my periods back so soon
• It was free
• It is why I have breasts
• It means I am less likely to get breast cancer
• It has numerous health benefits for my children
• It would make my children more intelligent
• I don't like feeding my kids from a plastic bottle
• It was a great way to get them to sleep
• It can be done anywhere

I home educate my children because:

• I wanted their natural curiosity for the world to continue uninterrupted.  They learnt to walk, talk, feed themselves and go to the toilet by themselves so I believed they could teach themselves other stuff too.
• I wanted them to learn at their own pace where I believe deeper and more profound learning occurs.
• I think the National Curriculum is a waste of time.  The focus on English (which we all speak); Maths (most of which we don't need to learn) as opposed to mental arithmetic (which I think is quite useful) and Science as opposed to physiology, proactive thinking skills and sustainability (or any other skills) makes no sense to me. 
• I think exams are pointless especially now when you can only really be judged exam-grade wise against the people who did their exams in the same year as you.  The marks, boundaries and subjects just keep changing too much to give a decent comparison so making them useless to employers and academic institutes alike.  
• I wanted them to mix (socialise) with people of all ages for the most part of their day because I feel it gives a more realistic feel of the real world.
• I didn't want them forced to learn things they are not interested in or are not ready to learn such as reading.  I felt that I was forced to read at school when I wasn't ready and it made me dyslexic.  
• They only have one childhood and I would like them to have fun
• If they want to go to school it will be their choice

Useful books and authors mentioned in the blog
Edward De Bono - Teach Your Child How to Think
Tony Buzan - Mindmaps for Kids
Ken Robinson - TED talks - Changing Education Paradigms; Bring on the Learning Revolution; How to Escape Education's Death Valley and How schools kill creativity
Carl Honore - In Praise of Slow
Tom Hodgkinson - The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids
Marshall B. Rosenberg - Non-Violent Communication (NVC)
Thomas Gordon - Parent Effectiveness Training (PET)
Permaculture Design

addiction, hemispheres and spirituality

I know Russell Brand isn't everyone's cup of tea due to his 'offensive' manner and warped sense of humour   See my blog post on 'taking offence' and you will see what but I personally think of taking offence (DON'T) and if you don't like his sense of homour don't watch him.  Whatever you think of him I think he has some very interesting stuff to say about addiction.  For example he was invited to speak at a Committee on addiction which you can view here and also I recently found this video on YouTube - Russell Brand on drugs, Savile and yoga.  I love his thoughts on drug addict rehabilitation: that addiction cannot be overcome by giving someone a different type or form of addiction but needs to be tackled by abstinence-based recovery whilst at the same time looking at our spiritual selves.  He states that

1. addiction is a health matter
2. people who are addicts need to be dealt with with compassion
3. addiction is symptomatic of emotional and psychological difficulties as well as a spiritual malady
4. abstinence-based recovery is the key
5. all 3 areas (emotional, mental and spiritual) need to be dealt with

I know Russell Brand talks about addiction mostly from the viewpoint of drugs and maybe alcohol but I believe that a similar approach can be taken with all addictive behaviour although with some this is more problematic than with others.

Here are some of the common addictions that are known about:

sex addiction

love addiction

over-eating

gambling

drugs

alcohol

exercise

work

computer-use - game-playing, surfing, on-line gambling

shopping

An addiction is hallmarked by the impaired control over the substance (food, drink, drugs, etc.) or behaviour (falling in love, shopping, exercise, etc), preoccupation with substance of behaviour, continued use/behaviour despite consequences and denial of these behaviours.  Also the need for immediate gratification (short-term reward) regardless of the long-term costs.

Obviously abstinence-based recovery with some of these might make life a bit boring but still some of Russell's approaches I reckon would work.  For example, I know someone who is a love addict.  He has moved through his whole adult life from one relationship to another with very little time in-between to spend any significant amount of time really looking at the route cause of his addiction.  It seems from the outside that he reckons he was only addicted to one of the people he attached himself to and therefore now he isn't with that person he is 'cured.'  I reckon the analogy here would be a cocaine addict now being recovered by being addicted to methadone and so nothing has really changed at all.  An abstinence-based program would tell this man that he needs significant time by himself (not in a relationship) to really face his addiction and find the emotional and psychological basis for it.  At the same time his abstinence could also give him time to find the spirituality help that 'fills' the gap that a relationship 'filled' before.  I can see it in scenario how Russell's idea would work unfortunately denial is a great defence and that isn't what this person has done.  And I can sort of see why because no-one can know how long this person would need to abstain from 'being' with someone for it to really be long enough.  Co-dependency is a tricky thing that way and not at all like drug addiction or alcohol addiction and I feel some of the other addictions listed above could easily have the same problems.  Can you really never clothes shop ever again if you are a clothes addict, can a sex addict really abstain for ever and can a work-aholic really afford to just give up the day job?  Obviously not and this is where Russell has obviously thought it through (bless his Jesus-like hair and beard) because I believe the key here is the spiritual element.  The idea that human beings are more than just physical beings with emotions and intellect has been around for a long time.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who realised one morning she was having a stroke and therefore paid very special attention to what was happening to her whilst the stroke progressed.  Here TED talk explaining the experience is really worth watching here because it shows us that there is more to us human beings than just a physical body with a bit of intellect and emotion thrown in for good measure.  "I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere.  We are energy-beings connected to one another through our right hemispheres as one human family."  She concludes the talk with the following "So who are we?  We are the life-force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive brains.  And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world....I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be."

I believe that 'running our inner-peace circuitry" means tapping into our spirit and finding ourselves there.  Brand does it via Kundalini Yoga, I do it via Shamanic journeying, my DH does it via walking through the woods and being connected to the earth, others do it via praying or meditating or just spending time by themselves.  Whatever your thing is, make sure you do of much of it as you need, when you need as often as you need and be aware that when you are 'out-of-sorts' that is probably an indication that your inner-peace circuitry needs some attention.

With regards to addicts of any kind the one thing they all have in common is the incessant left hemisphere chatter (as Jill puts it) that stops them from tapping into their right hemisphere and holds them captive to their addiction.  If you are constantly thinking about where your next 'fix' is coming from then there is no space for your spiritual side. If you are constantly finding the next 'job' to fill your time with or the next 'shag' or the next 'meal/chocolate bar/snack' or the next 'partner' who is going to make you feel ok/whole/worthy just for a little while then there is no peace and the cycle starts again.  Anything that fills your brain with endless chatter is stopping your right hemisphere having its time.

So although Brand may not be your cup of tea he is at least out there spreading the word in his own quirky way and I just thought I would add my own little thoughts to his.