I was reading parenting stuff yesterday. I’m far on the end towards cooperative living/consensual living… the terminology largely depends on who you ask. Unschooling, for me, is about building relationships instead of training a child to be a specific way. I understand that most home educators do a lot to adapt to their children–I’m not trying to imply that school-at-home is shoving kids into a mold.

But I’m really struggling internally with some of the things that go along with the parenting philosophies. I don’t believe in “no punishment”. I think that isn’t how the world works. I think my kids need to understand what happens when you push right past where you are supposed to be. It isn’t fun finding out the consequences from a police officer in the middle of the night on the side of the road as a teenager.

Mostly I think that things like biting/hitting your sister will have self-imposed punishment. I talk to the kids about how “If you are mean to your sister she won’t want to be your friend when you get bigger. As home schoolers that will be pretty lonely.” Mostly these days I separate them when things get hysterical but I’ve been letting them do a lot of fighting things out. They have to learn how to resolve conflict and always having an adult intervene doesn’t help.

I feel err, like I fall away from the unschooling pack/cooperative living pack when we get to the idea of chores. Many people in that camp think that if I chose to have kids I get to clean up after them until they are basically grown or I should just step over the mess because “they live here too and I should not subject them to my need to control.”

I uhm well I’m going to diverge from the pack and not give a shit. My kids get to clean up their own shit. Otherwise they just don’t need to have so much of it. Historically children had 1-5 toys. If we got down to that point I wouldn’t worry so much about the bloody mess. But I’m going to break my neck if they never clean up at all. Or I will never do anything else. And fuck that noise.

I think that my needs have to matter as well or I am not raising functional adults I am raising little entitled assholes. No thanks. I am not under the delusional impression that I am going to be able to create order Muppet’s out of them but my children will bloody well have the experience of picking up after themselves. I’m pretty sure no one will be irredeemably scarred by the experience.

That said! I did take careful note about the bits about tone of voice. I think that I share the opinion that if it would not be ok for Noah to talk to *me* in a given tone of voice I probably shouldn’t use it with my kids. But I’m really an asshole. A big one. Like, mean as fuck. So my tone of voice is… variable. I’ve worked really hard on sounding nice. Years and years and years of practice. I have actually sat down and worked with voice recordings trying to sound perkier.

For me most of the tone of voice arguments come down to the simple fact that the human brain is designed to shut down when you are feeling attacked or scared. It isn’t a choice. It is a protective device. The average child is literally incapable of learning when they are being screamed at. They may be capable of reacting in the moment but they are not learning whatever lesson you are attempting to teach. Instead they are learning that you are a big scary asshole.

Is that what I want to teach?

I believe that human beings are born with incredible potential and it is mostly whittled down as you learn to live in the environment you get stuck with. No one gets to choose their early environments. I try as hard as I can to have an environment with almost no restrictions. I want my kids to think they are allowed to just act upon the world. If they have an impulse it is ok to follow it. Neat things happen!

But this is hard to live with because small children are essentially wild animals. The messes are incredible. The waste is overwhelming.

So I take several deep breaths and I have to stop and think really hard which lessons I really want to teach. What are the best ways of teaching them? I more or less have to start lesson planning in my head, “Ahh. Obviously we have not mastered this skill yet. What do we need to work on over the next few weeks?” I’m constantly going through these check lists in my head.

One friend has told me to get Calli evaluated for potentially being on the spectrum. I don’t see it but I believe that mothers are often the worst people to make such a judgment so I am looking into it. Another friend is concerned about Calli’s speech because she still doesn’t enunciate perfectly. I am aware of the sounds she doesn’t make well and we play sound games but I’m really not worried. Many three year olds are almost entirely incomprehensible to people outside their family. Calli was noticeably later on speech development than Shanna. I think she has a lot more physical trouble with forming sounds. We will work on it… but I’m just not worried at this point.

So this parenting business is a lot to think about. Or some people don’t think about any of it. They put food in front of the kid and provide clothes and they just figure the kid will grow up. We don’t do that here. We are uhhhh over-thinkers.

I think of every single thing as a skill to be learned. I think in terms of schemas and scaffolding. How do I provide the base layers for later learning? What are all the kinds of exposure they should have? How do I eliminate the fewest number of futures for them? What do I do to broaden the path?

I have no idea what kind of adults they will be. I can’t assume they will be like me. Shanna goes from wanting to be a doctor to a firefighter to a jewelry maker to a dressmaker to a rock star. I don’t know what to teach that kid. Calli is even more amoeba-like but I think she will be involved somehow in finer details of making something work. She seems very detail and organization-focused. Who knows.

I tell Shanna frequently, “The main thing standing between you and whatever you want to do is thousands of hours of practice. I don’t know what you want to do. You will have to figure it out and just do it over and over. You have to understand that everything is hard and frustrating sometimes. You have to keep working even when you feel discouraged. Success comes after thousands of failures.”

It is super cool that she can open the peanut butter and jelly jars now. I feel kind of upset with myself for not noticing. She had to tell me. Even though she abruptly stopped yelling at me, “Moooooooooooooooom. I’m making a sandwich! Come open my jars, please?!” How could I have not noticed that change. I didn’t catch it for three days and she had to freakin tell me. “I don’t think you noticed. Not this time and not last time but the time before that I learned how to open the jelly jar and the peanut butter jar all by myself.” That’s my girl.

Calli likes to have a goodnight kiss and cuddle. She will shove the top of her head under my chin and nuzzle into my throat. She always says, “I love you and I will never let you down.”

I usually feel like my throat is about to close. Oh baby. I know. You won’t let me down. You amaze me every single day. I think you are so interesting.

I have a seriously bad attitude about doing all the supporting painting work. I tried to talk myself into heading outside to paint for hours before I managed yesterday. I knew I would have to do all the prep and I felt grumpy and bitchy and I just didn’t feel like fucking doing it again. The kids keep bringing piles of mud up to the second story of the play structure. My phrasing is, “Ladies is there any chance I can persuade you to play this game AFTER I finish painting? Scrubbing the mud off every day we come out to paint is really annoying.” After Shanna spent about half an hour on her hands and knees trying to scrub the mud off the floor she agreed that maybe this game won’t be a good one until we are done painting. I won’t CARE then!

Calli is a really neat painter. Even when she “knows” that she is painting a solid block of color she still invents things she is painting at the time. I say, “Make sure that you put an even coat of paint over this wall. See the drips? This is how you smooth them out.”

She says, “I am making Princess Celestia. And here is her castle. And look at allllll the bushes. And over here there is a cloud.”

But she’s doing it all in flat purple paint. She’s not trying to actually paint shapes. She’s just telling a story as she paints. It is fun to listen to her. I mean, her paint job looks like a three year old did it. It is gloopy and lumpy but it works just great. This is her bloody play structure. Shanna has done a surprising amount of painting so far. She is covering a lot of wood and doing a good job. She can’t handle doing just a single color on a given board. She’s putting stripes and polka dots all over the place.

It is really fun knowing that my children are just growing up with the idea that paint is something you can use at will to change your environment. You get to decide what you want to see in the world.

I like unschooling because we are learning vocabulary words and schemas as we paint. What is a streak? What is a drip? What does “drape” mean? (Dropcloths) Why are we painting? What happens to wood when it gets wet? What does the paint do for the wood? Why does it matter if the paint fully covers the wood? How do you physically learn to move your hand so you can create the images you want to see? How do you understand the scope of a job? How much paint will we use up today? (Important because when you are using several colors at once you don’t really want them all sitting with the tops off for hours and hours. Here’s another vocabulary word: scum!)

We talk about how to take care of your tools. We talk about why all of the supporting work is necessary. We talk about why you have to carefully clean the wood before you paint. We talk about anything and everything we can come up with. And while we work Shanna makes up songs for me.

I feel these waves of gratitude while we work together. Thank goodness I have children who want to be near me. Thank goodness I have children who enjoy working with me. Thank goodness I can manage to be patient and loving and introduce things as fun tasks rather than drudging unfortunate work.

I am very aware that I set the tone for our house. If I have a bad attitude I am teaching that as the default way of seeing the world. If I am angry I am teaching anger. I mean, they aren’t just mirrors. They have their own interpretation and experience. But trying to act like the adult doesn’t set the tone is bullshit.

When Calli gets upset with me I try to stop what I am doing and ask why she is upset. Often I have done something unthinking and rude. I wasn’t trying to bother her but I did any way. I have to act like my existing impacts people in ways I intend and in ways I don’t intend.

Recently I told the kids that something wouldn’t be happening and Shanna kept asking. I told her, “If I cave then you will learn that I don’t keep my word. What is more important to you: a mom who bends to your momentary whims or a mom who does what she says she will do?” She thought about that for a few minutes. Then she sighed deeply and said, “Ok. I guess you are right. But I don’t like it.” I managed to restrain my laughing for which I deserve a medal.

And the kids are up. Was that enough kid babble Pam? I’m reading your emails. I love you. I miss you. Outside of food I’m not sure I want anything from Taiwain. 🙂 (Not that they don’t have neat stuff… I’m just not sure that I need anything and it’s not like you can buy me clothes. Ha.)