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Re-inventing parenting or re-defining childhood?

My family swerved off the parenting highway and are negotiating our path through some fairly dense verdant jungles. It isn't so much that we are reinventing parenting as redefining the power relations. 

When my eldest son was born we chose to have a midwife assisted homebirth. Our doctor advised us against it and misdirected us by insisting we needed a consult with an obstetrician first. Luckily, I had some spotting and the receptionist who answered the phone was really rude. My partner and I searched the yellow pages and telephoned midwifery practises. Of the three practises in our area there was only one spot available. Had I waited another week or another day or another hour I would not have given birth at home with a midwife. Serendipity struck.

As my pregnancy progressed, I was shocked to learn about iogenic incidents in hospitals. All the horror stories I read or was told started with...”and then they decided to induce labour” or “and then they broke my waters” or involved medical intervention. I had looked at midwifery with much interest and intellectual curiosity.

I discovered that most of the world, particularly in Norway and throughout most of history midwives caught our babies. Our approach to childbirth was relatively new, though, statistically doctors may have surpassed midwives as primary caregivers in Canada it certainly took a long time to get women to agree to give birth in hospital. Only the poor gave birth in hospital for a long time. Mortality rates were higher with doctors. The respect just wasn't there for nature or for women or for their babies or for clean hands.

I suppose homebirth was an unconventional choice thirteen years ago. Each unconventional choice led to the next--as our confidence grew.  Having given birth at home successfully it was easier to follow my instincts around co-sleeping, and nursing on demand.

My son had an undescended testicle, so we visited a doctor when he was two days old. The doctor told me my son was using me as a pacifier and made some vague statement about my milk not being in.  He turned to address my husband, talking over me, when I contradicted this idea by explaining my milk would come in only if I continued to suckle the baby.  He did convince my partner of the need to feed the baby sugar water with a baby bottle. He insisted that my milk would not come in until a could get an eight hours of interrupted sleep. This completely contradicted everything I read about demand and supply. This led to an argument.

Luckily we did not have either a baby bottle or ordinary white sugar in our house. This had really perplexed the doctor, who kept repeating the instruction fearing we had misunderstood and thinking about buying formula. The only sweetners in our home were maple syrup, honey, and molasses. My partner felt bad about leaving me home alone and so by the time he found someone to come over my milk had come in.  Once my milk came in our son decided to set a cluster feeding record.

Dutifully, my partner changed diapers, and brought me water, while waiting for a break so he could slip away to purchase the white sugar but none came. Here was the wonderful lesson that we were responsible for our son's wellbeing.

Our lifelearning journey thus began we found our way to playgrounds and drop-ins.  For me, when my then two year old refused to leave a park despite the rainclouds, having another mother tell me emphatically that he didn't respect me was a bit confusing. When I examined the behaviour of a two year old oblivious to approaching rain,  I realized that he did in fact respect me.  He respected as much as I respected him:  he just did not obey me. I did not obey him, either.  Although Rowan and I ended came home soaked to the skin we had a blast, once I understood that unlike Dorothy's witch we would not melt.  This was the first in a long line of incidents that tested my commitment to be a respectful parent.

I could often persuade Rowan to go along with my plans: such as getting home before the rain if I forgot our rain gear. The harm I saw in getting drenched was following a parenting convention which I wasn't so sure about, but felt I should try to follow,  in case anyone accused me of fraudulently impersonating a parent.

My son iput me in a position with his wonderful two year old eyes to ask all the questions I had stopped asking after I became an adult. Two year olds are the logical tireless users of the enquiry based learning model.

Eventually, I tried to deconstruct our relationship and came to two conclusions: he didn't obey me nor did I violate his bodily sovereignty to enforce obedience. It meant that everything was a discussion. We were practising consensus, in that either of us could resist and block the other.  Generally my son and I got along amazingly well. I remember one day feeling embarrassed as a closet consensual parenter, when I picked my son up to put him in the stroller. All the parents were watching. He was a year and a half and told me firmly: stop, put me down.

I did, while blushingly stuttering my theories about respect and not raising a wife beater.  I was quite embarrassed. One mother watching me surprised me by expressing interest in what I was doing. She noticed when I picked up my son he always asked me to stop. He never kicked me in the stomach and turned blue screaming. I blundered my way through an explanation.

My partner and I had gone to marriage counselling over my parenting style.   Though I could not bring myself to follow the established rules, I always felt embarrassed.  Occasionally I'd overhear someone saying, "there goes the wingnut" and that certainly didn't help my confidence.

I valued children's emotional and intellectual integrity as well as physical safety. I had no qualms about according my son the same respect as I would any adult. Though, I certainly tolerated more incursions on my physical and emotional boundaries from my three children, than I would from anyone else.  I always considered what they said. But if there was ever danger and I  grabbed the back of my son's coat and pulled him back to the kerbside. 

People later labelled what I was doing unschooling, or lifelearning but at the time I though we were doing was experiential learning or simply being respectful of one another as collaborators. We were a mutual admiration society. I began talking to him as an equal from the day he was born and so thought of him as such. I wanted us to build a real relationship, rather than a textbook one. I was letting my son raise himself, with me as the resource. I reasoned that we weren't living in a lab or a textbook, so it didn't make sense for us to let someone in a lab or writing a textbook direct our relationship.

Years later on the parenting circuit with my other two younger boys I began visiting various drop-in parenting centres close to my house. I began to understand that my criteria for children's behaviour and adult behaviour were thoroughly different from those of the experts. I expected to model patience, understanding and compassionate communication for my children. It seemed in direct opposition to what I was seeing other parents doing and I felt pressure to conform. 

Adults modelled violence, and spoke rudely to children. Or they made requests and then forced the children to realize they were dictum in polite language and physically violated their individual sovereignty to enforce their wishes. Adults coerced children into obeying, yet expected children themselves to aspire to the higher ideal of peaceful conduct.

It seemed so obvious to me that disregarding and manhandling children could not help but lead them to behave in that fashion with adults and with one another, yet when I pointed out the emperor wore no clothes eyes rolled.

I chose to respond respectfully when my youngest son bit me or screamed or use emphatic language. I refused to call it a meltdown, or buy into that dismissive language that labels children's powerlessness as "whining". Paradoxically, I began to label adults loosing their tempers as having meltdowns and tantrums, shifting the words to better understand what was happening, in an effort to deconstruct interactions amoung children or between children and adults. I suppose I saw violence in the manner adults “gently” took things from children or redirected their behaviour. They were picked up against their will, made to participate in story time, and constantly shushed so that important words of adults could impart knowledge.  I expected more from adults:  politeness, patience, and respect for physical boundaries.

To me the expectations seemed backwards.  Adults with maturity and experience could compel others with physical, emotion or intellectual violence to meet their needs in a situation, whereas children were expected to be polite and keep their cool in the face of disempowerment and adult violence.

Knowledge as something waiting to be discovered or perhaps created was a novel idea. When I traded places with my children I understood that as an adult I would have a difficult time not responding with anger and frustration—that of course is with my experience and “understanding” pushed to its limit I could not find the resources to smile politely and obey without question time after time. I began to question how adults could possibly have such standards for children that they themselves could not meet, nor felt it necessary to meet nor were able to see the relationships between their coercive behaviour and negative outcomes in interactions with small children.

I thought of children first as apprentices, then later as individuals on their own path to gain the knowledge they needed. I realized that they were “in training” and required a wider berth than adults. As they lacked the power to hold adults to deals this made their positions always tenuous.

I am more willing to forgive a child who hits me in frustration than an adult, because I can accept that as a imperfect communication tool from a child. By not responding in kind, but by modelling a different way of dealing with frustration, fear or pain I can help that child see another path.  A path in which mutual understanding and compassion help us trust one another--a satisfying path which benefits everyone in our lives.

What is a parent's job? Is it to judge a child's decisions and "guide" them so they are always safe? Is it to nurture confidence--giving unconditional love so a child learns to make choices that will keep him or her safe.

I create the safe spaces to deal with scary stuff. The child learns to deal with it.
Many people looking at us see my children as over-protected. Others see them as too free.
Children learn to walk and talk, and so they learn ethics.

My children live surrounded by many cultures, which sometimes violate my ethics. We examine ideas and practises. Life isn't compartmentalized--they aren't hidden in a nursery, and don't wait to be spoken to in silence. They are explorers.

When my child sees a used condom in the park I explain what it is used for and how I wish the users had a different venue. They aren't, I suppose innocent. I wouldn't reply to a question without providing as much information as the child requires. But then knowledge is power and it is a continuum from ignorant to knowledgeable. In seeing a condom a child in our culture knows not to pick it up, though and why.

"Innocence" is a concept that hasn't been around long and it hasn't served children very well. I am not sure innocence or ignorance is freedom. I see it as exclusion from participating fully and possibly creating vulnerability. In other times and in other cultures children have witnessed animals being slaughtered for food, animals giving birth and probably animals copulating all before the age of five.

But my kids know what is normal in our culture and have a sense of their own sovereignty. I don't go out of my way to show them scary things, but anything encountered gets explained. Knowledge gives context and protection of sorts: providing freedom to enjoy life to its fullest in safety.

I am going for an integrated living approach. I try to honour their impulses. I think ignorance is dangerous and I think kids assimilate information as "apprenticing" adults.

I have seen children who are confident and enjoy freedom, make choices in many areas. For instance, one of my son's friends set up a ramp to jump with bikes fours summers ago. My son, the daredevil decided it wasn't safe. His position of daredevil I realized was a moot point as far as he was concerned. He hadn't bought into it at all, so he had no problem telling his friend he did not feel the jump was safe. He really was only doing things he felt safe doing all along; though he acquired a reputation as a "daredevil" among his circle of friends.

I was within earshot, so was aware there was for Rowan a perception of danger but could hear the attempts of others to persuade Rowan by nagging or shaming him into doing something he did not wish to do. I was not worried about physical danger because I felt Rowan able to make that decision with respect to bike riding and ramps, but rather his feelings of self-worth. Rowan made his choice and then dropped by for some parental reassurance--not to gage whether I thought the jump was dangerous, but just reassurance that it was his choice.

All I did was ask, "Do you think you made the right choice?". He replied affirmatively and I exhaled. He did not feel bad about his choice. He expressed disappointment in his friend, but was still secure in himself and his choice. We celebrated his judgement and it was sweet.This episode deepened my trust and respect, because I saw him in a situation where his own judgement that something was unsafe superseded his wish to belong to a group. My admiration reinforced his ability to walk away from a "friend" who wasn't giving him autonomy, trust and respect--though that was not my intention.

Unschooling in the city...
Where are the urban unschoolers? How do we delicately feed ourselves from this smorgasbord--which alternates between too much variety and too little. A smorgasboard with many lined up to partake: judging us. I dream of green space...but really I have so much in my life. Creating our unschooling nest just requires love luck and ingenuity. Things we have in abundance around here. I won't live in self-imposed exile any longer.

On Saturday night my 14 year old son and I went out and bought snacks. As we picked out snacks my son chatted about what movie we might watch, picked out raw veggies for a crudite plate, a bag of cheese popcorn, and a dessert.

Cashiers and other shoppers kept catching my eye and smiling. My son is taller than me, has long hair and was dressed kind like a "cool" kid. When he calls me "mom" it has a certain tenderness in the tone&mash;kind of the tone I use when I call one of the boys "honey" or "sweetie". He often calls me Marina. I answer to both, lol.

I realized as we walked home that people thought it is incongruous to see a Teen Boy out with his ma. I think that is in part about unschoolingmash;the affectionate respectful dialogue between parent and child. As we were leaving people were gaping as he sweetly asked me to switch bags with him, so I could carry the lighter one :)

In the past when someone with a younger child in tow has asked for "the secret" to all this respect I seem to receive I notice they can't *hear* the answer. I gave a lot of respect, choices and did a lot of trusting. I didn't ignore him. I was the resource. I listened, advised, and loved and laughed and supported. Unschooling is license, it isn't throwing conventional social rules out the window, but it is about taking a respectful approach to introducing social rules, and information. It is about a dialogue and about working together. You are responsible for the child, but also responsible to the child.

If your spouse competes with the kids for your attention or with you for their attention--unschooling and family relationships in general won't work.

John got nostalgic for when Rowan was three or so, and he actually drew the parallel about how our relationship with our son started with all the power/responsibility on the adult side and all the love, respect, and patience flowing to our son. Now, he is seeing flow both ways, and with our two younger kids at a sleepover, John was able to celebrate the journey. I was too busy hanging out with Rowan in the moment to see any of it on Saturday night:) He reflected on what an amazing kid Rowan is and what an amazing patient open-minded man he is growing up to become. The next morning he was talking to me about how wonderful it was to hear Rowan and I chatting and laughing.

We ended up watching Abbot and Costello shorts on youtube and some cartoons.

I realized how quickly time flies and just how happy I am I didn't listen to naysayers, but instead listened to my son and my instinct. The thing about being an unschooling family is none of it was "strange" to me, and it wasn't until later on that I realized why it might seem so odd to others. It seems so sad that a mom and her teenager eating, laughing and watching a movie should be so unusual.

Unschooling means parenting with care and respect. To me it also about collaboration and love.

I can ask my kids to help load the dishwasher and they will very often, or I could insist and bring on guilt trips, make less desirable foods, or deduct allowances. It is really a choice.

Presumably anyone who starts with little choices will continue to relate to their children positively and the children will reciprocate. As they get older they may smoke or make choices we wouldn't make for them, but if the present is any indication they will be receptive to opinions from mom and dad. They will know that people who love you are respectful and anyone who uses punishment/coercion isn't interest in a relationship built on mutual respect. That's all they know from people they grew up with about love, being entwined with respect:)

I have a connection to my kids based on love and trust. My partner, my kids and l know one another to be doing our best and so we all are inspired to contribute more to one another's contentment. Less energy is wasted on negative things.

Ultimately, that's what soured me on tools or gimmicks. If you have an agenda other than honesty, and love unschooling won't work. More than money and fancy trips unschooling is about connection, honesty and gentle nurturing parenting. The product of that home(your child) will know they were loved and cherished and given all possible opportunities!