a dream

This was a few weeks ago. I only remember a few seconds. I was in the back seat of a car w/my parents in the front seat. We were stopped at an intersection near my (now) best friend's home. I remember hearing and feeling a deep boom. I looked out of the window and in the distance I saw a plume of smoke. At first it was not a mushroom cloud, but my thoughts were "it's a mushroom cloud," and then it became one. A general sence of panic was suddenly all around. My mother was screaming. I remember thinking, "Okay, my God is still in control." I kept thinking it and then I realized I was saying it outloud, louder and louder. My mother turned around and cried, "we could die!" and I replied, "If we die, we go to heaven" in a sort of what-are-you-worried-about manner. Then I woke up. It felt so empowering that my first thoughts were not of panic but of God's control.

"Limits"

No artificial limits on much of anything here. We share one computer and only 1 television has cable feed, so there are some natural limts. I was terrified of game systems and swore I'd never have one (long, long before being a parent. I called them money suckers). Eventually not having one made it that much more wanted by and endeared to my son (8.5yrs).

We bought him a playstation2 about a year ago. We got him a Nintendo DS for Christmas. I was actually pretty happy about that decision as I find the Nintendo games much less violent than the PS2 games. He recently "e-bayed" a Gamecube for himself and got quite a deal. He rents games from gamefly.com which he pays for out of his allowance.True, when he gets a new game, he emmerses himself in it. He learns all he can online about cheats and other codes. He's researching plenty! For a day or 2 he does little else. He stops on his own for a rest now and again, but he goes back to the new game after a while. But he learns so much from the games themselves. There are goals to be met. There's reading the story along the way. There's math in figuring how many widgets he needs to collect to get to the next level. There's often people managing skills needed to get different characters in the game to cooperate. It's all in how you look at what is going on.

And he does walk away on his own when he's had enough. Sometimes that may be hours, sometimes a few minutes. But because he knows they are there for him to use at any time, he has no fear that they will be taken away and no urge to soak up all he can while he can.

Same is true for television. If he doesn't want to watch, he doesn't. He turns it off more often than I do. There's no fear of not being able to watch later.Learning happens all the time. You can't stop it. You can kill the desire, but you can't stop learning. Unschooling is about changing your perspective on what learning is. Living life is learning.

yes, even fractions

Gregory (busy playing Zelda in his room) comes running out and starts telling me about the hit he just survived. It ended with "I had full health and when I fell on the blasters I lost a quarter health and when I fell in the lava I lost another quarter health. But I still have half health now."

:)

rambling about unschooling

I felt led to be an AP mom. While PG, I decided I was not going back to work. Nothing I could do to earn (at best) $10/hr would be anywhere near as important as being with my child. I have been very blessed that my husband agrees and we are able to get by on one income. He has also allowed me to do the research on education and allowed me to start us down this lesser-traveled path. I know not everyone has the luxury of being as free as we are, and I am greatful for it. Unschooling, for us, has been a natural progression of AP and positive discipline. The central theme of trust and respect work for us. I'm trying to model for my son how to get along with others, how to be a good "housemate". How to love others and share our blessings. How to appreciate how blessed we are.

I have come to see the fact that we only have one child as a blessing in itself. Although I know families with many children who very successfully unschool, I do not know if *I* would have been able to give Gregory what he needed if I had had another little one needing me as well. As you all know, I love babies. My heart almost always sinks just a bit when I hear that someone is pregnant. It's as though I hear "Myrtle is pregnant and you aren't!" But as I've gotten older (I listen for the bio-clock, but I just don't hear it!) it's gotten easier. I think there still may be babies in my future - babies put in my arms but not in my womb. So if I had written the script of my life, I would not be 40 years old with only one child. But in hindsight, I do see all of the blessings the situation has brought us and I am happy with where I am right now.

Watching Gregory learn on his own has been amazing. I'm not even sure I can put it into words. For me, there is faith at work. Faith that he was created as a whole being. He is not mine to "train" or to "civilize". He is only mine to guide. He learns best when I stay out of his way. I am here to help him find his God given passion and to help him develop that passion. I am not here to convince him to be a doctor or a lawyer or even (as Dad is) an engineer. I don't really have worldly goals for him. What I want for him is to be a happy, healthy, productive person. Those are the things I am to model for him. He taught himself to read and reads very well. Math skills have flourished with time-telling and cash-spending/saving. He is better at budgetting his money than I am, and he often has more cash than I do! When interested, he approaches new things head on. He examines new things in their totality and figures out how they work. He'll then take it apart (literally or figuratively) and examine and absorb each detail. His thirst for knowledge is still fresh. And I love the light bulb moment expression I often see on his face. But I also know when he's not interested in something, and I know that if he's not interested no amount of talking or showing can change that. And that's okay - because of it, I am fairly aware of what he does not know. Well, maybe that's a stretch. I *think* I know what he doesn't know. He'll often suprise me by spouting off something that I had no idea he knew.

All of this is a long way of saying that examining where you are on your journey is a good thing. Finding your own way is a good thing. Questioning what you trust is a good thing. And they are all good things to be modeling for your children. They are seeing that even as an adult we are growing and learning. Very little is in stone.

And I could go on a rant about hating the term unschooling. Our life should not be described by a term with "school" in it at all. We have nothing to do with it at all. It's like calling breastfeeding moms "unbottlers".

no, really...

The dog ate my homeschooling book!

Worried about Gregory

Gregory has been very depressed for several days. He's very down on himself (calling himself a dummy, idiot, stupid, etc) and makes scary statements about not wanting to be alive. He hits himself a lot and has hit another child (whose mother implied G was a bully!). This sort of behavior is what led to our discovery of his red dye sensitivity. I know he's had way too much sugar lately, and I've taken him off of it as of yesterday morning. He was miserable not having any sweets yesterday, but I'm not caving. I've explained to him that I believe he feels so bad because of the sugar, and I'm going to help him to feel better. He's not asked for any candy yet today. (any homeopathic remedies that'd help him detox?)

Add to the scenario the fact that none of us know how to handle a puppy (much less a 3 month old 20+ pound puppy!). We've all become "yellers" in the past few weeks. Yesterday we enrolled Bullitt (DH corrected my spelling of his name, LOL!) in puppy school, which will begin in 3 weeks. So the yelling has stopped. Since I know it'll be better soon, I don't have to worry about keeping him off the sofa forever, I just need to remind him to get down. I see a resolution coming, so I am not as stressed.

I'm also trying to get my hands on some books about bi-polar. I know my lousey mood is affecting him in a bad way. How can a kid be happy when he's always around an adult who isn't? At first, I felt researching bi-polar would give it a form of power. If I didn't speak about it, it didn't exist. But that hasn't been the case. I think I need some information to help see around the disease. I see signs of it in Gregory already and I want to be armed and ready, as it were.

So if you could pray for us as we journey down these roads of change, I'd appreciate it greatly.

Meeting friends in New Orleans

Gregory & I met Deanna & David (friends from Oklahoma vacationing in NO) at Cafe Du Monde in N.O. Monday. We had beignets while listening to a street guitar player, took a little walk to the river, then went for a drive. I was forbidden by my darling to go into St. Bernard parish, so we didn't see the worst. To be honest, I'm suprised he let me go at all. I had to remind him that David would be with us, not just "us girls". So we drove down Canal Street to the old cemetaries and then headed to the Lakeview area, where the 17th Street canal had broken & flooded. There wasn't as much debris around as I expected, but very little has been repaired. Some of those homes looked "fixable". Now, cost and structural things may keep it from happening, but it looked doable for some. We saw the lakefront, drove through Metairie which had wind damage and some flooding from the rain, but not the levee failures. It looks somewhat back to normal. There are blue tarp roofs and FEMA trailers and the trees look beat-up, but many of the businesses are open. Then we rode back into N.O. and saw the city park area. There were many more trees standing than I expected. There was more greenery than I expected. There was just mud covering much of it for so long, I didn't expect it to rebound so quickly. After we dropped David and Deanna off, we saw the UNO area and we saw 2 cleanup crews outside of houses in full hazzard suit garb. That was strange.

I'm not in any way saying it looks good down there, I just expected worse. There's still no electricity in most of those areas, and seeing major intersections as 4 way stops was strange. And the medians at the big intersections are full of small "yard signs", some handwritten. Some are looking for workers, others for work - demolition, cleanup, roofing, etc.

David took a picture of Deanna & I, but it's on her camera so y'all will have to wait. I think they'll be there till the weekend.

Oh and we saw the green chair (I never believed it was really dead). David was the gentleman and got out to take a picture for us. He also did a great job keeping Gregory entertained in the back seat of the car. The driving around got old for him quickly.

Non-bottle carries

Gregory had some problems with his top front teeth at about 20 months. It began as a hole in the tooth, then it cracked and before we got to the dentist, it broke. The dentist noticed the same beginning on the other front tooth. He said it likely happened in utero, the pulp and the enamel never bonded together. His logic (which I agreed with) was that since the natural enamel didn't bond well, neither would any filling or cap. So we let it be. Gregory never seemed to be in pain. In fact, the only thing done at that visit was a bit of filing of the broken tooth because it hurt me while nursing. He also told us that once the decay is black, it has stopped. Gregory has lost his bottom front teeth, but the 2 top front teeth aren't budgin yet. It's been so long since my sweetie's smile included "whole" front teeth.

And FWIW - he never had a bottle and I quickly corrected the dental assistant when she said "bottle carries". She and I nearly had a run in. When I told her he was still nursing at 20 months (she asked if he still took a bottle), she looked at me and said, "well, he's probably going to tell you it's time to stop that." My response was a very loud, "He'd better not! Is he a lactation consultant? Are you?" I think she made a note on the chart because the dentist didn't bat an eye about the nursing.

"unparenting"

----- Original Message -----
***The few people that I have spoken to about unschooling say that their experience has been that unschooling and unparenting go hand in hand with most folks.


I have seen unparenting. Kids come home from school (usually after-school care) and are shuffled off to their room behind closed doors. What goes on in there is a free-for-all until the adult can't stand the noise. Then the door is opened long enough to yell "Quiet!" (or some threat of physical voilence). They are allowed to come out long enough to eat, bathe, and then be shut out again to go to sleep and begin the routine again at 6 AM. Actually, those homes often have the strictest (and most rediculous) rules.

I have a feeling that is not what you were refering to. :)

We disclipline with grace. That means no punishment, no judgement or shame. Lots of talking! We talk about bad choices being made, and how they cause harm. We teach respect by showing respect. We teach our faith by living our faith. We teach pick up after yourself by picking up after ourselves. It's about lots of communication, lots of prayer, lots of faith and trust. And that takes a lot of effort. Nothing "un"parenting about it. It is non-coersive and non-punitive, but it's very hands on.

My strep story

When I was 8, I had strep throat. My mom says I didn't finish the antibiotic. A few weeks later, I had both Scarlet Fever and then Rheumatic Fever. Very sick - hospital for a week, no school for several weeks. For months I was on high doses of aspirin (I think for the joint pain). For the next 8 years, I took antibiotics daily to prevent getting strep again. Then at 16, I began passing blood in my stool and within a few weeks I was hospitalized and eventually had my colon surgically removed. The surgeons weren't able to tell if I had Crohn's disease or Ulcerative Colitis at the time. There wasn't much tissue left to test. A nurse brought up the subject of antibiotics possibly causing my gut problems and even brought some of her nursing school books for my mom to read. She probably got in trouble for that. The surgeons then said that they sent a sample for testing to see if the antibiotics had caused the ulceration, but that test came back negative (I do not believe any test was done. I think it is a total CMB lie). I refused to take the antibiotics any more. That was 22 years ago, and I've not had strep since (I've not had many antibiotics since either). I've also not had any more ulceration, though I get some autoimmune problems associated w/Crohn's. I did finally get a diagnosis about 10 years ago of "Crohn's Colitis", a combination of the 2 where the ulceration seems limited to the colon, but acts in other ways as Crohn's does.

Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble so much. And if I were dealing w/strep now, I'd go natural/homeopathic first. If that didn't help, I might reluctantly drag myself to an allopathic doctor.