Mindful Parenting.
photo by Renee Cabatic
As we had been talking about natural learning, naturally I responded:
"The power to decide what to learn" makes a pretzel of the straight line between experience and knowing.
My children don't "decide what to learn, how to learn, and when to
learn it."
They learn all the time. They learn from dreams, from
eating, from walking, from singing, from conversations, from watching plants grow and storms roll.
Caren Knox wrote:
I've come to realize that my kids need ME—not just in the same room, not just nearby, but by my attention and interaction—my full self.. . . . Awareness that you're making these choices is very powerful.—Caren Knox
(dharmamama)
Sometimes deschooling works best when there are surprising (maybe even shocking) surprises, or stark refutations of what the mom has “guaranteed will happen,” or is positive can ONLY happen—that having candy out all the time will make kids throw up, have cavities, get fat. The stories of kids in the presence of the same old bowl of candy asking for vegetables and fruit are important stories to share. |
Choices can’t happen without choices, and choices don’t happen well with a mom hovering around and predicting negative outcomes. Lots of people have reported that their experiences with food, and unschooling, changed everything. Seeing kids learning about food, and making choices about food, made other choices seem to make total sense. |