trying to soothe the deschooling wobbles

It's been a while since I did a proper post. A friend is in hospital so I've been helping out her hubby with their kids where I can, plus my two ladies have given birth within a week of each other :)

I'm not sure whether there is much of an update in terms of what the sprogits have been doing. There has been much Minecraft - Little Clanger built herself a farm and has an army of dogs; and Small Clanger is perfecting his aim with a bow and arrow.  I bought them some books from the supermarket: some maths/English ones for both of them; a science one for Small; some crosswords/wordsearchers for Little and a number/shape pattern one for Small. We also bought some more (!!) craft supplies. Like we really need them... *rolls eyes* I see yet another (!!) home ed/craft cupboard sort out in my immediate future. This afternoon they made scones, and we ate them with cream and jam.

I must confess though, that I have been struggling a bit with the deschooling. Sometimes I have "but shouldn't we be <insert thing here that I feel we should be doing>" thoughts. They have been getting more frequent. They're not precipitated by others - I've not had anyone who has really thrown up any negatives about the whole home ed thing. People are curious; they're interested; they ask questions about how the legalities work and how we are finding it as a family being together more than we were; but nobody yet has expressed anything directly to me other than admiration and curiousity. The wobbles are coming from me... I had it in my head, when we originally knew for certain that we would be deregistering back in March, that once I had done my exam then we would start concentrating on home ed stuff. So even though I told the LA that we would be deschooling until the new year at least and to kindly bog off until then, I have still been kind of stuck on November. The sprogs, however, are telling me that they are not ready yet. Not in so many words of course, but in their actions.

While Little Clanger is currently still interested in gymnastics, and is wanting to start things like ice skating, she's not really interested in doing anything that seems to resemble school. She did a page of a maths book I bought for her, which involved using a calculator to work out the answers to sums which corrosponded to coded letters, so she could work out what the sentence said; and has done a couple of wordsearches. However, she has completely withdrawn from reading, and from Reading Eggspress; and while she seems enthusiastic when I suggest something that I know she'll like, when it actually comes to doing it she says "I don't want to right now, I'll do it later".

On Monday Small said that he didn't want to do gym because he didn't want to have to listen to someone and do as they asked him. Now, I accept that may have been him protesting about the unusually large size of the group last week, or it may have been simply that he wanted to play with his lego spaceship that we got via The Sun's free lego offer (never bought so many newspapers in my life!!), or it may be that he's genuinely not ready yet. I know you shouldn't compare your children, but he's always done things later than the girls - right from learning to sit up. I'm trying to think of him as more comparable to Tiny Clanger in terms of where he is, instead of comparable to Little Clanger, despite the older two being almost the same size as each other.

I guess, then, all the signs are that we are firmly in the grip of deschooling. Little Clanger has spent a whole 5 years in the school system. The guideline given on the home ed groups is a month of deschooling per year in school. With deregistering in July that means by the guideline Little would be done deschooling in the new year. I'm not overly convinced about that, but I guess we'll see where we stand in a couple of months. I'm also trying to remind myself that other European countries do not start schooling until a minimum of 6, and Small Clanger is not 6 until January. Therefore, he will not be at any disadvantage by my leaving off until next year. Despite knowing this, I'm still falling foul of the wobble that hits almost all new home edders: those "shouldn't we be doing X or Y or Z?" thoughts.

It is hard to have faith that you are doing the right thing sometimes. However, I do not want to be the kind of parent who forces her children to do things that they do not want to, before they are completely ready. Indeed that is one of the reasons why we deregistered from school, because we are not happy with them being coerced into things they are not ready for. But it is hard not to worry about whether one is making the right decision by not hurrying children along, when our entire society is geared to making children do things before they are ready. If a pregnancy continues for "too long" then labour is induced, with little appreciation for whether there is a reason why this baby has not arrived yet. If labour takes "too long" it is augmented with drugs, or a caesarean is performed for "failure to progress". Some baby "experts" (and I use the term experts in an entirely ironic sense) endorse imposing a timetable onto babies, regardless of whether it is appropriate. Early weaning is suggested as the cure for all manner of possible feeding problems, despite babies not being biologically ready for food until between 7 and 9 months of age. They are expected to sleep through the night, and subjected to controlled crying to "encourage" them to do so, even though most babies do not naturally sleep through until their second or third years of life. We are expected to send them off to nursery, and to just accept it if they show their distress by crying when we leave. There is so much of the way we are expected to parent that encourages us to ignore their cues about when they are ready to do things, and to push them if they are not doing it to our schedule. I'm not judging. I've travelled that path. I've been there with the caesarean, the early weaning mush, the controlled crying, the frustration, the feeling like I'm doing everything wrong because my baby just didn't seem to want to follow the same path as everyone else's offspring. It has taken me a long time to recognise that way of thinking, and even now, 8 years after starting my parenting journey, I still slip back into it sometimes. Obviously. That's what's lead me to writing this post. There's a phrase: old habits die hard. And it's right: it is hard to change the way you are, especially when it involves treading a less-than-typical path.

I don't know how long it will take me to free myself from my old ways of thinking, both about parenting and about education. But deep down, despite the wobbles, I know that I am doing the right thing. If I can keep hold of that (and maybe get a little pep talk and a hug or two at gym on Monday!) then I'll be ok. And no more shoulds and shouldn'ts. They're too prescriptive and it's not helpful.