Joyce Fetteroll

“I think my father’s rage at the Trenches took me over, when I was
very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents’
emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without.
What is the use of it? It is as if that old war is in my own memory,
my own consciousness.”

I was reading a review of Doris Lessing's newest book and the
reviewer pulled that quote out. It reminded me of Sandra's frequent
reminder that our kids need us to let go of the baggage we're
carrying from our own pasts. We're probably all full of legacies we
could have done without. No reason to give our kids the same.

Joyce

The book is Alfred and Emily
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/books/05kaku.html?th&emc=th
(That will probably only work for people who are registered with the
NY Times)

Even though I've never finished any of her books, her name has been
in the back of my mind ever since I read a review of a very literary
science fiction work she did. Just the idea of it caught my attention
though I was never able to finish it ;-)

Jenny C

It reminded me of Sandra's frequent
> reminder that our kids need us to let go of the baggage we're
> carrying from our own pasts. We're probably all full of legacies we
> could have done without. No reason to give our kids the same.


We've definitely had our share of unloading of baggage in our house.
It's certainly better to do that before you have kids, but it doesn't
always happen that way. Still, though, I think kids can learn a lot
from watching their parents grow and learn how to be better people!

I wish things for our family had been different earlier than later, but
it is what it is. Unschooling really helped make us better people. I
can't even imagine, or rather I can, how different things would be with
our relationships with our kids if they'd been in school all these
years.

Kids absorb the good and the bad. Unschooling really focuses on the
good, and that's, well, GOOD!