Katie

Hello All,

I want to thank you all so very much for your wonderful responses to
my post. All your experiences and resources are so helpful to me.
I feel like I have so much emotional work to do to be the parent I
wish to be. I haven't yet made it through all of them but I wanted
to reply to Tracy's really quickly.

>>Did you? How would you have known any different? It's kind of
>>easy to
>>just assume that you must have "needed" something because that's
>>the
>>way you were raised, but if we really look hard and break things
>>down
>>sometimes things aren't what they seem.

The thing is that I have actually experienced opposite ends of the
spectrum in parenting. I grew up for the first 5 years with married
parents, my mom very liberal and totally into letting me be
independant and figure things out on my own. I did have a reward
system~ a star chart in which I recieved a star sticker for certain
tasks. I was allowed to run out of the house as I pleased, hair a
mess, clothes I wished for, blanky in hand. My dad was more
conservative type, and he provided me some neutral structure. He
had the philosophy that kids will be kids, but he also was stern
when I did things wrong. He didn't get mad often, but when he did
he was very mad or worse very disappointed in me. My dad did choose
some punitive punishments on rare occasions. I find most of them to
be pointless because all they did was make me hurt by him, not by
what I did. For the next years of my life, till 12, I was raised in
an extreme manner. My dad remaried a woman who suffered miserably
in her own head and therefore made everyone around her suffer as
well. She was extremely controlling, parenting through fear and
manipulation. This has caused me such emotional trama. When I
moved back in with my mom I had the complete other end of the
spectrum. My mom had no control over me and let me do whatever I
wanted. I guess this is my fear. I don't want my daughter to be
without guidance because I see the irreversable dicisions I made
under this type of parenting. Ofcourse I would never in my life
dream to parent the way my dad's wife did. I have always thought
there should be a middle ground between the two. Maybe my mom had
the right idea but she lacked in herself the example. She is to
this day an emotional wreck for so many reasons, and doesn't have
boundaries so therefore doesn't respect mine. I could go on, but
not really the point. Anyway. All my questions about unschooling
are coming from these experiences. I know I really absolutely
needed someone to sit me down and say NO! I needed someone to tell
me to respect myself, to take care of me, to give me guidance, and
to protect me from myself. Granted I would never have listened if
it was in a punitive coercive manner. So I'm wondering where the
middle ground is. Maybe after reading all the links recommended and
picking up an unschooling book I'll understand. I hope I haven't
rambled. Thanks for listening.

Warmly,
Katie