[email protected]

Thanks Nance for your perspective.

I think for me the issue is that I was looking at our group as a club with shared goals, like girl scouts, 4-H, etc. When really it is a play gathering, with an activity on the side for those who want it. My girls are shy, but they do try to play with the other kids. It's when they get turned away or snubbed that they get their feelings hurt.

I know kids and adults aren't perfect. I've just been working with mine since day one at being inclusive, and we were in a group before we moved where this was a shared focus/value that was actually written into our mission statement. So, I think it's my hang up, and I just need to adjust my thinking. I'm realizing that my kids are just going to get their feelings hurt sometimes, and I just have to be there to give sympathy and support. But, I can't stop it from happening.

Amy



Ah, I had read it the other way -- that your kids were the ones in the smaller groups.

So your question is how to get other kids to invite your children into their smaller groups?

Or ???

I think this is going to happen whenever people get together and it's part of learning how group activities function. We can't force others to include us in their inner circles. And vice versa.

But we also don't have to sit there feeling hurt and excluded. We can participate and build our own friendships.

And we can stop judging whether any of this makes any of these people "perfect angels." It doesn't.

Nance



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[email protected]

Thanks Connie for your response.

>>>How old are the kids in question? What do you mean when you say that the smaller

groups don't want to include them? Are the other kids mean about it or do they
just not invite your kids to participate? Do your kids make any effort to join
the smaller groups?<<<<

The kids are in a wide range. The smaller groups sort break off around age groups, but with a very wide berth. The older group might include 10 and 11 yr. olds as well as teens, and then there might be another group with 11 yr. olds and down. It kind of shifts around. I do think my kids tend to be sensitive (it's a family trait, both inherited and learned), but there is some meanness too in the way they are turned away. Not statements so much as kids just turning away from them and purposefully going in a different direction, when they are trying to make an effort to join the group They do lean towards being shy. It is hard for a shy person to work up the courage to break into a group. It takes a lot of emotional energy, and then to have your efforts rejected, it hurts even if the other person isn't trying to be mean.


>>>If this is a homeschool co-op that does not
require kids to participate in the activity, then what is the goal of the group?
Does the group have any sort of requirements or guidelines at all? Most
homeschool groups have some kind of guidelines. <<<

I think this is where this is my hang up and misunderstanding with the group. It is advertised as a learning co-op, and we do plan weekly activities. But, when we are actually there, it is more of a play group. There are few activities that involve all of the children at the same time. The kids can either do the activity or not. So, there is not a shared goal for the children and adults. There are no shared experiences like in another group we were in before moving. We would occassionally do things like have a Winter Holiday party and have each family take a turn sharing one favorite holiday tradition (any winter holiday - Hanukkah, Christmas, solstice, etc.). This helped all the kids and adults to get to know each other a little better and gave us something to break the ice during free time. We could go up to someone and say, I really liked that idea that you shared.

I know I can't expect the group we are in now to be the group we were in before. That isn't fair. Different people, different place. Manly, I need to start seeing this new group as more of a social/play group and less as a co-op. I also need to accept that my girls are going to get their feelings hurt sometimes, and to be there to comfort them when they do, and help them move on and focus on something else.

Amy C.

Connie


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JJ

"I need to start seeing this new group as more of a social/play group and less as a co-op. I also need to accept that my girls are going to get their feelings hurt"

Why? That's surely not what I saw as an unschooling mom, when one of the children wasn't delighting in a group or activity!

What I don't understand is how anything about planned weekly group homeschooling (even in the old group you preferred, much less the new one at which you and your children get your feelings hurt) is moving your family toward successful whole-life UN-schooling ideas and activities. For that, why would you need to have this new group, or any group at all?

Have you thought about your own old feelings of hurt, being stuck to suffer as a shy child in whatever learning group you're put in by the adults, unable to feel you belonged yet also unable to honor those feelings and get out? It seems like answering such questions for yourself would be a more helpful direction even if you aren't unschooling, than steeling yourself against your children's unhappiness so you can stay in a group. To me that sounds like it would be setting your children up for socialization lessons, trying to teach them they might as well get used to feeling excluded and mom can't help because she doesn't know how. And even if you believe it, I hope you will think better of letting them know you see their shyness as some kind of predetermined fate or curse in your family, that dooms the children no matter what.



>
> I think this is where this is my hang up and misunderstanding with the group. It is advertised as a learning co-op, and we do plan weekly activities. But, when we are actually there, it is more of a play group. There are few activities that involve all of the children at the same time. The kids can either do the activity or not. So, there is not a shared goal for the children and adults. There are no shared experiences like in another group we were in before moving. We would occassionally do things like have a Winter Holiday party and have each family take a turn sharing one favorite holiday tradition (any winter holiday - Hanukkah, Christmas, solstice, etc.). This helped all the kids and adults to get to know each other a little better and gave us something to break the ice during free time. We could go up to someone and say, I really liked that idea that you shared.
>
> I know I can't expect the group we are in now to be the group we were in before. That isn't fair. Different people, different place. Manly, I need to start seeing this new group as more of a social/play group and less as a co-op. I also need to accept that my girls are going to get their feelings hurt sometimes, and to be there to comfort them when they do, and help them move on and focus on something else.
>
> Amy C.
>
> Connie
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Joyce Fetteroll

On Nov 1, 2010, at 10:56 AM, AECANGORA@... wrote:

> I also need to accept that my girls are going to get their feelings
> hurt sometimes, and to be there to comfort them when they do, and
> help them move on and focus on something else.

Well, that's true. You and and your girls can't make another group
accepting. But instead of getting stuck on the "can't do anything
about it" what about things you can do instead? Rather than feeling
defeated and powerless, turn it around to more proactive actions. What
about bringing toys and activities that are inviting? When you bring
something out, ask kids to join you and your girls. Draw your girls
into asking too as they feel comfortable with it. Let them see ways of
being inviting. Be the change you'd like to see. :-)

Joyce

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