Susan Buchholz

Thank you so much, Pam, for this post. I really needed to hear that.
With all that I'm going through right now, it was good to hear this. Tomorrow is a very scary day for me. Hospital tests and I may have to stay overnight (or so). Won't know until I get there. So I may go "no email" so I don't have four hundered posts on my email when I get back. ;-) If I do, you'll know why. Thanks again.

Much Peace to you,

Susan

Your son is right, Susan. People share. Women, especially, share.

There are email lists that don't allow any actual real personal
information - it is ALL about theories. I find those incredibly boring
and useless.

But many of us learn by telling our stories to each other and working
on them together - we chew on them - we dig for the bigger principles
at work, we figure out how we feel about things by talking about
real-life situations. Although we post specifics - true anecdotes and
situations - it is the underlying basics that we really focus on.
That's how we learn from each other. I post that my kids sing all the
time - at the top of their voices - they LOVE to sing. You may not have
singers, but you may have a kid who plays the radio loudly all the
time. Or kids who just use really loud voices. At the same time my
specific issue is looked at, perhaps in some depth with differing
responses, people will be comparing and contrasting it to other
situations that they've faced. Two of the most important things we'll
do will be to see how general unschooling principles apply to this
specific situation and to see if general unschooling principles can be
developed out of this specific situation. Either way - it is all useful
analytical discussion. NONE of it is about us all somehow determining
who is "right" or "good" or otherwise. None of it is personal. None of
us have any authority over each other.

However, we have simply found that if it is all hypothetical, it
doesn't have that ring of truth to it that makes it so real and useful.

You didn't share much, to be honest. I didn't get any sense from your
original posts of what your decision-making was like, what your
relationship was like, etc. Without that context, people's responses
will be more shots in the dark - so keeping in mind that they may be
useful to somebody else, you simply need to either ignore what doesn't
fit or expand on your situation more so that the conversation can be
more focused, if that is what you'd like.

If not, your comments might be the starting point for a discussion that
will expand and branch out in directions that are no longer even
relevant at all to your own situation.

In a way, NOTHING written is really about any individual - we know so
very little about each other (most of the 1600+ of us, anyway), that
we're all just responding to what WE get from what others write.

Take what you can use - if something provokes thought, consider it a
gift. Ignore the rest - unless you feel like questioning it or adding
to it or expanding upon it or disagreeing with it - or, in other words,
analyzing it yourself.

-pam






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