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We are currently visiting my family "back home".  Myself, DH, DS 10 and 8 mo b/g twins.  We are all sharing a smallish bedroom in a noisy house.  Most of my time has been spent helping the twins make the adjustment to a different environment.  DS has been playing video games with his aunts, watching tv, showing his grandpa games on computer, running erands with grandpa, watching dad fix grandpa's truck, playing with neighborhood kids.  He has helped with dishes and picking up without being asked.  I am so filled with love and wonder at how amazing he is.
My mother asked me the other day what we were planning to do about learning while we are here (4 weeks).  I told her we would do what ever we thought would be fun, walks, a trip to the zoo and science center, because we enjoy those things.  She asked if I would let him play video games all day, to which I responded that I would if that is what he wanted, but I didn't really think that would be the case.  Then the issue of eating came up, she was worried that she hadn't seen him eating much during the day.  (She is a member of the clean your plate club)  He eats when he is hungry, he knows what his body needs.
So to Sandra's site I went, looking for words I could give my mother to help her understand.  I re read the "If I let him..." section and I had a thought.  It seems to me that these fears of doing nothing but tv watching or only eating "junk" come from our oun issues.  That we sometimes put our fears and issues onto kids.  Its like we are teaching them that they cannot trust themselves. 
Just a thought...
Kelly




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Sandra Dodd

-=- It seems to me that these fears of doing nothing but tv watching
or only eating "junk" come from our oun issues. That we sometimes put
our fears and issues onto kids. Its like we are teaching them that
they cannot trust themselves.
Just a thought...
Kelly-=-

It's going along with the fears of generations, though. The "common
knowledge" that wasn't really knowledge at all.

Sandra

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k

>>>> Its like we are teaching them that they cannot trust themselves. <<<<

After all, many of us have gotten that message from all sorts of
sources: school, work, church. And many of us are still in those
environments, at least work. The things often said there tend to stay
with us because the ideas are repeated so much that they seem true. I
love John Holt's metaphor about why teaching doesn't work: that our
attempt to teach is separated from realtiy; that by training a parrot
to say something often enough, apart from the experience of the words'
meanings, we believe the parrot will come to understand the phrases
they learn to speak, simply by repeating. (I'm paraphrasing.)

It's great that I got the chance to take in new knowledge by watching
Karl as he showed us how he trusts himself and we can too. Most
people haven't had that experience, and if faced with the knowledge,
they don't understand because it's not what they're interested in and
they have no reason in their own thinking for such understanding.

Karl and I lived with my in laws for a few months, and it was strange
looking through the lens of unschooling at a familiar scene where
people are seeking order through a series of predictable actions. And
noticing that the order wasn't predictable because of certain touted
actions so much as through force and coercion. I felt an odd sense of
reality there.

~Katherine