Unschooling and a child's choice to go to school
Sandra Dodd
I'm sending this to the list with Nikole's permission:
Hi Sandra,
I'm a member of the always learning yahoo group and I have an 8 year old daughter, Camille, who chose to go to school this year after having been unschooled. (She had tried school two years ago out of curiosity, but didn't like it.) She is enjoying school this time and I was just writing a blog post this evening about how unschooling principles have positively affected her schooling experience. I wanted to write you personally to thank you for sharing your perspective on unschooling through the yahoo group and through your website, because even though Camille is no longer an unschooler, her life and my relationship with her is undoubtedly sweeter because of the ideas I found there.
Thank you,
Nikole Verde
p.s. Here's the blog post if you're interested:
http://verdemama.blogspot.com/2011/11/unschooling-and-schooling.html
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At the blog post, one respondent wrote "What a lovely take on schooling! . . . I'm sure she would be a joy to teach!!" that i I didn't see it as a "take on schooling " at all, but a view of one person. :-)
I wrote "School isn't the same for a child who has a choice of whether to be there or not. An empowered person making choices is acting, being and doing for purposes of her own. Powerlessness and a feeling of being trapped don't bring out the best in people."
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Hi Sandra,
I'm a member of the always learning yahoo group and I have an 8 year old daughter, Camille, who chose to go to school this year after having been unschooled. (She had tried school two years ago out of curiosity, but didn't like it.) She is enjoying school this time and I was just writing a blog post this evening about how unschooling principles have positively affected her schooling experience. I wanted to write you personally to thank you for sharing your perspective on unschooling through the yahoo group and through your website, because even though Camille is no longer an unschooler, her life and my relationship with her is undoubtedly sweeter because of the ideas I found there.
Thank you,
Nikole Verde
p.s. Here's the blog post if you're interested:
http://verdemama.blogspot.com/2011/11/unschooling-and-schooling.html
---------------------
At the blog post, one respondent wrote "What a lovely take on schooling! . . . I'm sure she would be a joy to teach!!" that i I didn't see it as a "take on schooling " at all, but a view of one person. :-)
I wrote "School isn't the same for a child who has a choice of whether to be there or not. An empowered person making choices is acting, being and doing for purposes of her own. Powerlessness and a feeling of being trapped don't bring out the best in people."
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Loredana Punal
> "School isn't the same for a child who has a choice of whether to be there or not. An empowered person making choices is acting, being and doing for purposes of her own. Powerlessness and a feeling of being trapped don't bring out the best in people."Thank you for sharing this. It's timely for me. I've been wanting to post recently but I wasn't sure what I was looking for and if it was relevant to this list. This post served as a signpost for me.
>
I'm in the middle of a personal struggle. My daughter is 4yo and has never been to school/daycare. I have been deschooling and hanging around attachment parenting and natural learning circles since she was 1yo. Her best friend is a 4yo girl she has bonded with in those circles and outside of those circles (ie as mums we've become good friends and see each other outside of groups though not on weekends, except for special occasions like birthdays). My daughter's friend started pre-school early this year and my daughter has been asking to go to her 'best friend's preschool' since. Due to financial constraints as well as waitlist constraints I didn't think it was an option for our family. I was also hoping that over a few months she'd connect with other kids and she'd move through the transition of knowing her friend now attends preschool. We still see her friend one day a week now however it will become increasingly more unlikely as they increase her number of days in preschool. Whilst my daughter has met other children and is happily playing for hours on end with them, noone comes close to the bond she has to her best friend.
My daughter is highly social and an 8-hour playdate on most days of the week is her perfect world. We don't have a close community of friends with kids or cousin-type relationships for her on weekends which I think is another reason why she craves the social contact during the week.
Cutting a long story short, it looks like we will be offered a place for her at her best friend's preschool for next year despite being on the waitlist for only a week. I would say it is my daughter's highest priority wish right now and has been for much of this year.
My struggle is between wanting to give her that option whilst fearing the covert impact a school system (as holistic/democratic/alternative it may claim to be) will have. There's no homework nor grades and agreements (aka rules) are democratically discussed & voted on but at the end of the day it's still a school. I am personally still hoping to continue our unschooling journey but not at my daughter's expense if what she really wants is to go to her best friend's preschool.
My question is: Is 4yo old enough to make that decision? How do I empower her in this decision making? Do we go with her wish whilst keeping a door open to a return to an unschooling journey like in the blogpost shared?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this.
This list has been very inspirational, informative and a critical part of our journey thus far.
Thank you!
Lori
(Sydney, Aus)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
BRIAN POLIKOWSKY
It sounds like what she really wants is to play and be more with her special friend and not necessarily go to school.
Alex Polikowsky
________________________________
From: Loredana Punal <loredana.punal@...>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [AlwaysLearning] Unschooling and a child's choice to go to school
I'm in the middle of a personal struggle. My daughter is 4yo and has never been to school/daycare. I have been deschooling and hanging around attachment parenting and natural learning circles since she was 1yo. Her best friend is a 4yo girl she has bonded with in those circles and outside of those circles (ie as mums we've become good friends and see each other outside of groups though not on weekends, except for special occasions like birthdays). My daughter's friend started pre-school early this year and my daughter has been asking to go to her 'best friend's preschool' since. Due to financial constraints as well as waitlist constraints I didn't think it was an option for our family. I was also hoping that over a few months she'd connect with other kids and she'd move through the transition of knowing her friend now attends preschool. We still see her friend one day a week now however it will become increasingly more unlikely as they increase her
number of days in preschool. Whilst my daughter has met other children and is happily playing for hours on end with them, noone comes close to the bond she has to her best friend.
My daughter is highly social and an 8-hour playdate on most days of the week is her perfect world. We don't have a close community of friends with kids or cousin-type relationships for her on weekends which I think is another reason why she craves the social contact during the week.
Cutting a long story short, it looks like we will be offered a place for her at her best friend's preschool for next year despite being on the waitlist for only a week. I would say it is my daughter's highest priority wish right now and has been for much of this year.
My struggle is between wanting to give her that option whilst fearing the covert impact a school system (as holistic/democratic/alternative it may claim to be) will have. There's no homework nor grades and agreements (aka rules) are democratically discussed & voted on but at the end of the day it's still a school. I am personally still hoping to continue our unschooling journey but not at my daughter's expense if what she really wants is to go to her best friend's preschool.
My question is: Is 4yo old enough to make that decision? How do I empower her in this decision making? Do we go with her wish whilst keeping a door open to a return to an unschooling journey like in the blogpost shared?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this.
This list has been very inspirational, informative and a critical part of our journey thus far.
Thank you!
Lori
(Sydney, Aus)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Alex Polikowsky
________________________________
From: Loredana Punal <loredana.punal@...>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [AlwaysLearning] Unschooling and a child's choice to go to school
> "School isn't the same for a child who has a choice of whether to be there or not. An empowered person making choices is acting, being and doing for purposes of her own. Powerlessness and a feeling of being trapped don't bring out the best in people."Thank you for sharing this. It's timely for me. I've been wanting to post recently but I wasn't sure what I was looking for and if it was relevant to this list. This post served as a signpost for me.
>
I'm in the middle of a personal struggle. My daughter is 4yo and has never been to school/daycare. I have been deschooling and hanging around attachment parenting and natural learning circles since she was 1yo. Her best friend is a 4yo girl she has bonded with in those circles and outside of those circles (ie as mums we've become good friends and see each other outside of groups though not on weekends, except for special occasions like birthdays). My daughter's friend started pre-school early this year and my daughter has been asking to go to her 'best friend's preschool' since. Due to financial constraints as well as waitlist constraints I didn't think it was an option for our family. I was also hoping that over a few months she'd connect with other kids and she'd move through the transition of knowing her friend now attends preschool. We still see her friend one day a week now however it will become increasingly more unlikely as they increase her
number of days in preschool. Whilst my daughter has met other children and is happily playing for hours on end with them, noone comes close to the bond she has to her best friend.
My daughter is highly social and an 8-hour playdate on most days of the week is her perfect world. We don't have a close community of friends with kids or cousin-type relationships for her on weekends which I think is another reason why she craves the social contact during the week.
Cutting a long story short, it looks like we will be offered a place for her at her best friend's preschool for next year despite being on the waitlist for only a week. I would say it is my daughter's highest priority wish right now and has been for much of this year.
My struggle is between wanting to give her that option whilst fearing the covert impact a school system (as holistic/democratic/alternative it may claim to be) will have. There's no homework nor grades and agreements (aka rules) are democratically discussed & voted on but at the end of the day it's still a school. I am personally still hoping to continue our unschooling journey but not at my daughter's expense if what she really wants is to go to her best friend's preschool.
My question is: Is 4yo old enough to make that decision? How do I empower her in this decision making? Do we go with her wish whilst keeping a door open to a return to an unschooling journey like in the blogpost shared?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this.
This list has been very inspirational, informative and a critical part of our journey thus far.
Thank you!
Lori
(Sydney, Aus)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Jenny Cyphers
***Cutting a long story short, it looks like we will be offered a place for her at her best friend's preschool for next year despite being on the waitlist for only a week. I would say it is my daughter's highest priority wish right now and has been for much of this year.***
When my oldest daughter was 4, she went to preschool with her best friend. She really wanted to go and it coincided with me needing a job. She was one of the few kids that cheerfully said good bye when I dropped her off and wanted to keep playing when I came to pick her up. She LOVED being there and even today has fond memories of going to that preschool.
I didn't send her the following year. She was supposed to go to the public school next door to the preschool and to the after school program at the preschool, but she wasn't able to so I kept her home rather than send her to the school near our home, which was awful. That's how we found unschooling, by keeping her out of school.
She remained very good friends with her best friend until they were about 11 and her friend got very busy with school stuff and just didn't have time anymore. They continued being friends for a few years after that, but only seeing each other a few times a year. Now, they never see each other, they are both 17. In all those years, there were other friends and other things that kept us busy and occupied. Never once has she ever regretted going to that preschool. Only I was nostalgic about having felt like I lost a year of my child's life.
I remember trivial things about that year, like the clothing she insisted on wearing and the cartoons she wanted to watch the moment she got home, the shopping trips on the way home, that sort of thing. She was there for 6 hrs each day. She remembers food and various weird things that kids did, finding needles in the park from the homeless people waiting for the soup kitchen next door, losing every single nice sweater she owned, different craft items, the different teachers, especially the one with the Eloise tattoo, and most of all, playing with her best friend.
If there is a way to help her play with her friend outside of school, I'd go that route first, but I know how difficult it is when one kid is gone all day long in a preschool. They are too young really to just go out in the neighborhood and find kids to play with, everything has to be arranged. There is no reason that she can't go to preschool with her best friend on a day to day basis, either. She can wake up and choose to go or not. If she is consistently choosing not to go, take her out, but if she likes it and wants to be there, that is a positive thing. I can honestly say that there was not a single day that my daughter would have NOT wanted to go and be with her best friend at her preschool, and sometimes they would continue playing after school at each other's houses.
School might not be a bad thing if the kid really wants to be there and enjoys going. *I* don't happen to like school and *I* didn't like my own school experience, but our children are different people with different likes and dislikes. My other daughter has never wanted to go to school, doesn't like playing without me there, doesn't do sleepovers, and generally likes being at home most of the time, she's 10. She is almost the opposite of her older sister.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
When my oldest daughter was 4, she went to preschool with her best friend. She really wanted to go and it coincided with me needing a job. She was one of the few kids that cheerfully said good bye when I dropped her off and wanted to keep playing when I came to pick her up. She LOVED being there and even today has fond memories of going to that preschool.
I didn't send her the following year. She was supposed to go to the public school next door to the preschool and to the after school program at the preschool, but she wasn't able to so I kept her home rather than send her to the school near our home, which was awful. That's how we found unschooling, by keeping her out of school.
She remained very good friends with her best friend until they were about 11 and her friend got very busy with school stuff and just didn't have time anymore. They continued being friends for a few years after that, but only seeing each other a few times a year. Now, they never see each other, they are both 17. In all those years, there were other friends and other things that kept us busy and occupied. Never once has she ever regretted going to that preschool. Only I was nostalgic about having felt like I lost a year of my child's life.
I remember trivial things about that year, like the clothing she insisted on wearing and the cartoons she wanted to watch the moment she got home, the shopping trips on the way home, that sort of thing. She was there for 6 hrs each day. She remembers food and various weird things that kids did, finding needles in the park from the homeless people waiting for the soup kitchen next door, losing every single nice sweater she owned, different craft items, the different teachers, especially the one with the Eloise tattoo, and most of all, playing with her best friend.
If there is a way to help her play with her friend outside of school, I'd go that route first, but I know how difficult it is when one kid is gone all day long in a preschool. They are too young really to just go out in the neighborhood and find kids to play with, everything has to be arranged. There is no reason that she can't go to preschool with her best friend on a day to day basis, either. She can wake up and choose to go or not. If she is consistently choosing not to go, take her out, but if she likes it and wants to be there, that is a positive thing. I can honestly say that there was not a single day that my daughter would have NOT wanted to go and be with her best friend at her preschool, and sometimes they would continue playing after school at each other's houses.
School might not be a bad thing if the kid really wants to be there and enjoys going. *I* don't happen to like school and *I* didn't like my own school experience, but our children are different people with different likes and dislikes. My other daughter has never wanted to go to school, doesn't like playing without me there, doesn't do sleepovers, and generally likes being at home most of the time, she's 10. She is almost the opposite of her older sister.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]