Kerrie Thomas

Hi all. We are not radical unschoolers (yet) or even unschoolers, although gradually moving in that direction. Because we are still using school for now, we need to continue with the current bed time, the kids (8 & 5) need to wear a uniform each day, and have set lunch times etc so what I would like is realistic smaller ideas to help them have more power in their lives. Food is one area I am relaxing with and we are having some fun there! They requested jelly (maybe called Jello in the USA?) with our breakfast this morning and I said "Sure!" which was a first :-) But would love some other ideas. Reading the current thread about the 4 year old boy speaking rudely possibly due to feeling powerless, made me realise this might be happening with my kids. There has been a lot of frustration lately. Any suggestions to increase choices, possibilities, light, fun etc within our current circumstances very welcome. Thanks.

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Juliet Kemp

Can you relax bedtimes and mealtimes at weekends? Maybe just saying to them "hey, on school nights, Sunday through Thursday, we all have to get up in the morning so we can't stay up too late, but on Friday and Saturday we can stay up a bit later" might help them accept that there's a real reason for bedtime and not you enforcing something arbitrary. Making early bedtimes more fun/snuggly (if they're not already) might make it nicer, too. (Or if they're regularly staying awake past "bedtime" or bedtimes are a big stress you could rethink how much sleep they really actually need.)

How much choice do they have over what they are doing after school and at weekends? Can it be more?


Juliet

> On 17 Feb 2014, at 00:07, Kerrie Thomas <keznco@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all. We are not radical unschoolers (yet) or even unschoolers, although gradually moving in that direction. Because we are still using school for now, we need to continue with the current bed time, the kids (8 & 5) need to wear a uniform each day, and have set lunch times etc so what I would like is realistic smaller ideas to help them have more power in their lives. Food is one area I am relaxing with and we are having some fun there! They requested jelly (maybe called Jello in the USA?) with our breakfast this morning and I said "Sure!" which was a first :-) But would love some other ideas. Reading the current thread about the 4 year old boy speaking rudely possibly due to feeling powerless, made me realise this might be happening with my kids. There has been a lot of frustration lately. Any suggestions to increase choices, possibilities, light, fun etc within our current circumstances very welcome. Thanks.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>
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Sandra Dodd

Juliet wrote:  "(Or if they're regularly staying awake past "bedtime" or bedtimes are a big stress you could rethink how much sleep they really actually need.)"

Original report said:
-=-Because we are still using school for now, -=-

Are you "using school" as babysitting?  Or are you letting the schoolyear play out just because it's already in progress?


If the former, then so what if they're sleepy at school?

If the latter, and if you're home, there's no earthly reason for a 5 or 8 year old to finish a school year unless it's their choice, to hang out with other kids.
The "completion" of an elementary or pre-school year is really not worth anything.  If they go to a different school, they'll be put in by age anyway, most likely.  

Within a school they make the threat of failure loom large, but it's nothing but a way to pressure small children to follow directions and sit still and "do work."

Sandra

<bobcollier@...>




---In [email protected], <juliet@...> wrote:

Can you relax bedtimes and mealtimes at weekends? Maybe just saying to them "hey, on school nights, Sunday through Thursday, we all have to get up in the morning so we can't stay up too late, but on Friday and Saturday we can stay up a bit later" might help them accept that there's a real reason for bedtime and not you enforcing something arbitrary. Making early bedtimes more fun/snuggly (if they're not already) might make it nicer, too. (Or if they're regularly staying awake past "bedtime" or bedtimes are a big stress you could rethink how much sleep they really actually need.)

How much choice do they have over what they are doing after school and at weekends? Can it be more?
===================


My daughter (now 28) spent 13 years in the school system before going on to university. She was never "unschooled". Before she started school, however, she had a lifestyle a radical unschooler would recognise (not called "radical unschooling" by me, I'd never heard of that: it was a parenting philosophy that came from respecting a child's "self-authority", as I call it - by which I mean that my daughter wanted what she wanted and that was her choice not mine, my choice was whether or not I would or could help her get what she wanted, and that was customarily yes, whatever it was, unless there was a positive reason for no). After my daughter started school, the only thing that changed was that choices were made taking into consideration 'what schools want'. For example, before my daughter started school, she chose her own bedtime; after she started school, she chose her own bedtime - only now it was likely to be 8:30-9 o'clock on nights before a school day rather than midnight or the wee small hours, which was now reserved for Friday and Saturday nights. That was a matter of sensible decision making. My daughter was never asked to do her homework and did it anyway because it brought positive experiences into her life, as it happened, so that was never an issue. Nothing changed with regard to her choosing the clothes she wore.outside of school, what she liked to eat, having friends over, her social life generally, if she hadn't had the opportunity to watch TV during the week, she could watch TV to her heart's content at the weekend, and so on. She had maximum freedom of choice in all areas of her life. That was the aim from the day she was born. Which, I acknowledge, is a different kind of situation from 'changing horses in midstream', as the saying goes..

But I do know from personal experience that 'what schools want' can be successfully worked around. It takes attention, time, and energy. That's all. My wife and I had the attitude with our daughter that it wasn't the place of her school to interfere with her home life, so her home life continued, as much as was practicably possible, as it had been before she started school. When school became a chronically negative experience for her ten years younger brother and he was removed from the school system at the age of seven, he simply reverted to the lifestyle he had before he started school - which, as I've suggested above, was a lifestyle a radical unschooler would recognise (I think from memory he'd been out of school for more than a year before I first encountered the concept of "radical unschooling"). 

One of the numerous pleasures of my son 'growing without school' for nine years (he's now at a tertiary college studying for his Year 12 Certificate, as it's called here in Australia) was never ever needing to consider 'what schools want' and how to minimise the effects of that on what my children's parents wanted. It was out of my life completely. That was a wonderfully liberating experience for me, knowing how much attention and effort had been required with my daughter to optimise her freedom of choice often in circumstances that worked against it. So, as I say, it can be done but it's work and a matter of determination and perhaps a sensible person would rather devote their energy to other and better things! Such as I did after my son was removed from school altogether.

Bob

<keznco@...>

Sandra asked: Are you "using school" as babysitting?  Or are you letting the schoolyear play out just because it's already in progress?

Neither really. I would like to withdraw the kids from school and start unschooling now, but my partner isn't fully on board just yet. We're discussing it and he's working through his concerns. I am fairly sure he will come around but I don't want to rush him.

If he's truly unable to work through his worries, or closes the door on the whole idea all of a sudden for some reason, then the kids will remain in school. I don't want to raise alarm bells with the teachers due to the kids being consistently late or yawning, unable to focus etc in class. They record lateness as partial absences. If there are enough of them recorded, they can involve Dept of Human Services (child welfare).

They stay up later on weekends and dress how they like, eat when they want to etc. Juliet said: make early bedtimes more snuggly.  I like this idea. Thanks. I'll change their sheets now & put some plush toys in there & spread some of our new library books over the duvet. 

As I said, the main reason I want to give them more choices is so that they feel they have power in their own lives. But also, I'm trying to make small changes from hereon to ease them into unschooling (when DP is ready to make the commitment) rather than just stop school & all of a sudden there are no rules.