Joyce Fetteroll

I received an email on the side about my website. I usually encourage people to post to the list so the time spent replying can be shared with lots of people rather than just one! ;-) So I brought it here in case others might find the discussion useful. I think it's all pretty straightforward. 


what if a child is filled with apathy and with no ambition except to be passively entertained? [His daughter is 14.]

If you see your daughter as choosing apathy in reaction to her life as *you* see it it's natural to think she's getting life wrong.

If you see her choosing apathy in reaction to the very different life that *she's* experiencing, then your perspective can shift. By seeing who she is you can be with, talk with, interact with the person she is rather than talking at who you imagine she is.

You will improve your relationship with her -- with anyone you care about :-) -- if you assume she's making choices she believes will meet her needs. If she keeps making the same choices, they *are* helping in some way. Otherwise she'd make different choices!

There might be options that would ease other needs she has. But rather than pulling her away from something that works for her, add more options for her to try. Not instead of what she's doing. In addition to what she's doing. 

If you assume her choices are valid, what situations would fit her choices? What life is she living that would cause her to act as though she had no ambition and craved entertainment?

And consider that you're mislabeling what you're seeing. Someone recovering from a broken leg might look apathetic, like they lack ambition and like they want nothing but passive entertainment.

Don't be so quick to judge her negatively. Trust she has issues she's dealing with that you can't see. Trust that she can know her life way better than you ever can. She may not totally understand what's going on. But she can feel what helps. She can feel what doesn't help. And each day she's trusted and supported to try what she thinks will help is a day she grows to understand herself and the issues she's grappling with better.

As in any situation, if her or other people's lives are not in imminent danger, then she has time to figure things out. She has time to ignore your suggestions and continue to do what's helping some part of her problem. She has time to decide she's ready to move onto something else.

You can't fix her or her problem. That's up to her. What you *do* have is a broader experience with what life has to offer. You can offer *ideas* for her to try. But remember, you can't see everything she's dealing with. You're seeing a piece. And the piece might not represent the issue that most troubles her.

Swirl opportunities into her life. Don't push. A nudge may get her out of a rut but ultimately what will serve her in life is learning to listen to her inner voice, not wait for someone to decide she needs nudged. She's 14. She has years to learn its language. Trust that she's listening. Trust that she does not want to spend her life on the couch staring at the TV. Don't rush her towards *your* right choices or she'll miss out on all the learning to be hand discovering her right choices. 

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us by Daniel Pink

Give her more things to choose from. *Be* with her more. Join her in her world. Get to know her. Add to her world things you think she'll like. Don't focus on things you think she *should* like or things you think are good for her. Focus on her and her likes. Because her likes -- everyone's likes -- are a big part of who they see themselves as. By turning your nose up at her choices, you're turning your nose up at her.


 passively entertained

It helps hugely in building relationships to not put negative labels on what you see on the surface. 

Someone reading a book *is* being passively entertained. They're feeding off someone else's labor for their own entertainment. And yet book reading is praised and TV watching isn't. There is absolutely no reason to treat them differently other than snobbery.


The one advantage TV has is that it can be more soothing than reading. It's why a lot of people watch TV in the evening to get some downtime from life.

What does she need downtime from? If you think "Nothing!" then you don't know her well enough.

She's 14. She's in a transition stage between kid interests and teen interests. She remembers the fun she had with kid interests but she can't figure out why those interests aren't sparking her any more. She looks around at more grown up things and they're okay but they don't yet spark her.

She's temporarily broken. And she's healing. Think of it as like having a broken leg. You can't heal the broken leg just as you can't heal the hormones in her. Her body just needs time to grow and adjust to the change. What you do have power over is the environment -- including you and the emotions you add to the environment. You can create a comfortable nest for her to grow in. Or you can keep trying to push her out of the nest because her recovery is irritating you. You get to choose.


I've noticed that they seem to have developed a fear of trying new things, and I think it comes from a fear of failure and lack of confidence in themselves.

It may be part of who they are. 

What if a fear of trying new things were part of their personalities? What if it wasn't something you could change? How would you help them experience more of life knowing that fear of failure was a part of who they are? 

If they had no legs, you wouldn't keep pushing them to get up on their feet! You'd find ways to be mobil that worked for them.

If it's not an inborn trait, they've *learned* to do that. They've learned to protect themselves from something worse by putting on armor. You can't snap your fingers and make the fear go away. It developed slowly. It will take time for them to understand life in a new way.

Don't try to change them. Change the environment. Create an environment where they don't need to protect who they are. And then trust they'll let go of the armor when *they* feel safe. 

Unschooling needs to be more hands on on parents' part. 
Italic above that I highlighted is also interesting, there seems to be a conflict between allowing the child to grow themselves and being hands-on.

Once you let go of seeing your child as your project and start seeing creating a rich environment that's responsive to each child's needs as your project, then there is no conflict.

No one wants to be someone else's fixer-upper project. ;-) All people do want to be seen and appreciated for who they are. And trusted to make the choices the feel are right as they learn more about who they are.

Joyce

Sandra Dodd

Has the girl just left school? Or have they been unschooling for a while?
You mentioned healing, but didn't recommend deschooling, so I wondered.

Some parents seem to think unschooling is like a wind-up robot that will rewind itself after the first time—that a child will discover all of the things that were on the state curriculum for her age, and come and report it to the parent every nine weeks with a larger report in late May or something... (School years end in December, in Australia, I think. July, in England, it seems.)

Sandra