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-=-My son can fight against me and voice out his opinion when I have done something he feels is wrong. That's great and I welcome it. It means he's developing into his own man. How much more could a mother ask for? Does that mean I back down? No...-=-

This makes me uncomfortable, on an unschooling list.

My children don't fight against me. They never have.

How can that be?

-=-No... because then he didn't develop into his own man inspite of someone else opposing him, he developed into someone who doesn't see that people have their own choices and demands on life as well. He's developed without challenge and opposition. And life, my friends, as we all very well know, is filled to the hilt with opposition. -=-

My children are 13, 16 and 18. They are their own people despite the fact that their parents did not oppose them. They're good people, too. They have found opposition outside the family sometimes, but they handle it well.

Life is filled with oppostion, but in the absence of being forced to go to school, an individual can pretty much avoid the opposition.

Our family life is not filled with opposition. If it were, I wouldn't be proud of it.

-=-He makes his
own choices every day... and so do I, very independent of each other. We don't talk about those choices... just live them.-=-

This is contradicted by things earlier in that same post, and is problematical in light of the many uses of "we believe" and "we agree" in earlier posts.

-=-And as a family, there is compromise and discussion, challenge and even arguements and the agreement to not agree.
-=-

There are two of you. It's conversation. It's awareness of one another in the home. Ideally, it's loving acceptance of differences. It sounds more oppositional than it needs to be.

Sandra