Julie Bogart

Your post was so helpful to me.

Last night I lay in bed talking with my husband. I was cracking up. I have
been on so many lists in the past eight years and have moderated a bunch of
them. I run a forum and teach in a business and have been hired to speak
about homeschooling all over the place.

Yet I have never felt so incompetent with expressing how my family lives and
why as I have on this list!

In the last couple of days, I've begun to see why. It's because I don't know
the unschooling language. I am learning it as I read. And I'm trying to
convey what I know of how my family runs at the same time as I make paradigm
shifts. That means sometimes my stories are off the mark and other times,
I'm happily surprised at how much they already fit!

You said:

> If conscious parenting and unschooling were rule based, we could easily say
> "Kids need help with this, this and this and you can drop helping them with
> that, that and that." But it isn't rule based. It's based on the philosophy
> of listening to what you're kids are saying with their words and behavior
> and helping them get what they want out of life. And that's a really hard
> idea to convey accurately. Especially since most parents are certain they do
> that already. And trying to get them to see how disrespectful standard
> parenting practices are without them feeling that they as people are
> disrespectful is a challenging task. ("What do you mean I'm not respectful
> of my kids!?") It's as hard as getting across the concept to a child that
> just because I don't like what you're doing doesn't mean I don't like you.
> It's a challenge to discuss the actions without the person thinking their
> character is being discussed.

I think this is the primary issue for most moms coming to the list. They are
already interested in being respectful, in-touch moms. They already believe
that they are for the most part. So when answers come back that don't
acknowledge that belief, it feels like, "Well, maybe I just didn't express
myself well enough. I'm going to try again." But that fuels another round of
answers that shows this mom that she really isn't considering her kids to
the degree that she thought.

I realized in my discussion of routines that that word itself was creating a
completely different mental picture for the readers than it meant to me in
my circles. I was so happy when Ren pointed it out! So I felt that I finally
communicated and I also then could see what nuances I needed to address in
our home.

Sandra said that she's been giving the practical examples while she
articulates the whys, but that it's also it's up to us to keep reading to
find the whys, too. I agree and that's just what I'm doing. I assume most of
the women here are. Sandra, your personal examples have been really helpful
to me.

> Until we figure out some good ways of getting the concepts across -- and
> it's not going to happen any time soon -- it's helpful to accept that lots
> of stuff is going to get mistranslated. It's like unschoolers are speaking a
> foreign language. The problem is the language sounds exactly like English so
> it seems like we're communicating. But the two languages have different
> definitions for words that sound and look the same.

This is the real issue. It's not just the whys or the whats. It's the
translation process.

Two cents from me. One thing that might help the translation process is to
cop to it all the time. For instance:

"Julie I hear you saying the word "routine". To an unschooler that means X.
What do you mean by it?"

Or:

"Sounds like you feel you have a good relationship with your kids. I thought
that I did too. Then I tried X and discovered that there was a lot of stuff
I hadn't known about until... How would you handle this situation? An
unschooler would probably think about it this way."

I think it helps to believe the best about the ones trying to learn this
stuff so that they are willing to risk opening their lives up for
examination. It's not easy to be the one asking questions and finding out
that how you've been doing things may actually be damaging.

Anyway, I love this list. I have grown through being here. And I'm enjoying
not having to answer questions as an expert. Glad that's your job this time,
not mine. :)

Julie B