Clarity
Virtues for Unschoolers
How Morality Grows, and how unschooling can help
The line between honesty and dishonesty isn't always clear, or easy.
We "had Santa" at our house, but I didn't lie. I dodged. I said "What I know is that when I was a kid, I put up a stocking and in the morning there was stuff in it, so we should put up a stocking for you." We did it in such a way that the kids were kind of into it, as performance art or a game, when they passed from audience to backstage crew. We NEVER told them they needed to be good to get things, but they did hear songs, so... mixed messages from the culture, but Christmas was fun.
When parents get divorced, the story told to children should be sanitized. Kids don't need to hear any sexually-charged narratives, nor the kind of condemnation-narrative that an adult comes up with to reject and eject another adult. Sometimes the only way to get loose is to think of all the bad things and none of the good things. I've been there.
But parents lie for convenience, sometimes. There was a recommended lie years ago about orange juice. I hope someone will remind me of details. It was about telling a child "this orange juice wants to be in your tummy" or something.
In 2017, an odd year (and I write this in September, 2017), people were feeling out of control and looking for things they COULD control, or affect, or improve. Increasingly, people were pressuring others not to kill spiders. Like never kill a spider. These people didn't live with black widows. [I let black widows live if they're far from the house—but only because my kids ar grown and gone. When I had young children playing in all parts of the yard, I killed every black widow I knew of. And they're still not an endangered species.]
On someone's facebook, shared with friends only, she said she was a recovering arachniphobe, who had been living with a spider on her bedroom ceiling for a week, but then it had been in the bed, and she couldn't find it. People were saying "Oh, it's there, hiding," but praising her for not killing spiders because they're so good for the ecosystem. Someone (not an unschooler, as far as I know) had written, "We take spiders outside so they can go find their family."
My response:
Killing one spider doesn't harm the ecosystem, especially if it's in the house where it could starve from lack of passing insects.The dishonest spider savior wrote:-=-We take spiders outside so they can go find their family-=-
Telling little kids things like that (or telling ourselves things like that) about spiders or lizards or ladybugs or other creatures who don't keep "a family" to live with is anthropomorphizing them in a way that's neither honest nor helpful. Making kids feel guilty that they caught a grasshopper and saying "he misses his mommy" or something won't help them understand science, nor the planet.
If we were little and caught in a spider web, they would not gently release us.
I let most spiders live, but if they're near children or anyone who's afraid of spiders, or if they're black widows IN the house, or brown recluse (both of those have bitten me each twice in my life), they can start the journey to their next incarnation now (or turn back to food for other tinier bugs).
Maybe find a friend who's not afraid of spiders to take some out for you (one way or the other). If I were there, I would help.
I have full confidence that my kiddos have figured it out by now. One majored in bio and is working in a research lab. So, I do think they know! After all, they didn't grow up believing in Santa or the Easter bunny! But we still take spiders out. If we bother at all! I think the kids will be just fine, please don't worry!I wasn't worried about her. But she showed further dishonesty there. Or lack of awareness or clarity. "We take spiders outside so they can go find their family" is present tense, not past.
It's manipulation of children by parents who don't believe what they're saying, I hope.
Of mammals and birds, yes—help them find their families if possible. But if a child has somehow killed one, don't build up the guilt with excessive details of grief and sorrow.
Of reptiles and insects—don't build them up a false storyline. A captured cicada isn't going to miss his mother. He might be afraid or uncomfortable or unable to find the food he needs—those things are true.
Saying what is true is valuable, for unschooling.
People from other cultures or religions who decide for personal reasons to try not to kill anything might want to NOT put that onto young children, but let them choose on their own to decide whether to step on ants or not, with honest information and not tear-jerking guild-inducing fantasies. Don't take an ant's side over your child's.
Don't take orange juice's imaginary side over your child's.
Virtues for Unschoolers