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A message from Wendy about this site
My Mother & I –
May 13, 2012
I was born when my mother was forty-one.
She was experiencing menopause while I was traversing the terrain of puberty. As
author Dr. Christiane Northrup says, menopause is puberty in reverse. So my
mother and I were experiencing many of the same hormonal issues at the same
time, including mood swings. I realize now how difficult life must have been for
her at the time, with a sick – then suddenly dead
– husband, a difficult teenager, and her own aging to
cope with. My dad died when she was fifty-six, which seems young to me, now that
I’m older than that.
Neither of us understood what the other was dealing with;
she wasn’t able to provide me with any guidance for dealing with my new-found
emotions. We never talked about how we were feeling, just went around slamming
doors on each other. In fact, we never talked about death, health, or sex, or
anything to do with our bodies. All I knew was that I was somehow supposed to
manage not to become pregnant until some distant time in the future.
After a few years of luck and a couple more on birth
control, I decided that the time had come to stop avoiding pregnancy.
When I was a kid, I hadn’t
liked having an “old” mother. So I had my first daughter when I was twenty-two
and the second eighteen months later. In some ways, I wasn’t ready, but I prize
the energy and open-mindedness that my youth contributed to my mothering
adventure. By the time I’d reached the age at which my mother birthed
me, my daughters had already moved into their own homes, and I was young enough to launch myself
into a new stage of life, with more advocacy, more writing,
more growth.
But that hadn't been my mother's path.
A few years after my dad died, and with her rebellious daughter out of her way, she briefly came to life
again, traveling a bit, coloring her hair, resuming the paid work that neither
my father nor the times approved of her keeping when she got married. Although
she dropped all of her still coupled friends and seldom accepted dinner party
invitations, she must have enjoyed those few years, because the photographs from the
1970s show her smiling in a way that I hadn’t known before. And she seemed to
enjoy her granddaughters, even if she didn’t approve of the style in which they
were being raised. Nevertheless, for most of the next forty years (she died a
few months short of one hundred), my mother was more like a lost, sad child
waiting for someone to make something happen than a mature woman.
She was a stoic person, one who didn’t believe in
sharing her thoughts or stories of her past. (That was a trait I admit to having
appreciated in light of her disapproval of my parenting style!) Perhaps she –
unlike her daughter – had internalized the family mantra that it was better for
children and women to be seen than heard. Off and on, over the years, I tried
unsuccessfully to engage her in conversation about what she was feeling –
seeking to understand her, or at least get to know her better, if not help her
be happier. In the beginning, I took her silence for disapproval or blame, as I
did as a child. Eventually, my own mothering taught me that people can take
ownership of their own feelings and issues. Realizing the damage I had done to
myself blaming myself for my father’s illness as a child, and wanting to give up
on guilt, I stopped feeling responsible for her state of mind.
But I never ceased wondering who she really was and what
she really wanted from life…and if she ever got it.
Posted: 2012/05/13 1:15
PM
Photo © SerrNovik/Shutterstock
from Life Learning Magazine |
Potential – May
2, 2012
Parents want the best for their kids – whether they’re schooled
or unschooled. That usually translates to “success” in the adult world. But how
do we define success? Our standards or theirs? Are our hopes based on fear that
our children won’t measure up, or on trust that they will? And if they do meet
our goals, will they feel they’ve done their best or will it be a hollow
accomplishment? Will they feel accepted only for what they have achieved, rather
than for who they are?
There is no rule that says everyone must achieve their
“potential.” I don’t think that potential is even measurable (certainly not by
tests), and is probably not even static. But I do know that the concern about
potential can create a race. Parents – even some life learning ones – worry when
their child hasn’t begun to talk “on schedule,” or if she shows no signs of
reading by age five. Keeping up with everybody else becomes the goal, rather
than personal development. (I have met many homeschoolers who feel pressure to
surpass everybody else in order to justify the educational choice they’ve made.)
This pressure can, as was displayed so eloquently in the
film
Race to Nowhere, do a lot of harm. The overwhelming emphasis on the performance
required by our aspirations for our kids can override or at least sideline other
aspects of life relating to family, love, compassion, resilience, creativity,
community, happiness, and health – now and in the future.
Our kids will achieve their goals
(not ours!) if they are given the support, respect, and trust that they deserve.
If we keep out of their way (providing guidance when needed – there is a natural
balance between too little and too much) and let their own innate motivation
guide them, they’ll do things we can’t even imagine.
They have the potential.
Posted: 2012/05/2 4:48 PM
Photo © Maridav/Shutterstock Images |
In Praise of Messy – April
29, 2012
I have begun work on a new book. It all started this past week with my pollen
allergy, which seems worse this year than in the past.
I remembered
this article I wrote in
2002 about the fact that most people and cities plant just male clone trees
because they are “litter-free,” meaning they do not drop messy seeds, seed-pods,
or fruit on lawns and sidewalks. However, we pay for being neat freaks because
these male plants all produce large amounts of allergenic pollen. Same
too, with the price our health and environment pay for the plethora of chemicals
with which we feed our obsession with personal hygiene and household
cleanliness.
Then I read
this article about how conventional farming shares with conventional gardening
that love affair with order and neatness: straight lines, clipped hedges,
uniform crops, and pasture that looks like a golf course. And no weeds – i.e.
“messy” plants growing in the “wrong” place!
This morning, I wandered about the house picking up
clutter, thinking about how it doesn’t take as long as it used to when our daughters
lived and learned at home. That got me sitting down with a cup of tea
reminiscing about those wonderfully messier times…and missing my messy
granddaughters who live half a continent away.
Many of the best things in life are messy – and disruptive
(uncomfortably so, for some people). Making art is mostly messy. I am a messy
writer, with books, references, and papers strewn across my office when I’m in
the thick of it. Creativity and other intellectual challenges can, in general,
be mentally messy and chaotic. Gardening – the process if not the end result –
is inevitably messy. Nature itself, in all its diversity and complexities, its
soft edges and muddy middles, is messy.
Most certainly, learning is messy. Schools try to
organize, plan, label, and regiment information. But that’s just memorization
and regurgitation, and any real learning that happens
is incidental to that tidy process. Learning is about trial and error,
muddling about, questioning, guessing, exploring, investigating, following
passions rather than schedules. (It is often disruptive, too.) Unschooling / life learning is,
well, messy learning.
I think this could be the beginning of an important new
trend, like the Slow Movement! In fact, young people may have already started
it; one of the meanings of the word “messy” in the
Urban Dictionary is:
“out of control in a good way.” The sooner we learn to relinquish our attempts
to control children and Nature, and, instead, assist them to unfold in their own
messy ways, the stronger, more resilient, happier, and healthier we’ll all be.
Posted: 2012/04/29 12:15 PM
Photo
© Anita Patterson Peppers/Shutterstock
from Natural Child Magazine |
Badinter Protests Too Much – April
26, 2012
In case you’ve been out of
touch with the media for the past week or so, Elisabeth Badinter is a French
feminist and academic. Her book The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines
the Status of Women was published in English the other day. The book is
controversial. Here’s an excerpt from the promo copy: “[S]he points her finger
at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women: liberal motherhood, in
thrall to all that is "natural." Attachment parenting, co-sleeping,
baby-wearing, and especially breast-feeding—these hallmarks of contemporary
motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home and family to an extent
not seen since the 1950s. Badinter argues that the taboos now surrounding
epidurals, formula, disposable diapers, cribs—and anything that distracts a
mother's attention from her offspring—have turned childrearing into a singularly
regressive force.”
I read a few chapters of the book last night. I found the
tone to be sarcastic, dismissive, and denigrating of anything the author doesn't
believe in. She is either out of touch or in denial about many things, including
health and environmental issues (which haven’t changed much, except for the
worse, since the book was first published in 2010). I wished I had been reading
it in print rather than on my e-reader so I could have experienced the
satisfaction of tossing it across the room.
Aside from the annoying tone and content, there is a much
bigger problem. Among many other things, Badinter hates breastfeeding –
especially the on-demand kind – and calls La Leche League "an offshoot of
conservative Evangelicalism." That's her right, except that the she fails to
disclose her conflict of interest on the topic: Her family has controlling
interest in Nestlé's PR firm (and she is chair of the board) – a business
interest that has made her a
billionaire, according to
Forbes.
There is a lot of bandwidth being used by commentary about
the book (and that will likely increase for a while before it abates). The
discussions will sell a lot of books and help prop up the flailing publishing
industry for a while longer. There are some smart women rebutting the book, like
Katie Granju writing in Slate, for instance. And I've written on this topic before. So I don’t plan to add my two cents
beyond this post (well, and some ranting on Facebook).
Here’s what I think is important in all of this: Given the
minority of people embracing all the things that Badinter claims are undermining
women’s status, methinks she doth protest too much. Remember that she is part of
the 1%, which is threatened by many changes happening in the world today,
and many choices that people are making. So
carry on with your home births, on-demand breastfeeding, co-parenting and
co-sleeping; your homeschooling; your unjobbing and work-at-home lifestyle; your home-grown and home-cooked food, food
co-ops, community kitchens, and CSAs. There is a great deal of power in the DIY lifestyle
and the sharing economy. And that choice apparently makes some people very nervous,
even if they do not fully understand it.
Posted: 2012/04/26 10:15 AM
A Reluctant Guru – April
23, 2012
Recently, I read a
piece online that provided a wonderful overview of John Holt’s life and work. It
was also a sincere tribute from someone whose thoughts about education and
children were shaped by reading John’s work. The writer expressed how he felt by
calling John “the Patron Saint of Unschooling.” That made me very uncomfortable,
because I knew from my conversations with John that he would not have liked to
have been remembered that way. When I shared my discomfort, the author suggested
I might be more comfortable with the term “guru.” I wasn’t.
When I knew John, I was young – in my mid-twenties and
early thirties
– and relatively new to homeschooling advocacy.
I remember sharing with him my surprise and concern that most people contacting
me for homeschooling information wanted me to tell them what to do and how to do
it, to provide them with a set of rules and procedures that would replace those
of school. My goal was different; I wanted to help people form their own
philosophies and develop the strength and self-reliance to act on that. (And
over the decades, I have tried to stay true to that goal.) At the time, John commiserated with me, and
expressed his discomfort with the idea that people would cling to his words as
to those of a celebrity or hero. He reminded me that school conditions us for
that dependence on, and comfort, with authority. He urged me to be patient and
reminded me that change takes time.
Yesterday, while fact checking some dates for an article
about John that I’ve been asked to contribute to an upcoming book, I ran across
a
quote from John's successor at Holt Associates, Pat Farenga, that remarkably used both the terms “patron saint” and
“guru.” In issue 48 of Growing Without Schooling, which was a tribute to John shortly after he died in
1985, Pat wrote, “One concern John often talked to me about was how some folks
turn him into a guru, a patron saint of children whose every word is Right. John
had little patience with such worship. One message John brings out in every
book, and every day at work he brought it out in our conversations about the
day’s events, is that everything is open to question. We should be critical of
John’s writing as he was of others’ writing, but when we find something in it
that withstands our examination, we should grab ahold of it, treasure it and
nurture it, as John did to so many other people’s work.”
There was a great deal of authentic thinking and brilliant
insight in John Holt’s work (and he expressed it so cogently). And as
inspirational and life-changing as it continues to be for many families, he did
not mean it to be the last word. He wanted us to build on his words, to
“nurture” his ideas, for the sake of our children and for humanity in general.
And he wanted us to think for ourselves in order, as he wrote in the first issue
of GWS in 1977, to help grow the minority of people “who do not believe in
compulsory schooling, who believe that children want to learn about the world,
are good at it, and can be trusted to do it, without much adult coercion or
interference.” As life learners, we can find commonality in that mission by
keeping the focus on the children, rather than on one man’s words, no matter how
profound they are. He would have wanted it that way.
Posted: 2012/04/23 11:58 AM
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