Purpose
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Carrots and sticks in education – a complaint about purpose being lost in systems.
One of the complicated things I’ve learned during the Free2Homeschool campaign is about something called the National School Reform Agreement. Now, I’m not part of any school, and my kids don’t get any government funding, so why does it matter to me? It turns out it’s relevant, and it goes like this. The National School Continue reading
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Painful practice
We were watching the beginning of Frozen. I’d never actually seen the early scenes where the sisters’ parents respond to Anna being accidentally hurt by Elsa. I was kind of shocked, but not, because this is based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, right? And it’s Disney, right? Anyway, kind of shocked that after taking Continue reading
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The Water Doesn’t Matter
Somewhere along the line, parents absorb the message that kids ought not to splash water out of the bath. Splashing is fun, and baths aren’t big enough, so happy splashes are probably going to wet the floor. But, depending on the kid, it’s doable to tone it down and keep the water in the bath. Continue reading
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Anger – the child/It’s not time
We live in a world of haste. Doing things quick, getting there, sorting it out, being there, NOW. I have a speedy, excited, creative, and usually overwhelmed ADHD brain. I often do want to be ‘there’ now or to hurry someone else up because either my brain has already moved on, or to the conclusion, Continue reading
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Permission not required; recognition appreciated
One morning each week, I take my younger child to the loveliest nature play community for young kids and parents, down by our local creek. It’s a forest school and the reason it works as well as it does for my family is that the parents are part of it with their kids the whole Continue reading
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Anger – the parent
I can be pretty painfully real with my older child. He sees some very unfiltered displays of frustration from me. I really worry some days that despite everything, I’m damaging him and shaming him purely by what is created by him plus me. Sometimes I think we are an explosive combination. And this is my Continue reading
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Anger – the energy
Anger is a complicated emotion for me. Somehow it became an umbrella term for a range of emotions that are not actually anger, but that I confused with it because of a shared intensity amongst them. Add to that, I heard so many times that my words, tone, and behaviour looked angry to others, and Continue reading
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Honour the drive
HONOUR THE DRIVE I was always called ‘intense’, and it wasn’t really a compliment. Frustration about stopping a task or being interrupted is often used as a criticism of people, and it even features in diagnostic criteria of autism in childhood evaluations. The common view seems to be that it is evidence of being self-absorbed, Continue reading
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Being child-led is no easy option
It’s hard to be child-led. In parenting, education, or in any other scenario, child-led learning isn’t checking out, giving up, or lack of care. It’s anything but that die-hard pejorative term of the eighties, ‘permissive parenting’. The deepest challenge of a child-led, child-loving-and-raising life on an average day is that it confronts my own preferences, Continue reading
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Dylan Moran reckons we got this
“I can feel pieces of my brain falling away like a wet cake.” (Dylan Moran as Bernard Black in Black Books.) The first time I saw Dylan Moran perform live was in 2011. My brothers and another friend and I were crossing the road from the car park over to the performing arts centre, and Continue reading
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Compass
When my son learned how to play Minecraft, I couldn’t get my head around it, nor could I keep up with what he was learning. He kept getting lost and not being able to find his way back home within his world. A friend (young enough that they grew up playing the game) showed him Continue reading
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A canticle for M.
Whatever the outcome, this was it. Not a foregone conclusion, not fated, not unchangeable right now, but this present, living reality, is the outcome. What if you fail? What will have been the point? All the effort, sacrifice, stress, and time… so much time. If you fail, I will say there was still a point, Continue reading
A Thousand Thoughts 