Complaints of an overthinking Mama who’s reading some good books

I noticed that it’s been almost a month since I last posted to this blog, and, well, I guess I should get back on the ol’ horse now. I feel like a lot has happened since my last post and yet I don’t know what to say at the moment. I guess I could start by mentioning two books that I’m currently reading: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. The approach and subject of each book is quite different from the other, and yet I’m astounded at how well they complement each other. I suggest you read about these books, because I don’t feel like writing a book report about each one. I will say, though, that The Continuum Concept is about a radical (though not exactly unfamiliar) perspective on child-rearing, which is relevant to the general theme of this blog.

I was saying a while back that I’m having a difficult time learning to live in the moment. Well, ask and ye shall receive. Learning to be in the present, especially as a parent, is what Tolle’s book addresses, and while I sometimes feel overwhelmed by what he is suggesting the reader do to let go of the ego and create awareness of who one really is, I think I’m on the right track. A part of what he has said in what I’ve read so far is stuff I’ve already come to understand, but his book is certainly giving me a clearer picture of how much better things could be once I realize what’s going on behind the facades of other people’s behaviour as well as my own. I also appreciate how he mentions the relevance of major religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity, to his philosophy and how he often “decodes” the true intention or meaning behind what Jesus said in the Bible. I’m certainly not a Christian anymore, but having gone to church almost every Sunday of my childhood, I remember some of what I learned and appreciate a fresh perspective. It kind of encourages a return of my sympathies back to religion instead of making me feel defensive against it, which is emotionally a much easier way to view things.

I have returned to the library all of the John Holt books that were sitting on my desk mostly unread. It wasn’t that I didn’t find the subject matter interesting or pertinent to my stance on educating/rearing Fisher, it’s just that now is likely not the time to delve into the material to the extent I had originally wished. Fisher is not even a year and a half old yet, and to start researching my methods for “unschooling” him are not crucial at this time when I have so much to learn vis-a-vis where we are right now. And since “unschooling” in itself has at its primary directive (if you can call it that) that one should go in the direction one wishes at a given time, I don’t feel bad about putting something like this off. Especially when I have two very important and inspiring books to finish reading and learn from.

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Fisher has been doing well, even if he has been a bit of a handful lately. But the craziness of wanting to do right by him every moment of the day is getting to me, and I know that this absurd pressure I’m placing on myself can’t last forever. I don’t think it is at all healthy that children constantly be the centre of attention, and yet I just have a hard time knowing when to draw the line. Eric had done a little reading about living with toddlers last night, and he said that I should socialize Fisher more. I guess by this he means that we need to be out in public more often and that Fisher should be spending more time with kids so that he can learn early on how to share and whatnot.

But can I be honest here for second? This kid is not yet capable of understanding the meaning of sharing, or of “I”, or of the concept of consequences. You simply cannot teach a child how to share if he doesn’t even have that kind of connection made in his head yet. And this idea of socializing children with their peers is grand and all, but seriously, I’m not too great at handling the socialization between myself and other parents in a “child centre” atmosphere. If Fisher reaches out and grabs another kid’s face (which he is wont to do), it’s about half a second before the parent of the kid is pulling them apart and I’m telling Fisher “no”. All of this seemingly random (to him) negative experience is already stuck into his head before he can understand why what he is doing is unacceptable. And so, it’s good to discourage his unadulterated curiosity before he even has a chance to test the waters with at least some kind of understanding of what’s going on? I don’t think so. That’s just a waste of time and an unnecessary hindrance to a child’s sense of learning. I also think that Fisher should socialize with people of all ages and backgrounds, and mostly with his family. So if he sees his grandmother once a week for a couple of hours, and his aunt also, and the rest of our family every other weekend, and a friend of mine and her baby every other week, I think we have a good start. Taking him to coffee shops or other places where people spend some time wouldn’t be too bad an idea, either, and he definitely enjoys emulating the big people, as well as waving and talking and smiling to strangers. He doesn’t form attachments to other children yet, so it’s fun for him to randomly come in contact with one when we’re walking down the street or something. I would like it if he had a “friend” or two his own age to play with once in a while, but my last attempt at contact with a mother (who I liked a lot) of a little girl who really wanted us to come over and play was snubbed for one reason or another. So I take things as they come and know that one day, when he really needs to learn about sharing and living as a member of the family instead of “the” member of the family, he’ll have a sibling to teach him (and me) a lot of what he needs to know.  Everything starts at home, and he still needs that environment most of the time. Now if only I could stop “Fisher My World” from becoming “Fisher My Universe”. The plague of over-civilized Western mothers, to be sure… .

Raisin-aid

I would like to say once (well, likely not once) and for all that children never cry for no reason. Never. I would venture to say that people in general never cry for no reason. But the cries of babies and children are more easily dismissed because we know-it-all adults tend to either disregard or make light of a child’s stress when we can’t figure out what’s bothering him or her. It’s much easier to say, “he’s crying for no reason”, which shifts the blame a parent feels to the child’s “emotional incompetence” – another fallacy – instead of admitting that a parent can’t figure out what’s bothering him. Blaming the child for “unreasonable” crying is, therefore, proof of a parent’s insecurity about his or her parenting skills.

I’ll admit, I’m guilty of repeated such offenses myself. But I come to my senses when I’m feeling less frustrated, and remind myself that Fisher can’t fake being upset, and even when it seems he’s putting on a show, there’s something underneath that’s not quite right with him and it’s my job to find out what it is.

I have had many moments of complete annoyance with Fisher several times this week. He’s been much needier than in the past and he’s been crying a lot. I know that he’s not sleeping as much as he usually does, even though I give him plenty of opportunity to sleep, even putting him to bed a bit sooner than normal in the evenings. I realize that not sleeping properly is contributing to his moods, which can go from cranky to pleasant a few times in day. Last night, being tired as I was and just fed up, I got mad at Fisher for wanting raisins, an unusual request at dinner time, when he had plenty of food he likes sitting right in front of him. I denied him the raisins and cut up a pear instead. I was relieved to finally put him to bed, and then he woke up at 5am this morning. I sat silently in his room for a while hoping he would go back to sleep, but by 6am I saw that he was wide awake and that I might as well prepare his bottle. From 6am until 8am (when I put him to bed for his first nap), he was very very cranky, screaming for things that I couldn’t give him, pushing book after book in my hand, too impatient for me to finish reading them, etc. I didn’t know where my sweet, patient and content little boy had gone, until he had breakfast. He demanded more and more raisins, and when I saw the little bit of blood on his lip I realized that he was teething. And given his behaviour, I deduced that some of his molars must be pushing through. So he wanted the raisins to chew on to relieve the pain in his gums! Now I understood, and now I know for certain that when he’s impossible to please, it’s because he’s in pain and is trying to deal with it in the best way possible. We haven’t had teething issues in the past, but with the molars I guess it’s a whole other story. I’m so glad that I didn’t ever lose my cool with him (except a little once, when I was tired of him screaming in my ear last night), and was as patient as possible. I also learned an incredibly valuable lesson about my son; he may not be as emotionally developed as I (to his advantage, sometimes), but he has an inherent wisdom that tells him how to soothe himself when something isn’t right. And because of his innate know-how, helping him as his mother is just a matter of my listening and observing and following his directions. I am so relieved that I learned this lesson rather quickly, only because I choose to trust and believe him when he expresses himself in the only ways he knows how at the time.

I also wanted to mention a neat little experience I had that I felt connected me to unschooling yet again this week. I was choosing a book to read to Fisher while he ate his mid-morning snack, and I found an old one that my sister had bought at a used book sale a while back. I hadn’t read it before and wondered what it might be like. The book was called Silly Goose and was about a goose and fox going for a jog in the forest. On several occasions the goose warns the fox of impending danger, but because the goose calls the threat by the wrong name (e.g., a falling elm instead of a falling oak tree), the fox ignores her warnings and gets into trouble. Every time the fox is caught, the goose figures out a way to get him out, and then the fox continues jogging and says repeatedly that “some people are too dumb to know how dumb they are”, only because the goose doesn’t call out the right names for the dangers ahead. Anyway, my interpretation from an unschooling perspective, was that the goose, who didn’t use the right names to warn the fox but still recognized danger and was intelligent enough to get the fox out of trouble, was like a child who had been free to learn on her own terms, and the fox was the academic type who was more concerned with memorizing facts than being prepared to handle life in a practical and effective manner. Reading this story to Fisher was fun because I once again felt supported in my new path by intangible forces. I love when that happens .

The mover, but not shaker

I went for a walk with Fisher this morning, and he was very interested in exploring a moving truck that was parked in front of our next door neighbour’s house. The owner of the house, a friendly older man originally from France, came out and chatted with me for a while.

Near the end of our conversation, the head mover came out and saw how interested Fisher was in his truck. He was a pleasant man, with a nice smile and seemed pretty easy going. But as he started to pack his moving equipment up into the truck, he said to Fisher quite seriously, “Don’t become a mover. Go to school. It’s better to be the boss.” I jokingly replied that he was already the boss, and the man laughed.

The rather minor but well-worn sentiment the mover expressed then reminded me precisely why I don’t want to send Fisher to school. Becoming a boss has little, if nothing, to do with how well one does academically. In fact, the more pressure there is to learn things that aren’t of interest to a child, the less chance he or she will have the confidence to take the helm of a company, or at least a group of employees. And the boss of a company isn’t necessarily happier with his or her job than the employees; he or she often simply has more responsibility telling joyless people what to do, and a little more money at the end of the day. So how is that better? I guess unhappy people have a hard time seeing that more money is not the answer, that following your heart is always the best way to go no matter what.

Eric told me recently of a Harvard economics professor, Roland Fryer, who is initiating a plan in New York to pay school kids to do well on standardized tests. It’s an attempt to narrow the gap between the quality of education among kids in poor neighbourhoods and the kind kids in richer neighbourhoods get. Eric read parts of the article in the New York Times to me, and I was too angry to write about the issue a few days go.

My heart sinks when I think that these bribed children will be forced even earlier in life to believe that getting a paycheque equals working at something that doesn’t make them happy . Why doesn’t the idea of opening free schools in these crappy neighbourhoods occur to the so-called experts? Why not spend the money on providing materials for optimal learning (libraries, art supplies, computers) and passionate, non-invasive facilitators? And why is an economics professor, who just happens to have been a poor black kid once, being consulted on a public education issue? Since when does economics play into quality of life and learning? Where is the insight, the love, and the respect for the value of children’s naturally curious and hungry minds? This type of limited thinking, propagated by the institutions to which a guy like Fryer and his cohorts belong, just burns me, and I only want to hold Fisher even tighter when I realize how much safer his mind and spirit are when I’m the one looking out for him.

Onto happier topics, though, I’m reading one of John Holt‘s books, called Teach Your Own. I find it to be an encouraging read, and I look forward to reading some of his other books that are already sitting on my desk, including How Children Learn and Learning All the Time.

I also picked up a writing book I had on hold at the library by Brenda Ueland, called If You Want To Write. It a classic work written to encourage the creative thinker and artist (and writer, in particular) in all of us, and I find it to be very optimistic and enlightening. She suggests that aspiring writers (or simply, writers) not worry about producing for others, whether it be for approval gained through opinion or money, and that writing for your own sake, and at the pace the imagination slowly and quietly feeds it, is how true satisfaction and success come about. I am also excited that her perspective on the act of, and reason for, writing is similar to the unschooling philosophy of learning. I am just amazed at the support the universe seems to be sending me with regard to my own uninhibited re-education preparation for Fisher’s education

I am overjoyed. This has been a wonderful and productive week. Play on, world, play on!