There's a very old joke about a man saying "Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this," and the doctor replying, "Well don't do that."
When someone comes to a radical unschooling discussion to complain about their children's response to bedtimes or limits or "having to" read, they won't get the help they think they want. They will get advice to stop doing that. People will point out that the parents' actions and expectations are the problem, and the children's responses are rational and maybe inevitable.
(quote from page 38 or 41 of The Big Book of Unschooling)
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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This is so comforting to me, as I have always thought exactly what that last sentence says,"the parents' actions and expectations are the problem, and the children's responses are rational and maybe inevitable." Unfortunately I have been beating myself up all these years for thinking such a thing because I had never met anyone who seemed to agree. This is really life changing. I'M NOT JUST A PUSH OVER AFTER ALL. Like the man said, "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."~Jiddu Krishnamurti
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