All learning is connected, and everything counts.
photo by Cátia Maciel
So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.
Keith and I did think, early on, we said what we are doing is inoculating our kids against the trait of some, or the fact of some kids leaving with the first person who says “Hey baby, you wanna live with me?” or “Oh, let’s go get a house”, or, you know, that sort of energy of young people luring other young people out and away, to other states, to other places, to dangerous neighborhoods. We said "It’s going to have to be a pretty good offer to beat what they have at home."
And so that becomes a safety factor too. If the children know that they can stay at home, then someone who comes and says, "Hey do you want come do something with me? Do you want to come live with me?"—it better be a good offer.
I responded:
Fear doesn't hit you with a stick in a dark alley.An additional problem, though, is that it also treats "fear" as something outside herself, that comes toward her and assaults her when she least expects it.
Don't use the word "assaults."
It's too dramatic and it makes you a victim.
Maybe ALL the negative words are doing that—personifying, or anthropomorphizing, an emotion as an external enemy. So some would say "it's just semantics," but it's a map of one's emotions that ranges outside the body and builds bad guys, I'm thinking.
I'm sure that my acceptance has something to do with the peace that we are experiencing.
That lizard looks like it's in the air, but it was on the windshield. The driver didn't expect to see a lizard there. There was a time she didn't expect to arrange for her children to stay home instead of go to school, either.
What seems shocking, at first, can end up quite interesting, safe and peaceful.
Another recording: Ross Kennedy. Seeing there that Robert Burns wrote it, one more search got me the poem, from 1796.
Fix them a little tray of cheese and crackers and take it to them, wherever they are, unasked. Sit down on the floor and play with them. If nothing else, just go and give each of them a little hug and a kiss and say, "I was just thinking about how much I love you."
Okay—so that is one good, positive interaction.
Again—just change the next interaction you have with the kids. Focus on making the next interaction another one that builds up your relationship.