Reality Bites, I'm Making My Own Government

Kaio's been asking for a new video game for our wii console.  Well, a couple days ago he asked for a blank CD, and took a sharpee out to write on it.  After finishing writing, he walked over to the wii and popped the baby in.  If life were a cartoon, this would have totally worked.

But it didn't work, and my poor kid's disappointment was unbearable to watch.  I had no satisfying explanation for why it wouldn't work.  And part of that is my approach to life and parenting in general.  I'm reluctant to explain life, because I truly believe that our concept of reality gets in the way of our potential.  It's like the miraculous placebo effect.  The power of believe goes a long way in making something possible.

So my boy sat there pouting, trying to troubleshoot the problem, "Do I need to draw the characters on the disk?"

I went on amazon and bought him the game.  It was only $6.

He's also been asking for a Lego Republic Gunship set.  It costs $500.  I told him we could try selling some of his toys, or he could make something to sell to cover the cost.  His response, "No, I don't want to sell things, I'm making my own money, I'm making my own government."  Then he made his own money, with Barack Obama and the American Flag:    

Similar thing happened when we saw a deer in our yard and he wanted to go hunt it.  I told him that he would need a hunting license first.  His response, "Here's my hunting license."

I don't know where this subversive behavior is going, but I bet he'll be in the pack of people shopping with bitcoins and raising quails without permission from the county ;)

What the heck do we do?

What the heck do we do?

Burrito shop

I was sick of spending $20 to feed us at chipotle.  So I proved to Nala that burritos can be made at home too.  Big Success.

Hunting for Herbs

Nala's my partner in harvesting for medicinal tinctures.  These are acacia flowers, which are great for prenatal water retention  aka swollen feet.  The trees grow wildly around the DC area, towering right off the beltway.  It's amazing how many flowering white acacia trees you see once you start looking for them.  Nala's already observant to the nature around us and she gets so excited about picking the flowers.  I'm sure she's going carry on as an herbalist.

Multitask

Or whatever you call this.  The line between genius and dumbass is a thin one.

I'm pretty sure I'm on the genius side.

The Beginning of Nature School

It seems like the less traditional academic we get, the more right life feels.

I guess it just fits our family.

People kept telling me that if I stopped trying so hard to teach things, then I'd be amazed how much self induced, passionate learning emerges.  And for me, the interesting aspect of this hiatus from teaching has been in my own shift in understanding of learning.  I've even stopped believing that there is a word "learning."  Because when we live in this manor, learning is exactly as equal an experience as living, there's no parsing it out.  Learning and living are so intertwined, they are the same thing.
This shift in thinking happened without me planning of realizing it.  Just one day, when my mom was trying to quiz Kaio on reading, and I noticed that I didn't care.

I didn't care if he answered her questions or sounded out the letters because I knew that he's focusing on other things in life right now and he'll get to reading when he wants.  He spent all day in and out of the swimming pool improving his stroke.

And when Nala demonstrated she could divide in halves and thirds, I didn't care either.

In fact, I was more impressed by her clay shark.

And the colorful clay islands that weren't copied from any example.  Weren't ordered by me.  Were just a pure expression of creativity at the moment.

And then Kaio made me a pair of earrings.

I guess he could have gotten art credit for that.

   

Nala has started to say we have a "Nature School."

"Here mom, we can use these in our Nature School."

I have no idea what she's talking about.  But when she hands me somethings natural, I find myself staring, inspecting, tearing them apart by fiber, feeling the difference in texture with a trippy kind of wonder.  Industrialized manufacturing can create some amazing substances, but I see we have so much more to learn from the diversity of nature's creations.

So maybe she's right, maybe nature should be our school.

And for recess, we'll hang out dancing in the rain.

Farm Colors

I just found myself role playing a hen.

So we were going over these pictures from one of our many trips to Frying Pan Park, when I looked around to realize that both the kids have wrapped themselves up in blankets, waiting for me to hatch them.  What's a mom to do in a situation like this?

So I clucked away.  And soon found us pecking at the ground, hiding from a hawk.

I love the farm colors.

Something about weathered paint really makes me happy.

Daylight lit barnyards, and the contrast of shadows.

Did I mention that we really want a pet goat.

The shapes and patterns of the functional, mixing with the wild randomness of nature.

The amazing paintbrush of God.  Seriously, why are animals so artistic?

Just had to share.

Old and Stinky

"Mom, you're Old and Stinky! I need some pants."
That's the lovely thank you I got after wiping Kaio's butt.
"What?!  That's mean!" was my response.
"ok, you're not stinky." He said.

"Nala, am I old and stinky?"
"No mom, you're too beautiful to be stinky."
hmm.  Ok now she's my favorite daughter.  and I'm old.

It's been a day of riveting discourse.  Today he also insisted that I don't want him anymore and that he's leaving and going somewhere else.  "You don't want me anymore.  I'm leaving.  I'm want to go somewhere else."

We've made beautiful progress with my comfort level around our homeschooling.  I've opened up to trusting in the natural learning process and to the possibility of learning through play.  I've started to see some pretty cool anecdotal evidence that this approach works.  Like the day we stopped off at a battlefield park to run around, that turned into a civil war lesson.  The kids were so much more interested and engaged than if I had planned that.  There was the morning Nala woke me up with a math workbook in her hand begging me to teach her.  The intricate and incredible ships that Kaio builds with legos and the way he studies the text on Mario Galaxy to recognize the words.  The developmental optometrist who told me that the games kids play serve to tone their senses (like playing catch strengthens eye muscles and spinning around in circles as well).

Plus it just feels right to do my thing and let the kids do their thing, merging on common activities every once and a while, having fun.

There's the tire swing, that exemplifies unschooling to me.  I had no idea how to do it, but we figured it out.  It took three iterations and some applied physics to attain the optimal swing.  But eventually I succeeded in building a low cost perpetual fun machine.

There's painting the house, where we merge on something practical and valuable for the family.

Where I let the kids stand on the ladder and paint whatever they want to, instead of insisting that only adults are capable of climbing ladders.

There's the wild balancing acts that defy what I think is possible.

The beautiful mixed medium art projects, where I gave no instruction and no example for her to copy.

There's the spontaneous moments, when I need to just sit down and soak.  When I can place down my bag and become engrossed in a simple task fully, without a mental tug propelling me on to the next spot.  When I can feel and truly believe that where we are at is the destination.

But despite this new dawning of schooling for us, Kaio still has emotional breakdowns almost every day.  No matter how much freedom I give him, he keeps seeking and finding walls to shove up against.  Like we go to a park to play with friends and he begins insisting on going inside, saying the sun is burning him.  Or when he shivers, saying he's too cold, and I'm holding his jacket out right in front of him but he refuses to put the jacket on.  Or when he begs me to put his shoes on for him, even though he's been perfectly capable of dressing himself for years.

These events drive me batty.  His cry has always made me irrational, ever since he was a baby, and really I think that's an instinctual mom reaction.  We'll do anything to make the crying stop.  But it's so hard to know what to do.  He's such a tough kid to parent.

One of the really awesome presentations at the Radical Unschooling conference I went to this year was led by Laurie A Couture, an author and therapist who works with children who have been through the most emotionally damaging situations like abuse, neglect, gangs, etc.  She spoke about the attachment cycle and its relevancy beyond the baby years.

When kids do not get their needs met and erupt into a fight or flight breakdown, the emotional center of the brain releases neurotransmitters and hormones (norepinephrine and epinephrine).  As these bind to parts of the brain and body, they encourage solidification of those connections, making the fight or flight style breakdowns even more common.  Literally changing the brain to make aggressive behavior more easily triggered.

I see how I'm facing the downstream sludge of trash dropped upstream.  There's already so many emotional patterns established within Kaio's reactions and when I encounter these, I follow down my own paved trails.  I want to be available to him and help him stop the breakdowns from happening, but figuring out what they are really about and what he actually needs is mental gymnastics.

There's a Chinese medicine saying  Treat the Mother to Treat the Child.  The energy a mother supplies to her child will reflect the mother's imbalances and will manifest in the child.  When looking at Kaio's anger, I need to first look at my anger.  I don't think that I have any issues, but maybe I do.  Maybe I'm just not seeing them.  I have to admit that when I yell at Kaio for getting angry and jumping up and down about something ridiculous: well that seems pretty hypocritical.