My son went from a vibrant, happy, magical kid to a joyless boy with little curiosity and a ton of anxiety. School wanted him on Ritalin, they wanted him tutored, they wanted him in therapy, and like an idiot I went along with it. Fortunately for both of us, I eventually woke up and saw my actual child. He was miserable. His life was awful - one dreary obligation after the other, forced to do things he hated by those more powerful, stretching out endlessly before him into the foreseeable future. It knocked the wind out of me - I'd been making the demands of the system more important than the needs of my child! This realization forced me to rethink everything about learning and living -- made me really look at the things I had just gone mindlessly along with throughout my life and his. It's a profound source of regret that it took me so long to recognize it. How could I be so blind? How could keeping to the conventional path be more important than his well-being? It really stuns me.
We also had a lot of conflict between us -- it seemed I was constantly engaged in power struggles over homework, bathing, food, bedtimes, practicing violin. In TV families, fighting and wrestling with your child like this meant you were a good, caring parent. The real-life truth was, he didn't trust me. Why should he? He was in my hands and his life was hell. I had the power to help him, and I wasn't using it.
He was 11 when I took him out of school and we started deschooling, big time. It's been about 18 months and we are just recently coming out of it into unschooling. He's needed the last year or so to heal and rediscover himself and his own interests. I've needed this time to reorient myself to a new way of thinking, not just about learning, but about love and relationships and how to be trustworthy. For about 8 or 9 months, Oscar just basked in the comfort of movies, TV, and video games and experimented with his sleeping schedule. He didn't want to "learn" anything (although he did learn a lot anyway from Dr. Who and Star Trek, the Suite Life of Zach and Cody and The Amazing Race and the hundreds of conversations we had as I kept him company). How could he think about learning when he'd been in in such distress for so long? How could he think about learning when he'd been cut off from his own curiosity by the adults around him who frogmarched him from one boring study unit to the next since he was 5? He'd been too busy trying to survive emotionally to focus on anything else. That has now changed and he has many interests - baking, voice-acting, chemistry, comedy writing, the Renaissance (thanks, Merlin and the BBC!), and on and on. He had to find a peaceful home in himself before he could start to decorate it with knowledge.
[This next part addressed to a mom considering unschooling and working full-time.]
I am a single working mother unschooling. You can do it. Create a space at your business where she can nestle up and heal. Fill it with books and games, dvds, craft kits - whatever she enjoys when given a choice. Fill it with snacks. Order delivery to share a few times a week. My life with my child is absolutely wonderful now. I earned back his trust and he is just flourishing. His curiosity has returned with a vengeance. But it took patience from me, plus faith in my child's inherent worth and goodness. More faith than I had in society's methods and mandates.
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| Oscar spelled this out with Boggle letters while his mom was asleep. |
Bring her home, surround her with peace and joy. Don't fight with her. Just love her. There is much more at stake here than her "education."
I feel so sad when I hear stories like this on how children are being mistreated in schools. I personally know what it is like since my at the time 5 year old was a victim of maltreatment/abuse directly by the staff.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter begged me once she entered 1st grade to remove her out of the school. She also was a child who was happy, friendly, kind, caring, thoughtful, giving and healthy before she entered the school district. Not to long after, she started to get sick with coughs. I took her to on MD after the other only to hear that there was nothing that they could find what was causing this. Her coughs I learned later was linked to her being under an enormous amount of stress which lead to weakening her immune system. It was obvious something was going on which lead my daughter to not want to go to this school. I knew something was definitely wrong. They made her life miserable. It affected her sleep, she didn't want to eat, she went from crying to anger/rage and then to telling what really was happening at this public school. One of the staff physically assaulted my daughter, staff were making negative comments about her food,screaming, calling her names, insulting her asking her if she showers(we have two showers in our home), and bullied by the staff.
Since February 15, 2011, her wish came true. She began as a homeschooler and now considers herself an Unschooler. In retrospect, I wish I had listened to my intuition and pulled her out before they had the chance to hurt a beautiful, innocent human being. Thank you for sharing this story because you see I do understand the horrors that our child experience within the brick walls.