Am I Doing it Wrong?

[Christy]

I learned of the idea of Unschooling/Radical Unschooling about six months ago. Some days I think I am getting it and then other days I feel like I am ruining my children! I totally get the "school" part of Unschooling. I was a teacher and I have always known I didn't want my chilren to go to PS, so that part is pretty easy. My main problems are with the parenting part.
I have three girls (4 1/2, 2 1/2, 1). We have always been pretty laid back parents, but we did have rules and we used timeout with them. Well, that has all changed since we have discovered RU. We no longer have a bedtime, which was REALLY hard at first, but now seems natural. We haven't used timeout in months.
I feel like my kids have become more disresepctful than they were before. My 2 1/2 year old has started hitting, kicking and I just say, "We don't hit." Tonight she pushed the baby down just out of the blue for no reason, and I really didn't know what to do. I really feel helpless at times because I don't know how to make her understand not to do the things she is doing without punishing her (timeout).
Tonight I was talking to my mom on the phone and she told me she was worried about my kids because they aren't held accountable for their actions and they have no responsibility. I really didn't know what to say, it just makes me question my parenting and wonder what I am doing wrong. My girls stayed the weekend with her last weekend and she said my four year old wanted to take a bath after playing outside and she just threw her clothes in the floor and said, "My mommy and daddy let me throw my clothes where ever I want to." My mom told her that her mommy and daddy weren't there and would she please pick up the clothes and put them where they go. She said she complained about it, but she did pick them up. That has made me question the fact that I don't make them clean up. I read on one of the RU lists I am on that the mess is my problem if it bothers me, and that made sense to me, so if something is in the floor I just pick it up instead of making it a big deal.
My mom and I started talking about my 2yr old and her hitting and she said my 4 yr old went to timeout when she was little and the 2yr old doesn't know what timeout is, so maybe that is the problem. I am not confident enough in my parenting to defend it I just start questioning everything.
I really need some advice!! THANKS to anyone who made it through this whole rambling post and I appreciate any advice you have.

[Kim S.]

we asked "what were you hoping would happen?" and "do you need some help?" and "what do you want?" At first those floored him - he was used to "why did you do that?" so the shift to asking about his needs, wants and hopes was startling and affirming. Suddenly those needs, wants and hopes were Important to someone besides him.
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Wow! Those are some great questions! I still have a hard time with my kids hitting each other, and I am frequently at a loss as to how to help them find a better way to communicate. I'm going to try to approach each of the kids just as you suggested and see how their responses change. I think if I work with each of them, perhaps together we can find a better way to communicate ... I know it would create a more peaceful environment for the boys.

[Joel C]

Hmmm... all this is new to me... mine is only 5 and has no responsibility other than to clean his messes. Any time i've ever asked him to clean his mess, his first answer is always no. How is cleaning it youself and never holding him accountable for his own actions and letting him know that he never has to lift a finger because mom and dad will do everything if i say no, how does that translate to him becoming more reliable?

[Joyce Fetteroll]

Joel, if you wouldn't mind reading at Joyfully Rejoycing. Down the right hand side are answers to most of your questions. All that you're asking makes perfect sense -- and is asked lots! -- but the problem is that what happens in real families isn't at all what sounds like should happen. And I go into why in a fair amount of depth.

After you've read that and gotten past the "This doesn't make sense" stage everyone goes through, if you have questions specific to your family, they would be a whole lot easier to answer.

[Joyce Fetteroll]

** mine is only 5 and has no responsibility other than to clean his messes **

No, it isn't a responsibility. Parents *call* that a responsibility and then their thinking gets muddied when that is lumped in with the responsibilities we have as adults.

Responsibilities aren't imposed on us by others. We take on responsibilities. We choose at what level we will keep those responsibilities. We can choose to drop a responsibility. We can choose to keep it at a higher standard than someone else. All our choice.

What your son has is conscripted labor. It's a chore imposed on him to be kept to your standard. He doesn't have a choice to drop it or keep it to his standards. It isn't a responsibility. Once you see the difference, see it the way he sees he world, rather than the way you believe he should see it -- and his vision is a whole lot clearer than yours since he could easily see the difference between an imposed task and one that's self chosen! -- then it will be easier to see why his reaction fits the true situation rather than the one you're pretending it is.

** How is cleaning it youself and never holding him accountable for his own actions and letting him know that he never has to lift a finger because mom and dad will do everything if i say no, how does that translate to him becoming more reliable? **

Do you become a better more reliable person if a more powerful person dumps tasks on you that you don't see the reason for and then hovers over you judging how well you do?

But just because mindful parents don't do that, doesn't mean we do nothing. It will help loads to read at the links.

[Joel C]

Wow... you should really post this site somewhere up front. I was just cruzing all over RUN all day looking for more info besides just the random Q&A and this site is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks Joyce.

[Joel C]

**Do you become a better more reliable person if a more powerful person dumps tasks on you that you don't see the reason for and then hovers over you judging how well you do?**

Actually yes... lol.. I'm in the military. Thats sorta what we do. But thats just me. I get what your saying though after reading on the site you posted.

One quick question though. I am overseas at the moment and its difficult to get my child in school. He just started kindergarten a few weeks ago and I want to start using these things while he's in school to see how he takes to them, as well as to research the home school guidelines the military set. I've been told they require yearly standardized testing but I still have to check.

Should I just try the behavioral things for the moment or just go all out. Also, he has a speech delay and is currently in speech therapy (PTSD from something that happened when he was two and now has a pretty bad lisp). Are there special things you'd recommend to help us that isn't "stuctured" like his speech class would have it?

[Joyce Fetteroll]

** Actually yes... lol.. I'm in the military. **

Ah, but you *chose* to be there, knowing that's the type of environment it was. There was something about the environment that fit with your personality and made the approach work for you.

With conventional parenting, kids don't get to pick. It's one size fits all. If it works, it's the process. if it doesn't, the child is just bad. But not true. It's a mismatch which is why conventional parenting can create nonburdensome citizens as well as criminals.

** I want to start using these things while he's in school to see how he takes to them **

By what standards will you judge "takes to them"? It's an important question! Some people want unschooling to look like kids choosing to do what they'd be taught in school and are disappointed when it looks like playing.

How will you separate the effects of unschooling from what carries over from school? If he resists doing sometihng at home is it because it's not working or because he associates it with something he dislikes at kindergarten? Lots of schooling parents assume their kids won't learn anything unless they're made to because when given free time the kids avoid learning. Is it because kids naturally hate learning or because schools create a need for downtime as well as paint a lot of the world with a dullifying brush so it's just not attractive to kids?

(Unschoolers know from experience that kids naturally are curious and want to know about the world. It's school that causes kids to avoid what looks like learning.)

** Should I just try the behavioral things for the moment or just go all out. **

Take it a step at a time. Don't yank all the rules or turn his world upside down or it will be chaos and you'll think we're a bunch of loonies. Find ways to say yes more.

** Also, he has a speech delay and is currently in speech therapy **

Most speech therapy is to help kids fit into school so other kids don't make fun of them and teachers can understand them. That's just the foundation most speech therapists work from. Since it's true for most kids, they don't question it. Most speech problems self correct. To find a therapist who can see without the blinders of school will take some research.

[Joyce Fetteroll]

** Find ways to say yes more. **

Which from a conventional parenting point of view sounds indulgent. If everything is yes (good, right), when is there ever no (bad, wrong)?

We will model what we believe is good and right and bad and wrong as we put effort into choosing more difficult but "nicer" paths and not choosing some paths that are direct routes but full of things we want to avoid (like hurting others).

"Can I climb up the slide?" "Yes, let's wait until the kids wanting to come down are done."

"Can I run in the street?" "Let's find a place for you to run where you'll be safe from cars." (Of course that's not normally a question a child asks ;-) but their actions ask the question.)

"Can I have ice cream for breakfast?" "Yes!" (No qualifiers on that one! And before you ask, yes, there's tons of stuff written about nutrition from a mindful parenting point of view so that's a good place to start. One point that might make it easier to build a picture of what we're talking about when food controls are lifted is to begin by making nutrition dense foods easier (and funner) than less nutritious dense foods rather than saying no.)

"Can I watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre?" Now I'm running into questions that seem simple on the surface but really dig deep into mindful principles and depend on what the child is really asking. Why does the child want to see that movie? Something about the cover? A friend said it was great? Or they're starting to explore their personal fear boundaries? So rather than "Yes" being popping the movie in and letting the kid watch it straight through (and maybe be traumatized because they didn't really know what they were asking to see!), there would be lots of help along the way like reading at sites like Screen It! that detail specific scenes that might bother a child to find scenes your particular child might want to skip over, watching it during the day, letting them know they can stop and pause and fast forward at any time, watching extras on how it was made and so on and so on. (Yes, lots of discussion on this too on how to empower them as they explore.)

[Joel C]

First of all, Joyce and Heather, thanks for the help. You brought me from having no clue to at least a good starting point in understanding what you guys are talking about. Thanks to every one else too. Second, I need to apologize to christy for hijacking her thread, lol. I'll start my own for more questions. Take care.

[Maya]

Back to the OP, here are some thoughts I wrote the other day in response, and never got around to posting. I'm always late to the party.

My now nearly five years old went through quite a hitting/biting period when she was two and a half or so. I was new to unschooling at the time, and also said things like, "she does it out of the blue." I got some great advice on a list (that at first really pissed me off) which was, basically, if my littlest was getting bitten or hit, then I wasn't doing my job. That I was missing the cues that had come before the hitting. Advice that goes WHAM right between the eyes, lol! It was great, though, because, I started paying super-close attention to the two year old, trying to see situations from her perspective, all the time, getting to know her and her cues so that I could see it coming. It was a surprise, like, oh, I can be paying THAT much attention. And it worked because the hitting WASN'T out of the blue at all. There were things happening before, that I just hadn't been noticing.

When I did start to see the cues, a tone of voice, a tension, or just knowing what would set it off, I found I could prevent the hitting with distraction, or separate play for a while, or protein snacks, or changing the energy all together (like going somewhere else), or more one on one time with her, or offering to play a game, etc. For a while, it turned out, this meant that I was the only person who could really be with the kids, because other people weren't clued in enough, and when the older one got frustrated, bam, the little one got bit/kicked/etc. It got to be that things would look fairly smooth when I was there, and it wasn't apparent to others, necessarily, that I was working really hard, paying attention and balancing out tiny moments that, to the uninitiated, might not be noticed, but I knew would quickly escalate to hitting. Just a tiny example, kid A is coloring, kid B reaches over to make a mark on kid A's picture, and mom just casually reaches out and redirects the hand, saying, "Oh, do you want your own paper?" and kid B happily colors on the provided paper, never receiving the wham from an angry kid A who never got the unwanted mark.

I also realized that my then two year old felt bad when she hit. She didn't act like she felt bad, so it took a while for me to figure it out. But when she felt bad, she hit more. So if I did anything that made her feel worse, it was gasoline on the fire. And trying to show her the wrong of her ways made her feel worse. Trying to 'teach' her that she shouldn't hit, or just being worried that she was 'getting away with something' or that she would 'never learn' made it worse. What helped, I found, was being really kind to her when it happened, and, even better, facilitating as many happy, connected moments as we could cram into a day, setting her up for as many successful moments as possible. She didn't need to even be thinking about 'I'm not supposed to hit, it's bad to hit, I'm bad when I hit' and other stuff like that. She needed lots of love and attention and kindness and fun and feeling really good about who she was (not getting into situation where it was really hard to not to fail). Smoothing over and keeping things on track for fun (including avoiding situations likely to trigger the stress that caused the hitting) was called 'avoiding the problem' by my MIL. But, after a while, my daughter grew out of hitting, or she got better tools, or both, because it just stopped being an issue all on its own. She never hits now. She's five. She's incredibly sweet to her little brother.

It is so easy to think hitting kid=bad kid=must change the kid. It was really hard for me, I discovered, to be nice to someone who wasn't being nice. It is all around in the world. When someone is mean--hits someone weaker, or bites them, or shoots them, etc, it's the accepted solution to yell at that person, call them bad names (jerk, maladjusted), see that person as wrong, in the wr

[Maya]

Hey, it cut me off! I'm talking too freaking much, eh? Here is the last part:

ong, bad, put them in time-out or jail, depending on their age, in other words, do mean things to them to make them stop. It was a different paradigm, and hard at first, for me to be nice to her when she wasn't nice. But maybe that is part of how she learned to be so kind--people being kind to her when she really needed it. I know when I'm being a b*tch, I long for someone to be sweet to me. It's rare to get it! Which is too bad, because it's what helps the most, ime.