Motivating your child?

[Beth Cugal]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to unschooling this year and I'm interested in the radical unschooling philosophy. I admit, though, that I swing back and forth between excitement and fear. Recently I heard on the radio a man who never finished high school and was sorry for it. He said he wished his parents had put more emphasis on school when he was growing up. I remember feeling the same way when I was in college. I never had good study habits, but managed to get through high school OK. But when I went to college, boy did I struggle. I was annoyed with my mom for not "teaching" me more discipline. Now here I am starting an unschooling journey with my son and I wonder... Am I now going to be guilty of the same thing as my mom? Don't kids need some kind of guidance from their parents? I don't want my son to stumble through life the way I have. How do radical unschoolers react when they see their children just sort of drifting?

Beth

[Ren]

Trust that it's part of the process. Be connected enough to know when they need some inspiration or a sounding board or just time.

I think it's natural for a schooled child to blame the parent's when there is a perceived lack. All their lives they learn that other people know more, so why would they take responsibility for their own choices when they make so few of them? An unschooled child may "drift" but at least they realize it is their choice and if they need more of something the parents are available and connected and trustworthy.

Guidance is important. Guidance is not control or force though.

[laura bowman]

so so so weird...i went to bed last night thinking about guidance vs. control...i even wrote myself a note to remember to start a discussion about it!! the stars are definitely aligned for this topic.

beth...i know exactly what you mean. i remember wishing my parents had guided me more with school, i struggled as well and eventually dropped out of college after 4 years (it was a 5 year art program)...until i learned that that wasn't what i really needed back then. what i needed was encouragement to follow my dreams. an environment where the things i was interested in mattered...and were recognized and encouraged, fascilitated. i look back now and i don't think about that we didn't have any structure, just that i wish they would've seen my passions and helped me explore them more and guided me. i think i just wanted my passions to be recognized and respected.

i think unschooling gives children that freedom. and we are in the wonderful position to see our children's interests emerge and be there to fill their environment with the things they need to pursue their dreams.

i would call the drifting...exploring. when i think about how much time my kids have to totally delve into exactly what they want, i get so excited. man, wouldn't that have been awesome!!! isn't it awesome that after learning how to give them that gift i was able to finally give it to myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think you are going to be amazed at how much YOU will grow as a result of choosing to unschool your children. that is something i never expected, but i'm so glad for it.

the pull between excitement and fear is just letting you know you're alive and you are human. embrace it, then let it go. trust.

[Beth Cugal]

Of course... If someone else is making my choices for me, then I might feel cheated if later I don't feel like the right choices were made. But my son's case is totally different. I didn't think of that. Thanks.

Beth

[Beth Cugal]

Your response gives me great comfort. Thinking my mom should have had all the answers for me, and that now I should have them for my kids, is all wrong. You are so right about recognizing and encouraging our kids' passions. It reminds me of a quote from Harry Truman I once read (paraphrasing): The best way to give your kids advice is to figure out what they want to do and then advise them to do it! Thanks.

Beth

[Sylvia Toyama]

I'm finding presence is more important than guidance. In my childhood guidance was a very bad thing. Everyone, it seemed, knew so much better than I what I 'should' do, what I should want, whom I should become when I grew up. Heck, they told me they knew who I was better than I did. I often heard "you don't really mean that. You'll see, when you're older you'll understand what I mean."

It has taken me years to begin to know and love who I am. What my parents' guidance told me was that they either didn't know me and didn't care to, or (even more frightening) they did know me and I wasn't good enough, or smart enough. For so much of my life, they made it clear I wasn't enough. Even my dreams weren't enough. I was supposed to want 'more' for my life (their definition of more, certainly not mine).

When my firstborn was young, and I was a single Mom, I fell into guiding him, and it was a mess. I didn't want to tell him his dreams were less valuable than my experience, but I was so very afraid and unsure, and I didn't have any other tools. He demanded more of me, tho. He fought and railed against my perceived reality, and finally just insisted that something had to change. That was our first step on the path to a life that blesses us all every day.

There seems to be this mainstream idea that not guiding is the same as not being present for children. Presence and guidance aren't synonymous. I find that I can't be truly present if I'm guiding. Guidance implies that I want my child be somewhere, or someone, else; to not be where he is right now. Where and who he is right now is reality, and who am I to argue with that? I can choose to be present with him, to offer what I think might be helpful to him, because I love him and want joy for him. But it's not my place to tell him which path he should choose.

Guidance also suggests I know where my child needs to go, that I know his path. Their paths aren't mine. I'm thrilled to be invited along for the journey. I look at them and they are so magnificent, and so much more present in their own lives than I was at their ages. They don't need my guidance -- I can share my experiences and support them in pursuing their joy, tho.

I think drifting is a good thing. Drifting includes being open to finding out new things about ourselves and our world. It's not really a word I think of often, but I'm finding that life is very 'stream of consciousness, and drifting fits with that.

[Julie B]

I think the understanding that unschooling brings to parents and kids alike as that guidance comes from within. Learning from at early age to trust the direction of that stream bubbling up from within you is a wonderful thing. Actually, it's not exactly learning. Dmitri has always trusted his inner guidance because he has never been led away from it. I see my job as largely staying out of the way and realizing that everyone's inner guidance is different.

[Schuyler]

Now, these years later, do you still feel that your mother could have "taught" you to be more disciplined in your approach to school? Or was school a poor match for you? I did really well at university, not because I could study but because I enjoyed being there. I left everytime something else came along that was more interesting. I don't feel like I lacked discipline, or that being more disciplined would have been a better option for my life. I like the things I went off and did, the last distraction was my infant son Simon. And that has been wonderful.

It is easy to look to others to define you, to be the limits that keep you from succeeding or the driving forces that get you there. Own your choices, own your failures. You went to college and struggled, maybe there were other things that were going on that made the academic side of college less of a pull than the other things going, maybe college wasn't the right place at the right time, maybe it had nothing to do with your study skills and more to do with your motivation.

Schuyler

[Ren]

~~
Guidance also suggests I know where my child needs to go, that I know his path.~~

I'm thinking in immediate moments I DO know what his path needs to be, better than my child does. It's really not a "path" though...just a moment. Like if he feels like pounding on his sister, then I know without a doubt that she is not ok with that and I need to step in. I know that the activity needs to stop and quickly. That is guidance because he would not make that a choice right then.

He still knows himself better than anyone, but because of longer years and more experience, there are moments I need to use guidance. They become more rare as we partner together and be proactive. Very rare.

I do think there is room for guidance in unschooling.

[Sylvia Toyama]

I'm thinking in immediate moments I DO know what his path needs to be, better than my child does. It's really not a "path" though...just a moment. Like if he feels like pounding on his sister, then I know without a doubt that she is not ok with that and I need to step in. I know that the activity needs to stop and quickly. That is guidance because he would not make that a choice right then.

****
I consider that to be assistance, not guidance. Maybe it's just semantics, but when I'm helping my child to find his way thru a challenge in this moment, then it's help. For me, guidance would look like reminding him not to hit his brother before he even felt the need to.

Guidance is one of those mainstream buzz words for me. I don't know what they're called today, but when I went to school we had 'guidance counselors' whose job was to help students choose the right classes to secure the right credits for college, so we could have the right career. It was their job to help us plan out our entire lives. It left me with a bad association for the word guidance.

But, yeah, when talking about this topic with Gary over dinner, he made the point that the word guidance isn't always loaded in the way I define it. And I've seen parents who representing themselves as unschoolers, who give no practical guidance, and very little in the way of practical help, to their children. It probably wouldn't hurt me to reconsider my dislike for the word 'guidance.'

[Beth Cugal]

--Now, these years later, do you still feel that your mother could have "taught" you to be more disciplined in your approach to school? Or was school a poor match for you?--

I think she could have taught me more discipline, since at the time that's the path I thought I had to take. But maybe even better would have been what Laura said--to recognize and encourage my interests and dreams. To this day I'm not sure I could recognize them myself, much less follow them.

Beth

[Ren]

~~I consider that to be assistance, not guidance. Maybe it's just semantics, but when I'm helping my child to find his way thru a challenge in this moment, then it's help.~~

But that's what guidance really should be. I agree with you that it can be a loaded word. In fact, most people think it means guiding the child's life path! So I can see where it could be misunderstood.

However, I DO guide my children. Not by force, not by coercion. They are free to utilize what I share or not (unless it's an in-the-moment need for intervention) but I am still sharing my views on healthy food, how to care for the planet etc...

THAT is guidance to me. I don't believe they need to feel the same way. I don't believe I have the right to override anyone else's choice except in rare moments. Yes, I do override your choice if you feel the need to hurt someone else in the home. I don't know how to candy coat that into something it isn't.

It's guidance. It's even control at that point because what the person wants to do right now is not ok.

But the long-term is definitely about being proactive to avoid those situations, to partner with each other in finding solutions. I just know how many of those moments used to happen because of certain personalities being more intense in our home and I'd rather talk about guidance in all of it's forms because I have seen parents sit back while their children are obviously being mean and hateful to each other, needing intervention but the parent is smiling and saying "be nice" like THAT is going to help.

I am focusing on sibling relations here, because that's where most of my intervention happened. I think it's important to talk about HOW we intervene with respect.HOW we try to help our children when they're doing something that is obviously NOT ok instead of having only conversations in which we talk about our children not needing guidance or saying "yes" more etc....

Guidance doesn't need to mean parental authority, or top-down control. Maybe we can explore just what it CAN mean outside of a mainstream paradigm. Because the healthiest families I know of, utilize guidance.

[Julie B]

Ren wrote:
> I am focusing on sibling relations here, because that's where most of my
> intervention happened. I think it's important to talk about HOW we
> intervene with respect.HOW we try to help our children when they're
> doing something that is obviously NOT ok instead of having only
> conversations in which we talk about our children not needing guidance
> or saying "yes" more etc....

> Guidance doesn't need to mean parental authority, or top-down control.
> Maybe we can explore just what it CAN mean outside of a mainstream
> paradigm. Because the healthiest families I know of, utilize guidance.

Joe (dh) says something like words are just air that pass away. I've had the same experience of words never really being adequate.

Here's something I've been experiencing/thinking about lately, though. To me, a guide is someone who helps you because you've asked for that help. Maybe there are many ways of asking. Thrashing about is a way of asking.

Often, I meet people in the role of guides (sometimes even myself!) who think they know better, and that's funny to me. Especially when it's me. I'm now able to sniff out that I can never be 100% sure that I do know better. The most intense pain I've experienced in parenting situations is because I thought I *did* know better and therefore had to find a way to make my version of "better" come in to being.

There's something really nice about never knowing better but also just following what you're doing in that moment, which could be intervening. Am I a guide? I can see how I am, but I'm also a fallible person just doing what I'm doing in the moment. And it's when I *think* I'm the guide, when I'm being Ms. Smartypants, that I'm most fallible, historically speaking.

I see that I do best when I don't see myself as anything in particular other than fellow human being. It's when I let messages like fix it, you're in charge--do something, holy hell--I've got to stop X right now rule my thinking that I get into trouble, so that's why it's helpful for me to try to transcend the terminology in my thinking about myself and how I handle these situations.