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Lately, our family has been watching Netflix’s Family Reunion. It’s a cute modern family show with storylines that incorporate all ages. The grandparents are the Pastor and First Lady of a church and that’s REAL familiar to our family. And the parents have a progressive bent, so that too is familiar. So Mighty and I are watching this with my sister. In the first episode, the son, his wife, and their four children return to Georgia for a family reunion. Now Grandma done told them that children are not allowed in the parlor. But the kids go in there anyway, end up fighting, and break a whole bunch of stuff.…
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Wasteful, Entitled, and Inconsiderate
I was so ready to jump on Facebook and ask my fellow unschoolers how to deal with my child and what’s happening in our house around food. I was already writing the post in my head: “We’ve done a lot of deschooling and releasing of control around food in my house lately. We no longer require everyone to sit at the table and eat dinner at a certain time, my daughter often makes her own plate, she eats when she wants, and snacks all day. Full disclosure: we are still working through that one. But nevertheless, we have come a long way. But lately, she makes a plate and then…
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Getting Past No
In order to really raise free people, including myself, it takes a LOT of self-work. It’s deep work, it’s continuous, and it can be overwhelming. Who knew I had so many personal challenges?? But the steps forward feel so GOOD! I’ve mentioned that I, and other people in my household that shall not be named, have control issues (and communication challenges) that show up in various ways. We aren’t abnormal or strange. We were taught that being a good parent meant having your kid under control. And we are some good ass parents because we control the shit out of everything! What time she wakes up, what time she goes…
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When Your Partner Has Different Parenting Practices
I thought I would share a few things that I am learning, living, and growing through while parenting with a partner that does not fully align with your parenting philosophy. Around August, we decided – well, I decided and pressured him – to unschool for the 2020/2021 school year, which starts with a period of deschooling. The words unschooling and deschooling are SCARY for most people, so let me give you a couple of definitions from Akilah S. Richards, author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work. People typically think unschooling is letting your kids do what they want and not parenting appropriately. Akilah, ‘cause she’s my…
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Losing Control
As I continue on this journey towards sustained optimal well-being and joy, one of the things that have continuously come up as a pothole on the road is the issue of control. In fact having control, using control, being controlled, became so much of an issue that it caused me to take my first mothering sabbatical, a story for another day. At the time I felt like going mad. Seriously. There were questions all the time. She asked for a snack. And then asked for another snack. When she wanted to change the movie, she asked if she could watch a different movie. Then ten minutes later, I didn’t…
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Choosing Beyond
“To truly be free, we must choose beyond simply surviving adversity, we must dare to create lives of sustained optimal well-being and joy.”~bell hooks Never has a quote resonated so deeply with me. It was like she heard my morning meditations and took all my beliefs and desires and wrapped them into one beautifully articulated gift. Each word felt specially chosen for me. I felt heard. For the first time, I understood what my body had already known, where my feet had been stumbling for a path, where my words had failed. I want to be free. Free people have choices. I’ve been in a space when I felt like…