Yes, yes yes!!!

Nisarga’s dystonia means he uses his body in a quite twisted way. To push against the floor, he uses the back of his hands instead of palm. It has been a struggle for over a year now to keep patiently correcting it by turning his hand over so that his palm pushes against the floor. Of course, I can’t do it every time, but as often as possible.

With the new medication, he has been more open to using his palms, though he still uses the back of his hand a lot.

Today, when I corrected how his hands were resting, he put his head down, so that he was sleeping on his stomach with his forearms and palms against the floor palms in line with his shoulders. And something I had made a mental note of clicked in that position. He could push up with minimum effort.

Now, this is a very good position to push up on hands and knees. One which I tried to “place” him into, but he is very touch sensitive, so he doesn’t stay like that.

Using the opportunity, I supported his waist slightly to take off some of the weight and make it easy for him to try coming up on his hands and leaned over him so that he looked up at me, and very naturally, he raised himself till his hands extended and reflexively got his knee under him, and there we were!

Both of us surprised. Me surprised because after all those battles trying to teach him, when I really went with what he was already doing [I tried always, but I am learning from youtube videos - don't have the skill of those guys], it was so ridiculously simple to help him to it! He, because he found himself in a totally different position with a lot of possibilities.

Big grins.

I refrained from over reacting, because that kind of freezes him. He has done it with a random movement that worked, he still doesn’t understand what to duplicate if I tell him to do it again. So we played, and then again, when he was in a similar position, I touched his waist and he came up on one knee and hands.

Then again. Some four or five times. Differently each time. He is experimenting. And it is so beautiful. I went to the loo and cried some happy tears.

We are finally up on our hands and knees and making some attempts to crawl mixed up with it. Yay!!!!

Another moment when I wished so much that someone was around to wield a camera!

Another breakthrough with ad hoc Feldenkrais Method

Those following this blog for long know that I have been learning the Feldenkrais Method on my own (and not too well) from videos found online and books and training videos purchased on the internet. Basically, this being such an experiential knowledge, simply watching or words are not really “enough”, but in the absence of a practitioner within reach, and with my belief in the Method, I am doing what I can.

So, after a long plateau, during which, I lost motivation, etc. I ended up taking a break. Then I began again a few days ago. The first day or so was… okay… nothing really happened, but three days ago, something suddenly clicked for Nisarga with how he uses his back (or rather how he didn’t use his back, but could). That session exploded into possibilities.

Difficult to put into words, but the end result is that Nisarga is now much more happy about holding and banging toys, which he had lost when he regressed. He has also started applying his knee to the floor to help his creeping. He requires lesser assistance in sitting up, and is able to maintain his sitting much better than before. His back is more relaxed and the curve in his spine doesn’t show as much.

I suppose all this would have happened much earlier in the hands of a skilled practitioner, since for me it is an awkward process of remembering movement possibilities I had noted in videos, seeing how any of them might fit what we are doing, innovating based on them, being sensitive to Nisarga’s body and mind… many things at once… I am not skilled enough yet for it all to just instinctively happen, as it does for those with more experience, but I guess it is far superior to not having known about the method at all.

He just figured out that his back could do more than he was using it for, and it kind of flowed from there. Very optimistic. Watching videos and reading a lot again, so that I can use this breakthrough and we can figure out more ways the body has potential…

This is also good on another level, because I was getting a lot of flak for discontinuing his Physiotherapy on my own initiative, because it wasn’t helping and he seemed to be getting stiffer from all the demands of applying strength to achieve something that was basically movement. It was also making his scoliosis more pronounced (not that any of the doctors noticed that or agreed when I pointed it out until the recent doctor from Vile Parle), which I found worrying. The doctor had prescribed braces, but to me it made more sense to get rid of the tenseness than to prevent it from showing as a distortion.

In any case, with over 6 months of physio, he hadn’t really achieved any particular milestone – he still wasn’t sitting or crawling, creeping erratically… and any progress from one session was not lasting unless repeated constantly. That isn’t learning. But to me, as a mother with a “non-performing” child, it had become about defending a decision made with considerable thinking, observing and soul searching in the face of those who insisted on the proper procedure being followed, recommended training being given, etc.

*Sigh* it always seems to be a fight between responsive choices and choices deemed right by the world.

Anyway, he is creeping far more fluidly than the physiotherapy allowed him, his scoliosis is relaxing again, and I can SHOW the difference to skeptics – which definitely helps.

The neurologist and Syndopa

Today, my birthday. No one at home but Nisarga and I. Big plan for the day? Meeting with Dr. Anaita Hegde, who is supposed to be the top or second from top pediatric neurologist in Mumbai. A few odd thoughts sent through my mind:

How can a doctor be ranked top or second from top, etc? Do they have contests or something?
Frankly, I didn’t think Nisarga’s symptoms are neurological. Or they might be, but I used to think its related with his lack of head control and increasingly scoliotic tendency because of that (in my mind), but as a parent, I didn’t have the guts to not act on any advice I get – and a child specialist had said that I must meet a very senior pediatric neurologist.
Difficult getting appointments, so its really a birthday gift that we were able to meet her and it turned out to be a very good meeting.

The meeting went very well. We went with all our increasing paperwork and ended up waiting a lot. Nisarga dozed off and I asked them to let a few of the other waiting patients through before us so that he could be well rested when we met the doctor. Since everything was running HOURS behind schedule, they were grateful for my offer. Of course, I was being utterly selfish. If I had to shell out a lot of money consulting a fancy doctor, I wanted Nisarga bright and cheerful, not wilted from waiting, so that she could really interact with him and examine and whatever it is these people are supposed to do.

While we waited, Dr. Anaita’s assistant (a neurologist herself) came and took a detailed case history. As meetings go, this was probably the most surprising and best of the lot. Dr. Hegde interacted with Nisarga and he was at his charming best. She made quite a few observations related with him scissoing his legs, not being comfortable on his back and other things, and had some conversation and a eureka kind of moment with her assistant.

She was concerned about his regression. He gets these developments, and he loses them. For example, after the bouts of bua bua ba ba boooa etc, he isn’t babbling much at all, while I was expecting him to speak more post that. There are other things too.

She has prescribed something called Syndopa, which is supposed to fix some chemical deficiency in his brain. No side effects, but a miracle cure if it works out. She explained that it was a long shot, but some of the symptoms made her think it was worth trying. Just as we were leaving, she took note of his history of slight jaundice immediately after birth, and considered the possibility that there may be some brain damage – even though the MRI was clear.

I spoke with her about the Feldenkrais work I do with Nisarga. She was very supportive and went to the extent of saying that if it is helping him, to not even ask any more doctors, because he is really the final judge. To not even risk someone asking me to stop! It was a big surprise after the unrelenting skepticism of most doctors so far.

Brought him home, fed him, gave him his first dose of Syndopa. Perhaps its my imagination, but after his second dose, I think he is more active. Fingers crossed.

Anat Baniel method of Feldenkrais in India

Okay, this is what I have been up to these days. Nisarga’s development still seems behind schedule and the attitude of his pediatrician is wait and see. That seems fine, since he isn’t ill or unhappy, but I was getting concerned about his lack of movements.

A lot of research online led me to discover the Feldenkrais method and then the Anat baniel method for children.What I liked was the attitude of sensitivity to the child’s comfort and the focus on creating learning experiences rather than training or therapy. I was eager to have this for Nisarga, but there aren’t any practitioners in India. Not to be stopped, I have turned my considerable aptitude for learning toward this and learned through reading and teaching materials purchased online.

I tried to understand the principles and used the abundant videos on YouTube to see example after example of them in action and started applying these learnings to assist Nisarga. It started showing results almost immediately. I felt encouraged and worked further, helping Nisarga to roll over and gain neck control.

Then, I became complacent, till I realized that he is now 8 months old and still not sitting or crawling, and have been working with him gain for the last few days. Again, I am encouraged to see that within four days he learned to hold his back straighter, sits with very little support, uses two hands to play with toys and as of today, has started crawling – all of which he was not able till four days ago.

What began as a disappointment over lack of access to practitioners is leading to me becoming a practitioner!I am not a certified practitioner, but I would be happy to work with other children who need help with motor development. I am not promising any competence and of course, if, unlike me, you can fly abroad and get those experts to work with your child, its best. But if that is not possible for you, I dare say that this may be worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t harm for sure. But if it does… the changes in Nisarga in the last four days are miraculous.

Of course, in an ideal world, I will be able to afford to fly abroad to learn when Nisarga is older. Or, there may be other practitioners who begin working in Mumbai…

Unfurling learning – the unschooling way

When I began unschooling Nisarga, he was two months old. I was often told by veteran unschoolers that it was too early to think about schooling or unschooling and to simply enjoy my child. Yet, experiential learning is a way of life with me, and I wasn’t adopting unschooling so much as I had found a name for what I was doing, and a community to help me find ways to do it better. I couldn’t have stopped.

At the same time, I had bought in completely to the opinion expressed that at this stage what I was doing would be attachment parenting, plain and simple. And it was. Yet, I experienced the living proof of what I say countless times – “We begin learning from experience from birth and stop at death. Its like breathing. We may consciously influence its quality, but we can’t stop.” And so it was.

Nisarga was learning a whole load of things, and my awareness of unschooling helped me apply the principles to support his learning at his level.

He is rather young, so it isn’t really about projects and things, but simply discovering the world, creating meaning out of experiences, learning to use our bodies (and I mean the ‘our’ – my own body has discovered many new ways it can be used in this process). I pretty much let him do what he wants. He wakes up, sleeps, plays, interacts or not at will. I let him guide me as to what to do. My chief role at this stage is loving him to bits (he’s one cuddly love-sponge).

He is slightly late developmentally in reaching milestones, so a lot of my responsibilities involve protecting him from unintentional and well intended training that makes him uncomfortable (‘making’ him bear weight on his feet, pressuring him to roll by constantly jangling stuff at him, etc). On the other hand, I am trying to balance ‘getting him to do’ things with providing him with opportunities he enjoys and it has resulted in some very new ‘games’. Currently, his chief toy is me. Followed closely by DH, MIL, an exercise ball, a swing, four foot ‘hit me’ dolphin and absolutely anything he can lay his hands on.

Unschooling provided me the concept of trusting him that helped me discover that I don’t need to make him do exercises to develop his motor skills. If I offer them in a way that’s fun, he prefers them over other things. If he doesn’t want to do them, its not the end of the world. He has taught me (by being excited) to create our own exercises by simply breaking down the movements he is trying unsuccessfully into smaller doable bits or supporting him through the bits he is not able and he enjoys these more, since they are what he wants to do in the first place. I found this AMAZING. He doesn’t need a pediatrician to tell him what to do and this way we always have variety and increasing movements than those ‘recommended activities’.

We intend to go out everyday, but he’s not too much into it. So we don’t, unless he’s in the mood.

He loves spending time on the floor and is currently obsessed with eating his feet and the feet somehow keep escaping. So he rolls to catch them and finds himself rolled over, which is new and interesting. But he doesn’t have the strength to do much from this position, so he yells for me after a while. Depending on his mood, I may pick him up for comforting (fed up) or I may hover him over his toys so that he can pick them up and throw them around the room. He loves this. He taught me this by simply being delighted when I took him over the first time. Another version is when he sits in my lap and plays with toys and I take him over to pick them up himself. He likes being bounced, so I bounce him whenever he asks (which is immediately every time he is in any bounce-capable position). He loves me, so he gets a lot of me. Absolutely unlimited attention, any time he wants it.

We are discovering that he is fine going out in the evenings for a short time if he has had a good nap and enjoys the busy market bustling with people, bright and curious things and moving vehicles. I have started seeing the miserable place as interesting through his eyes. I am learning to be tuned in to him and it is an intimacy I have never experienced before. Its just beautiful. he is a cheerful, expressive baby with a distinct preference for communication, and very little need to cry. Its not like he never cries, but its mostly physical issues like gas or burp, or someone not setting him down when he wants to pee – doesn’t like to pee on people.

I discovered (to my surprise) that there is indeed a way of unschooling a baby, which is unschooling and distinctly different from attachment parenting, or simply loving and indulging. He has interests and preferences. It is not only about being there for him and loving him, but actually paying attention to what he is doing, what he enjoys more, and offering more of the same. Respecting his wishes for what he doesn’t want. Pretty much what I imagine happens with an older child, but this is a baby and it works very well for his learning as well. He likes grabbing at toys. We got him more ‘grabby’ kind of toys. He likes movement, so we have a ball to bounce on, swing, plus a whole repertoire of throwing, swinging, rocking, etc that he enjoys. He doesn’t like rice cereal, so I don’t feed him that. He likes watermelon, so he gets that often. Its a whole load of things we do that we wouldn’t have before beginning unschooling, and I’m glad, because he is so happy, contented, energetic all the time. He takes most opportunities offered, which only makes me see how much more I can offer him. New ideas keep popping up, and life keeps getting enriched.

There is a long way to go, of course, but the journey is enthralling. I totally forget that this guy isn’t actually speaking, which is the thing I was most scared of before I became a mom – how would I understand the ‘tiny creature’?

It is difficult to say what exactly we do, since its pretty much based on what he wants to do in the moment, and in the last couple of weeks, no day has been like another. I guess he’s discovering more and more. My role is to simply make as many wishes of his possible as I can understand and offer anything that I think he may enjoy.

It is an unfurling, an opening. New possibilities emerge with each moment lived.

Would love to hear how other families spend their days.

Encourage rolling over

Many children these days roll over late. Nisarga is one of them. Its not that he can’t. He just doesn’t seem interested.

He has rolled over from his tummy to his back and vice versa more than a few times. He can. But he is content to lie how he is. I must admit that I have some concerns over his muscle tone, particularly when I went and discovered that he has many symptoms of mild hypotonia. But his doctor is not overly concerned, and I dislike labels anyway, so I am simply plodding along, helping him to do more, unless the doctor suggests that there is a problem, which she clearly doesn’t think at the moment.

Anyway, here are some things I tried to encourage him to roll over:

Tummy time – the god of all motor development. This can’t be over stressed. It is an opportunity for him to try doing things with his body by using his limbs to move in gravity.
Variations on tummy time, like on an exercise ball, incline, rolled towel under armpits, etc.
I support his movements by helping him move in the direction he is looking in. This may mean bringing over his hip or shoulder, etc.
Alternating interaction and alone time – in nice chunks of time, say fifteen minutes at least.
Propping his bottom up slightly when on his back, to encourage him to lift his legs and catch his feet. This is a good position for him to be tempted into rolling over.
Sitting at his head and speaking, encouraging, giving toys, etc, so that he has to turn to watch me.
Play by turning his body from side to side. The trick is to roll him when his body is moving with the movement – for example, arms coming over if I’m rolling him by his hips or legs, or hips turning if I’m rolling him from his shoulders or arms. Initially, it takes him a while to go with the movement, but after a few rolls, I can roll him from side to side really fast, and he is totally with the movement and enjoying it and asking for more. Don’t do this for too long, even if your baby seems to be loving it.
Rolling and bouncing on an exercise ball (roll the ball, not the baby and bounce the baby, not the ball )
Take a very soft scarf and drop it onto the baby’s tummy. Nisarga brings his arms and feet up and kind of hugs it and often rolls in his ecstace. This works specially well if the baby is not wearing clothes and can feel the light and soft material against the tummy.

Other things that may be possible are sessions in a swimming pool,

10 ways to develop head control in an infant

A friend has a daughter who was born a couple of months after Nisarga. She has hypotonia and is having trouble getting her daughter to do many things. She goes with him to a physiotherapist, but is feeling rather discouraged. As we chatted, I realized that with Nisarga having low muscle tone as well, and considering the amount of research and experimenting I do into encouraging movement, I had tons of very useful advice to offer.

We spoke about many milestones and specific motor achievements over a week or so of extensive chatting, and I am planning to share the ideas as different posts focused on specific subjects.

This one focuses on encouraging head control. Here are the different things I do (and some I haven’t yet done) with Nisarga:

Tummy time. Lots of it. If your baby doesn’t like tummy time, put them on their tummies, and pick them up the moment they complain. Don’t force them to endure it, but don’t stop providing opportunities. With Nisarga, I found that these things often depend on mood. Sometimes, he can lie on his tummy indefinitely, other times, he will start crying even before he hits the ground. So don’t be in a hurry to decide that your baby doesn’t like tummy time, it may simply be their mood – tired, hungry, gas, sleepy, etc.
Carry him upright. Carry in your arms, in a baby carrier…. this gives them opportunities to manage his head without having to lift it against gravity.
Lying chest to chest on you as you recline. This is a modified kind of tummy time where he doesn’t have to bear so much weight on his hands and can lift his head to look at your face – motivation and ease.
Put a rolled up towel under his armpits when on tummy to help him look up easier. N doesn’t really need this, as he’s happy to look up.
Carry him facing the floor with his tummy on your arm.
Swing him tummy down like an aeroplane
Encourage him to look around. Move toys so that he has to turn his head to see them, show him things as you carry him around, get others in the home to call him so that he turns to look.
One exercise I play is to sit him on my knees facing front. I look over one shoulder and call to him and give him a kiss. Then I do the same over the other shoulder. After a while he should start anticipating your moves and look at you and smile. (Not for very young babies, I guess)
Talk to him as you move around the room so that he turns to look at you. Most infants will naturally want to follow their parents with their eyes (mothers in particular)
Sit him on your knees or on a big rubber ball, hold him carefully and with enough support for his head, and sway him to music or a rhyme. You can also tilt him from side to side and front and back. Begin with small movements and move to larger movements only when he starts enjoying this. This helps him learn to make small corrections to keep his head upright.

Keep everything fun. It is not going to work if your child is resisting what is happening, since his energy will then not be with ‘flowing’ with the activity, but in avoiding it. Also, something fun for both of you is likely to be repeated regularly to coax laughs out of the little charmer than something that is an ordeal.

Transformation

I have learned living in a whole new way from my son.

For a long time, I’d been wondering, where do I express this. The transformation is manifesting in my personal life, so it could go on my personal blog, the transformation is manifesting in my professional life, so it should go on my professional blog, and the source of the transformation is Nisarga, so it belongs here. As you see, I am here, sharing this.

What is this transformation?

Before Nisarga was born, I had committed to myself that I would not blindly do anything without understanding what I was up to.

When he was born, I discovered that I pretty much knew nothing. Of course, it was my first child. What did I know? I started finding out. I discovered that if I was paying attention, I understood him very well. Life is simple. Smile is yes, frown is no, intent gaze is interest, show me more.

I discovered that responses change, and what brought a smile usually, may not be liked at all at some time. It was a learning in constantly seeing with attention, being with caring. This is not as tedious as my description. It is fascinating to discover that like me, like any other person, this little guy is taking in the world around him, selecting what to pay attention to, and has his own opinions about it.

Seeing how explanations don’t make sense to him, I learned to move away from them, and simply be with what is, however inexplicable, and discovered that it is. It doesn’t need explanations to be possible, because it already is. If he wants to nurse fifteen minutes after he was done, it doesn’t matter why. What matters is that he is hungry. The ‘Again?’ of surprise is irrelevant too. Living in the now means he needs me to nurse him. I don’ need to understand why, just do the needful. He has his own reasons, and no one else needs to know.

With time, I became so used to this, that explanations are dissolving from my life leaving my mind free to really see the need without analyzing its validity with everyone. Relationships are unfurling from the haze of unnecessary judgments I didn’t even know I used to clutter myself with. I find myself listening, really listening, and the responses I get reflect the new freedom I haves started bringing with me.

Life is different. Intimate. Rewarding.

And I can see how a child gives birth to a parent. I’ll go ahead and say that it is silly to focus on teaching your child, when there is so much you can learn.

The Unschooling Gods

I had joined these online unschooling information communities, where parents from all over the world can interact. There are many knowledgeable people there as are many people just stepping into unschooling. It is an incredible space.

However, like anywhere else in the world, intolerance abounds. Or perhaps it is intolerance in me at listening to generalizations on how unschooling should be.

My current discomfort is with Sandra Dodd. Yes, her site is still on one of my highest recommendations for information on the subject, but I find that like any other human, she is rather set in her view of unschooling, which makes it rather difficult to listen to some of her opinions on unschooling.

I guess, what I will have to do, is start my own ‘brand’ of unschooling, which really is what every parent does, whether schooling or unschooling or other.

This post is about my belief in respecting a child. It is about not knowing what is best, and doing what I think would best support my objectives. I can only ever find out.

Two statements made by Sandra recently remain in my mind as hallmarks of how we can become rigid in our thoughts and how we stop learning when we begin “teaching”.

They are (there is no link to provide, as this was said in a group post at AlwaysLearning on yahoo Groups):

“If she can’t give enough to make unschooling better than school, she should put the child in school.”

and

“If she can’t give enough to keep the child from being an absolute mess, she should give him up for adoption.”

I made a response to these on the lists, but I have no belief that it will be posted, since said Sandra also has the ability to block posts. It will take a person willing to reflect to actually absorb the response statements like this get.

I may lack experience, but I find this utterly crass. This goes well beyond unschooling as a practice and into the realm of telling a parent what to do with a child based on own judgements of what constitutes “good enough”.

Considering a mother newly getting into unschooling. Things are in a bad space for her. She is finding it difficult to keep supporting all an energetic childs initiatives can be, unconditionally. She is already questioning how her children behave and worries that things are not right. How do you think a suggestion for putting them up for adoption rather than messing them up hits her in this frame of mind? Being experienced is little use if it cannot be ssensitive.

Sandra, I bet you were right where we are in the beginning and didn’t actually begin knowing it all. How would you have felt when you didn’t know what was to come and things were rough, and some ‘expert’ suggested that your child would be better off without your contributions if you were not able to ‘crack it’? You still don’t know the future. What if they get messed a few years later? Will you give them up for adoption?

Or, in other words, I don’t know if I can make unschooling better than school. I don’t know if I can keep my child from being an absolute mess whether I school or unschool, raise him myself or give him up for adoption. All I know is that I believe that I am making the most respectful choice I can make for my child. By the time I am forced to accept that I did indeed mess my child up, it will be too late, since of course, I’m not intentionally messing him up. My child would also have some security in what was happening, however messed it was. Would he cope with whatever parents he would get through adoption? How do I know the adopted parents won’t mess him further? I will never see my child as messed, so I cant trust my own judgment. I want the best life for him, even if it means I should keep my toxic self away. So tell me, wise one, should I send him to school or adoption? By these standards, does anyone deserve a child at all?

It is not that Sandra doesn’t care about the well being of a child. I know she does, or she would never have made this phenomenal effort. I think, somewhere down the line, responding to so many questions, providing so much invaluable advice, working so hard to extend support to new beginners, she has lost that much essential space for self-awareness that makes it possible to keep our own selves nourished. When that space gets crowded out, our actions start being automatic based on what we usually say, and they take on a life of our own, while we still continue to see ourselves as sensitive and caring.

I have no doubt that she actually means this statement as well-intentioned advice to mothers who question the need to give their children the freedom to do whatever they want and learn from that. What she means is that if you grudge your children that, there is no point making this huge effort toward unschooling, because you will have ended up making all the effort, but with the same result as school. I also took it like that. I just think that it comes from a place of being God, and I resent her implication that she knows what is better for my child.

I still have a lot of respect for Sandra. Her words are invaluable support for someone beginning a journey, like me. I read them, I reflect on them and often they empower me to have a more enabling attitude toward growth. Mine and the others too. So don’t go, “Oh, I was reading her because you recommended, and now I’d better stop before she wrecks my self-esteem”. Read her, read everyone. Just trust yourself. Trust that you are doing the best you can, and that is always good enough.

It is also a learning on how there is no point idolizing a person to a place of infallibility and then being outraged when they turn out to be human. It is a lesson for me to see the humanity in me, in others.

Unschooling Nisarga

Okay, its world war three, and as usual, I’m in the thick of things. This time, it is a stray comment that Nisarga will not go to school. This has sparked a minor wave of arguments. Many have shaken their heads wryly thinking that its yet another of my strange ideas. Those who know me better have started their own campaigns of explaining how school is necessary to a well rounded childhood (as though they have explored options), how it will be difficult to sustain year after year the strain of educating the child, and more.

I find schools overrated.

I have been in one as a child. While not traumatized, it isn’t something to write home about.

My reasons for deciding to unschool Nisarga:

Schooling is a huge investment in time. Compared with the time I invested in it, I have got precious little back. That is not to say I didn’t learn anything. It is simply saying that much of what I learned is rarely useful in life, and many things I learned actually harm my well being in real life.
Schools teach us to quantify people based on a standard scale. We don’t really need much of what we learn in school, and most of what we need to learn in life, we learn from life. Yet, kids start believing themselves as clever or dumb based on what some ambitious bunch of teachers decides as life skills.
The education system has no real way to impart necessary knowledge. One may argue that maths, science, history, language, etc are the foundations of learning. One may argue that they are certainly not. The fact is that very few schools actually prepare you for life. With calculators all around, I see no reason for my son to waste some of the prime developmental years of his life learning methods to divide 679676876 by 5875. Been there, done that, and never done it in real life. Always used a calculator – on my phone, my computer…
Many subjects of knowledge are not covered though we pretend they are. Art for example is a joke. So is language, where a student will actually be considered ‘less’ for using slang, or ‘street language’ which is really an important part of speech in real life.
Students are carefully molded into prescribed human beings and measured according to their ability to conform. This is actual damage.
Think of all the life experience that he actually can learn things of interest to him that he can fit in in the coming 16 years (basic schooling). Travel, experimentation, art, science, people skills, computers, television, whatever. Whatever works. Once we aren’t obliged to measure our worth from standardized and useless examinations, there remains no real need to limit ourselves to prescribed learning and tentatively dabbling in our real interests. I see no reason why a kid can’t play video games all day and then grow up to make a living out of it. Or to play with colors and become an artist. Or to take apart things, improvise and then become an engineer or scientist. Or to become all of the above because he wants to, or to choose something else altogether.
I suspect that schools often serve the purpose of keeping the kids occupied for parents who would much rather not have the hassle of dealing with their growth. This is not needed for me. I enjoy growing with him

I am not planning on teaching my child anything at all. Let alone school. I will share what I find important if he finds it interesting. If he doesn’t, there is really no need for him to learn to do maths (for example) till he needs it and figures it out. Or to know about all the countries in the world or to read history only to forget it. The big thing I am going to do to support his growth is to stop interfering with my own ideas of what is best for him.

For all those of you concerned that I’m going to ‘ruin’ my child, I appreciate your concern, and share my trust that he is a person and if learning turns out to be essential, he is capable of making a choice to engage in it as much as he likes.

If you have read this far, and see some value in what I say, I’d like to share that I have also discovered that unschooling is practiced by many people over the world. That is how I realized that my “no intention of sending my child to school (since before I even married)” actually had a name, and my instinct was indeed leading me to something many involved and caring parents found value in. You may find out more on:

http://www.naturalchild.org
http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole new world waiting to be discovered.

This is unorthodox. I know. But then I have never really been famous for following the rules.

PS: If you wish your child to excel in maths, this article is a must read.

Nisarga

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Category Archives: development