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.

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.

Brillkids – does it work?

Recently, a friend asked me about my fascination with the Brillkids softwares. Does it actually work? They ARE very expensive!

The way I look at this is that the Brillkids softwares – both Little Reader and Little Math are tools. How effective they are depends on how well you use them. A committed parent could get more results out of chart paper and marker pens than one who gives up with the Brillkids Little Learner (as they are collectively called).

That said, they are infinitely better than that chart paper and much more convenient than flashcard sets. I’m trying to use flash cards with Nisarg and discovering that it is definitely a skill that takes serious honing. Take for example teaching him about family. What I’m doing is with many members of the family, but for the purposes of this example, lets take just Raka, me and Nisarg.

This resulted in 6 two sided picture and word flash cards. Mother, father and Nisarg in two languages and photos on the other side. Now, this still leaves space for Vidyut, Raka and baby, but that’s more cards. Close relatives I’d like him to learn are at least grandparents, uncle and aunts. Its a logistical nightmare to have physical cards, not to mention learning to flash them at a speed fast enough to lead to effective right brain learning.

That takes me to power point slideshows. At least Mistakes can be corrected painlessly. More than that, I can copy paste stuff to create the slide shows. With the addition of the Open Cards extension, I can flash them quite well too. Much better. There are several slideshows I can download, and creating new ones is easy enough. I can add sound files, so that anyone can show Nisarg his cards without worrying about what to say, when to flip and so on.

The next stage in this journey is the Little Reader. I can add several audio files for a word, several images. So that each time it says Mother, it can speak in a different voice – Raka’s, my mother-in-law’s, mine… and show different photos of me. Entertaining and holds his interest and can be set up really fast for the variety it outputs. Not to mention that I don’t need to create a thing to teach him body parts (for example). The community shares files. I can benefit from someone else’s efforts as others can benefit frommine. 10 people can teach kids 10 things for the effort of one. Plus I can add videos, create playlists and there are even lesson plans that I can simply play directly, when I don’t have the time to invest in planning all that.

I have ended up discovering stuff on some subject by downloading a file for Nisarg.

I am a busy person. This kind of quality and ease of use makes it far more interesting and sustainable in the long term for me.

As for Little Math…. Beats flashcards a million times over. You have to have used the physical number cards to know how awkward they are to handle, let alone “flash”, major learning curve and not particularly exciting for me. Creating cards or powerpoints with quantities to 100….. forget it.

Powerpoint is still good if you can lay your hands on some of the ready files for 100 numbers. Of course Open Cards flashes them for you. If you want to show random cards….. Numbers and dots mixed…. or anything different, you first gotta hunt a file for it, unless you have the patience to create it yourself. In which case, Pleeeease send me a copy?

And Little Math? Hold on to your seat. Show dots, images, customize to use pink panthers and blue trucks, or whatever your child enjoys watching in the place of dots. Show in sequence, randomize, with audio, placed random or in grids, ….. and I haven’t even started talking about equations and fractions and stuff.

So? Does it work? Works for me!

Baby Signing Time

Okay, so I’m on a roll with educational resources for babies. Another absolutely awesome resource dropped into my lap last week. A friend with a grown up baby gave me the first episode of – Its Baby Signing Time!

The idea being that babies develop an awareness about their needs and desires long before they are able to express them. Thus, babies often cry out of frustration, because they are unable to get their needs met.

Teaching them the baby (read very basic) version of sign language empowers them to communicate more fluently with you, thus removing much of the stress of guesswork for both of you.

There is an additional bonus – research shows that children who gesture a lot learn to speak early and develop better mental abilities.

There are supposed to be four episodes, though I’ve seen only one. What we saw, we liked. Nisarg was entranced with the lively music and bright colours. I was entranced with how clearly and charmingly the whole thing has been created. Its literally lessons on sign language woven with music, words, and plenty of practice time. I had never imagined that learning could look so much like a fun video. Nisarg doesn’t understand anything at all, but approves anyway, if his stare and waving limbs are to go by.

He’s still young, but in a month or so, I guess we’ll have all the episodes.

Really, sign language is not just for deaf and dumb children, but for all children who are not able to speak – babies qualify.

Brillkids to speed up your baby's learning

Research increasingly shows that the more information you make accessible to your baby, the faster he or she begins using it. This is particularly true when it comes to language and maths.

Babies this age are more “right brained” – they need to be, if they have to learn to understand people, interaction and express themselves. At this age, perception rules. They are constantly absorbing things they are exposed to, and this particularly holds true for language and mathematics. They can understand entire words or quantities as images, and comprehend them enough that a quantity expressed in different ways, or a word written in different fonts/handwriting is quickly identified as the same quantity or word.

All this is happening even before they learn to speak.

Our current ways of teaching children begin well after the child learns to speak. Children learn to read in school, by when they have already moved beyond the formative years when they can grasp these things intuitively and effortlessly.

As more and more parents discover the value of early orientation to fundamental skills, methods which enable such learning to be fun are becoming popular. Flashcards, story books, sign language, DVDs and such resources add value and maximise ease of use. This also directly results in you being able to be consistent and persistent with your efforts.

Two such programs are from Brillkids – Little Reader and Little Math. They literally take out all the guesswork and tedious labour needed to constantly create learning resources and present them correctly. They have trials for download on their site, and I must say I’m hooked!

The only sorrow is that they don’t work on Linux, which is what my machine is, though I have a little used dual boot with Windows on it, which should be working (at least it worked a year ago). However, if you have a Windows computer, there really is no excuse for not checking out the trial versions of both of these. The trials are free. And if you wish, you can always buy. (aff. link)

PS: One mystery of life was solved as I read their Teaching baby to read ebook. There is a quote from Janet Doman, daughter of Glenn Doman and director of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, “[At school] we are literally trained to read and talk at the same time. And this is not a good way to teach, because when you and I go to read a book, we subvocalize. We actually are talking, and it means we read very, very slowly. [A baby] will just take in the word, and as you teach him to read and he gets to be a better and better reader, he’s not subvocalizing. ” I learned to read very early and was an extremely fast reader, finishing a typical Enid Blyton in an hour and a half flat with distractions and all, could understand “less easy”English like Shakespeare, attempt crosswords and remember pretty much anything I read or was told. The two things I was never able to do were reading aloud and understanding what I was reading at the same time and reading aloud to memorize. The vocalizing probably wrecked my natural learning tempo. This quote explains much!

Sensitive parenting

Didn’t want to end the day on a sour note, so I just thought to share an awesome site and a must read for all parents. Aware parenting.

The first time I found this site, it was like coming home. Distressed by my mother-in-law’s insistence to not pick up the baby all the time it cries, and to let it cry because “its good for the lungs”, I was speaking with a friend about how disturbed I was with such an attitude, when she told me about how she disciplines her children by taking away some previlege when they are naughty. This made sense on the surface, but “felt wrong”.

Considering that I was pregnant around when this happened, call it hormones, or inexperience, but I was getting increasingly insecure about my ability to raise my upcoming child, as everyone around me assured me that such permissiveness and listening to the child would only end in unruly children. I had no intention of doing any punishing what-so-ever. I had begun fearing that I may have bitten off more than I could chew by planning a child when I was obviously going to wreck its life as I would be unable to give it the kind of guidance it needed. My plan was more about role-modelling than disciplining. The back up plan was “keep living the love I feel, no matter what”. What seemed like a good plan when I thought about it was falling to pieces with every bit of advice I got on the subject.

When I read this site, I literally felt like I finally came home, if home is where the heart lies. I didn’t disagree with a word in there. It was like the writer simply took my wishes, organized them and wrote them out.

If you have a child, are a caregiver for a child, have a child as a close relative, or have ever interacted with a child, this site, and her books are for you. Its rare to find the insight of emotions we are used to applying to adults applied directly to children. And no, I don’t even know the author. This is complete promotion because of conviction.

For that matter, forget children, and simply live these values with anyone you know, and you will transform your life.

Nisarga

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