In an effort to show how child-led learning happens in our home, I document what we do every second Tuesday for those that want to follow along. I hope this takes the bias out of blogging about the ‘better’ days and can show a real picture. This is the second instalment.
Three little kids. Three very different personalities. Three people trying to navigate the learning curve of emotions. Make no mistake, it can get messy.
I was having a conversation with some women the other day who were feeling a bit down about how perfectly glossy the online world can look. My response is always this. If you have seen a mother and her children a few times and stand in awe of how together she is, how amazing and emotionally intelligent her children are, there is a really good chance you have caught them on three great days. Because, we are all human. We all make mistakes. And even after all the mistakes, she is likely still amazing and so are you.
All behaviour is communication.
I read this somewhere in an article or a book along the way, and I have seen it many times since. It was a light bulb moment for me. It sounds ridiculous that something so simple could be so transformative, but it was. I started looking at challenging behaviour with fresh eyes. I stopped focusing on the actual behaviour, and started trying to read the message.
Yesterday, a lovely reader commented on one of my unschooling posts about feeling inspired, but struggling to imagine how a day would look. I can remember feeling exactly the same. How would I accommodate different interests between my kids? Would they just want to watch tv all day? Would I miss what my kids were really interested in?
We live a long way from our family and I am always trying to think of ways to increase their presence in our kids lives. We have lots of photos around, we tell our family stories and we skype and facetime.
My daughter loves building make believe worlds with wooden blocks and other bits and bobs. She has a few little wooden people that are always involved.
She turns three on Sunday and I thought it would be cool to make a set of wooden family members for her birthday. I had a bit of a scout around online and used a combination of ideas. I know a lot of us live away from family so I thought I would put together a little tutorial for those who might be interested.
First of all, let’s have a look at what resilience is.
It is defined as ‘the ability to recover quickly from difficulty.’
Brené Brown (don’t you just love her?) talked about the qualities of highly resilient people in her book ‘Rising Strong.’
‘The most transformative and resilient leaders that I’ve worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognise the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts and behaviours. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts and behaviours are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability.’
I guess this probably should have been my first post. How we got here.
We didn’t join this parenting game with any defined way of how we were going to do it. We didn’t know any other unschoolers, and other than my sister in law, we didn’t really know any other parents. My baby was really the first baby I had held. I didn’t read any books. I didn’t know that people did that. All I knew was that our hearts were full of love and anticipation.
The Untamed 