Education doesn’t make you happy, and nor does freedom.  We don’t become happy just because we’re free, if we are, or because we’ve been educated, if we have, but because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy.  It opens our eyes, our ears… tells us where delights are lurking… convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever… that of the mind… and gives us the assurance, the confidence, to walk the path our mind… our educated mind… offers.

- – Iris Murdoch

 

             “There is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever… that of the mind”… meaning that if we are not educated, academically and other wise, we are not truly free.  So if we want our children to grow up to be truly free human-beings, we must find a way to inspire them to fall in love with the idea of educating their minds.

            How do we inspire our children?  We must be inspiring parents and teachers alike.  We must be in love with what we are teaching because if we do, they will.  We must be in love with learning, for if we do, they will.

          I would like to start this by saying that I do not believe home-schooling is the only way to educate children well or even the best.  I will say that home-schooling worked out very well for my son and me.  But perhaps, the element in our home-schooling that made our educational technology work can be implemented in the more traditional settings to better support the students in their learning environment.

            When the parents who home-school use their creativity as well as their open minds to encourage thoughts that are other than their own, providing diversity of ideas, intellectual and otherwise, it provides a well rounded intellectual experience and can be a wonderful learning environment for the child since, he or she is learning while receiving the unconditional love that parents can so easily provide.

            Home schooled children may avoid the negative influence of misguided teachers who may discourage a child from being someone that is absolutely perfect due to their own lack of understanding or their awareness level.   I have watched instances of brilliant children, who were deeply misunderstood by their teachers, labeled trouble makers and received mistreatment by most of the faculty(negative perspectives being reinforced by one teacher to another).  These children ended up going through an unpleasant and unhappy educational experience, impacting them powerfully. 

            I know that there are many wonderful teachers in the traditonal educational systems and I want to take time to honour them since they are some of the most important people in our world.  The great teachers.  Our culture does not take notice enough of these very special beings even though they powerfully impact the young minds of our future… our future!

             One of the reasons whyI home schooled my son was perhaps due to my exposure to a few bad situations.  Another reason why I kept my son away from the traditional educational environment was that I wanted to preserve and protect my son’s brilliance, his creative instincts and his strong sense of self.  I think if done right, a traditional school environment can do the same thing.

 

 

To know that our brains have endless potential to learn is just amazing! 

I love this talk!

           It’s just too easy, getting into a pattern of noticing the negatives, whether it be general issues of life or actions and habits of those around us.  This habitual pattern may stem from our desires for things to be good, or more aptly… our fear of failure.  

            I know that when I seem to focus on the negatives of my life, I think I am attempting to prevent something that I fear.    And when I am in this place of fear, I tend to overly correct and criticize everyone including myself.  And when I am in that constant habit of correcting or criticizing everyone, I am not empowering those around me as I want to be doing or as I think I am doing.  Instead I am most likely disempowering everyone.

            If as a child one is often criticized without receiving much in the way of positive feed back, he or she may then, as an adult, not know what it means to just be a part of life, to just know that things are right, just as they are.  It may be that as he or she felt picked apart, he or she learned to pick a part their own world, looking for areas to fix and make better to prevent from being picked a part by those who were in charge of loving them.

            The only problem with this way of being as a parent, is that as a parent our deepest desire is to empower our children and being overly critical contradicts what we want for our children.  We all want our children to be confident, strong and know how wonderful they are.  We want them to go out and conquer the greatest of obstacles and be on top of their world.  We don’t want them to become overly self-critical and spend even one minute doubting them-selves.

            I think about what it feels like to be overly criticized, to have someone notice only the negatives and have those negatives become the only focal point from which they view me.  It feels awful, to say the least. 

            And then I think about my friend, Mara.  Whenever I am in front of her I always feel like I’m on top of the world.  I know that I feel the way I do because she always sees the best in me and therefore connects with the best part of me.

            Our children need for us to be their critiques at various times, but if we find ourselves predominantly in that mode, and not as often their accepter and admirer, then we may need to step out, take a deep breath, clear our lenses and take a new look at our perfectly beautiful and beautifully perfect children.

            It was never going to happen to me, some strange phenomena called empty nest.  My son and I were so close that he was never going to want to move out; fly away, at least not at anytime soon.  He appeared offended at the mere thought of living away from me.  So when this empty nest thing suddenly dropped from the sky and onto my head a few weeks ago, I was shocked to my core.  I would have liked to have had a little more time to work on building his life muscles just a bit more.  I wondered and perhaps even wished that I was in some strange dream/nightmare and hoped desperately to awake from it.

            His flying the coup may have been especially hard for me because my own mother had given me away when I was only three years of age to a couple who I would have to leave at age sixteen for they were less than loving and rather extremely abusive.

            As I built my life on my own terms, I vowed that I would never abandon my future child nor allow him to be in the hands of anyone who could hurt him.

            Thirty years later, my nineteen year old son would suddenly decide that he no longer wanted to live with me, that I was overbearing and over protective and even a control freak.

            During the last few weeks while I was trying unsuccessfully to understand what he was trying to convey, many not so pretty words were exchanged between him and I.  There were tears, anger and extreme frustrations on both of our parts.  We argued about his social life that seemed in excess, about the amount of time he appeared to be investing in his school work which seemed not enough and other issues.  We were losing control of our communication and fast losing the sense of connection that seemed so to exist so easily just a few months back.

            We have had fights and heated arguments in the past, ranging from personal topics, to ideological and intellectual.  But our bond never failed.    Some even seemed to envy our closeness.  We talked about everything with one another.

            He once welcomed my advice.  But it seemed that those days are long gone and now at nineteen, he was asking that I just simply trust him to know what he is doing, that he will make good choices and that he will take good care of himself.

            All my doubts poured into my heart.   I questioned how he would know who to trust, what is best for him and how he would recognize danger.  I questioned what he will do without my coaching and teaching. 

            But when my “coaching and teaching” was no longer wanted by my child, and my “coaching and teaching” was causing nothing but anger and resentment in him, this was a blaring sign that I must let go. 

            After weeks of  struggling to guide and control, I finally hit bottom.  I hit a wall.  I was forced to realize that I had to completely let go of control.  My attempt to hold on lead me to manifest a painful kidney infection and no positive influence on my child.

            I realized that there had to be a right time for everything.  All my coaching, teaching (which now had gained the labels: over bearing and controlling) were appropriate for his current success (getting into one of the top law schools in the country as a nineteen year old), but now it no longer fit him.  I was impinging on his sense of freedom, sense of independence and perhaps even his sense of identity.

            After all the debris fell (well, some may still be falling as I write this… and as I work to heal my kidney infection)… I am of the opinion that I must give him his freedom in as big a way as he is asking and trust that I had done a good enough job and just cut the string (I don’t want to use the misogynistic term apron string)… so let me call it for the time being, a protective rope.

            Life is full of chances that we need to take.  I am not able to make all things perfect… I cannot force it, and I cannot control it, and trying to control it creates only ugliness.  And perhaps, not controlling it, losing all control of it, may in the end create something even more beautiful.

            Letting go was hard for me because I am a mother.  Letting go was additionally hard for me because, I had been left by my mother when I was too little.  It was hard for me because I had vowed to keep my family together forever and losing him meant that I was failing at it.

            But I also remembered something that I always said to parents as I preached about being there for them, to never kick their children out of their home.  What I used to say was… and I quote, “ it is always better for the child to reject the parents”… so there it is, my words coming true, not to hunt me but to wake me.   So there he is rejecting me, pushing me out of his life so that he may have his own.  It is his time.  And it is mine.

            My son is so sure of himself, so strong and confident that he can ask to live on his own.  He is so strong and confident that he can say, “I will do well in school because I want to, not because it will please you.  He is so strong and confident that he can be all right without me over night.  I must have done something right with him, with all of the warts of my childhood and all.