Size to fit

Our family recently bumped up against what I'll call institutional response. It's the way institutions respond to situations, which is to say, rigidly and without creativity. Institutions usually have reasons for their rigidity, and these usually run along the lines of "the alternative is logistically and/or financially too hard to handle" and "if we make an exception for you, we'd have to make an exception for everyone."

I have managed an institution (a traditional family is one), so I understand both the temptation and the seeming good sense of those reasons.

What unschooling has shown me, though, is that those reasons are cop-outs. There are myriad ways to run an institution (as this article shows), and rigidity is the very least of them. As unschooling parents, as human beings, we prefer to focus on the individual: the individual situation, the individual (and often extenuating) circumstances, and, above all, the individual person standing in front of us.

There is a lot of theory wrapped up in unschooling and a lot of ideals. Both of these leave a lot of room for institutional response. For instance, if one abhors school, one might be tempted (and this "one" was) to refuse to allow one's child to set foot in a school, or to decline to spend any money on formal schooling, including college. But to take either of those positions is exactly contrary to what unschooling is all about. Unschooling parents help their children attend school if the kids want to, often suffering tremendous angst and a fair amount of compromise and outright inconvenience to do so. (Imagine the dilemma faced by a friend of mine who has a nightowl household and a family that travels a lot, and who now has one daughter asking to try school.)

Other examples: Suppose an unschooling parent holds a firm belief that toy guns contribute to the violence in the world, or that plastic toys are an abomination, or that meat is murder, or that TV rots your brain. Suppose he or she believes that Christ died for our sins or that the Law of Attraction works. The institutional response to these beliefs is rules and close-mindedness: "You can't" or "You must." In her mind, the parent who employs an institutional response might have excellent reasons for the rules she sets. She might not call them rules, and she might approach the rules with gentleness and respect. She might believe she is implementing the rules without punishment. And she might perceive cooperation and understanding from her kids and think everything is hunky-dory.

But here's the deal: Any time you let your belief system or your convenience come between your child and your child's wants, goals, or desires, that is institutional response. It's rigid and it's inherently disrespectful of the individual. Also, it is punishment because when you keep your child from having what he wants, you are punishing your child, and I don't really care how you pretty it up.

The alternative to this rigidity and disrespect is adaptability and acceptance. Adapt to your child. Accept your child for Who He Is, both in this moment and in the larger sense. And always, always respond as an individual and to an individual.

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That should be the end of this post, but as I was writing it, I could just hear the comments coming in. So, let me add a couple of footnotes to head some of those off:

Convenience and compromise - Having the wants and interests of one child conflict with the wants and interests of another child is probably the hardest situation an unschooling parent faces and you have my sympathy. The complexities of such a situation are not covered by this blog post.

Your excellent reasons - I do not care what they are. Your child has excellent reasons for his or her choices, too. They count, too, and often they count more. You have had your whole life to build your belief system. Share it with your child, live it in front of your child, and then get out of his way and let him build his own belief system. He will almost certainly make some choices that you don't like. You will survive this, I promise.