Should

One of the things I’ve tried to do throughout our unschooling journey is to stop and question any thought that contains the word “should.” It was surprising and liberating when I realized just how many of the shoulds in my life were, upon examination, other people’s shoulds, or society’s shoulds, or just my own misconceptions or exaggerations about what constitutes proper behavior, appearance, and occupation. Initially, all these false shoulds were easily, even gleefully, abandoned. Some examples:

My kids should dress according to Hoyle (a.k.a. societal standards).
But why? To fit in, to make other people more comfortable, to avoid attention.
Who cares? Not my kids, not Frank, not me.

My kids should go to bed at a “reasonable” hour each night (even though they don’t ever have school in the morning).
But why? Uhhh…
Who cares? Not them, not Frank, not me.

My kids should sit down to meals with the family (even though we are together a lot through the day).
But why? Uhhh…
Who cares? Not them, not Frank, not me.

And the biggie:
I should bear full responsibility for my kids’ choices, to the point of taking those choices away as appropriate.
But why? Because society says so.
Who cares? Not them (they like being responsible for themselves), not Frank, not me (well, okay, sometimes me, but I do my best to stifle the controlling urges that come so naturally to me).

So, I threw out all those shoulds and many more like them. It was fun, and it was challenging. In fact, it was one of the most challenging things about beginning to unschool. I mean, Frank and I thought we were making an educational decision—the kids simply wouldn’t “do” school any more—and instead we ended up revamping our lifestyle, our assumptions, and most of our standard operating procedures. We began to question everything. “Who believes this? Is it really me, or is it society or Grandma or the next door neighbor?”

The happy results of all that questioning and revamping were impressive and became the foundation of my passionate belief in radical unschooling (RU), an approach to life and parenting that goes far beyond homeschooling. With RU, our kids became our friends. They began to trust us to be there for them in all ways, without any of the wrangling and plain bad feelings that traditional parenting techniques engender. It was a wonder.

And it still is. But lately, I've been noticing again how often I use “should” in my thoughts and speech. I think I've been backsliding from my early determination to stop letting “should” rule our lives.

Epiphany today: I use “should” regularly when what I really mean is “want to.” For example, it's Frank's birthday today, and I found myself thinking, “We should do something special for him.” How self-defeating that is! It strips out all the love and generosity that is actually contained in the thought, leaving only dry obligation. The fact is, I want to do something special for him. Where “should” is draining, limiting, tedious, “want to” is empowering, defining, motivating. “Should” is from that tense place between my shoulder blades; “want to” is from the heart. (Thanks to unschooling dad and life coach Scott Noelle for helping me place them.)

This is not to say that every should can be reframed into a want. If I say to Chloe, “I want you to wear matching socks,” it can be (and usually is) just as much about controlling her choices as “You should wear matching socks” would be. I’m not going to use my own wants as a weapon against my kids' autonomy.

But I do want to move to a place where I’m better able to recognize my own choices as being just that. The guilty thought “I should call my grandmother” becomes “I want to call my grandmother because I want her to know how much I care about her.” And the shame-filled “I should mow the lawn” becomes “I want to get the lawn mowed because I think it looks ugly when it’s shaggy.”

I also hereby renew my campaign against the false shoulds that bombard our family daily. And I'm going to stop doing the bombarding myself. I can tell I’ve been doing some of that when I open my mouth and my kids look at me with faint apprehension, like “Oh, man, what’s she going to lay on me now?” Enough of that! To help me break the should habit, they’re going to fine me a quarter every time I use a sentence with “should” in it. Here’s hoping they aren’t able to get too rich off my wayward tongue. :-)