Avoiding zombies

The other night, Frank was watching that new zombie series on AMC, "The Walking Dead." At one point, a ~10yo boy spots his zombified mother outside the house. He bursts into tears, and his father tries to quiet him because, hey, if the zombies hear them, things are going to get ugly. What was interesting was that the scriptwriters chose to have the father respond compassionately. He snuggled his son close, spoke in loving tones, and offered the boy a pillow so he could cry into that.

That is peaceful parenting, folks, and I am so pleased with the writers for showing it that I might even give the series a try, blood and guts and all.

The sad thing is how infrequently one sees that kind of compassion out and about in the world. Instead, it seems like people want their kids to BE zombies, stifling their emotions and walking the earth in a mindless, hungry shuffle. Their kids' emotions (and probably the parent's too) are too much work, too much noise, too much mess. Sure, they might dredge up some compassion when their kids are suffering a huge, gaping wound of a hurt (as this boy was), but the rest of the time they just want their kids to suck it up and move on. They want things to be easy, which means they want their kids to be quiet (without having a fraction the motivation this dad had).

Consider the possibility that, to kids, smaller wounds are just as gaping and scary and overwhelming. Consider that kids with smaller wounds are just as deserving of compassion as that boy with the zombie mom, and that they are just as entitled to some time and space to feel what they're feeling. And consider that asking them to bottle their emotions is just another way to lose them to the zombies.

An unschooler in school

When Chloe told us she wanted to go back to school, my reaction was mostly fear. I worried that she would be devastated by social crap and brainwashed by the school mentality, and that our unschooling lifestyle would be sacrificed on the Temple of Doom. (That's a bit of an exaggeration but not much.) I did my best to squash the worry in lieu of squashing her, but there can be no doubt that she was aware that Mom Did Not Approve.

I'm sitting here wishing I could go back in time and tell myself to shut the hell up. The experience so far has been entirely positive (except for waking up at 6:30!) and so much a continuation of our beloved unschooling lifestyle that I can hardly believe it. We have all learned SO much!

There was the day that Chloe expressed irritation because she was being required to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. She didn't mind the "stand" part of that as much as the "required" part, so we did some e-research, found state law on the subject (which says only that students who do not participate in the pledge should be quiet), and discussed ways of making it clear to the requiring teacher. I gave her a copy of the relevant RCW section, and Steph sent us a truly beautiful excerpt from the Barnette decision, which includes this gem:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

Chloe decided she wanted to talk to her teacher herself and we left it in her capable hands. She went in the next day and simply remained seated during the pledge. The teacher did not complain, and Chloe was able to mentally amend the teacher's spoken "everybody stand" to the "everybody who chooses to, please stand" that it should have been.

Her English teacher has been doing a long (3 weeks plus!) unit on the Holocaust, purportedly to provide context for their eventual reading of The Diary of Anne Frank. We've had discussions about why an English teacher might decide to teach history instead. They have been at least as interesting as Chloe's Holocaust research and have led to discussions about religion, propaganda, the appropriateness of compassion for oppressed people, and more.

We've had conversations about the pressures that schooled kids are under; the ways that unschoolers are free from or share the pressures; the openness of unschoolers as opposed to the social caution of schooled kids; the reasons it might take longer to form friendships at school versus your average unschooler gathering; and the possibilities that kids both schooled and unschooled see, how those possibilities are often nay-sayed by adults, and what might happen if those possibilities were instead greeted by simple acceptance as possibilities.

She's discovered that most of what we've been telling her about school for the past six years is true: she's well-suited to do well academically, she hasn't been falling behind, kids who are in school because they choose to be have a lot more fun and get a lot more out of it. And she's learned that Mom's fears about school were (way) excessive but based in reality.

And finally, she's learning a lot about herself. These discoveries are her business, so I won't go into detail, but they are all very positive, and her self-esteem seems stronger than ever.

In short, my advice about handling unschooler requests to go to school is to stay calm. Certainly explore other ways of resolving any needs underlying the request (more social time? more structure? more variety?), but don't fear school. It is just another path for your child to lead you down, just another interest to follow, just another resource to explore. And it's a damn fine strewing machine.

Some people go all hardcore and say that a kid in school is no longer an unschooler. Our experience says otherwise.

(For additional posts about Chloe's experiences in school, click the "school" label below.)

My worries, your worries

I am prone (or habituated) to worry. When my chicks are out of the nest, I worry quite a lot. That's probably the extreme case. But I worry about lots of other stuff, too. My friend Steph calls it fussing, and I do a fair amount of it.

However, I don't like what worry does to me. It takes me out of the now and keeps me from enjoying it. It distances me from my family. So, I try to put some effort into turning worry off. It's not as easy, unfortunately, as flipping a switch, but I can get there. I can smoosh the worries into a closet and live life without them.

A good example was when MJ spent those weeks in California at Harper's. I knew she was safe, I knew she was happy, I knew she was really enjoying being independent, and I knew she didn't particularly want a lot of contact with home while she was immersed in away-from-home. So, I commenced enjoyment of the unique opportunity to have a family of three. Chloe and Frank and I got into a rhythm (at least until Marty got sick), and it was fun, and we got the very occasional update from MJ. Great!

And then someone would ask me about MJ.

"How is she spending her time?"
Beats me.

"Is she feeling better?"
Umm, was she sick?

Truly, I had very little idea. And that was okay with me. My worries were in the closet, and I had a made a deliberate choice to respect her privacy and give her space. But nevertheless, the questions would knock me for a loop—shouldn't I know what she had been up to? shouldn't I know that she'd had a cold?—and I'd have to start all over again.

She's safe, she's happy, she's enjoying being independent, etc...

Stuff the worries back in the closet...

Laboriously flip the worry switch back to Off...

It's not an effortless process for me. I think this is why I have been so reluctant to talk about my job search. I am not worrying about it, and I'd like to keep it that way. Battling the what-ifs is exhausting, discouraging, depressing, and completely, utterly counterproductive.

I know people ask questions because they care, because they're interested, because they want to be reassured. I get it. I do the same thing to Frank and my kids and no doubt many others. But it really isn't the kind thing to do, is it?

Years ago, when Frank's mom died, an acquaintance called to offer her condolences and insisted on talking to Frank even though I had told her plainly that he didn't want to talk to anyone. Who did she think she was helping there? Certainly not Frank!

I think this is similar. When you share your worries with me about the situation I am in, or ask me to reassure you, how can it possibly help me?

To express support, say, "I'm thinking about you." To show your love, say, "I love you!" To help, send me a joke or a job listing. If you're curious about my job search, well, too bad. I'm not telling.

But if what you want is a little reassurance, come here and read this:
We are okay. We are used to being between jobs. This is nothing new. Work always becomes available within a couple months. If it takes longer this time, we will be okay. If it takes a really long time this time, we will still be okay. Life may change, but it will still be good.

Compassion and fear

Where does compassion end?

I have an intellectual fondness for spiders. This fondess was born of respect and fascination: respect for what they do (spin webs, eat bugs (especially mosquitos!)) and fascination for the beautiful and clever ways in which they do it. In calm circumstances, I will go to some effort to rescue a spider from my house instead of killing it. I am a merciful spider relocator.

But when caught by surprise, such as this morning when I realized I was sharing my shower with one, my first reaction is fairly typical, squirmy, creeped-out, kill-that-thing-before-it-touches-me fear. Indeed, this morning, I stood aside so the spray could better reach that little sucker and wash it down the drain.

Fortunately, a calmer head prevailed, and the spider scurried behind the shower curtain where he was better protected. I regained my senses quickly with him out of sight at the opposite end of the tub, and when he ventured out again minutes later in search of even better shelter, I watched patiently to see if he could scale the tub on his own. No. When he began to look distressed from the spray, I grabbed a handy spider elevator (a scrub brush) and boosted him up to the rim, where he remained, curled up in a tired little ball, for long minutes until he realized he wasn't dead.

This aptly illustrates that compassion ends with fear. I can provide dozens of examples from world history, maybe even thousands. There are fewer examples of fear being controlled in order to restore compassion. I suppose it happens from time to time.

But today, I am more concerned with households. What fears have hold of you? How are they limiting your compassion for your kids?