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Well, she's been at high school for 3 days and already it's time to have that talk.
How to find the space and mindfulness practice to keep connected to Who You Really Are when you are in chaos. (If you thought I meant a different talk I can assure you that all took place awhile back... but even in that discussion staying true to yourself and who you want to be has been the theme.) My daughter loved her first few days at our local high school. She manifested courses she likes, which are easy and fun. She has meant some great friends already, she's surprised at her own confidence and ability to talk to groups. She feels like herself. But then she's coming home, and collapsing into bed. Exhausted.
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I can’t believe that a year ago my daughter Gia was still struggling with schoolwork.
Oh my goodness, what a tangled mess we used to live in. She hated standard curriculum, would zone out if I suggested movies or educational videos like those her sister was using. She was staggering, literally staggering, through a few programs we’d found and she would often make herself sick by giving herself pressure to do things that felt so un-natural to her. Often I would suggest unschooling to her, but this worked against her desire for structure, for routine. We know we both work well with routine and rebel against it at the same time. I relate so much to my girl. We look a lot alike, but more we learn alike. I was home-schooled off and on when I was growing up, and the concept of sitting and memorizing what people told me to, without any explanation why, without any dramatic build so I could feel it in my soul… it was like pulling teeth! But last year we started the grade 7 Oak Meadow curriculum with my girl, and it all changed. As parents, we can observe our children, watch their behaviors and mannerisms and basically try to guess how they truly feel about something they are experiencing. Sure we can ask them honest questions, but deep down, we know there’s a chance the answer being given is the one our children assume we want to hear.
Often our children might not know their inner truths themselves. In my own experience, it is only in the still of the night, when all is calm, that I can quietly feel my way to how things are unfolding for my children and if there’s any new ways I can support them. Early on this year in one of these moments, I suddenly found myself feeling the need to help our, then 13 year old, daughter, Gia, and I’m so glad that once we acknowledged the issue, we were able to allow in such a glorious solution. She's going to share her thoughts and experiences with you in a moment... but here's some background. January 2016 was a strange month in our homeschooling journey. She’d pushed herself through some painful lessons on line before Christmas the month before, had plowed through a workbook that had given her no joy. Our Gia is our natural joy-lover. This week we finally put our tree up and it was so exciting to see how our three children really dove into it this year.
At the same time, I had to do a little bit of inner work to really release the outcome and allow it to flow. You see, I have this box of Christmas decorations which we’ve been lumbering around with us for the past 15 years. They’ve been carefully gathered and collected over our family’s childhood. Many of them were bought in the UK from when we lived over there when our girls were small. There are the few things that were gifted to us during a particularly broke time. There’s even a small angel decoration that I made for my husband’s and my first Christmas together. (We were “in-between” countries, not knowing where to settle so not really wanting to buy a lot of things. We had a small apartment and at the last moment I decided we needed to decorate for Christmas after all. The little angel’s face was done with embroidery thread and her body was ribbon found in the bottom of a sewing basket. Her head was literally the blower of a bubble bottle, covered in material. Every year I hang her on the tree with fondness.) Over the years our box of decorations has been bashed around as it traveled from place to place with us. Not only that, many a time I’ve stressed about its wellbeing, begging my husband to do check ins on its care. There was the couple of Christmases it had been left in storage and I would mourn the little angel or special trinkets that wouldn’t be on the tree that year. There’s even been late night panic attacks where I’ve planned fire escapes and wondered how to get that box of decorations out from wherever it was stored. At a certain point I’ve had to ask the magic question of “why?” Why? Why was a box of decorations so important? |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
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