the game of unschooling..

I was so fortunate to meet a few families who were homeschooling before I had children. The kids impressed me, they were bright, well adjusted and had a sense of peace about them. When Reese was just 8 months old, I attended a 5 day homeschooling conference and listened to about 30 different speakers share. I was blown away.. again.. I was 34, I'd been around, I'd had 2 careers, gotten a Masters Degree, traveled and once again a whole new world opened up to me, just like with homebirthing, attachment parenting, co sleeping, not vaccinating, a whole world of choices opened up and once again I seemed to be strongly internally guided away from the mainstream. I listened to a speaker at the conference who shared that the two primary language arts were not reading and writing but speaking and listening. There are many people who are quite proficient at reading and writing as skills but they are not very good at really deeply listening and expressing their truth, being true to themselves, speaking up and being in integrity with their highest heart expression. I felt so strongly that children come in with a sense of who they really are, the fullness and greatness of who they are, they are here for a reason and somewhere inside of them they know what they are here to do and how they are to contribute. I felt that it was not my job to mold them as I see fit, but to see them for who they really are, see the perfection in them, what was whole, complete and perfect. My job was to listen to them, to love them, to provide a container for them to grow and flourish and thrive! This path of unschooling, homeschooling without a strict curriculum, giving my children space, freedom and time to pursue what they love, to choose how they spend their time, to allow a lot of time for play and exploration. with less direction and more inspiration and exposure. Our conditioning says we need to condition our kids, make them mind, teach them, mold them.. etc. and there is some of that that is beneficial.. but for the most part, I believe we need to celebrate that which is unconditioned in all of us, but more often expressed in them.. what is always free & open, our infinite potential .. Our children are here to teach us more than we are here to teach them. love this quote, it says it best, it's been a guide for me for many years.. by Kahlil Gibran “Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness. For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.”