Breathing, Stretching

In yoga, there’s this thing that they do (I say “they” because I’m not a regular yoga-doer…) where they get into a pose, which may be a little uncomfortable, and then hold it, take a breath, exhale, and find they can take it a little further; their comfort level having just expanded.

My unschooling journey seems to be progressing in this manner. Every time I think, “this is my flow” I take a breath and the universe conspires to take me deeper into understanding my children and this unschooling life.

The most recent “expansion” has come on the back of my previously-tightly-held belief that I’m a hands-off parent. This idea probably came about through The Continuum Concept (TCC), but I think somewhere along the way I modified the philosophy to an extent that it was unrecognisable.

TCC is a huge proponent of family-led parenting. As in, not making the child the centre of attention. It holds that family-led living is the most natural form of living, and that too much child-centredness causes a raft of issues – often violence and acting out.

So I took this and ran with it, and embraced the concept that I didn’t need to focus on my child and to just let them get on with their lives as much as possible. What wasn’t in the book, but was in my way of being, was an emotional detachment from my child. I had been telling myself that although I wasn’t with him all the time, I was available all the time, should he need me. But was I? No, in reality I wasn’t. In reality, sometimes I just had had enough of all the questions and I put my earphones in on our walk to drown out the constant chatter. In my defence, it’s hard to be the only parent around to do all the answering. In my un-defence, how perfectly HORRIBLE it must have been for my son to be so FULL of life and experience and questions and have a mother so completely unavailable.

All of this self-examination started when I was lying in bed one night after a particularly heart-warming chat with Louis, and the thought slipped into my mind, ‘I rely so heavily on these night-time snuggles to connect with Louis, what are we going to do when we don’t have them anymore?’ quickly followed by, ‘WTF??!!’ and ‘I wonder if he’s relying on them too? I wonder if he would like more connection throughout the day, but it’s unavailable to him? I wonder if these precious moments in the evenings and early mornings, when he’s kind and caring and funny and empathetic – I wonder if they’re a direct result of the connection we share by co-sleeping. I wonder if some of the argumentative, mean, violent behaviour we deal with during the day is because he isn’t connected to me? Because I’m not there? Because I’m not engaged with him????’ And I had a Slap My Face moment, with myself. Really, Trudy, it’s taken you how long? Sometimes I am sooooooo dense.

I have always been unable to see myself playing with trains, or role-playing, or playing with lego, or rough-and-tumbling. I have always looked at (or read about) people doing this and thought, that is not for me. It is this part of me that grasped onto that family-led TCC philosophy and ran with it. But, I think what is missing from this family-led real-life scenario in this day and age and culture is, as always, tribe. A tribe would mean that if I was doing something that meant that Louis couldn’t connect with me, there would be countless aunties or grandmothers who would be available. It would mean that if I did chose to put my chore to one side and connect with my son, there would be someone else to pick up where I left off and finish the chore. Tribe would mean that I wouldn’t have such a need to cordon off “space for me” because my cup would be getting filled by my people all around me, by not being over-worked and sleep-deprived, by having an intact continuum myself, so my Joy and Shine were apparent in my everyday. This HUGE part of TCC is missing, and I didn’t think about that, I thought only of how much I disliked playing. BUT, for whom am I doing this? For my kids. For my kids. So that they might grow with the knowledge of who they are firm within them, so they might know joy in being themselves, so they might shine their light unmitigated on their journey and in their world.

So, I am in the phase of that yoga pose where I am exhaling and discovering I can go further. And am discovering how far I can go, and what that feels like, and what the flow on effects are from stretching myself just that bit more. I am experimenting with what it feels like to play, what it feels like to open myself up to engage whenever Louis needs it, what it costs me to do this, and how it feels to let those boundaries dissipate.

I am in the part of the yoga pose when I know I have not reached the edge of my capacity; and the possibilities are stretching with me.