Socialisation- BLAGH!

Well, we’re back! What a journey it’s been. My favourite part of our holiday was watching Louis and Joss be a team, a unit – watching them work together, play together, resolve together. In a world where they were the two people who best understood each other, they came together in support and it was glorious to see.

The trip back has knocked us for six. (is that a kiwi saying?) We are all, still, incredibly tired. Our most desired spot in the house is still snuggled on the couch in front of the TV. We are enjoying quiet, and calm, and relaxing. We are enjoying eating our food, walking the dog, visiting the beach. It’s good to be home.

I learned during our time away how difficult it is for people who are not used to unschooled children to interact with them. And interestingly this is the most frequently asked question: How will you “socialise” them? Which does imply that the child they see before them is not socialised. But let’s back this truck up a little: You know when you get a new puppy and one of the things you need to do with it is to take it to lots of different places so that it gets “socialised”? Well, apparently with children, “socialisation” involves sending them to the same place everyday, to be talked to by the same teacher and interact with the same children. That doesn’t make sense, right?

So, when adults find it difficult to interact with unschooled children, who frequently have an opinion and a strong will and are used to being listened to and engaged with and respected, when other adults find it difficult to interact with them, it is often “evidence” that children need to be “socialised”. Because asking a child how school is going just rolls off the tongue, right? Asking what school they go to, who their teacher is, what their favourite thing to do at school is – all these things are so socially acceptable, that for an adult not to be able to ask these questions means that there’s something wrong with the child’s upbringing. Obviously.

When we hang out with other unschooling familes, I notice that no-one tries to engage with my children. Nobody puts on an act of trying to find common ground. Adults wait for children to approach them, with questions, requests, comments, ideas and an authentic conversation flows from there. I was in the car with a ten-year-old unschooled boy the other day who found common ground with me (!!) and started to tell me all the movies he thought I might enjoy watching. I loved it! These kids just don’t do small talk – these are my kind of people!!

The Sound Guy asked me once a while ago, are our kids going to be weirdos? And my reply was, going to be?! Really?! They already ARE! 

There’s a gigantic big chance that these children are going to look different, talk different, behave different to their age-related peers. They do now, because they’re not sent to school to be molded into shape. They will (probably) in 15 years because they will have had 15 years of not going to school to be molded into shape. We’re not unschooling our children inspite of this, we are unschooling our children because of this.

Giving birth, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, natural toileting, and unschooling have all required from me that I put my ego firmly to one side and constantly raise the question, Who the fuck am I to interfere? Most of the time I defer to their innate knowledge of themselves and their be-ing and just get the fuck out of the way. Parenting for me at the moment is about providing foundation. I am the bit that you don’t see, you don’t notice, you don’t think about. Humbling. So, no, my children will not be “socialised”. So you can stop asking. Actually, scratch that - keep asking, I love talking about all this - I love it when people ask. ASK AWAY!!