The Nature of Boredom

On the Homeschool Australia FAQ list today Theresa asked:
"Could you expand on how you set your home up to be an interesting house? When they're not playing computer, I am constantly being harassed about their being bored... "

What ages are your children and how long have they been homeschooled and how much exposure have they had to school, preschool or child-care settings?

"I'm bored."

This statement exasperates parent. They remember their frustration at feeling bored as children and inability to find something - anything - to relieve the apathetic state in which they wallow. As parents nothing they suggest to their children captivates the imagination or generates enthusiasm. Everyone ends up frustrated and short tempered.

Daniel Macintyre in his Key Words blog The Blessings of Boredom believes that boredom is a necessary step in learning new things and lists the steps how this tends to happen. When I examined my own bouts of boredom I found the same process at work.

Children naturally go through growth transitions. We all do. Did you know that we aren't fully 'adult' until around 21 years of age? That's when our brains are fully formed, but throughout the rest of our lives our bodies change and this means mental and emotional growth occurs - we can't avoid it!

I've always found growth transitions are accompanied by periods of confusion. Mild confusion can look a lot like boredom and is accompanied by much frustration. It's often simply an 'in-between' stage where I've finished, or nearly finished, one project or activity or phase of life, and am not quite ready for the next. I usually don't have a clue what the next passionate interest will be, or all-consuming activity. It's a matter of impatiently sitting around waiting for something to happen but not knowing what it will be, or sometimes, especially before I became aware of the process, not even knowing I was in a transition stage at all.

I recognised this first in myself, and then realised it's what my children seemed to suffer from fairly regularly. Life was chaotic and unpleasant when two or three family members were in a transition phase like this at the same time!

You know how it's almost impossible to overcome boredom by offering, or being offered, activities to do? We can bribe our children or ourselves with enticing activities or treats, but ultimately this process fails, as once the treat is over, we're bored again. I'm with Alfie Kohn in his beliefs about the futility of reward and punishment as effective motivators for behavioural change. The effect is usually short term: remove the external motivator and the problem still remains.

So, my number one treatment for boredom, is to sit it out. We all seem to move through this phase faster if we simply accept it, instead of fighting it.

I had a young friend who was bored every time she visited our house. This went on for years, from age 5 to 10. As far as she was concerned, although she never said it, she didn't like coming as nothing here interested her. It would have been better if I owned a horse or two... Sometimes we say we're bored when there is actually something else happening - we don't want to do what we have to do or are made to do. Once this misuse of the word 'bored' was recognised and discussed we felt empowered to change either our attitude to what we had to do or the the activity itself. Now most of the boredom we experience is due to transitions and not because we're doing something we don't want to.

It's hard to do things we don't want to do when we have to, and that becomes an issue of how to motivate ourselves, which requires the development of self-discipline. All of these take time. It's unreasonable to expect a child under ten years of age to show much ability in these areas! My advice is to keep a positive eye on the goal and acknowledge that it's a journey, a very long journey! Most of us haven't mastered these skills as adults yet insist that our children be competent. :-)

A second, and most important, look at boredom. And why I asked that second question...

School children have been trained to be bored. They've been directed for most of their waking hours. They haven't been given the opportunity to know what to do with their time when left to their own devices. The only cure for this is to simply sit it out, wait for them to get bored of being bored. Don't rescue them. They want and crave and are addicted to being rescued - that is, having someone direct them.

Modern education is contaminated with the idea that learning has to be fun: thus education becomes entertainment. Our children are addicted to entertainment. We mostly blame television and video/computer games, but if our children have spent any time in child-care, preschool or school they've been indoctrinated in the cult of entertainment. When we're addicted to harmful substances (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, fast foods, etc) we're advised to abstain. It's hard to avoid entertainment, but it's probably worth trying to reduce availability and incidents of passive entertainment. I wouldn't tell my kids not to use the computer or television, etc though - that's like telling me not to eat the mudcake on the kitchen bench. Forget it, I'm going to cut a slice, and then another, and another. I'm hooked. I need a supportive environment to overcome this addiction. Remove the cake. Remove the computer/television. Ouch!

Okay, we've handled that hurdle, but the kids are still bored. So am I! We can sit and do nothing, and that's an excellent idea, as it will fast track the whole process. Any distraction at this stage (at any stage) will only postpone the healing process. We crave distraction in our lives. From birth we've been trained to accept distraction as a temporary solution to whatever problem we face. If we're unlucky, we're ployed with one distraction after another until we learn that problems are to be avoided and ignored until they no longer seem to effect us. I've often wondered if a lot of chronic illnesses are actually created as a result. We're given food to distract us, giving rise to the risk of obesity in adult life. We're given toys to distract us, giving rise to credit problems in adult life. We're given activities to do, giving rise to the workaholic...

What we really needed back then, and what we need when we're bored, is for the need that gave rise to our distress to be identified and addressed.

Reflective observation is the method I used, plus asking my children what they needed, rather than what they wanted, to feel okay. I'd watch my children a lot and talk about what they did and why with whoever was handy. They didn't need to listen - I always listen to what I say. Talking (and writing) is my way of reflecting on my thoughts. Occasional feedback was great as it always offered a different perspective. An objective and critical perspective was especially valuable, but was always challenging and I didn't always value the opinions when they were given!

Most of the time our children's needs aren't as apparent as their wants. Like us, children get confused between needs and wants. Once we help our children learn the difference they rarely become 'bored'.

We don't need to remove the distractions - including entertainment - from their lives to help them overcome this uncomfortable (for everyone) boredom. It helps to let them know that being bored is their problem, not everyone elses, and that they aren't to bug others.

At times, when I'm feeling low or bored, I'll over-indulge. I do the same with mudcake. And the result is the same. I get sick. And bored of mudcake, or bored of being bored. The result? I eat nutritious and healing food. I do something that makes me feel better about myself - I find something I'm interested in doing. If someone gives me healthy food or an activity to do it doesn't fix the problem, it postpones it.

This has nothing to do with 'will power' by the way. It's all about brain/body chemistry, so don't give yourselves a hard time if you can't 'win' or be 'perfect' all the time. These words are loaded with emotional baggage: it makes sense to chuck them away, at least for a while, if not forever.

Begin by accepting that boredom is often a symptom of growth and that it's natural and okay. Identify the need, don't feed the wants. Keep distractions as a last resort tactic. Experience the full depth of boredom and let it pass, because it will, everything does. Keep an eye on it, don't let it slide into depression, but if you're tending to need, not want, this isn't likely.

Creating a stimulating, educational environment: I've covered this pretty extensively in my $2.50 booklet Learning Materials for the Homeschool, and in a chapter of Getting Started with Homeschooling. But organising a learning enviroment isn't going to work unless we accept that our children are responsible for what they do with their time. If we become directors of their time we rob them of the opportunity to take on this role for themselves. I've met kids who are in charge of their own time from toddlerhood, and I've met kids who need direction, even in play, at 18...

As usual, it's our attitudes and beliefs about life and how we manage it that are more important, especially to our children. It's the way we approach choices - the underlying ethics and attitudes - that matter. What are doing and why? What do we need? What do we want? Sometimes we need to be still and just allow the subconscious to work on these important questions. Ultimately, sometimes we need to be 'bored'.

Some quick tips for setting up the enviroment to engage children:
- a garden. Pay attention to creating the kind of garden your inner child would delight in.

- access to the kitchen. Encourage the children to cook. The kitchen is a science lab too. Teach the kids how to play and clean up safely.

- lots of busy shelves. I hate cupboards and drawers. If I see it, I will use it. If I can't see it, I forget it's there.

- be prepared: stock those shelves. Have the stuff on hand, anticipate the children's needs.

- go out, for a walk. This is totally underrated in life.


© Beverley Paine

Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

A Different Perspective on Addicted to Computer and/or Video Games

On the Homeschool Australia FAQ list recently a mother lamented about the time her children spent playing with their Xbox. Addiction to computer and/or video games is an issue that arrives frequently on homeschooling forums.

The way I see it, the bit that kids get addicted to is the fiction. That happens to kids who can't get their noses out of books, but noone bugs them as much as kids who watch telly or play computer games all day. We like computers rather than xboxs and playstations cos you can use them for other things. Thomas and Roger would spend ages on the game, but then they'd also be using the paint/draw programs, word, publisher, design and fiddle with webpages, etc. That led to making and editing movies, music, writing emails, responding to forums, surfing the internet and so on.

Even writing on forums is addictive and thomas reckons it's because it's sort of a fictional world. It's not as real as being there actually chatting to someone. It can eat up a lot of time every day too!

I don't want to downplay the other aspects of computer or video gaming that are addictive - such as the cleverly crafted plot that resist your attempts to shut the game down after you've levelled up (or cliff-hangers that stop you from closing the book at the end of the chapter). Games which are little more than click-fests tend to mesmerise me. Doing the same thing over and over again, until we get it 'right', is a component of many computer games. For some reason the game creators have cracked the secret to motivating children to learn in this manner. Try motivating them to do maths by repeating the same sum over and over again!

There's no getting away from the fact that if something 'looks' educational then as adults and parents we're generally happy. If it looks like fun, then we're not, yet as parents and educators we're forever trying to make 'lessons' fun for kids! Go figure!!

Kids live in a fantasy world most of the time. Unless they get hooked on books (fiction) most kids used to lose the ability to wander in this fantasy land, especially in the pre-telly days. Artists and writers always got to hang around in fantasy land, but their art was never considered 'real' work. You couldn't make a living out of it, unless of course you had a patron... I hated growing up and leaving my fantasy world behind. I hated the idea that growing up meant always being responsible. I was a reluctant teenager!

Nowadays kids can stay in fantasy land just about forever. They seem to grow up just as fast though, and embrace that responsibility we all have to eventually. Homeschool kids don't seem to have any problem with growing up, though many are very happy to take their time.

There are real issues to be dealt with when kids play computer non-stop. Like wearing their eyes out (same trouble with readers). Some kids get headaches, especially with VCRs: LCD screens may solve this problem, but eye strain is a huge issue. Dry eye can develop - remind kids to blink lots and to focus long distance. We have a window behind the screen, though this can set up glare problems that need attention. Drink lots of water - not cordial, pop, or juice. Water. Keeps the brain going, and to score well you need lots of water... Keyboards don't cost much if it's spilled (so long as the kid pays for it so s/hes careful next time!) or use water bottles.

Balance all day/night computer playing with lots of physical activity outside. My guys would play for four days and then they'd be outside for four days, climbing trees, playing war, chasey games, etc... They seemed to know instinctively that they needed to stretch. Especially when they were younger. Older teens can easily forget, but then think about those guys hunched over school desks all day, five days a week. No one complains about that!

© Beverley Paine

Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

When Children Resist Education

"Can anyone please offer any suggestions as to what they do when their child wastes time, whines or sooks when they are supposed to be doing bookwork? My daughter is almost six and is very good at the work when she sets her mind to it but for the best part, if I am not able to sit close to her when she has work to do, she is distracted by anything and everything and she has a good attention span - it just seems to be set bookwork. Do people use rewards, punishments, bribes?"

This was my experience in the first few years of homeschooling and nothing I tried seemed to work and I tried lots of different things... bribery and threats, pleading, star charts, making learning 'fun'...

It was really hard and I felt that I was failing all the time and worried that my children would grow up absolutely useless. Well, they're grown up now. Thomas, my youngest, will be 19 in a month, has been unschooled since birth. Robin and I are totally rapt with how he's turned out. I read a book by Julia Webb (UK researcher) about a decade ago on grown up homeschoolers. She said that unschoolers tend towards starting their own businesses and seem unwilling to work for someone else for very long. Thomas is a lot like that. He doesn't know why anyone would want to work five days a week when there is so much to do every day. He busies himself around home - mostly working on cars or computers, but also helping out with the house renovations, garden, landscaping, taking care of our animals (about 100 assorted chooks, guinea pigs, geese, pigeons, ducks), housework, etc. We live on four acres so there's always something that needs to be done. He does computer jobs for pocket money and to keep his car on the road. If he wanted to he could be working full time fixing computers in this area...

I think Julia is spot on when she indicated that unschooled children grow up with different values, but with strong work ethics. My children are diligent workers, but only work on things that are important to them. However, they'll go out of their way to help others. April's loyalty to her employers (past and present) makes her an asset to their businesses - she believes that doing her best to help their businesses grow will help them employ other young people, as well as improve her working conditions. This was not the outcome I imagined 15 years ago, when she'd slack off, whine, and even cry doing her bookwork...

Back then I backed off - I couldn't think of anything else to do, having tried punishment and reward to no avail. First of all, I said "pick a page you want to do, or can do". Basically, do anything, so long as it looks like learning... give me some paper evidence that learning is happening and I'll be happy! Eventually I began saying, "what would you rather do right now?" And then finally, just about everything she did was negotiated first - we'd talk about what I wanted her to achieve, what she wanted to do/achieve, the different ways that could happen, what we'd need, how much time would be needed, etc. We slowly gave up the rigidity of a structured curriculum written by someone else and did more and more activities related to our immediately daily life. Which, as it happens, was a very busy life embued with a great deal of practical skills and knowledge.

Occassionally I'd have a fit of insecurity and bring out the books and ask the kids to do a few pages everyday for a week or so. I couldn't force them to do it on educational grounds. They knew that doing a few sums or pages or writing wasn't a real education. But they'd do it for me, to make me feel better about being a homeschooling mum. Every time we did this it was obvious that even without doing any reading, writing or arithmetic for a few weeks or months, their skills in all three areas had advanced. A few days of what we started calling 'playing school' was a tremendous boost to MY confidence in unschooling. We did this for years - I am a slow learner!

One thing I can say for sure: that if I wanted my children to do anything they didn't particularly wanted to do, without a fuss or whinging, or if I wanted them to do a good job, then I had to BE with them the whole time. I learned that this was THE fastest way for them to become competent and independent at this tasks. Helping them, working beside them, modelling the skills I wanted them to learn, fast tracked this process. Whinging and whining at them, yelling instructions from the other room, was a complete waste of time and didn't promote healthy and happy relationships within the home. For better or worse, homeschooling is hands-on for the parent. I've found that self-instructional material works best when the children reach the teen years and have had plenty of time to develop self-discipline through playing and pursuing hobbies largely on their own. If we use the same methods that teachers use in schools we get the same behavioural problems that teachers in school get!

When Thomas was approaching 14 I felt that he ought to know how to do maths on paper, just in case an employer ever asked him to work something out. Much of my worry about my children's education was based on my fear that people would think less of me if my children were 'failures'. That was a hard truth to finally accept and deal with. I asked Thomas to work his way through two maths books, doing about 30% of the problems, enough to check that he understood the mathematical concepts and methods. Thomas never needed reminding to do his 'bookwork' and would sit, often for an hour or more, three or four days a week, slowly working through text book. Occasionally he'd ask for help, but mostly he taught himself whatever he didn't already know.

We are taught that when children resist our attempts to educate them there is something wrong with the child. My experience is that it's not the child, but the method and resources we're pushing onto the child, and sometimes simply 'when'. I learned that homeschooling life is so much easier, and the children enjoyed learning so much more, when I matched their learning styles and needs to what I presented. This meant working out what kind of learners they are, when they learn best (what time of day, what kind of conditions best suit them, etc). It took me about ten years to sort all this out! As I said, I'm a slow learner.

Someone stood up at a (Christian) conference in Qld last year and said that even if you don't deliberately teach your children at home, they'll still get a better education than they would at school. It's really hard to fail your kids at home. They will learn an incredible amount through conversation, from watching the television or browsing the internet or playing computer and other games, from having so much more time to play and pursue their hobbies and interests, from the access to wide variety of adults and children in the community, from the opportunity to be involved in many more household chores than they would if they were at school all week... It all adds up to a wonderfully rich and meaningful education. The rest - the bookwork, unit studies, narration, excursions, etc - they're all bonuses. It's easy to see why homeschooled kids are turning out the way they are - valued and appreciated members of their communities.

© Beverley Paine

Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

In addition to posting here, new blogs will now appear on
http://homeschoolaustralia.beverleypaine.com/blog.html

cheers
Beverley

Frustration with lack of information on child development beyond six years of age...

I've just posted a great description of unschooling on the daily homeschooling tips list by Renata Rooney, from an article she wrote for the current issue of Life Learning. Does anyone else subscribe to Life Learning ? Although I'm totally convinced about unschooling and natural learning I still find the articles informative and sometimes challenging. 'Radical unschooling' is still something that I struggle with, and now that my kids are grown up I can't experiment on them any more to see if it really works!

One of my constant frustrations when my children were young was that parenting information stopped when children turned six... I had parenting books that could tell me everything I needed to know about children under that age, and a book by Penelope Leach was never far from my hands, but no one seemed to know how a child developed - naturally - after this age! All the studys on children's development were done on children who went to school, and this seemed totally inappropriate for my situation. Especially as I wasn't seeing the kind of development the books described. I wasn't having the kind of problems described either! I am glad there are now authors like Jan Hunt and Alfie Kohn producing great books that help parents navigate child-rearing beyond those early years and beyond school...

Many of the questions I'm asked about homeschooling once parents are through the getting started stage are usually parenting questions: the kind of questions we asked during those early childhood years - what is 'normal' development for a child of this age, are we doing the best we can for our child, how can we overcome this or that problem? I often find that the problems are usually resolved when the parent recognises that each child is an individual and that issues usually arise when we try to fit these individuals into behaviours not tailored to their, or even our, needs, but to fit what someone else has determined should be 'perfect'.

Unschooling and natural learning unfold from the centre - our centres. Our kids' centres. Our families' centres. The question we need to ask each day is what is central to our needs, as individuals within a family, within a community, within a society, within the family of humanity. Keep it honest and frank and confronting and we will naturally (and almost magically!) meet our needs in a timely and satisfactory manner.

© Beverley Paine

Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

frustration with lack of information on child development beyond six years of age

I've just posted a great description of unschooling on the daily homeschooling tips list by Renata Rooney, from an article she wrote for the current issue of Life Learning. Does anyone else subscribe to Life Learning? Although I'm totally convinced about unschooling and natural learning I still find the articles informative and sometimes challenging. 'Radical unschooling' is still something that I struggle with, and now that my kids are grown up I can't experiment on them any more to see if it really works!

One of my constant frustrations when my children were young was that parenting information stopped when children turned six... I had parenting books that could tell me everything I needed to know about children under that age, and a book by Penelope Leach was never far from my hands, but no one seemed to know how a child developed - naturally - after this age! All the studys on children's development were done on children who went to school, and this seemed totally inappropriate for my situation. Especially as I wasn't seeing the kind of development the books described. I wasn't having the kind of problems described either! I am glad there are now authors like Jan Hunt and Alfie Kohn producing great books that help parents navigate child-rearing beyond those early years and beyond school...

Many of the questions I'm asked about homeschooling once parents are through the getting started stage are usually parenting questions: the kind of questions we asked during those early childhood years - what is 'normal' development for a child of this age, are we doing the best we can for our child, how can we overcome this or that problem? I often find that the problems are usually resolved when the parent recognises that each child is an individual and that issues usually arise when we try to fit these individuals into behaviours not tailored to their, or even our, needs, but to fit what someone else has determined should be 'perfect'.

Unschooling and natural learning unfold from the centre - our centres. Our kids' centres. Our families' centres. The question we need to ask each day is what is central to our needs, as individuals within a family, within a community, within a society, within the family of humanity. Keep it honest and frank and confronting and we will naturally (and almost magically!) meet our needs in a timely and satisfactory manner.


Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

Creative Solutions and Goal Setting

The problem of logistical hurdles seldom prevents me from doing whatever I want to do. I've developed a practical way of thinking over the years that says that if something isn't happening then perhaps the obstacles are the lessons I need to focus on, rather than the desire. In this way I've learned much about my limitations and how to accept them. From that platform of self-knowledge I either concentrate on my existing skills and talents, and improve them, or work out gentle ways to challenge and extend those areas of limitation.

Where logistical hurdles force a complete stop to all activity in a particular direction, I examine the causes objectively and usually find that the desire was inappropriate or unrealistic in the first place.

For example, I wanted to go to University a dozen or so years ago while homeschooling my children, but the course I chose necessitated learning on campus. This meant renting a house in the city and coming home on weekends, at considerable inconvenience to other family members and something we couldn't afford. Over three months I worked hard to create this reality, but eventually came to see that I wasn't ready to push in that direction yet. In fact, the desire to study at University was externally driven. I could achieve the same results by self-education, without leaving home, with greater efficiency. While searching for a creative solution to facilitate my desire I realised what motivated me, and what I really wanted to achieve. I learned more about myself.

Since then I tend to analyse logistical problems and ask 'why have I created this block', acknowledging and celebrating the way logistical problems naturally slow down the headlong rush down paths that may not suit, or may be externally motivated. If it becomes apparent that I actually want the original goal, that it is my heart's desire, then logistical problems seem to evaporate in a cloud of creative solutions that pop out of nowhere. Things happen, and quickly. The universe provides, abundantly. I trust in this process. Experience has shown it truly works.

Often conflict is embedded in the process. Things seem to go wrong, or become difficult. I celebrate conflict as the sharp end of the learning curve. If I am observant and objective enough I learn rapidly. With a positive attitude, problems become solutions, usually to issues I hadn't recognised initially.

This positive attitude was tested to the limit with my sister's illness and eventual death. Instead of focusing on unrealistic goals I did my utmost to learn the difficult lessons this time provided for me. Each obstacle challenged me to grow. Often I couldn't see the nature of the lessons until I reflected upon them much later, with an objective mind. My sister's life became a gift of self-development for me, in ways that I had not anticipated.

Setting realistic goals is important. A few years ago we made a wish list at New Year. As the year passed we crossed off the goals achieved. All but the most unrealistic, like winning the Lotto or owning a $500,000 car, were realised. The desire for a swimming pool was realised in an unexpected, but delightful way. We purchased an adequate inflatable paddling pool for $60 that we could all sit in and cool off - the real desire behind our need for a pool.

Last year I found a list of long-term goals I'd recorded in 1986. Ninety percent of those goals have been achieved. The ones that weren't didn't accurately reflect who we were as people, but were externally motivated by the need to conform or please others. The same holds true for our lists of tasks we complete on a daily basis. The realistic ones get done. I think this is because we continuously reflect upon who we are, what we want, and what our limitations, talents and abilities are. We also reflect upon how the world affects us, through peer group pressure, media exposure, cultural rituals and so on. Sorting out the externally driven motivations and desires from the personally meaningful internally driven motivation and desires can be difficult, but it certainly makes a difference to how and when goals are achieved.

© Beverley Paine

Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

It's finished!

For over a year I've been threatening to renovate my Homeschool Australia website. Well, it's finally done! You're all invited to take a peek and tell me what you think!!

I wouldn't never have completed this project if it wasn't for the assistance and encouragement from my son Thomas. Eighteen year old Thomas has been fiddling about with Dreamweaver and put together a new look for The Frog Pond, his forever evolving website about what he does all day as an unschooler. The current focus on The Frog Pond is his modifications on his Subaru Brumby, but in the past he's loaded his tutorials for modifying computers and computer games... Thomas is heavily into modifying! There are also some great images and movies of him and his brother having fun on their motorbikes, and my absolute favourite movie of the wild duckling we raised a couple of years ago.

As Homeschool Australia has over 100 pages I thought it best to rework my defunct Writing Pages, now called Beverley Paine South Australian Children's Author. In time I hope to add more published novels to my rather lonely 'The Chimaera Conspiracy'. Time is what I need more than anything else! We live incredibly busy lives... This has led me to Fruitful - a fantastic downshifting resource from Sally Lever. Sally's free online newsletter is helping to keep me on track toward my goal of simplifying my life.

Using Dreamweaver and Thomas's help I was able to quickly put together a small website. Once I got the hang of using 'styles', and the working layout of Dreamweaver, I found it so much easier to use that FrontPage. We needed to include dynamic content to cut back on the complexity of my site and to give me more time to write, rather than play around fixing broken links, etc.

Web design has been a huge part of our unschooling/homeschooling lives over the last six or seven years. Thomas has grown up with computers and his knowledge and skills amaze most people. He keeps it quiet though - a stint fixing other people's computers and problems a couple of years ago quickly robbed him of just about all of his free time. He guards his time fiercely! According to Thomas there is never enough time each day to do what he wants to!

Have a wonderful week,
cheers Beverley

Have a homeschooling question? Become a member of the friendly Homeschool Australia Frequently Asked Questions email group. Visit Homeschool Australia for more original content. No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the FREE bi-monthly Homeschooling Australia Newsletter, or sign up for Daily Homeschooling Tips
Visit www.alwayslearningbooks.com.au for a great range of homeschooling, unschooling and books on natural learning!

Home education - a valid option

The article below is reprinted with permission by Sally Lever and is taken from her excellent newsletter on downshifting and healthy/simple living "Fruitful" http://www.sallylever.co.uk
I highly recommend subscribing to Sally's newsletter. To subscribe, please send a blank e-mail to subscribe@sallylever.co.uk.

© Helen Moore.

I have always been interested in Home Education (HE), even before I had children. I used to hear the odd thing on Radio 4, or an article in the Sunday papers and I always thought what a good idea it was – but it was just a thought.

Anyway, fast forward umpteen years, and on marriage number 2 and at the grand age of 37, I give birth to my first son, Rupert. I now live in London with my husband Tony, who is a musician, and we have a great lifestyle. We’re both based at home and we both do work that we find really interesting and satisfying. As I was working, I never really considered home education as I thought that I didn’t have the time, and as we were really keen for our children (we now have Angus as well) to have the best education on offer, we opted into the private system – the state system in Haringey is pretty dreadful. Initially he went to a little pre-school group around the corner which he seemed to like, but as we were committed to him going into the private system, he had to start at a ‘proper’ nursery attached to a pre-prep.

So, come the September, he went off to ‘school’, although still only 2 ¾ years old. Nothing really went ‘wrong’, and I can’t criticise the school in any particular way, but it was a slow realisation that we were going in the wrong direction – we felt like we’d run to catch a train, and now we were sitting on it, we didn’t like where it was going, or the other people on it. Rupert didn’t hate it, but it didn’t particularly like it either. I think the catalyst for our decision was having to look at schools that he would go to when he was 7 (you have to look at other schools incredibly early in the private system). These schools just seemed so detached from reality – a call back to the Empire or something, and the parents were caricatures of snooty middle-class people – think Margot and Gerry (with bells on!) My Eureka moment, came when I was at an awards ceremony and got chatting to Janey Lee Grace who is a Radio 2 DJ – she was heavily pregnant with her fourth child. The topic of education came up, and I was rolling my eyes about school fees and so on, and she just said, ‘Oh no, I educate mine at home – it’s sooo much better.”

It wasn’t the fact that she was educating at home that really struck me, it was the fact that she was this trendy 40-something working woman with a brood of children who was managing to fit it all in. I didn’t think that I would be able to do it, but once I heard about someone else doing it, that was it! I phoned Tony from the awards ceremony, he agreed and that was that really! And once we’d worked out how long we’d be spending on the school run and so on, we figured out that HE would be right up our street. Not to mention the fact that there is an HE club five minutes walk from our house, which fifty, yes fifty, children attend. The more we find out about it, the more enthusiastic we are becoming – the amount of material available for home ed families, not to mention the support, is truly amazing.

It was great not having to send him off to school in the morning (definitely a bonus for our lifestyle too – being a musician household, we’re not renowned for our early starts, and we were dreading the day when our lovely relaxed morning routine would be broken by the dash out of the door to sit in a traffic jam at 8.15 in the morning.)

So, we have taken the first step. Rupert is thriving at home with piles of books, watching documentaries, and looking up stuff up the ‘pootier’ as he calls my computer! We’ll let you know how we’re getting on.

How downshifting benefits your health and wellbeing.

The article below is reprinted with permission by Sally Lever and is taken from her excellent newsletter on downshifting and healthy/simple living "Fruitful" http://www.sallylever.co.uk
I highly recommend subscribing to Sally's newsletter. To subscribe, please send a blank e-mail to subscribe@sallylever.co.uk.


© Sally Lever

About 17 years ago, I consulted a Complementary Therapist for the first time. I had decided to take a different route and try out what was for me an unknown and unexplored alternative to the conventional medicine I had always relied on in the past. Why? Because I was pregnant for the first time, suffering chronic morning sickness (of the “all day” variety) and unwilling to risk harming my baby by taking conventional drugs. This experience was to be a revelation for me and my introduction to a totally new way of viewing my own health and wellbeing, as well as that of my child.

Priorities and values

Suddenly, with the prospect of being responsible for someone else’s life, my priorities had changed. No longer did my health come second to my availability to work and earn money. Some would say that my behaviour was a natural reaction to surging hormones – nature taking over and asserting itself. I prefer to see it, with hindsight anyway, as the start of a shift in my priorities and values.

When we choose to prioritise our quality of life above our standard of living, magical things can happen with respect to how we treat ourselves. For most who downshift, improving health and wellbeing take a driving seat, often where it has previously been denied or ignored. And for those who are forcibly downshifted through ill health, this change in circumstances can be very challenging indeed. For those who take the route of voluntary simplicity and decide of their own accord to slow down their pace of life and reduce their stress levels, miraculously, it seems, health issues suddenly seem to become less of a problem. How does this happen?

Trading money for time.

The answer is very simple. Downshifting involves deciding to accept a lower level of income in return for more time to spend as we want to spend it. In order to practice preventive medicine and optimise our health and wellbeing, time is exactly what is needed.

Spending more time on ourselves benefits our nutrition. Real food, home cooked, is higher in nutrients, lower in harmful additives and costs less than convenience food in money terms. Growing and preparing food can also be an enjoyable experience for many, rather than just a means to an end. Thus, the process of looking after ourselves in itself becomes a stress-relieving activity.

By reducing our stress levels, we strengthen our immune systems and are therefore less likely to succumb to infection or contract stress-induced chronic conditions, such as heart disease, cancer, depression, chronic fatigue states or diabetes.

When we spend more time on self-care, we are more likely to find a form of exercise that suits us and that we find enjoyable.

When we are ill, time gives us the opportunity to explore the options with respect to treating the illness. We can choose to take a more holistic approach through diet, exercise and rest, alternative or conventional therapy or lifestyle changes.

During the pregnancy that I mentioned above, one thing I came to realise was how incompetent I was as a patient! I was so lacking in self-awareness that I didn’t have the first idea how to answer my homeopath’s questions. Ok, to be fair to me, they did seem to be rather odd questions, like “How do you feel in a thunderstorm?” What on earth did that have to do with how long I could keep a meal down? I got impatient with her and wanted a quick fix, when really what was needed was my cooperation and thoughtfulness. Often I felt like cutting out the middle man and just throwing my carefully prepared platefuls of food straight down the toilet! I was afraid that I would not cope with the situation and that my baby would not survive. My anger soon dissipated when I realised the homeopathy was working and I was starting to benefit from giving myself time to be more self-aware rather than fighting my affliction or denying it existed.

What other aspects of downshifting are beneficial to our health and wellbeing?

Trading an unhealthy environment for a healthier one.

One of the parts of our lives that we attempt to optimise when downshifting is the way in which we earn a living. Hopefully we will take steps to modify our employment to suit our values and minimise stress levels. Looking at our working environment can be part of this. What effect does working in an air conditioned office have on our well-being? What about fluorescent lighting, noise levels, access to sunlight, fresh air and water? Trading an unhealthy environment for a healthier one can benefit our wellbeing by reducing the physical stresses we have to endure and by bringing us into contact with fewer infections.

Reclaiming the responsibility.

In my experience, many downshifters discover during the process of changing their lifestyle that they feel more able to accept responsibility for their own health and wellbeing. They learn to face up to the challenges of making self-care a priority.

One of the advantages of working from home (and home educating) that I’m personally very grateful for is that when I or my sons are ill, there’s noone putting pressure on us to return to work or school. When we need to rest, wrap up warm, take extra fluids or get more fresh air, we can adapt our day to incorporate this and recuperate in our own time.

Ultimately, it’s not up to our GPs, our bosses, our family or anyone else to keep us well. It’s up to us.

Copyright Sally Lever
sally@sallylever.co.uk
http://www.sallylever.co.uk/

A Different Kind of Discipline

I used to believe that my kids were doomed because I was hopeless at disciplining myself - especially to finish stuff I'd started, but then when others look at what we've acheived in life - Robin and me - it usually amazes them. We're always getting told we do so much... We don't finish anything - well, not straight away. We have a dozen or more things on the go at once. It looks and is chaotic. We can't discipline ourselves to be centred on one job at a time until that jobs done... If we're lucky we'll get 90% of the way there and then we'll start on another project, or pick up one of the unfinished ones. It frustrates us sometimes, but only when we're trying to fit into what we think we *should* be doing...

At home we tackle projects and most chores with enthusiam - largely because we do them when we feel like it, or want to. If you visited on some days you'd think we were total slobs! :-) They're probably the days after several days of intense effort on some huge project, like laying pavers, making new guinea pig enclosures, bathroom renovations... (which still aren't finished one year later!) Because we do things when we are highly motivated we seemed more focussed, and definitely enjoy life more. :-)

I'm not convinced Robin and I are undisciplined, but it would sure look like it to someone who didn't know us. When we are ready to tackle something we approach it in a disciplined way. Plus, although we gave up punishing our kids in a traditional way when they were tots, we felt that our approach of discussion, negotiation and leadership instilled a better kind of discipline. Not that either of us were very good at that approach - we fumbled our way through and took ages to learn to let go of the need to bully the kids and ourselves.


© Beverley Paine

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