Sarasvati
26-06-2009, 04:41 PM
I am reading the unprocessed child atm (thanks Ayla!)
I was nodding along to a lot but I've come up against some ideas I quite disagree with. Now if you've read the book she very much assumes that a lot of things are directly the result of her parenting/unschooling, whereas some of the things she assumes I tend to think it has a lot to do with a child's personality. For instance early talking is not necessarily a result of not talking baby talk (and late talking doesn't mean you talk baby talk) but it comes across that way in her book. (That she believes her daughter's early talking came from a lack of baby talk in their interactions).
But the stuff I was quite surprised about was that 1) a child should have their own sacred space, free of siblings. The idea is if you cannot afford a house with enough rooms that each child has a room, then the room should be at the very least partitioned.
I think this is a very western-centric view. While I agree it's nice for all people to have a sacred space to call their own, I don't think that has to be a bedroom. I had a room of my own but my sacred space was the jetty out the back. I went out there when I was sad or angry, to centre myself and calm down. I still miss that jetty. I think that in some families there is a need to allot private spaces, but in others there is no need. In other cultures room sharing is such a normal thing and I daresay they don't feel they suffer for it unless it is painted as abnormal or substandard. Thoughts?
The second thing was about chores. She basically said that she didn't believe in making her daughter do chores. Now I also agree with this. However I don't see that my job is to clean, cook, pick up after, etc, the entire family. She said she learned to clean by observing her mother (however she had chores she had to do)... the feminist in me screamed "what about your father!!?" And then she went on later to say that both her and her daughter suffer from an inability to put things away, and her daughter admitted she hated mess but she looked at mess and couldn't see where to start (and I understand that sooo much!) I figure it's up to me (AND their father) to provide tools for tackling mess, and that doesn't just include me doing stuff while the children watch. It means getting them involved with helping, as long as they aren't in the middle of something interesting. Chatting about ways I find that help to keep things tidy (um, when I figure those things out). So my children don't express a frustration to me when they are older that they feel overwhelmed by housework and don't know where to start. Just as unschooled children learn maths and science through living, shouldn't they learn about mundane things like tidying up after themselves through living? Shouldn't we also be showing our children that we are not there to just pick up after them?
Her argument is that we chose to have children, therefore we should do what needs doing. If you choose to live on a farm, YOU chose it, not your kids, therefore kids shouldn't do anything around the farm that they don't want to do. Again I think this is unrealistic. Would you ask the parents to give up a farmlife because the kids don't want to help out (and presumably if the parents did everything ther would have no time to spend with their children?)
I am aware the housework stuff is SUCH a fine line. I think of all the men I know who do no housework because their mothers did everything for them and their partners take on that role. I think of women (like myself) who have struggled to do their share of housestuff; not just because mum did everything, but because the father figure did nothing. Because we had chores that we hated (I rarely dust because it was one of my chores). When I moved in with a guy I didn't see it as my job to do housework, and he didn't either, and it didn't get done. It took us YEARS to figure out what worked for us. And now it's an organic process (though sometimes I have to prod him to do more). I think making housework an organic process that includes the kids is preferable to mum doing everything with the reasoning that "you made the choice to have them, they have important things to do" (implication that I haven't got important things to do??).
Anyway would LOVE to hear other people's thought as these things have obviously challenged me. I must admit I think a lot of her assumptions are based on having one child, if she'd had more she might have been less rigid in her thinking about what "caused" her daughter to be a certain way.
I was nodding along to a lot but I've come up against some ideas I quite disagree with. Now if you've read the book she very much assumes that a lot of things are directly the result of her parenting/unschooling, whereas some of the things she assumes I tend to think it has a lot to do with a child's personality. For instance early talking is not necessarily a result of not talking baby talk (and late talking doesn't mean you talk baby talk) but it comes across that way in her book. (That she believes her daughter's early talking came from a lack of baby talk in their interactions).
But the stuff I was quite surprised about was that 1) a child should have their own sacred space, free of siblings. The idea is if you cannot afford a house with enough rooms that each child has a room, then the room should be at the very least partitioned.
I think this is a very western-centric view. While I agree it's nice for all people to have a sacred space to call their own, I don't think that has to be a bedroom. I had a room of my own but my sacred space was the jetty out the back. I went out there when I was sad or angry, to centre myself and calm down. I still miss that jetty. I think that in some families there is a need to allot private spaces, but in others there is no need. In other cultures room sharing is such a normal thing and I daresay they don't feel they suffer for it unless it is painted as abnormal or substandard. Thoughts?
The second thing was about chores. She basically said that she didn't believe in making her daughter do chores. Now I also agree with this. However I don't see that my job is to clean, cook, pick up after, etc, the entire family. She said she learned to clean by observing her mother (however she had chores she had to do)... the feminist in me screamed "what about your father!!?" And then she went on later to say that both her and her daughter suffer from an inability to put things away, and her daughter admitted she hated mess but she looked at mess and couldn't see where to start (and I understand that sooo much!) I figure it's up to me (AND their father) to provide tools for tackling mess, and that doesn't just include me doing stuff while the children watch. It means getting them involved with helping, as long as they aren't in the middle of something interesting. Chatting about ways I find that help to keep things tidy (um, when I figure those things out). So my children don't express a frustration to me when they are older that they feel overwhelmed by housework and don't know where to start. Just as unschooled children learn maths and science through living, shouldn't they learn about mundane things like tidying up after themselves through living? Shouldn't we also be showing our children that we are not there to just pick up after them?
Her argument is that we chose to have children, therefore we should do what needs doing. If you choose to live on a farm, YOU chose it, not your kids, therefore kids shouldn't do anything around the farm that they don't want to do. Again I think this is unrealistic. Would you ask the parents to give up a farmlife because the kids don't want to help out (and presumably if the parents did everything ther would have no time to spend with their children?)
I am aware the housework stuff is SUCH a fine line. I think of all the men I know who do no housework because their mothers did everything for them and their partners take on that role. I think of women (like myself) who have struggled to do their share of housestuff; not just because mum did everything, but because the father figure did nothing. Because we had chores that we hated (I rarely dust because it was one of my chores). When I moved in with a guy I didn't see it as my job to do housework, and he didn't either, and it didn't get done. It took us YEARS to figure out what worked for us. And now it's an organic process (though sometimes I have to prod him to do more). I think making housework an organic process that includes the kids is preferable to mum doing everything with the reasoning that "you made the choice to have them, they have important things to do" (implication that I haven't got important things to do??).
Anyway would LOVE to hear other people's thought as these things have obviously challenged me. I must admit I think a lot of her assumptions are based on having one child, if she'd had more she might have been less rigid in her thinking about what "caused" her daughter to be a certain way.