Not Hungry

Monday's paper had an article on 'the hungry generation' that caught my attention. Any tag-line with 'are mum's to blame?' tends to have that effect. According to findings there is a crisis amongst girls and their attitudes to eating and body image and it is fairly normal for teenagers to routinely miss two meals a day. I find it hard to get from breakfast to lunch without a little something and my children help themselves to a mid-morning, and a mid-afternoon snack, and woe betide any one who suggests that, as they didn't remember until midday and lunch is merely minutes away, it could be missed.
Although the causes of such distorted relationships with food are many and far from easy to untangle, the article identified two in particular:

“The playground is an incredibly strong environment when it comes to forming
their views and opinions. It has become almost impossible for girls to extract
themselves from some negativity towards their bodies and food.”

“For a lot of the young people I treat, food also becomes an issue when Mum
isn’t sitting down to dinner with everyone else, or is off preparing a separate
meal — or eating nothing.”

I'm glad that I'm fortunate enough to be able to Home Educate my children. I'm glad that it is our home, our family and those with whom we chose to share our lives which will shape their views and opinions. I'm glad that all three of my children know how to bake muffins and, just yesterday, sat at the table with me, tucking into chocolate cake, reading poems with a friend and enjoying being together.

Learning to balance

My little girl has learned to ride her bike! We finally got around to taking the stabilisers off the pink bike she was given for her fifth birthday,

and my husband took her to the park on Saturday. Off she went! No tears, no drama, ripe and ready to do it, it came easy. On Sunday we had a quick walk up to our local recreation ground for her to do a lap of honour, pedalling away, perfectly balanced, riding her bicycle! I forgot to take the camera though to capture her wide, proud smile.

I was reminded of her achievement, her grin and my pride in her this morning as I was praying. As I wobble along in my life, there are certain weaknesses I have that would cause me to crash every time. I have a real tendency to pride. I've just spent a week on retreat, an experience I loved, drawing me nearer to Jesus and also providing a much needed break in my busy schedule. But it doesn't take me long to start feeling that I must be very holy, better, in fact, than most folk, closer to God and that they would all have a lot to learn from me ... except humility of course! This is where I need my stabilisers. Why I'm not really ready yet to spiritually cycle unsupported, let alone go mountain biking. But my heavenly father is patient with me, he takes me out in the park often to practice, and one day I'll be ready. It's not that the potential to wobble and fall off will have gone, but that I will have learned to hold my balance and not to topple, or at least, not so often. And God will not be standing there with a scowl on his face saying, "About time too, what took you so long?" but with a huge grin of love and pride.

Comments

Having posted on the local e-group that I had written about Friday's walk, some new readers have made some very welcome comments around the blog. I have always try to reply to comments, usually by pressing 'reply' in my Outlook Express where notification of a comment arrives. Eventually,though, I noticed the 'no-reply' bit of the return address! This gave me a clue that my carefully composed responses may not have been reaching their intended targets. I checked this out by e-mailing and 'replying' to a friend who comments regularly. Sure enough, the 'no-reply' answer goes nowhere - go figure! So, apologies to those of you who have never heard back from me.
This morning I decided to tackle this. I have spent the last half-hour searching on blogger help, peering at indecipherable HTML code and importing code (from a site which told me that if I could read Chinese there would be additional detail to the instructions) in order to be able to reply directly. However, the promised link to click on has not appeared. I am left with the slightly uneasy feeling that I may have added something irrevocable to my template code which will gradually destroy my blog like some flesh-eating parasite, and still no way of replying directly!
So, I have replied to the comments by posting comments of my own, so scroll back and take a look. I have not cooked lunch, or started maths with the children. My planned tales of cycling and pet spiders will have to wait until later in the week!

Chilworth Gunpowder Mills

A week or so ago a message appeared in the Home Ed e-group I belong to (or should that be, lurk on?), suggesting an autumnal walk by the River Tillingbourne at Chilworth, with the added attraction of meeting some alpacas thrown in. So, even though I didn't know the lady organising it, or anyone who might be going, I thought we'd join in.
The idea of 'paddling' and 'dam building' was included so I made sure we were armed with three complete sets of clothes, all wrapped around hot water bottles, as well as hot chocolate and snacks and, this morning, we set off into the wilds of Surrey.
We met up with a lovely group of mums (one of whom I did know from a few years back) and lively children of varying ages and we strolled into the woods. Sticks, water and leaves were in abundant supply, with plenty of opportunities for collecting, climbing, investigating, paddling, dipping and running. We found an old tram-swing bridge which one or two of the children balanced across. Of course, it was my children. (Sometimes it's easier not to watch!)A little later we came across a shallow-ish part of the stream. My middle son took to 'extreme paddling' and was soon waist deep in November cold water, after a quick duel.Eventually, wellingtons emptied (for the second time this week), we meandered along and my son was stoic in the face of potential hypothermia. We met the alpacas of Chilworth Manor, the daddy of whom, Odin, was just as curious about us as we were about him.
By this stage my two wettest children were ready for the car so we hurried back and soon they were wrapped up in warm clothes, picnic blankets and sipping hot chocolate - worth getting soaked for!
It was one of the best mornings I have spent in ages. I enjoyed the adult company and the chance to be in the fresh air and surrounded by nature. My children had a great time with the others and the chance to really play in nature in a way that can seem so elusive in suburban life.
Even the best plans don't always work, but this morning was the perfect example of preparation and spontaneity going hand in hand, and the serendipity of the simple.

Thanks for the photos, uploaded from the e-group.

Nim's Island

Nim is an eleven-year-old girl brought up on a remote and secret island by her nano-plankton obsessed scientist father. In her own words she is "home-educated, well technically, island-educated." She plays with her friends, Gallileo, Fred and Selkie, (a gull, a lizards and a sea-lion), she hatches turtle eggs, she cooks, she sails with her dad, she reads countless books and knows enough about Ancient Greek military strategy to fend off invasion by crass, uncouth and spoiled Austrailian tourists.
I wonder what our Local Education Authority, or the many skeptics who are so fond of questions about socialization and examinations, would make of her? Of course, this is pure fantasy, but I was still left with the feeling that her life and her education lacked very little. I pondered whether such a situation would be 'allowed' in real-life society and I am pretty sure that this is exactly the kind of thing Graham Badman and all who are uncomfortable with Home Ed would like to see eradicated. There were no safe-guards for this girl and, had her father been brutally abusing her then there would have been no-one to protect her but this was not the case. She had a loving and close relationship with her father and they each respected and adored the other. But would many consider such an upbringing to be so unconventional to also be prevented? Would some consider such isolation or such disorganised learning, (no goals or attainment targets, no progress reports or testing,) a failure to educate?
There are many aspects of other people's parenting that I am uncomfortable with. I have heard loving mothers say how much their child hates school day after day, and yet they continue to force attendance, heart-felt believing that it is the right, or only, thing to do. And there are the tennis or gymnastic or athletic stars-of-the future who practice for hours a day on top of their school work and feel that anything less than perfection is failure. Could this ever be seen as abusive behaviour on the part of the parent? I would not behave towards my children in these ways but I would not suggest that these parents should be registered, annually inspected and required by law to change their life-style if I didn't like what I saw.
I am reminded of Laura Dekker, the fourteen-year-old Dutch girl who has been banned from attempting to sail around the world. Now, I know nothing about sleep management or sailing and maybe the enterprise is folly, but the arguement that one reason she should not embark on her adventure is that she will miss out on schooling seems to me to be laughable. Surely any person capable of sailing single-handed across the North Sea has a very developed skill set. I cannot imagine that any person with the strength of mind to complete the challenges that she has and hopes to, would be dettered from learning anything she set her mind to or that she needed to. Really, what do the authorities think a school will provide that following her passion and experiencing life to its fullest will not?

Wet Wellies

Today has dawned bright and clear: the perfect autumn day. Yesterday it rained as if the sky was being wrung out and I doubted earth could hold any more. This made for some great puddles. Not content with just splashing, my younger two devised a plan to scooter through the biggest puddle they could find. They returned some minutes later, giggling, triumphant, wet to the skin ...
and with wellies full of water.

On Sunday I met with my father's cousin, my first cousin once removed. (Thanks to a handy table provided by a genealogist tracing my mother's family when a distant relative died without a will, I have finally grasped the subtleties of first and second cousins and how removed they are.)
He lives in a small town about half-an-hour's drive away and I discovered him through my great-aunt, whom I also met for the first time this year, who has a keen interest in family history. I was treated to a 'proper tea' with sandwiches, scones and cake which made me feel very special and I enjoyed a pleasant hour looking at his old family photos and showing some that I have recently discovered. He grew up on the same village street as my father and attended the same secondary school and I have a couple of photos of them together, along with another brother, clearly much more interested in going off to play than in posing for the camera. What touched me deeply was how very similar these two men are, both in striking physical resemblance and also in mannerism and speech and it was as if I was with an alternative version of my father. I realise that I, too, am part of this family line, mixed up with another, and wonder what I have inherited, genetically and culturally. How deep our family ties go and how precious it is to know something of where we have come from.