My little girl has learned to swim!

For the last six years we have spent a week in the summer in the same luxurious converted barn which shares a pool with the five or six other holiday cottages on the farm. I realised this morning that all three of my children have learned to swim in this pool.

The year my eldest learned to swim he had begun to understand the dangers of not being able to swim and did not want to get in the pool at all. We managed to coax him in by measuring him against his father and comparing where he came up to and where the water came up to on dad's stomach, demonstrating that he was, just about, in his depth. With this security he was eager to jump in and play. Before long, he was swimming.

My middle son is a very different build to his older brother and even at a comparable age he was out of his depth. We showed him how he could touch the bottom and jump up to get his head above water and he kangarooed around the pool quite happily. He wanted to learn to swim independently and when he thought no-one was looking began to swim across the corner near the steps, not too far from something to grab hold of. When he was a little more confident he began to swim along the length of the pool, right by the edge so he could stop and hold on when he needed to. I could see the determination on his face and his desire to set himself progressively harder challenges until he was swimming boldly.

My daughter has been happy to swim with her 'woggle' (a noodle shaped piece of foam) for a long while, or if she is held. But as soon as I let go she would stop paddling and sink. It has taken many, many widths of the pool with dad's hands just touching her stomach, to give her the confidence to go it alone and she is justifiably very proud of her achievement.

Reflecting on these experiences I can see two truths. My children have all learned to swim in very different ways and have needed very different help from us because they are unique individuals. Also, they have needed security, safety, before they have been able to cross the line. My job is to apply these truths as I parent and educate them.

A glass of milk and a chocolate biscuit

Twice in the last 24 hours, my two boys have had a bust up. On both occasions, my middle son has been upset by something that my older son has been excited about, without any intention of causing hurt. I am a great believer in listening to and respecting the children's feelings, it's what my parenting books tell me, and my basic counselling skills training. But it's the hardest thing about being a mother, especially a full-time, Home-educating mother: the sheer volume of messy, difficult, irrational, unpleasant and grouchy feelings, (not just the children's but mine too!) Both these incidents involved my elder son being proud and excited about something he had done, and my middle son feeling jealous, angry and embarrassed. Big feelings, no easy answers. My best effort: a cuddle, a discussion about the need to state feelings clearly and trying to imagine the impact your actions may have on others, a glass of milk and a chocolate biscuit. The difficult feelings are still there, I just hope that this painful experience is one step along the path to greater emotional intelligence, that the acceptance of the feelings strengthens self-respect and that I've got enough chocolate biscuits in the cupboard for the remainder of the week!

More thoughts from Swanage

The sun is shining today, the children have gone out to the beach with their grandparents and my husband and I are going for a six mile walk. It is not often that we get extended time together, certainly not in daylight hours without children so it will be good to talk things over and reconnect.
We had fun yesterday on our quick visit to Swanage. While I blogged the boys read in the library and my middle son was eager to show me the pictures of peregrine falcons and capercaille he had found. Afterwards, we bought chips from adjacent chip shops and decided which we liked best. The seagulls congregated greedily around us waiting for scraps. I mused about whether they would be so interested if we had apples, or apple slices wrapped up in white paper? How do they know that we've got chips?
We had a beautiful view of a buzzard as it glided over the road and landed on a telegraph pole. My middle son was particularly impressed, likening it to golden eagle.
During the rain yesterday we started a thousand piece jigsaw of 'Kings and Queens of England and the United Kingdom'. The boys occasional placed a piece with a comment like, 'Chainmail, must go around here,' or, 'I recognise you, you're Henry VIII's son.'
My eldest has read the delightfully entitled 'Why is Snot Green?' I now know that there are four ways to be struck by lightning, including being splashed by electric charge that has grounded near by! He was insistent that I should never wash-up during a thunderstorm as apparently this is dangerous. (I can add that to my reasons not to wash up!)
In the face of such enthusiatic and voracious learning, I am still happily planning September's curriculum. I'm not sure why. Despite being the adult, I think it is me that needs the security blanket!

What am I writing for?

Here I am in Swanage library. We holiday with my very generous in-laws every year and it is the one week of my year when there are more adults than children around so I am not so much in demand as usual and I savour the opportunity to reflect and plan, to read and to think. I carefully chose which books to bring from the pile, both physical and metaphorical, waiting to be read and selelcted seven! One book I picked up off the library shelf before I left was Blogging for Dummies. I hope I'm not a 'dummy' but I am hoping to pick up some tips and ideas on how to make my blog an even more interesting place to visit. One of the books I've been reading is Peter Elbow's 'Writing with Power' which is also making me think about what I'm writing for, who I'm writing to. And then, by one of my favourite writers, Henri Nouwen, I discovered this:

I decided not to go to the library to do research on the topic but instead just
kept asking myself what I knew about it. What did I have available from my own
experience? What did I know about it? Did I have some experience with
this topic that I could articulate so that other people could recognize it as a
real experience? ... to say, in effect, " I don't know the answers either. I am
simply a catalyst, simply somebody who wants to articulate for you things that
you already know but might get a better grip on if there are some words for
them."

In a moment the blurriness focussed. This is what I would love my blog to be, what I aspire to, and what I love in the blogging of others. The feeling in my gut when I read something that puts into words what I has sensed, suspected, felt but had never drawn out before, never examined before, is very special. I hope that as I blog more and find my writer's voice, this is what this blog might become.

Questions, questions

It frequently suprises me how little I know. Not only that, but how much I don't even realise that I don't know. My eldest son once asked me how thick a rainbow is. The question fascinated me, the concept had never occured to me.

In the one Home Ed seminar I managed to get to at HESFES, I was reintroduced to some research on thirty four-year-olds and the conversations they had with their mothers at home and with teachers at school. The researchers found that these girls asked an average of 26 questions an hour of their mothers and only 2 per hour of teachers. In addition, the questions asked of the teachers were mostly 'business' questions, 'Where's the glue?', but that 'challenges' were rare and 'passages of intellectual search', entirely absent. The amazon review of this book describes how:

'conversations at home revealed the children as persistent and logical thinkers, puzzling to grasp new ideas.'

There are times that I find my childrens' questions exhausting and I feel like Mrs Butler, but at the same time I marvel at the pondering and contemplation that brings forth these questions. I delight in the passages of intellectual search and the puzzling to grasp new ideas. I love the belief that the world and its inhabitants should make sense and I often find that what I have taken for granted or never considered does not make sense at all.

My husband's school breaks up for the Summer today and we are driving down for a week's holiday in Corfe Castle and the seaside at Swanage. I am hoping to find an internet cafe and post while away. If not, I'll be back next Friday.

Reading the Label

Sitting outside my freshly erected tent on Friday evening, I noticed a man approaching me. A man with two dogs and a child - my child! He introduced himself and informed me that he had rescued my middle son from a thorn bush. After I thanked him and he had gone on his way, I asked my son how he had got into the thorn bush. Apparently, it was the only way out of the field he was in. I asked him why he hadn't stayed on the path and he told me that he hadn't been on a path in the first place!

On Saturday a friend told me that she'd suggested quite firmly to him that wriggling under the static caravans wasn't a good idea, even if it was to rescue a ball.

On Sunday evening, my neighbour told me that my son had proudly informed him earlier in the day that he'd found an axe when he has slipped into the marquee before it was open and found it backstage. My neighbour was impressed with the size of the axe, which he had taken away and handed back to the crew.

I pondered these incidents. Once I had moved on from the horrors of what could have happened I was struck by a new and powerful realisation: he will always be like this! He is an adventurer, a confident, independent and physical child. He already talks about the round the world trip he will take in a camper van when he is a grown up. For a long time now I have been waiting for him to calm down, to be more sensible, more safe, more like his brother. But I don't think he will and my view of him has abruptly come into focus: this is who he is and my role is to equip him to be safe in his adventures.

I have consistently fallen into the trap of seeing my eldest as the blue print and I miss the uniqueness of all of my three children by doing this. At HESFES I briefly attended a seminar on the legal aspects of Home Ed and was reminded that UK law states that a child must be educated according to their 'age, ability and aptitude.' Ability is what the child has already achieved. Aptitude is the natural talents and interests that a child has, the child's scope for development in the future. Each of my children is one-of-a-kind and my role is to encourage, support and provide for three distinct aptitudes. My middle son needs equipping with survival skills, organisational strategies, physical skills, road safety; I need to help him find ways of looking after himself and taking responsibility for himself, of making sure he has what he needs. I need to look for ways of letting him have adventures. He is already a Beaver and I am sure that Scouts will be full of opportunities for him. I will get find Ray Mears or Bear Grylls DVDs; I will send him camping with trusted male adults. I want to figure out what nourishment I can give his emergent nature.

I am cautious of labelling people: one son is my adventurer and the other my quiet writer. Labels are unhelpful, even dangerous, when they close my eyes to the possibility of change or experiment, of other; if they become a limit. If they are a signpost to recognising the unique needs, desires, competencies and aptitudes of my three children, enabling me to encourage them to be who they are, who they were created to be and to discover all their potential then it is important that I carefully read the label.

Home Again!

I'm home. Tired, sun-burned, mosquito bitten but full of good memories and ideas to ponder. I missed writing this blog and processing my thoughts. The first couple of mornings I was up long before the children and sat in the morning sun with coffee and pain au chocolat and my morning pages notebook, a leftover from The Artists Way and mulled. I even thought I might just write out posts and type them all in when I got home. It didn't last and soon the children were getting up with, or even before me - not a moment to think!

It was good to be around other Home Edders, not just the mothers, and it is mostly mothers, but also the young people. To see them all together, socialising, learning, playing just like normal children! But I would say there was a subtle difference. Now, I don't know much about fashion and what's hot on the street, but I would say there was a refreshing non-comformity about the young people, even when they chose to wear a uniform. What do I mean by uniform? A lovely group of girls on our "street" were all wearing items of tie-dyed orange. Eye-catching, bright, funky, distinctive and it marked them out as a group. I would guess, although I didn't ask, that maybe they didn't all like orange, perhaps they wouldn't choose it as a colour on its own merit, but they belonged together as a group of friends and they wanted to express this. They could choose not to wear the colour, they could choose a skirt or a t-shirt or shorts, they could wear it how they liked and they looked good. It said they belonged, and they did, because they chose to. I liked it.