Education without school

Noah is almost two and a half, so we are just beginning to think about schooling and unschooling. Two years ago I would never have considered unschooling. I was quite passionate that all South Africans should return to the public schools, and that these should be free. I'm sure I will wrestle with issues of equality and social justice some more, but right now I am thinking about how the internet, and the radical availability of information is changing the way children the world over can learn, and the way we work. 

I began to consider unschooling because of the freedom Eug and I have felt in breaking the tie between work and financial survival. Central to this has been some radical choices (and a good amount of luck) that allow us to live on about 1/3-1/2 of the U.S. median income, without any real pressure to earn much more than that.

Firstly, what is unschooling? For me, unschooling is about allowing people to pursue knowledge and relationships without social and institutional expectations or pressures. In practical terms, for us this means pursuing a range of experiences, reading a lot of books, and respecting that Noah and Eli are integral parts of our family with valid experiences of the world. When your children are tiny, unschooling is very easy and very hard: easy in the sense that there is no social pressure for your child to be learning algebra. Very hard in the sense that keeping one's cool and showing respect to very small children is difficult, and small children are also disrespected in social settings all the time.

There's a lot of people who have given much more thought to this than I have, so I defer to them:
Christian Unschooling
Sandra Dodd
Joyfully Rejoycing
You can find a great summary article at Zen Habits on Unschooling

There's some parts of it that wouldn't work for our family right now- we don't own a TV and Noah usually doesn't have the opportunity to request junk food- but I'm fairly open to figuring out what works for family in each season of our lives.

There's a lot wrapped up in how we think about school for our kids: Whether we think tertiary education is essential, how we think about socialization, gender balance in the home, how we think about learning in general, how we think about money and earning a living. Somewhere in there is the truth of our situation, a truth that I think is a bit different for different families.

Two common questions I have been thinking about re: unschooling, and my current thinking on them:

1. Will my child be social awkward/miss out on important social experiences? 
• In the real world, we socialize with a range of age groups and benefit from all these relationships. This doesn't mean one doesn't need peers so as Noah and Eli get older I'll pursue classes and group activities and I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm not sure the shared suffering that defines most schools is real socialization, though if Noah and Eli want to go to United World College I'd be pretty excited about them sharing the amazing socialization I experienced there.
2. Will all the parents' time be taken up/isn't that a lot of responsibility for a parent?
• I'm not sure. Eug and I currently split up our time and this year has been a mom-heavy year for me because of giving birth and breastfeeding. Right now I'm imagining that as Noah and Eli start to learn more, they'll also be more independent and allow the care-giving parent to do chores or projects that actually benefit the household. Having family nearby is really integral to my belief that this could really work- I think there are enough people around us doing interesting things that could spark interest in Noah and Eli. If they're interested, I'd love them to try different activities with different people as they get older- from lessons to apprenticeships. We don't have to squeeze these in after school, so I think there's a lot more flexibility to pursue whatever interests them.

What unschooling looks like for us right now. I tend to highlight the things that are unexpected for me:

• We try to say yes unless there's a really good reason not to ("I'm tired" is sometimes a good reason). It's built up a fair amount of trust between us. It's not perfect and we're still figuring out how to frame our no's as yes's. It means I'm pretty careful about taking Noah places when he's very tired, and the supermarket is just a super fun adventure that only happens once a week. We generally don't do something unless we all feel up for it. This means life has few errands, and that things happen very slowly. 
• I try not to freak out about mess, but I always invite Noah to help clean up. I try not to freak out if he doesn't help out, I just say I want him to.
• Noah does things other 2 year olds might not be expected/allowed to do- he can make scrambled eggs (though I put the stove on), feed the worms, plant seeds, get food from the fridge with pretty limited supervision. 
• For Eug and I, we are trying to find what we truly love to do, so that work is an overall joy and a contribution (however small). We are 29 and 33 years old, so it would be absurd for us to have "arrived", but I think it's a good goal. 
• We don't do "educational activities" or try to have toys that teach certain things. In fact, other than duplos and building stuff (where it's silly for small kids to use real bricks), Noah uses the real thing and does "real stuff" as much as possible. He's really getting into fantasy play, so I'm not saying he has to be a little adult.
• We don't have a hard line on napping and bedtime, and Noah can choose his own clothes and shoes, even if they me look like a bad mom. Noah also doesn't have to clean himself unless he wants to, though if we don't brush his teeth I can't offer him food that has sugar or simple carbs. He hates clothes changing time, so he usually wears the same clothes for 24 hours.
• Bribery, or incentives as I like to call them, are fine because peace matters more. I don't think of it in terms of mutual manipulation or those terms. Incentives are generally pretty low-key, just something Noah likes when he's being asked to do something he doesn't like. 
• I get a bunch of books from the library every week, and read them with him. We all spend a lot of time together in general.
• If Noah isn't hungry at mealtimes he doesn't have to eat. I don't cook a whole separate meal for him, but he's often hungry at different times to us, so he can choose what he'd like (fruit, vegetables, plain yoghurt, eggs). 
• Noah's allowed to watch Kipper and Sesame street almost any time he'd like to.  

I imagine the way we educate Noah and Eli will change a lot over the years, and as we learn about their needs and our own. 

Some experiences unschooling

A few people have recently asked about how and why we are unschooling, and in the moment I usually mumble something incoherent about autonomy. I wanted to reflect a little more deeply here, though not comprehensively, as supporting our kids' education is inevitably complex. Noah would be in Grade 2 this year, and I've written about unschooling in the past (though I cringe at some of those posts). School can seem really innocuous to those who thrive in those settings (or seem to), so I'm grateful for a firstborn who is sensitive and challenged so many of my assumptions.

The experience of unschooling, to me, has been a move away from outcomes, towards the journey, and towards connecting with my kids. If you've ever read this blog, you know I plan and scheme and will suffer seemingly endlessly for a goal (I think this is partly a result of school). This can serve me well, at times, but it also means I struggle to be present for the ride.  It also means that my tendency is to think of the future for my kids-- and inevitably, because I'm that kind of person-- to constantly be measuring my kids' successes.

In fairly Calvinist (conservative Christian) settings as a child, during college and our early years of marriage, there were a lot of fairly awful ideas about children. Alongside these were also quite negative ideas of God-- and these were tightly wrapped up in a highly patriarchal social structure. What was terribly confusing is that God (and parents, leaders, and teachers) did not necessarily have to be kind or considerate-- they could do anything and say it was "for our own good." A consequence of being in this kind of setting is that one cannot trust one's own feelings. Don't even get me started on what it was like to be a girl and a woman in these settings! Not only could we not trust our own desires and motivations, we also could not trust God to be good, all the time. I am not sure if this influences how kids in schools are being taught around the world-- I am outside of that world right now-- but I want to move away from my tendency to see my children as vessels to be urgently filled (with skills, or knowledge, or even values), whether or not they want that skill. While self-reflection is powerful-- I want my kids to be the ones doing the reflecting on their desires and motivations, not me or another adult. In this sense, unschooling is less about learning and more about relating-- knowing that in healthy relationships it is easy to learn and grow.

There are a lot of people who believe God is always good who don't unschool, so I think my experiences are the result of a particular, non-universal, journey. Still, unschooling has brought a helpful consistency: In imagining a more relational, less capitalist, less power-based, less shame-filled/competitive society, a lot of ideas align, albeit messily (and inconsistently). We can enjoy our lives while remaining responsible and responsive to our contexts.

So as I grow with our kids, the value of unschooling is less about outcomes and more about finding ways to be consistently kind and support our kids, while being careful to attend to our own journey, responsibilities, and boundaries. It is a way to trust our children and try our best to connect with them, which is harder than it sounds. It does not mean leaving them to do their own thing, but finding opportunities for them to get to know themselves, and to shine. It means creatively finding ways to meet all the needs of all family members, and be explicit when we are struggling to do so because of financial, time, or energy constraints. What I want them to feel is an abundance of opportunity, and an abundance of love-- a complicated abundance, given friendships with those who have much less than we do-- but abundance nevertheless.

Adult Unschooling

I've been reading about unschooling- which involves various degrees of helping your children learn without formal curriculum. One blog, Sparkling Adventures was particularly fun and inspiring to me- check it out! I wrote a while ago about my interest in (and prejudices around) homeschooling. [to be clear, I'm less attracted to unschooling in a school setting, which seems to let kids teach each other and create self-rule, and which I don't really like.]

A few weeks ago, a mom stopped me on the street with her 8-month old, and asked where I was sending Noah to school. Noah is 22 months old, so I was quite taken aback. I thought I had a few years for Eug and I to make a decision. It made me think a little more, because I want Noah to be connected with a variety of people and so on and so on, and I don't imagine myself being good at running a traditional "home classroom". I also don't necessarily want to go on a five-year wait list for the "best" government school in Cape Town.

Anyway, back at home I started to get to work. Eug and I have fairly regimented times to work- an hour here, an hour there- and there's pressure to make the absolute most of those hours, whether or not one is really in the mood. Such is work life, right? And we're hugely privileged in that we do paid work at most 5 hours/day, 3 or 4 days/week. Yet I would argue I get as much work done as I did when I was in the office for 40+ hours/week, but the work is in intense spurts, followed by other activities.

Anyway, in the midst of rushing to "get stuff done" I wondered how I go about getting the things on my long "to-do" list- whether dissertation, work, or home-related. I've been conditioned that one just buckles down and does it, sometimes without much thought. Yet what I read about unschooling made me to think a little more about what would happen if I paid attention to what I really wanted to do.

The thought that I, too, need to be unschooled a little was helpful. That is, maybe we should sometimes be productive in the ways we feel like being productive. It's a luxury, but it may be in many of our grasp(s?)

I want to pay attention to the bigger picture of who I'm becoming, not just what I need to get done today or tomorrow or next week or next year. The tasks should have that context where possible. (And I'd love your thoughts on unschooling).

August 2017: Using waste for urban farms, lots of ducks sitting, unschooling and power

Farming, heading into year 3!

Farming in an urban space can seem like a poor use of space, especially when there is really high density right next door, and a desperate need for adequate housing. Sometimes I think that it would be great for our family to have more land to work with (!minicow!), and for this land to be less threatened by developers. We have intermittent pressure to succumb to rezoning (our land is currently agricultural, within Cape Town city limits, which gives us quite a bit of freedom-- to own bees, livestock (though with rules about how many), and chickens/ducks). Our response to this is partly pragmatic-- we really want to stay here and raise our children here, and don't want to have to start over. It's also spiritual and connected to calling, though perhaps in a very tangible, we-don't-have-a-five-year-mission-to-change-everyone way: what we are doing is connected to where we are living. 

The other thing is that, while urban land is much more expensive and not very good for growing, there is a lot of organic waste in the city, and diverting this waste from landfill makes urban agriculture fulfill a role that isn't easily fulfilled by other types of farming, or other types of urban action. This month, one of our sources of waste diversion was large amounts of spent brewing grain. I'm working on scaling up our worm farm to take on more barley. The ducks and chickens eat some, but it ferments quickly, so we have to have a bigger/faster plan to turn the grain into something helpful for the farm.

Rain came to us in August-- it hadn't in July (usually our rainiest month). Our trees have responded by budding and leafing out. Our winter seems to last about one month-- our stone fruit were dormant only briefly. I am loving the signs of life around and about, and the hope of a summer that brings a lot of growth, and maybe even fruit crops. Tiny almonds are starting to form on at least 7 of our 9 almond trees. Our trees don't look like YouTube permaculturist trees seem to at the beginning of year three. Partly that's because of our drought, and some have been in the ground just a few months, some a year, very few two years. I think it's partly that the journey is truly slow, and that we have to be very patient.

Of course it's also a time of a lot of work: making sure trees have everything they need to grow, checking irrigation, prepping our annual garden to be on a drip system. Right now, our biggest long-term struggle is around mole rats. We have a LOT of mole rats, which can destroy an established fruit tree in a matter of moments. We've been planting with wire as a way to get trees established, but in the long term the wire will decompose, so we have about 2 years to figure out how to get rid of the moles.

Unschooling, money and power.

In a way this is its own post, but I don't seem to have the bandwidth to make a separate post so this is it: 

We continued to do many of the same things as before: Noah got to dissect pig organs, which is totally the type of thing he loves. He also got to make a lot of dog food, for which he earned organic biodynamic bacon for our family! It continues to be up and down and up again, but the trajectory is firmly positive, so we keep at it. The time it takes to talk through stuff, and to work through our own stuff as parents is good. I sometimes worry that we don't offer the certainty that small kids need-- I apologize a lot for being quick to judge, for being nitpicky, for nagging. But we keep at it. This month, despite the cold, we went to the beach a lot, continue to go to clay lessons pretty often, and generally we learn a lot together. As Hana edges towards two, I do feel things begin to shift as we suddenly begin to have 3 children, not 2 kids and a baby. 

One way that there has been synergy between unschooling and other aspects of my life is in relation to power, money and "earning" your place. One criticism of unschooling seems to be based in the idea that one earns one's place by working hard in school, perhaps by suffering, perhaps by working at a job you don't really like or doing things you don't really like. That escaping this is somehow dangerous. It's a grim drivenness that is very hard not to fall into as an adult. I sometimes will say "hey be careful with that, it took me time to earn money to pay for that!" Then I cringe. That's not the reason I want them to be careful. I want them to be careful because I'm worried that they're going to be a jerk, however defined, in the future, or because I really like whatever they're playing with, or because I want them to respect material goods. The message I hear so much of the time is that we must teach our kids the value of money, that they must be prepared for the "real world." Kids must even "earn" their pocket money.

When we live in a society as socio-economically unequal as ours is, one of the hardest things to figure out is how to navigate this idea that one's hardworkingness defines one's success. This gets woven into earnings and money. I don't think this perspective of "you earn what you have" is good for kids, at least not without nuance. When kids earn their pocket money, for example, they risk internalizing that their value is somehow related to this ability to earn, and counterintuitively also get the sense that earning money is pretty easy. For example, in our neighbourhood, there's no way most kids could earn money for toys, and it seems silly to imply that that is for lack of effort. That is, amongst the well-off (that includes the middle-class) it's ultimately the parent earning the money or building the social connections needed to earn-- all of which could well be valuable, except if it teaches kids that resource-poor people should put in more effort. 

A better narrative, which I think is consonant with unschooling and which better reflects our reality, is this: "we are really lucky and will share whatever we have with you (and others)". Life is not lived in the abstract, of course, and sometimes I give my kids a confusing mix of these two narratives, and they have their own navigating to do. 

Unschooling has something powerful to add to dreams of a kinder world: kids need dignity, parents share what they can constrained by their own background and values, and what we have is not what we deserve. If we know ourselves well enough perhaps we will not need so much, we will not need to prove our worth either to ourselves or to others quite as much. Which is not to say that one cannot work towards all those things without unschooling, but that it's been a helpful framework for me.

I suppose it is also worth acknowledging that unschooling is a manifestation of power; we're open to it because we are doing well financially. A lot of people (particularly in wealthier countries) say that homeschooling is not only for the privileged. I disagree, and think it is totally an expression of privilege, at least right now. Yet I don't think it is necessarily a negative expression of privilege-- I don't think schools or our community is worse off for wont of our sending our kids to school. We have time and energy to be better connected to all ages in our neighbourhood, and to spend most of our money within a very small radius. The task is to make alternatives to school better and more accessible to more people. 

It is a struggle -- it's yet another layer of privilege. But it feels better to own it than to feel self-righteous about one's brilliant choices. I feel very frustrated at people who are super smug about consuming only organic local food: not only are you enjoying physical (health) privilege but you also get to feel great about your choices! The task in both cases is not necessarily to say that organic local food isn't good, but to acknowledge the world in which only a few people get to eat like that, and work towards changing that, step by step.  

Noah got to climb with my dad again!

pig heart dissection at our neighbour's place...

Watchtowers at Soetwater beach...

This is a game called Timeline (bought while in the U.S.), in which you guess the order of historical events (albeit a very Euro-centric history). Noah likes to memorize the cards to give him an edge on his opponents when we play. Even though he can't really read, he's memorized a lot of the cards.

We were so grateful to friends who sold us their entire collection of trains and duplos, very cheaply, after their son grew out of them.

Did you wonder how the seal is doing? Not well. We're going to check today in case there's a skull in it for us. We've cobbled together almost a complete skeleton, from a few different seals, but never been able to get a skull-- seeing this decomposition I can understand why, as the skull is clean well ahead of the rest of the body.

Free the frogs and dinosaurs. never seems to get old...

The dam was notably deeper, thanks to a much better August of rain.

We arrived to our spot to find that this Keurboom tree had fallen over because its roots were pretty shallow, right next Silvermine dam. The kids took turns jumping, before we realised we might be able to root it again...

Wait, we can stake this in the ground, and maybe it'll be just fine! We'll check.

This is our cat's first kill. We were going to dissect it, but our scalpels were a bit blunt so Noah said "let's not." and we gave him to the chickens instead. 

Guava's were our best (*only*) fruit tree crop this year. They kept coming for a while. Okay, there were 10 total. But they were big and tasty so I'm counting it a win.

More beach as we prepare for spring...

Blue bottles on the new moon. Check out that sting! 

It can be hard to find napa cabbages (Chinese cabbages) for kimchi here, so we grew some... Okay, we grew six. Enough for some kimchi.

You know how I said we weren't going to eat our ducks any more??? Well, in August 5 of our ducks went broody on eggs. We keep removing them but have to be a bit careful about how many we remove, because if they stop laying completely then it can be a while before they start up again. Here, I switched out 13 duck eggs for 13 chicken eggs, as we'd happily have more chickens (and have 4 other ducks sitting on a mixture of duck and chicken eggs-- we've never had success with hatching chickens out of a mixed nest, but I'm hoping a nest of just chickens might just work out. I'll know next month!

friendship. Sortof. cat licks guinea pig, but not sure if she's just tasting her.

tamarillo! hoping for fruit this season...

Guava 

Bear lime getting its spring growth!

pomegranate in spring-- by now we have over 20 pomegranate trees. Again, I'm hoping some will bear this year.

Thinking More about Unschooling

I vacillate a lot as a parent- from angry to super kind and loving, and everything in between. Parenting brings out all my own issues. Particularly with a new baby, I tend to have age inappropriate expectations of Noah, which is compounded by the fact that he's a toddler and is thus annoying to his parents. All this must be very confusing for Noah.

Thinking about this and, tangentially, the death of Maurice Sendak, I've recently found this website on unschooling really helpful. A lot of what I'm reading about unschooling encourages parents to see a situation from a child's perspective, which has been powerful for me.

I'm still use bribery, but I'm starting to try to understand why bribery works (perhaps as an acknowledgement  that I've just made him do something that he doesn't want to do), and how to make it less about bribery and getting Noah to do what I want-- which has the underlying attempt at control-- and more about figuring out how to live together as a family- with all the transitions that we're in the midst of.

He's not yet two, and so I'm not talking family meetings or deep discussions of feelings. I guess I'm just starting to figure out how to process Noah's behavior less personally and more in the context of his development and needs. Really, I just wanted to recommend that unschooling website.

In other news, Eug installed a motion-sensitive light in our front area, partially in the hopes that it would scare the cat who keeps pooping in the granadilla, and partially in the hopes that people will stop jumping over our wall and taking stuff from our tiny front space. While Eug connected the wires, Noah had free reign of the drill, which is surprisingly not very dangerous. If I had more energy I'd put Eli down, get up and download the video so you can see it. It may be that you don't need to see videos of our toddler, though. Here's to Noah turning two on Saturday- maybe that'll give me an excuse to post more photos and videos of him.

Unschooling TV and Two Year Olds

When I encountered unschooling, I found the idea of unlimited television most scary. The theory is, TV binges are an outlet to decompress after a hard day of work or school. So if a child or adolescent isn't forced into a structured, stressful environment, they'll only watch TV that's actually helpful to them in some way. Furthermore, parents should try not to judge what's helpful and what's not.

We don't own a TV, because I would likely watch TV all the time if we did. I hate that TV makes money by being a powerful force for making people buy stuff.

So what about ad-free seemingly innocent stuff? I clearly remember one day when Noah was a newborn and I was alone for the day with him for the first time. It was a big day in our Boston lives- Andrew's funeral and Saji and Charlene's wedding reception- and I was at risk of feeling as though I was missing out on life. I watched about six episodes of Grey's Anatomy on Hulu back to back. It presented tremendous comfort, even if not otherwise helpful to me.  The time passed, and that newborn hazy day passed blissfully with Noah in my arms and my mind on an imaginary story. Hulu was such a great thing in those times.

So the unschoolers sort of made sense to me- both in the sense that decompressing might sometimes helpful, even if not healthful, and in the sense that a forbidden fruit is all the more attractive. So we recently tried out freedom in screen time with unlimited Kipper on Youtube. I can see why parents would like TV. It was like having a babysitter while Eug made coffee or I made dinner. It made the journey easier these first weeks with Eli and renovations.

Yet rather than being excited about a little TV, Noah just wanted to watch Kipper all the time. While unschoolers suggest that there's benefit in not judging TV too harshly, watching so much Kipper doesn't quite feel right to me or Eug. We realized he wanted to watch partly because we were largely trying to figure out ways to get him out of our way the last several weeks. Whereas allowing a teenager to regulate his own screen time makes sense, it didn't feel like Noah, left to his own devices, would self-regulate in a way that was helpful to his development. So we're figuring out how to distract him towards other things and avoid having our computers around while we're caring for him. It's more work, but it seems to make sense. 

Although this means I'm still only dipping my toe into unschooling (and in this case, quickly pulling my toe out!), I want to get as much from unschooling philosophy as I can- around guiding natural curiosity rather than forcing learning and not trying to regulate behavior or control our children for the sake of control. I'm convinced that dealing with my own anger and control issues will improve my parenting immeasurably, and so I focus on those things first.

I liked this quote by John Holt about being two:

Even in the kindest and most loving families two year olds must be reminded a hundred times a day, perhaps by words and acts of their parents, perhaps by events, by Nature herself, that they are small, weak, clumsy, foolish, ignorant, untrustworthy, troublesome, destructive, dirty, smelly, even disgusting. They don't like it! Neither would I. Neither would you.

A snapshot of things that come up unschooling three little kids

A lot of this is likely to change as we find a new rhythm with my parents on the property, but I thought my last post about unschooling was pretty abstract so I wanted to be more specific today. A lot of people ask about unschooling if you work or do other things-- and this is us-- we juggle and it works out!

The last few months of building my parents house has meant our schedule has been complicated and busy, and coincided with Noah (8) and Eli (6) getting really into Minecraft (and now Terraria), while Hana (2) has needed a lot of our hands-on time. Part of me thinks that they got so into Minecraft because we were not as available to do fun and interesting things with them, and because the winter has brought a lot more illness this year than previous years. So the boys have played a lot of Minecraft. I say that totally fearful of judgement, and yet supportive of their strategy because our house has remained peaceful and happy during a potentially intense, overstretched time.

I'm not [yet] an unschooling mom who totally understands when my kids want to spend large chunks of the day gaming, but I have learned that it's all in how your perceive the situation (even if there are limits how far you can stretch yourself in the moment). I have said on various occasions to Eug "I think they are playing too much Minecraft!" I like that that hasn't led to us reverting to control. If a partner or another loved one was doing something you were concerned about: you might talk to them, see if they perceive an issue, discuss how to support them, protect your own boundaries, see what their motivations were or what they were going through or getting out of their approach. This is more or less what we've done,  and it's been an opportunity to reflect, and to think through how to support the kids in their interest, while also figuring out the extent to which they're playing to numb difficult feelings. It has been a chance to notice and appreciate that they have found ways to to meet their own needs and spend their days tremendously gracefully during a busy time. I appreciate that they'll know themselves better from these few months-- we talk about what we're doing with our days and why-- not in judgement but with interest, to reflect and think through choices and options. In doing this, I also notice that I'm making not-perfect choices: I have kept up with farm chores and propagation for our nursery, and with from-scratch cooking-- both of which require a huge amount of time and energy-- because that's was what I needed to do for myself. Yet this has come with costs and I could have sat with Noah, Eli and Hana more than I have done. So I'm working on doing that, now. In an ideal situation, we'd be giving them plenty of opportunities to connect and do other things if that's what they want. We were working to bring up the adult-child ratio on the farm, and so the temporary trade-offs seemed right to us.

Most days, either Eug or I wakes up early to start work (I sometimes go into work when I need to be at meetings, and then I leave very early to avoid traffic), and the other person gets to wake with the kids, start coffee and oats, feed the animals, and check on the state of the farm with Hana. When Eug is working, the boys don't play Minecraft because we don't have enough devices, so the kids and I will do something inside together, or work on something out on the farm (or sometimes I'll work on something, and they'll just join me). I bake a lot with Hana and occasionally do some cooking with Noah; Eli's favourite thing is to play boardgames and make up elaborate stories together. When with Eug, they'll often play Minecraft, with Eug in the background participating where he can (he'll sometimes play with them also).

Eug and I will switch after a few hours, and whoever is caring for the kids will make lunch. In the later afternoon, we will either be with individual kids, or Eug will work on the house and I will take the kids out to the beach, or to a couple of classes they participate in (clay lessons, swimming lessons, speech therapy, Scouts). I do speech therapy practice with Eli, while playing Star Realms, his favourite card game! It's not rushed most of the time. I will sometimes walk down the street with one or two kids, to our nursery and check in on how things are going. The kids will sometimes pair up and play together for a while-- legos, magnatiles, or telling stories outside, until something happens (If Hana is involved) and conflict comes and goes. I sometimes feel very busy if I look at the number of jobs I seem to have in addition to my actual full time job at the university. Then I settle into the actual day: what I actually need to do, and it is always doable-- though the issue of our kids' less visible needs is definitely something I'm thinking about more, as I tend to go from one task to the next, and kids are not tasks.

Amidst the imperfection, all three kids seem to learn what is relevant to navigate their day-to-day life, and what they enjoy-- I remain convinced that we can learn naturally, given interested and supportive people around us. We try to offer lots of interesting options, which sometimes are taken up, and sometimes aren't. I am not measuring whether they progress similarly to others of their age, though I do try to observe if they are stuck in a rut and if we can help. I do marvel at all they know from our reading of copious fiction and non-fiction together, and from watching Youtube-- this is even without me understanding all their skills from playing Minecraft-- and those are abundant. We discuss so many things together during the course of the day. I read quite a lot for work (and enjoyment), and talk to them about what I'm learning, and about what I'm learning about farming, also. All three kids can spot a spekboom from 100m (CUTTINGS MOMMY-- they even know the spekboom-on-pavement map of our routes and sometimes will generously say "There's a spekboom coming up soon, you can stop the car"). They know the kind of pelargonium that only grows naturally on Ou Kaapse Weg, know the difference between English, Dutch, French and Spanish lavenders (I learned this like a month ago) and can identify which chicken laid which egg based on size and colour. They know how to care for many different animals. More than what they know or don't know, we are learning how to relate to one another, and how to relate to other people, also.

Star Realms

We still get to the beach a lot

Soap carving

Found a lizard tail- it was still moving!

matching Minecraft and real life stones

Silvermine dam- it was too cold to swim so we walked around the dam instead. I could not keep up with my 2 year old, which is a bizarre twist.

dinosaur tea party.

Unschooling and doing what we love

One of my primary motivations for pursuing unschooling for Noah and Eli is this idea that we don't actually have to spend the bulk of our lives doing things we dislike. If that is true, and school is primarily drudgery in preparation for more drudgery in the working world, then it makes sense to see what happens if you scrap it all. 

How to Do What You love by Paul Graham is a great essay on this topic. An excerpt:
"If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring. Maybe it would be better for kids in this one case if parents were not so unselfish. A parent who set an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house."

I'm not sure we're there yet in terms of doing what we love, and conveying that to Noah and Eli. There's some balance here, and it takes a lot of negotiation and give and take, especially as part of a family. We somehow have to balance sacrifice to nurture our kids and provide some minimum financially, with nurturing ourselves. 

One argument against unschooling that's given me pause in the past is the argument around parent's time; that in order to unschool, our dreams have to be sacrificed for those of our children and on and on through the generations. We haven't figured this out yet. I'm trying to find what I love partially outside the house so that everyone else in the family can do the same- find our loves both internally and externally. With the physical demands of two small children, this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. But I feel quite safe that Noah is learning phenomenal things and that we're staying connected to one another and figuring out what works. I doubt we'll figure it out any time soon. 

Balancing Attachment Parenting, Elimination Communication and Transitioning to Cloth Diapers

Thanks for your feedback on Unschooling. I'll probably keep coming back to it as something I'm thinking about (as you all suggest, there's a balance to be had and each of us will probably find a different balance).

Attachment Parenting
Here's a recent article about a related subject: attachment parenting, which has raised a lot of discussion in parenting circles. When Noah was born, I hadn't heard of attachment parenting, but I did a lot of AP-like things. With Eli I'm much more conscious of what these things are- baby wearing, cosleeping, breastfeeding. Rather than being anti-feminist, which it's accused of, I found attachment parenting made me feel like I could rely on my instincts; I did it because it was easier and gave me confidence, not because it's necessarily better.

It would be a sad kind of feminism that didn't allow us our instincts and our connection with our babies. It's also silly to take things to extremes: I forget to put Eli down occasionally, which leads to ridiculous things like being in the toilet with him for two days straight and not brushing my hair or washing my face. But that's silly, because Eug is available and Eli also does great laying on his lambskin.

I'm not all that strident in many of my beliefs around baby care, but I really believe the context and timing of our choices may matter more than the actual choices. Research offers support for breastfeeding, but otherwise I simply don't know enough. Rather I want to use the wisdom of our instincts, of trusted friends and family, not because they're necessarily right (each generation has their own strange ideas), but because we can glean the context in which a particular child-rearing idea worked, or didn't.

Given how little we know and how much changes, wisdom is most powerful in the context of relationship and environment and figuring out what is working for a family: So if unschooling or attachment parenting is running you, your spouse, or your child into the ground, maybe it's time to change tactic. And if using some crutch (computer, running water, watching this 20 times with Noah) to pass the time is the difference between feeling like a run down, exasperated parent and not, I'd say use the crutch.  Though it's not always so easy to identify what's not working, is it!?

Elimination Communication
I've started taking Eli to pee in the bathtub (this is the only potty that's big enough for this boy) and it's fun. It's easier now, when he can't move around and he's peeing and pooping pretty much continuously.

When Eli was first born it felt a bit daunting to start, because he didn't like the potty and it's getting colder here, so it doesn't make sense for him to be naked for any length of time. But taking him to the bathtub with each diaper change has been a really easy way to start out.

Transitioning to Cloth Diapers/Nappies
The last thing that's happening here is the transition to cloth diapers. We spent the first two weeks in disposables- for the sake of sanity and because it was raining so much- and it's a little tough to get used to washing again every day (multiple loads). Eli also came out a little small for Bumgenius Diapers, our diaper of choice. Another reason to do elimination communication: laziness. The cost of disposables and the amount of trash we created in two weeks was staggering.

Happy Mother's Day! Here's to trying whatever works. Noah turned two yesterday! He also pulled out the external hard drive with our photos, so it no longer works- note how calm I am? That's how much I trust Eug to work miracles or look up on the internet how to work miracles.

Trees, Rats and Bathtubs

Upstairs, we have a bath and a sink which we are not changing in the foreseeable future. Noah loves bathing, but it's much too cold for Eug and I right now (and, with cold weather, our solar geyser has only been providing enough hot water for Noah. 

How do children not feel the cold??

Or the rain, apparently. Noah wanted to stay outside and play with rocks in the rain. We let him.

One tentative foray into unschooling has been to allow Noah to watch the cartoon Kipper any time he wants to. It's certainly not all the way unschooling (it's just Kipper, and he can really only watch an 8 minute clip again and again), but it's been refreshing to let go. I was a bit surprised that he really only wants to watch at the beginning of the day (maybe 8 minutes X 3, a blessing when Eug is making us coffee) and in the late afternoon (maybe 8 minutes total).

My dad came over to help cut our tree, which will make our wall collapse if it keeps growing (and prevent me from growing food in the little back area) It's so wonderful to have sun in the back now. 

Not sure if you can see the scissors in Noah's hands, but he's been helping to take the leaves off the branches-  the leaves we'll compost at my dad's, and the branches we'll put aside for a year to dry, then use as firewood.

Mushroom Pizzas. Mushrooms seem to be in plentiful supply at the moment, so I'm grilling them with tomatoes, bacon, cheese and garlic.

Observatory (note I avoid saying "our house") has a pretty serious rat problem. We have some holes in our floor, and pictured here is a potato a rat tried to drag into his home. No more humane traps. WAR.

Poor Eli. His picture follows a potato so that you get the full measure of his cuteness.

Tuesday Links

Over at My Plastic-Free Life Terry writes about canned food producers not revealing what they're using in can lining instead of BPA. When we arrived in Cape Town, we decided not to buy a can opener. It's slightly limiting, but it means I never have to look at parts of the grocery store, and I don't have to decide again and again whether to eat canned/tinned food- the choice has been made by simply not having an opener. In Boston, our main canned foods were pineapple chunks and peeled tomatoes- both because they were much cheaper than their fresh counterpart. What canned foods do you eat, and how can you avoid them if you'd like to?

I was inspired by this story of a mom who rides her six kids around on a bike! We initially hoped that we'd be a biking-only family, only to find it wasn't practical right this second. So I'm tucking it away on the blog so that it stays on my mind in the next couple of years, as we try different projects. When I look how far we've come, I know we'll get there soon, and that when we do, it'll be a joy, as it is for Emily, the mom in this post.

I came across Clare's blog when she commented on an unschooling post. I had a lot of fun browsing around, so if you need some unschooling-with-young-kids-inspiration, check out her blog!

I've occasionally written about my experience in an abusive church here on Concrete Gardener, but it's not been a primary forum for this experience. For those of you who have been similarly hurt, I want to encourage you to check out Darren's page where he provides a comprehensive resource all on one page. The books he recommends were also helpful to me.

As Rhonda says over at Down to Earth when she does her weekend reading: get a nice cup of tea, sit down, relax, and read!

Week in Review

I haven't been blogging as much recently because I've been thinking about thinking about my dissertation, (sleepless nights, two little people, and overly ambitious expectations.). Today, my reward for doing a tiny bit on my dissertation is the pleasure of writing a post while Eli nurses (and Noah is with my mom- thank you mom!) I have twenty minutes before Noah gets back, so sorry for the stream of consciousness and lack of editing:

First, some fun links:
Beet Chocolate Cake I'd be suspicious but my friend Bridget is in love with the stuff (and likely could share a recipe without sugar.) Beets are coming into season at Fruit and Veg City, so I'm going to try it out.
Christian Unschooling, a great blog for those of us who feel like unschooling would be "despite" our faith rather than "because".
No More Harvard Debt, for those of us who have paid off tens of thousands for our degrees. He's at a different point in his life than us (see six figure salary), but what I saw was a surprisingly relatable view of finances.

A shout out to our favorite coffee shop, Expresso Lab in the Old Biscuit Mill for giving us free beans in celebration of Eli's birth, and for always giving Noah the best Babycino in Cape Town. We love this coffee shop, and we'd love for all their coffee to go fully fair trade. Along these lines, Luke, our friend with big coffee dreams is back from his trip to Ethiopia where he was discovering what might be possible linking fair trade coffee and small business entrepreneurs, starting in Ethiopia. I hope to feature more of his story here.

Our photo library is still lost. There's hope, but it's sort of sad so we're struggling to make a new photo library and start over. I know that you stop by to see pictures of Noah and Eli. Poor Eli has lived a thus far undocumented life.

I was thinking more about pregnancy and parenting preferences, but I've run out of time, so I'll rename this post "week in review" and talk more about parenting choices later.

July 2017: Unschooling, vegetables, no more duck killing

July! We're coming out of the fog of our trip to the US and Canada, which felt like it took about three months out of our year. (A month before, a month there, a month after). Even though our trip didn't turn out quite as we hoped, coming back I've noticed we're taking all these leaps, maybe because the kids are growing up, or maybe because we were outside of our comfort zone and that caused unexpected growth. Perhaps because we saw people we love and were able to take stock, in a small way, of where we've been, where we are, where we hope to be.

This month I've had to evaluate my work (like, the paid stuff) for the next few years... I'm set to work until the end of 2019. I am so grateful that I was able to negotiate to continue in a space where I can largely work from home, which is not the case for many people in academic research. I am also able to do research largely in my own neighbourhood, which means that my (public health food) research meaningfully intersects with our farm dreams.

Unschooling sometimes requires leaps of faith, but I think usually what is best is if you take progressive tiny steps of trust, rather than leaps. When it's tiny little steps of trust, you're able to see signs of growth and flourishing, whereas when you're trying to take a leap, it sometimes implies that you ignore signs from your family, waiting it out, thinking you haven't yet landed after the leap. When we've decided "no bedtimes!" "No screen limits!" it generally doesn't go well (I think it is too confusing for the kids!), but when it's gradual: when we sit with our kids and help them decide what they love on an iPad, or when we're open to the possibility of a gradual shift in bedtime routine, it goes much better. Which is to affirm that it's centrally about the fruitfulness of the process, rather than the destination. Which isn't to say we should endlessly tweak things until the process is perfect-- I sometimes do that! I think it means we try to rest in relationship with our kids, as best we can.

One irony about being on the farm is that a lot of times the kids are indoors. We came to a new awareness of this when they were bouncing off the walls at bedtime, and we realised they hadn't done any exercise all day. We don't force them to do chores, though I suppose sometimes we do coerce Noah (trying not to). The kids love the animals and I want to keep it that way... I'm not quite sure how to make the farm a joy and not a burden that takes us away from them. Perhaps as it becomes less of a burden (uhh... labour of love??...) to us, we'll be able to invite the kids into sharing the process in a way that feels less like we're trying to unload the burden of our values onto them. So Eug and I spend quite a bit of time doing chores, and if the weather is good then usually the kids sortof gravitate with us. Anyway, we've been intentionally getting outside on the farm a bit more. I still take the kids to the beach or mountains once or twice a week, which can make it feel like they are getting plenty of time to roam and exercise, but actually this is not the kind of daily, continuous bursts of speed they seem to need.

Our duck population was large, and we'd finally found a duck stew we really enjoy and were regularly killing ducks (6 since we got back from our trip). There were two major problems with the duck farming strategy. One was that it never got any less time-consuming, though dry plucking first did seem to help. So Eug would spend his entire working day on a Saturday killing two ducks-- they took about 90 minutes per duck, and each duck gave us just one meal for the five of us. So we knew this was not a great approach to meat, after all. The plucking is just too difficult for us as a regular part of our week, and an entry level mechanical plucker costs about R9000 here ($750). Hard to justify right now.

The second problem was bigger: Noah has never gotten used to our eating ducks. He's actually ok with pigs and chickens going to slaughter, but never ducks. Everything I've read suggests that children under the age of about 10 are intuitively matter-of-fact about the process, but for Noah each duck death felt like a trauma (though we've certainly never had him actually witness it. He was happy to be part of the rooster processing). Which added to the labour (I needed to take the kids off-farm, and it was by no means a learning opportunity, though raising the ducks has certainly been), and to the sense that the process just didn't add up. His tears were an expression of very real pain... not really what we were hoping for as far as farming goes... So no more duck killing and eating. We're gradually selling the ducks we already have, and will keep just a few for the sake of our farm's diversity, for eggs, and in case Noah changes his mind or we have more time. It has been a major lesson in meat production, but at least we can say we tried it. I feel huge gratitude now whenever we eat meat, and am thinking more about how we should eat on the farm.

I imagine it will change as the farm changes. Right now I am spending a lot of time thinking about our vegetable garden. Growing vegetables year-round seems to be one of the best things we can do as a next step. We have a lot of trees in the ground-- I would love to put more trees in, but with the drought the question would be how we could water them next summer given the layout of the farm. In August I'll be focused on setting up water systems for vegetables (a small hand pump, together with a pump coming out of our reservoir). Vegetables can be very water intense, but we'd have systems in place to make it as efficient as we can, and then, I am sure, begins a new stage of learning. I've grown vegetables here and there, but this is a real effort to supply a much bigger portion of our diet with vegetables we grow ourselves.

Anyway, we are living and learning. We had our first taste of home-grown guava this month, which Noah said was "magical." While it is sometimes hard to see what exactly we are doing, or whether our kids are maturing, our kids say excitedly each night "I can't wait until it's morning!" That seems like enough.

Noah is helping out on the neighbour's farm once a week, feeding 100 pigs and 200 chickens. It's lovely for him-- he's learning and growing from the experience.

Barley feed!

Chicken feed!

Noah also got to go on a hike to the nearby waterfall with just his grandfather! There hasn't been nearly enough rain for winter, but the waterfall is still flowing, which is a really good sign.

I didn't expect that Cape Point would be the kids' favourite spot in winter, but it is. Noah and Eli are in this picture, as they run out of the car so fast that they're by the ocean before Hana is even out of the car seat. 

We found a dead seal on the beach, and did what anyone would do...

inspect its large teeth.

Drag it up away from the waves, so that it wouldn't be pulled back into the ocean...

... and come back weekly to see how the seal's body was doing... (week 2 it was completely buried, but week 3 it was back)

Week 3: The skull is almost ready for relocation...

We saw a Cape Clawless Otter, which made me extremely excited. Can you spot it?

Otter is still in the picture!

The kids felt that if they approached on all fours, the otter would not be scared and run away. Mmmm.

tracks

Cape Point has the most amazing shells. We go at low tide so that we can look at a lot of rockpools, and we put them back carefully.

Unsafe modes of transport. This is a directionless trolley gifted to us by someone. It's basically used to crash at high speeds.

These waves are extraordinarily cold. 

Epsom salt crystals. 

building with spielgaben. 

Another winter's day, another.... beach???

Silvermine hiking

Big girl doesn't need a ride anymore.

She does, however, need to pick up every single rock on the way.

Boys ran ahead and had to circle back to find Hana and I.

penguin babies are everywhere. 

We had the entire penguin beach to our selves, because the penguins are all hiding in the bushes with their babies, and it's the middle of winter.

Noah made me call a ranger about this adolescent penguin because at first she looked... dead.. and then... uncomfortable stuck between two rocks. But she's just a firstborn, waiting for her younger siblings to grow up so her mom can come out of the bushes, onto the rocks to hang out with her. A metaphor for first borns of all species?

Mid winter swimming.

with auntie Kim.

These are our annual beds. 2 years and a lot of labour (and a lot of horse manure) in the making... finally ready and starting to grow stuff.

starting to grow vegetables...

Noah's toad raft... our reservoir is a good breeding ground for endangered toads, but if they get in they can't really get out.

Eli's Toad raft...