on Unschooling ` Homeschooling

Home schooling Home Schooled Children Feeling "Free At Last?"

Q: I have begun home schooling our children. However, finding the perfect teacher has been challenging.
A: When people use the word "teacher", the vibration that matches the word often feels more like asserter than it does like allower. But, the ideal teacher is one who is an open vortex through which desire can be satisfied, where an asserter is one who has information that they are wanting to impart. Jerry and Esther visited with a magnificent founder of a wonderful school, *Sudbury Valley School in MA. And he offered something that was so clarifying to Esther. He said that their teachers never say, "Well, Johnny, don't you think you would like to learn to read?" because they are understanding that unless Johnny is asking to read, that the effort that everyone makes is going to be uncomfortable anyway. The ideal teacher is one who understands that desire to know is natural, and is someone who stands by ready to offer examples to satisfy the desire of the student What made you realize it wasn't working out?
Q: Behavior issues with the kids they were not liking the restraints
A: The kinds of things they said to you were, "We thought it was going to be a whole lot more fun. We thought we were going to get to do more of what we wanted to do, and we thought we were going to get to choose." And that's the way you felt when you were born, you thought you were going to get to choose, that was the bargain. And then somebody else says, "Well, here you are, and you don't get to choose. You don't get to choose where you sit, or when you come, or how long you sit there, and you don't get to choose what we think about. You don't get to choose when you talk, and you don't get to choose what we talk about. In other words, you are not free, you are our captives. And we are here to assert good stuff into you." And they say, "Ah, give me a break! That's not what the bargain was. I came understanding that I am a creator. I came knowing that I get to choose." It takes years to beat that out of them. It takes years and years before they are willing to sit there and be quiet and do only what is supposed to be done when it is supposed to be done. It takes a long time to conform you into your unhappiness. Oh, it is so delicious! When you have an environment where children feel free, where they get to choose, and you are brave enough to ride it out In other words, at first they'll choose all of the things that you have been convinced are wrong But when you are brave enough to let it go far enough that they actually do identify their own personal desire, and then you stand as the loving implementer of their desire -- you would never go back to any other form. The other never worked. It doesn't work even a little bit. It doesn't work at all. Not even a little bit.

Children, Kahil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against
her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not
to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for
gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The Greatest Gift To Give To A Child

Your children came forth pure and eager and knowing that all is well, to try to remind those who have come before them of something that they have forgotten. And so, that's why the generation gap will always be there. These bright young beings come forth feeling invincible, and their parents, who are not feeling so invincible, spend most of their life, teaching them to feel less and less invincible. And we say, how backwards is that? You're wanting your children to be empowered. Self-empowered. That is the greatest gift that a parent can give to a child!

dependent children

Parents don't want their children to make the wrong decisions, so they don't allow them to make the decision. And then the child becomes dependent, and then the parent resents that, and it gets off into a blameful thing early on. If you are encouraging children to do all that they can do and not squelching the natural eagerness that is within them, so that they can shine and thrive and show you and themselves how good they are at adapting then everyone wins.

Children's platform

Children coming forth today have a greater capacity to deal with the greater variety of information that is coming forward than you did. They deliberately are coming forth into this environment where there is more to contemplate. This generation gap that you are talking about, it has ever been thus. Each new generation, every new individual, that comes forth, is coming with you having prepared a different platform for them to proceed from. There is this thing that gets in the way of that that says, "I'm the parent. I got here first. I know more than you do." From the children's perspective, what they are saying is, "You're the parent. You got here first. You prepared a platform that I am leaping off from and my leap will be beyond anything that you have ever known."

you are free

The children desire freedom! And every particle of their being from their Source says, "You are free. You are so free, that every thought you offer, is responded to." And so, to take that kind of knowledge and try to confine it in any way, defies the Laws of the Universe. You must allow your children to be free, because the entire Universe is set up to accommodate that. And anything you do to the contrary will only bring you regret. You cannot contain those that cannot be contained. It defies Law.

words of empowerment

Relative to our children or any children with whom we would interact, our one dominant intention would be to give them a conscious understanding of how powerful and important and valuable and perfect they are. Every word that would come out of our mouths would be a word that would be offered with the desire to help this individual know that they are powerful. It would be a word of empowerment. We would set the Tone for upliftment and understand that everything will gravitate to that Tone if we would maintain it consistently.

individual talents

You are really individual beings, with very special talents, and it would be nice if teachers had the time, or parents had the awareness or skill, to see the children as the very individual, very special beings that they are. So that rather than trying to drum them into one category, they are, instead, appreciating the special insight that each child brings to the sea of diversity and contrast which is the stuff that creation comes from.

once you know you want it, think thoughts that match it

Q: An issue that [has] come up for me a number of times is regarding parenting.
A: We don't recommend it. We don't recommend being a parent or having one.
Q: It's good advice. I have a six-year-old right now who... I guess where I struggle, a lot of the thing that you teach about parenting are letting people make their own decisions or, you know, now moving into this controlling mode. There are certain positions I am placed in where I am the decision maker -- for example, I choose what school he goes to go, I choose what toys he can have. I struggle with that. Could you talk that a little bit, when the child is younger....
A: We will come back and talk about the specifics of that if you want, but we want to talk about something bigger first, and that is that as a parent, as you are approaching your child from the standpoint that it's a dangerous world that you are protecting him from, that's one vibrational mindset that will produce a whole set of results. And there's another vibrational mindset that says 'this is a safe universe and my child has guidance, and well-being is the basis of his experience.' So many parents approach their children as if the world is very dangerous and as if they are trying to protect them from all of the things that go wrong, which automatically disconnects you from your Source, from your reason, from your clarity, from your intuition, and the little one knows that it's happening all along. Because in his early life experience, he is still trusting in well-being. That is the greatest discord that takes place between parents and children: if the child feels safe and the parent doesn't think the child *is* safe. A parent would say, "Yes, Abraham, but bad things happen to these children." And we say not in an environment where their sense of well-being is fostered. In other words, parents work so hard at distorting the sense of well-being of their children, and then they complain about things going wrong and then use that evidence as the reason that they're wanting to protect them to begin with. What a backwards spiral that is, you see. So the thing that we would most work on from the perspective of parent is we would remind ourselves what a great universe this is and how well things are going and how magnificently orchestrated it is and what an amazing little body that is and how miraculous it seems that all the components of that body are working so amazingly well. We would watch for evidence of their intuitiveness and of their adaptation to their environment. And we would praise them at every opportunity and note how well they are doing, and we would anticipate them to be very different, we would not try to pound them into any regular roles. We would accept him as the individual that he is and take great delight in everything that he's doing that is even the slightest bit different in nature. We would just be beating the drum of the magnificence of this being. We would fast-forward in our mind and we would pretend that our son turned out to be the most successful, happy anything that ever lived upon the planet, and we would be crowing... about the role that we played in all that, and we would approach every day of their life from that fast-forward vantage point. In other words, we would pretend that they were ultimately successful, which from our vantage point means that they were ultimately happy and always find satisfying things that made them feel an in-this-moment love of life. And we would spend as little time correcting them and corralling them and trying to inhibit them and contain them as possible. We would just be bolstering their individuality and looking for evidence of it and reflecting it back to them over and over again. And the words that would... come out of our mouth that our little one would hear most often [would be], "You are amazing. You are so bright. You have such wonderful guidance. I always know that you will make the right decision. Oh, that was a good choice, Oh, I like what you've done here. Ooh -- really, really good job. Oh, I love that. Oh, it's very nice to be with you. Well, aren't you the smart one. Well, aren't you the fun one. Well, aren't you the clever one. Well, aren't you the beautiful one." In other words, we would just bombard them, we would treat them exactly as their conscience treats them, in real live words. His conscience would say to him, "I adore you. You are perfect. You are magnificent. Wasn't that fun? Let's do that again. It's all right." In other words, his conscience is rooting, rooting, rooting for all of those things [about which] parents are trying to say, "No, no, don't do that!" That's that duality that we were talking about earlier, isn't it? In other words, Inner Being knowing your perfection and mother not being quite so sure. Conscience knowing how clever you are and mother not being quite so sure. Yes.
Q: Can we chew on the specifics a little bit?
A: If we must.
Q: I must. 'Cause I go back and forth on this issue.
A: Well, don't do that.
Q: Well, he was in kindergarten and he was miserable....
Abe: Because it is containing.
Q: I know that.
A: It is boring. It is so boring! How would you like to go someplace where they don't let you do any of the things that you really want to do?
Q: Well, I began to recognize that the kindergarten that he was in was...
A: Boring!
Q: ...not a good fit. Abe: Boring! Boring! Boring! Like jail. With crayons.
Q: Okay, so I pulled him out. I have a six-year-old around all day long now. And it conflicts with what I want, too. I mean, I want to explore....
A: We understand. We understand. It's why you put all of your criminals in jail. In other words, you want them out of your hair.
Q: Well, what I would like for him is to be in an environment where he is inspired to pursue his interests. And when I pulled him out of his school, I really felt terrific about it. I felt like I was in touch with my intuition and -- but that's where I get stuck. How much is it just 'oh, I'm just satisfying my desire, I hate to see him cry in school, I hate to see him struggle, so I'm just making myself feel better by pulling him out'?
A: That might be, and it's all right if that is, but...we really think that you were doing your best to look at his best interest in doing all of that. But here is the thing that we most want you to hear: So he was in an environment that was not a good match for him, and the intensity of his response let you know that. And we think it's a wonderful thing. Don't you think it's great...
Q: Yeah, I do.
A: ...that his emotions were telling you, that [they] let you know that this was not a good match for him? And we love it that he erupted in that way. We would much rather that he let you know through his emotional response that it wasn't a good match than that he just bucked up and endured, and later became an alcoholic over it. We're not kidding. There are so many people that contain themselves in so many ways and then their behavior is affected in some other way. But the experience for you is that out of this is born a new desire that you did not have access to before. You now know that you want him to have some place to go, some place [where] he's stimulated, someplace that is a good match for him. Someplace where there are other high-energy children who like to do lots of different things, someplace where they're allowed more flexibility and more freedom. And we promise that those places exist -- they're all over the place. And now that desire's been activated within you, you have access to it, where you did not have access to it before. But you will not be able to reach this new desire if you keep beating the drum of how you did not like that school or if you keep beating the drum of now he's in your hair or... now you don't have the freedom that you are wanting. In other words, you have to be careful not to keep beating those drums because you don't have to explain anything to anybody. You don't have to justify your desire for him to be in school or your desire for him to have a fun place to be. That desire is natural, and it's nice that it's been born within you. And the Universe has heard it, and the Universe is not asking for any justification from you, just vibrational alignment. So how might you vibrationally align with that idea? By pretending that it's already happened. By waking up in the morning and pretending that it's already the day, even though it may not be, that this is the day he gets to go to the place that he really wants to go. By imagining that you're waking up, and he's in there before you even get your eyes open, saying, "Can we go? Can we go? Can we go?" That he's coming home with all kinds of things that he's created or thought about, or new friends that he's found, that he is just full of all of this exuberance for life as he's now found someone who understands him and plays with him and appreciates the power of his genius as you are coming to do. We think that you can have anything that you want. You can find something that will be satisfying for you at the same time, but you couldn't have it before you had an experience that made you identify that you want it. And now you know that you want it, all you have to do is think thoughts that match it and it will be yours. And fast -- it is our expectation

Children CAN learn in joyous freedom

"The premise of the school is, no one learns anything, really, unless they have a sincere desire to learn it. And so, the premise of the school is- we don't teach you just for the sake of teaching, if you want to learn something and you express your desire to us, we will do everything we can to assist you in learning. But no one- no teacher, no faculty member- is even allowed, much less encouraged, to go to Little Joseph and say 'wouldn't you like to read this or wouldn't you like to learn about this?' It is ALL left to the desire of the child. The basis is unless you are asking, then there is no answering that comes forth, and when you are asking, the answering is always coming forth, you see."

(pass these links below to parents and/or teenagers you know)

Smothering Natural Learning

Your educational systems, however, for all of their idealism, have largely ended up smothering the natural individual bents and leanings of children, and overemphasized instead the cultural organization. It became more important, then, for the child to conform to the culture rather than to follow its own individual natural leanings. Its own characteristic ways of dealing with nature were frowned upon, so that education does not work with the child's abilities, but against them. Education then often goes against the grain of the natural person.This does not mean that some children do not do very well under your system. I do not mean to imply, either, that children do not need an education, or that some discipline and direction are not beneficial. Children, however, will concentrate for hours at a time on subject matters and questions that interest them. They are often taken from such pursuits, and their natural habits of concentration suffer as a result.

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Unschooling and Friendships
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Unschooling: Words and Thoughts HOW CHANGING WHAT WE SAY CAN CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK What Teaching Never Can Be "Learning" vs. "Teaching"
Learning to See Differently
Welcome to Spiritual Unschooling Definitely "a horse of a different color!"
BORED NO MORE
REJECTING A PRE-PACKAGED LIFE
Refining Basics
When Jon Came Home
No Fear!
Moving a Puddle
You Could Grow Up to be President!
But aren't we supposed to not care about that stuff? Isn't that why we're unschooling?
"Open School in the True Sense of the Word"
Joy ` Life couldn't be better
Accomplished Poets
Schoolchildren
Essays
Unschooling - Sandra Dodd Balancing in the Middle Ground
Unschooling and the Art of Running