Aftershocks

Today, I asked my mom if she had gotten any new comments regarding the article in the paper and she said she had not. Then I realized that I hadn’t heard what my grandparents thought about it so I inquired about their reaction. She paused and it was a Loooong pause so immediately I knew something was up. “You don’t want to know”, she said. Well, I reassured her that indeed I wanted to know their reaction, it didn’t matter whether it was good or bad. Suffice it to say it wasn’t good. See, my grandparents are very, very old school and on top of that, my grandfather was a math teacher and high school track coach for many years. They didn’t even read the whole article but they determined that they completely disagree with what I’m doing and you know what? I’m okay with that. They’re o-l-d, not saying that the elderly don’t have anything to offer because certainly they do. What I’m saying is it’s hard for them to accept something so far outside of the norm for them. When you’re 88, you’ve come to have some opinions and that’s just how it is.

The beautiful thing about this is how vigorously my parents defended me and my children. I can tell that my father is not totally on-board with unschooling and that’s fine. They’re not his kids, he’s not raising them, so as long as he doesn’t express his disagreement or negative opinions in front of the boys, we have no problems. What’s cool is that even though he disagrees with me, he supports me 100% and isn’t that the spirit of what unschooling is about? The problem he has is that he can’t refrain from trying to influence me with his opinion but that’s okay. He supports my decision and that is what really matters when the chips are down. I was sitting this afternoon, reflecting on the things I’ve complained about regarding my dad over the years and the one thing I come back to is that he has always been the one who supported me in whatever I did, even if he thought it was completely insane. Oh, he let me know upfront that he thought I was crazy or ridiculous but he didn’t stop me from doing whatever it was I wanted to do and I really love and appreciate him for that. I can’t imagine the adventures I would have missed out on if it weren’t for him allowing me to follow my own mind. Thank you, Daddy. I really do appreciate you!

I was going to go into detail about what my grandparents said but then decided there’s really no point. It’s just the typical argument and coming from two people who didn’t even deign to read the entire article it doesn’t mean too much. I’d be happy to describe it in an email if anyone’s interested though. It just seems like putting the words here gives them more power than they deserve so I won’t do that.