Panic Attack!

So I’ve heard of the phenomenon but had not until today, experienced it for myself. Veteran Unschoolers often describe moments of panic, feeling that one should drag out all the textbooks and worksheets, that one’s child is not keeping up with the Joneses educationally. That’s exactly how I’m feeling today. I think it’s tied to periods of time that are not going so well in my own life. It creates feelings of needing to prepare my children so they don’t go through what I’m going through. What is difficult to see in these moments is that by releasing control over their future and allowing them to experience life as it is and not through a textbook, they will actually be prepared to handle situations like the one I’m in right now. It’s unreasonable to think they won’t make the same mistakes as I did and that is something that I have got to get over. It’s just so hard!

Something else that has been bothersome is the passive resistance I’ve been getting from my husband. Don’t get me wrong, he’s been very supportive of my desire to unschool our boys. I just wish he would read the book by Rue Kream that I asked him to read 3 months ago. In his defense, he doesn’t enjoy reading, he’s much more into audiobooks. Maybe I can read it and record it to a tape so he can listen to it in the car? It’s just hard to unschool when he doesn’t know the techniques I want to use in parenting and he’s trying to do it the “old school” way. If he would read the book, it would be such a tremendous help and would prevent many disagreements between us. It’s been difficult for me to stay the course because I’m extremely stressed out trying to anticipate his reaction when the kids “misbehave”. Radical unschooling is definitely the way to go though. Iain and Ryan are just thriving in this atmosphere. I asked Iain today if he wanted to go back to the way we used to do things and he said no. He enjoys the freedom he has and feels like he’s learning a lot even without a structured format. To further his point he told me that 2×3 and 3×2 are the same thing – 6. I asked him how he knew that and he said, “easy! two 3’s equals 6 and three 2’s equals 6.” We don’t talk about times tables and I don’t know how or why he’s even thinking about it but he is and that’s cool. Completely without my influence and I love it!

Well, writing this post actually helped me work through my frustration with Sean’s lack of interest in reading An Unschooled Life. I think I’m going to get started recording it now!