Flipping the switch: Leaving the schooled frame of mind behind

Here we go again..... I have my moments where I think for sure I have made the wrong decision. "I should have put them in school from the beginning", "I have failed them", the negative self doubt can go on and on.  Today was one of those moments.  They last only briefly, and oddly seem to happen on a 'cycle'. But of course not everything can be blamed on this coincidental 'cycle'.   Each time I have these moments of doubt something happens that reminds me of why we chose this life.  It can be a quote (thanks Stef), or a exciting discovery the boys make, or it can be my husband telling me how grateful he is that I do what I do.

Our journey is our own, like many aspects of our parenting style.  We have chosen a less travelled path and therefore have a lonelier road.  I don't feel others should follow this path, although it would certainly be less lonely if we knew more families who did.  It is important that a family make decisions for their own based on what is best for the whole, not to make decisions based on what everyone else is doing or ignoring the facts because the facts make them uncomfortable, but to make decisions for their family eyes wide open.  I believe it is important to know why you are doing things, the possible consequences, the possible joys and to go forth with that information with a sense of confidence.  You may falter, loose that sense of surety for while, you may even change your mind.

I have taken to not using the term unschooling as what we do is not really related to school at all.  I have used it to describe our learning choices.  I also use the words "school" or "schoolish stuff" to make what we might be doing more relate-able in my blog.   My biggest struggle with our choice in educating our children is me. I am my own thorn in my side.  It is when I see our lives in relation to my 'schooled' way of thinking that I allow doubt to creep back in. 

I need to deschool myself.  I need to get out of the mind set that school is the base line for normal.  You may not like the term deschool, it might rub you the wrong way or feel offensive and oppositional to schooling.  Here is why I feel it is not.  School is an institution, home is something entirely different.  They are not even close to the same.  I intend to educate my children, schools are in place with the intention to educate children but the process of education does not in anyway need to be the same. I would go as far to say it shouldn't be the same. School is a place, it is not a state of being, it is not a process.  It is a place, a location where set rules are put into practice to facilitate their objectives.   I grew up like most everyone else learning in an environment where those rules guided my childhood years.  That is my frame of reference for education.  Until our journey into home education I have only experienced education as it is done in a school setting*****I have only acknowledged education as it is done in a school setting as I have experienced education everywhere.   My children do not have that frame of reference.  I am the one that needs to turn the switch and deschool my brain to best meet our family's needs and education at home.  The rules and schedules set out in a school simply do not apply.  Now, that is easier said than done.  Want to sit back and watch me try?  Want to join me?