Be the tree

I'm not satisfied. That last post, that didn't feel real. Oh sure, it gave a nice glancing update into a few easy-to-tackle topics, but it didn't get to the meat of what we're working on around here, and how hard it is.

I'm torn on this. Part of me IS having fun, genuinely, and wants to focus on all that joy because it's what's most important. But I also feel like doing that does a disservice to others who are swimming upstream and having a hard time of it, because the last thing I want to do is gloss over the hard parts and leave those parents feeling that they're doing something wrong because they're not covered up in joy all the time.

Let me tell you about a night last week when I fought with Noodle, literally, for 30 minutes because he was angry at me and needed to show it. We had swords, and this was serious (he actually said that at one point when I was being too playful, he said "this is serious", and I collapsed in giggles because all I could hear was Ming-Ming the duck), and kiddo even got in a couple of good licks. And you know what, there were points during that fight when I thought "this is ridiculous, a million other parents would have shut this shit down immediately", and part of me wanted to do that. To send him to his room until he can "be nice" or walk away from his anger because as an adult I have that option and can explain all the reasons why he's wrong for being angry at me because I wasn't trying to upset him. But I kept at it. I kept parrying and using pillow shields and running away scared, I kept letting him charge at me out of genuine anger, because a smaller but stronger voice was saying, "if you don't show him how to love someone through their anger, who will? If you don't accept his anger and let him share that part with you, how will he ever be sure you love ALL of him?" And I told him, when he asked why I was smiling when he was so angry, that I had a choice in how I dealt with his anger. I told him that part of me wanted to get angry back, and make his anger go away by making him scared of me, but that I didn't think that was good for him. I'd rather let him show me his anger if he doesn't want to tell me about it, and hope that by doing that he'd know I'm okay with him being angry with me and eventually learn how to talk about it. Or at least we'd both be really good swordfighters. I realized that I had a choice: I could talk to my son about both of our feelings, or I could shut his down and risk him not sharing them with me in the future.

We've also let go of bedtimes, and let me tell you THAT has been a process. Not that we're done or anything, lol, just that it's been going on long enough for me to see it's not a quick thing. It started a long time ago with us declaring the weekend nights to be "No-Bedtime Bedtimes", then progressed as we all started to develop our own after-dinner flow on the weeknights, and continued as Daddy-O and I have stopped alternating nights of being responsible for each group of kids (the boys in their room and Monkeygirl in hers) and simply started offering to be available for nighttime cuddles and tuck-ins. It's extra hard because Noodle, with his Minecraft obsession, will often be up playing until 11pm, then he wants 15 minutes of cuddles and I'm not out of their room until Midnight, at which point there aren't enough hours before Monkeygirl gets up in the "norning", as she calls it, for me to feel rested and ready for the day. I know it will work out, but it's going to take a lot of finessing to make it happen.

In short, we've jumped feet first into what we call, for lack of a less formal-sounding term, "consensual living". We try to include the kids in decisions which involve them, to an extent that is appropriate for them and manageable for us. For instance, when I was doing doula work for a year, I had a couple of 24+ hour births that really upset my kids. They didn't know when I was going to have to leave to go help a mama, they didn't know when I'd be back, and I was largely unavailable while I was gone. They didn't like it. But we needed an additional source of income, so I offered up a compromise: I'd quit doing doula work out of respect for their needs, but I'd add back in a weeknight childbirth class that I hadn't taught since I got pregnant with the Monkeygirl. They felt heard and respected, they had proof that their voices matter, and our household still got what it needed in order to be able to "go".

The hardest part of all this, really, is fighting what I've been taught all my life and the knee-jerk reactions that result. The desire to make my children into people that are "no trouble" instead of people who ask for what they want and make things happen for themselves. Two days ago the boys were playing online games and Skyping with a friend, and that friend mentioned that another family we love was coming to their house to play. Tex immediately said "Mom, can you call and ask if we can come over, too?" Ugh, grimace, cringe. You want me to what, now? You want me to call and invite ourselves over to play??? Oh, the rudeness, the utter gaucherie of such a move! I told my son how wrong it felt to me, how much it bothered me to make that call. But God bless his persistence, he continued to ask and I was forced to think about why it was such a problem. The truth is that either one of these families would let us know if joining the playdate wasn't a good plan, so what was the harm in calling? So I did, stating upfront to the mom that I knew it was rude so that she would know I knew, because above all I didn't want to be thought of as inconsiderate. She asked her kids, she asked the other family, and they all said "are you kidding, if you come over we'll have enough adults to do the zip line!!" And a wonderful time was had by all. Including me, old Mommy Stuffypants.

So yeah, it's not easy, this Unschooling, consensual lifestyle. It requires a lot more listening, thinking, bending, and perspective-shifting than I ever expected to have to do as a parent. It requires me to acknowledge that, no, I do NOT always know what is best for my children, and that if I want more information I should go to the source. But thank God for it. Truly. I hate to think of the kind of mother I would have had to become in order to fit my family into the current popular model. I hate to think of the wall I would have had to build between my children and myself in order to be able to stomach forcing them to bend. Instead I like to think that we all do our share of bending, and that like a tree, it will make us stronger in the end.