#gentle parenting
What does a homeschool kid do all day?
We spend some time doing one-on-one work on paper and workbooks, but most of the time he’s living life by playing, exploring, and helping us. It turns out these are great ways to learn.
July 14, 2017
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Judas Jr. started a week of summer day camp at Hartley Nature Center yesterday. He had a blast and that night we grilled venison and hotdogs and had a fire in the yard with smores. Since we homeschool this was a good way for him to have time with oher kids but without the drawbacks (including massive time sink) of traditional school. Everything is nature-based and interactive with a lot of outside time.
He’s never been away from both of us before and I felt extremely anxious about leaving him with what is essentially a stranger. He’s never even had a babysitter, instead we’ve coordinated work schedules so he always had one of us and I stayed home with him for the first several years. So rather than drop him and go, we busied ourselves on the bike trails for the duration of his class. That way we were on the grounds if he needed us. It was really nice and fun for all of us and we even crossing paths a few times while his group did outdoor activities.
We brought his little balance bike/kickbike along and arrived early so he could ride with us beforehand. I can’t praise this style of bike enough. The whole training wheels method is rediculous because kids just learn how to ride a bike with extra wheels. Once those go off they then have to learn balancing from scratch and it makes no sense. On a kickbike it’s a regular two-wheeled bike but without peddles. Kids use their feet to run and push the bike, they glide with their feet up and put them down instinctively when they need to and end up learning how to ride intutively. The also seem a lot more agile and capable racing around dirt, grass, and mud.
July 25, 2017
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I’m so happy to see Black people parenting differently from their own upbringing. Why subject your child(ren) to the trauma you endured and hated from your parents? I’m especially happy where little Black girls are concerned. When young, we were labeled “sassy”, we needed an “attitude” adjustment, ‘we thought we were grown’ and blah blah all because no one told us how to express ourselves. And even if we did know how, we were told to hold our tongues out of respect. And if we were allowed to speak, our feelings were immediately invalidated because the adults taking care of us had problems worse than ours and we didn’t pay bills.
Some of the kids are alright.
My little cousin was just diagnosed with ADHD and the doctor said in girls, anger is a symptom. Made me wonder how many Black girls were labeled with “bad attitude” when in reality they couldn’t focus on the task and just pissed at the adult in their face demanding and threatening them over something outside of their control
