Naomi Aldort

When we (here at this blog or on the unschooling lists) discuss extending the principles of unschooling into other area’s of our lives with our children, Naomi Aldort’s message is very helpful.

Naomi does not teach parents how to “get kids to be/do…” but rather how to be with children so that they are free to be their own magnificent selves. Parents say that what they get out of Naomi’s work is much more than help in parenting – they get self-realization, which frees them to see the child with clarity and wisdom.

Naomi’s Declaration of Complete Confidence in Children:
** Children respond best to modeling and leadership, not control.
** Trust… and wait.
** Choose between your momentary convenience and your long-term goal for your child’s sense of self.
** Enjoy your child for who he is, not for who you would like him to be – he will never be this age again.
** Distinguish between your emotional needs and what your child feels and needs. Act toward your child in harmony with her needs; take care of your emotional needs elsewhere.
** Celebrate your child’s uniqueness as well as your own.

You can sign up for Naomi Aldort’s free newsletter and read some of her parenting articles on her site.

I especially love her views on institutionalized schooling;

School, Learning and Self-Esteem:

When children are represented as empty and ignorant vessels, adults brace themselves for making adults out of them. This means that they must go against the child’s inclinations and coerce him to be whoever the adult want him to be through training and teaching that is imposed and controlled by the adult.

In order to make children into the image of adults we want them to be, our society created institutions that children must go to against their will or through coercion of their will. Children who want to go to school have so totally lost their inner connection that they believe that what they want comes from inside. It doesn’t. What feels good to them is pleasing and fitting in because they have been trained to look outside and not inside.

In order to train a child to accept constant instructions and loss of freedom, society starts at birth, taking the baby away from mother, using cribs, strollers and nannies instead of constant body contact with mother and fathers. The separation continues by taking the child away from mother and from home as early as possible to daycare, preschool and kindergarten. Separating a child from its primal connection strips her of her power.

Being away from his power source, mother, the child is helpless and disconnected; she will do whatever she is told just to gain acceptance and love. She becomes needy of approval to make up for the deep pain and longing for that primal connection. In this way, the powers that see the child as material to be molded get to prove themselves right, not because it is true, but because our ways with children. The child does becomes either pliable and compliant and needing authority, or he confused, aggressive or depressed. Being forced to learn against their will, even motivation vanishes.

I am reminded of Albert Einstein’s famous words, “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Indeed, some humans jump back on their feet and recover from childhood within five to twenty years. On the other hand, more often than not, people don’t recover and the culture of successful players of a game not their own gives birth to depression, aggression, dissatisfaction, addictions, food disorder and suffering.

The most extreme aspect of this way of seeing children is drugging them, which is often recommended and even enforced by the school. When a child doesn’t fit the representation he gets either a special fixing program or drugs, or both.

It is lucky that we didn’t have these toxic drugs earlier in the 20th century; Einstein was thrown out of school in Germany, and Edison’s mother was told that he is a dunce and wisely pulled him out of school. Many other leaders escaped the tyranny of school. Today, there is no way to count haw many great minds are dumbed down or drugged out or their wisdom.

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Arts And Crafts

Throughout a lot of our unschooling days, we have some sort of art or craft project going on, or in different stages of completion (some don’t get completed, but most do). Here’s a few glimpses of the last few that we enjoyed.

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Speaking With An Unschooled Child

There was a discussion, on one of my unschooling e-mail groups, about how extended family members seem to have a hard time finding something to say to a child, when they can’t ask about school. It’s like the only questions anybody can think of to ask a kid is “What grade are you in?”, “What’s your favorite subject?” and “How are you doing in school?” lol

I’ve found this to be true sometimes, not so much from family but from friends and people that we meet while out and about. I’d like to share the reply I posted on the e-mail group. It was written with my daughter Jacqueline in mind. (note: This post was originally written in 2007 when Jacqueline was 9 years old.)

Dear Friend,

Please don’t talk down to Jacqueline when you speak with her. Your eyes may see only a young child, but I see a person who is interesting and knowledgeable in many areas. If you give her half a chance you may learn something that you didn’t know before you met her.

Ask her what she’s interested in and she’ll tell you all about the Mars Odyssey satellite. Ask her what she did today and she’ll tell you how she fixed her grandmothers VCR…after her daddy called her to ask for help. Talk a bit longer and she’ll tell you the Barbie story she wrote, and what her next story is going to be about.

Ask her about her life and she’ll tell you that she’s a four year Girl Scout, that she met an astronaut at the Kennedy Space Center and that she has her own plant at her grandmothers house (which is next door) that she waters every other day.

Also, if you’re going to ask her why she’s not in school, be prepared for her to tell you she dropped out in the first grade. She has her daddy’s sense of humor. Don’t look shocked. Laugh instead. She’s being funny.

Speak to her like a human being and she’ll speak to you the same way.

Sincerely,
Jacqueline’s mommy.

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Homeschooling Article In Business Week

This article from Business Week was originally posted in 2006 and is mainly about homeschooling, not unschooling. It’s a pretty good article but obviously written by someone who doesn’t have first hand knowledge of homeschooling because they didn’t refute the inaccurate stereotype of homeschooled kids not being “socialized”.

A growing number of affluent parents think they can do better than any school

Slater Aldrich doesn’t attend any of the top-shelf public or private schools near his family’s Madison (Conn.) home, not even his mother’s alma mater, the $18,000-a-year Country School. Instead, the 11-year-old spends his days playing the role of town zoning officer, researching the pros and cons of granting approval to a new Wal-Mart (WMT ). Other endeavors include pretending he’s a Sand Hill Road venture capitalist, creating Excel-studded business plans for a backyard sheep company, and growing his own organic food. “It’s kind of like living on a white-collar farm,” says his dad, Clark Aldrich. Aldrich vowed he’d never put his kid through the eye-glazing lectures he endured in school, even at prestigious institutions like Lawrence Academy and Brown University.

Like a growing number of creative-class parents, the Aldriches homeschool Slater, splitting the duties. (Aldrich père, who co-founded interactive learning company SimuLearn, handles math and science; his wife, Lisa, a stay-at-home mom, does the reading and writing. Slater’s friends come over after school and on the weekends for pickup games.)

No longer the bailiwick of religious fundamentalists or neo-hippies looking to go off the cultural grid, homeschooling is a growing trend among the educated elite. More parents believe that even the best-endowed schools are in an Old Economy death grip in which kids are learning passively when they should be learning actively, especially if they want an edge in the global knowledge economy. “A lot of families are looking at what’s happening in public or private school and saying, ‘You know what? I could do better, and I’d like to be a bigger part of my kid’s life,”‘ says University of Illinois education professor Christopher Lubienski.

The spread of the post-geographic work style and flex-time economy, in which managers can work at odd hours in any number of locations, is also playing a role. So is the fact that more knowledge workers want to live in more than one place. Homeschooling can untether families from Zip codes and school districts, just as the Internet can de-link kids from classrooms, piping economics tutorials from the Federal Reserve, online tours of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, ornithology seminars from Cornell University, and filmmaking classes from UCLA straight onto laptops and handhelds. Also driving the trend is a new cottage industry of private tutors, cyber communities, online curriculum providers, and parental co-ops. Popular online sites range from the humanities tutor edsitement.neh.gov to the agenda-free lifeofflorida.org. “It would have been impossible to homeschool like this 20 years ago,” says Richard Florida, author of The Flight of the Creative Class.

The Internet is a chief resource that’s powering homeschooling’s growth, from 850,000 children in 1999 to more than 1.1 million today, according to the U.S. Education Dept. The popular perception is that people homeschool for religious reasons. But the No. 1 motivation, research shows, is concern about school environments, including negative peer pressure, safety, and drugs. In some circles homeschooling is even attaining a reputation as a secret weapon for Ivy League admission.

Homeschooling is also more prominent in the popular culture, which is helping to de-stigmatize the choice and lend it some cachet among kids and their parents. The near-perfect SAT-scoring Scot, a contestant on last year’s ABC (DIS ) reality show The Scholar, was homeschooled. Home-learners have long swept the national spelling and geography bees. This year the $100,000 prize awarded by the famed Siemens Westinghouse Competition went to homeschooled 16-year-old mathematician Michael Viscardi.

Viscardi’s neuroscientist mother and engineer father pulled him out of the tony, oxford-and-shorts private school St. Mark’s in Dallas because administrators wouldn’t accelerate Viscardi in math, even though he was doing high school-level work in the fourth grade. Michael’s mother, Eunjee Viscardi, says Michael initiated most of his own learning. The challenge was dealing with her fears that she was ruining his life by isolating him, something he countered with heavy involvement in the community youth orchestra. “It was nerve-racking because we’re all brainwashed to believe that our children have to be in school,” she says. Those concerns have since faded; Michael is set to enter Harvard University this fall.

One popular critique of conventional education likens it to a mass-production institution that is failing to adapt. Schools, critics say, are like old industrial assembly lines, churning out conformists who could function well in rote factory jobs or rigid corporate hierarchies but not in New Economy professions that demand innovation and independent thinking. Indeed, the Education Dept. states in a report that the most promising learning developments, such as e-learning and virtual schools, are occurring outside the system. “Almost everyone is thinking about how schools aren’t the right institutions anymore,” says Florida.

PATCHWORK OF LAWS
Homeschooling isn’t universally applauded as a solution, however. Some parents and educators worry that it retards children’s socialization. Others say it siphons much-needed resources like per-pupil funding and the activism of the most savvy parents. Schooling in isolation could threaten civic cohesion and diversity of thought, says Stanford University education professor Rob Reich. Reich favors stricter homeschooling regulations to supplant the current patchwork of state laws so that children can be assured of exposure to more than just what their parents sanction. He also worries about parents pushing homeschooling on their kids.

But in some cases it’s not the parents who are doing the pushing. Lynne Miles-Morillo, a mother of three, taught herself Russian in high school so she could read Dostoevsky in the original. (“It’s totally different, you wouldn’t believe.”) She graduated from Bryn Mawr College and married Robert, a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar who is now a history professor at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind. A year ago, Miles-Morillo’s oldest son begged her to homeschool him. He was bored in class and didn’t share the conservative views of most of the other kids. She agreed to try it out on her two older children, and if they didn’t all hate one another by the end of the month, they could continue. “I don’t have that inner Buddha inside of me,” says Miles-Morillo.

What surprised her was how lovely it was for the family to create its own educational rituals. The biggest misnomer is the word home since the family travels all over, from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington to Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry to the world’s most active volcano in Hawaii. Morillo’s fear was that homeschooling would make her kids’ world smaller. But instead, she says, “it’s opening it up more.”

By Michelle Conlin

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Nurturing Your Teenager’s Soul

10 clear and practical principles for giving teens a much-needed moral and spiritual compass:

Nurturing Your Teenagers Soul:
A Practical Guide to Raising a Kind, Honorable, Compassionate Teen
by Mimi Doe

At a time when teens face overwhelming issues-the hazards of substance abuse, issues of sexuality, the stress of high school, the importance of getting into a good college-it’s no wonder that these years often become a battleground for parents and teens. With all of these concerns pressing in on families, a teenager’s spirituality is often completely overlooked, when it has the ability to alleviate these issues as well as bring teens and parents closer together. And, as award-winning author Mimi Doe explains in NURTURING YOUR TEENAGER’S SOUL: A Practical Guide to Raising a Kind, Honorable and Compassionate Teen, talking to a teen about his or her spirituality need not be intimidating, difficult, or even cause for argument. Doe gives parents all the resources they need to raise safe, happy, and successful adults who remain in touch with their spiritual selves.

“Mimi Doe is the juxtaposition of great guest and informed source. Her presence and media savvy are uncommon. Whether the interview is five minutes or an hour, Mimi has the capacity to be authentic and informational at the same time. Her clear understanding of time and space make her a true professional. Not only would I recommend her as a guest, you’d be foolish not to have her on your program.”
–Tony Trupiano, Talk America

In NURTURING YOUR TEENAGER’S SOUL, Doe presents 10 concrete, engaging, and inspiring principles to help parents find new ways to honor and encourage their child’s individual spiritual perspective. Doe uses a non-denominational approach to show rents how to nurture their teen’s spirituality and provide adolescents with a moral compass. At a time when teenagers are ungry for pirituality and are actively searching for a connection to a source greater than themselves, adults often just assume that teens are rebellious and acting out when what they are actually doing is launching a spiritual quest that involves two undamentalquestions: “Who am I?” and “Where do I fit in?” The book explains how to:

*Listen fully and connect with your teen
*Nurture your teenager’s dreams-and make miracles happen
*Negotiate the balance between being a pal and being a parent
*Support your adolescent in becoming a successful adult

NURTURING YOUR TEENAGER’S SOUL will help parents understand the positive power of spirituality in their teens’ lives, as well as give them practical guidance for raising teenagers who achieve their full potential.

About the Author

Mimi Doe, award-winning author of Busy but Balanced and 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting, was the recipient of the Parent’s Choice Approved Seal and a Books for a Better Life Award Finalist. Founder of SpiritualParenting.com, she publishes the site’s ewsletter with 50,000 subscribers from around the world. Doe was called a “parenting guru” by Ladies Home Journal and has ppeared on Oprah. She appears weekly on New Morning on the Hallmark Channel. Doe holds a Master’s Degree in Education rom Harvard and is the mother of two teenagers.

ADVANCE PRAISE:

“…Drawing from her 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting, she (Mimi Doe) offers parents ten inspiring principles to encourage their teenagers’ spiritual development, e.g., “Words can profoundly change lives,” “Remain flexibly firm,” and “Let go and trust.” These straightforward themes are expanded in chapters that contain poignant anecdotes and comments from parents nd kids. As Doe is an Oprah guest and frequent speaker, her new work is sure to be requested.”
–Library Journal

“Yet again a talented writer helps all of us to consider ways of encouraging our young people morally and spiritually and does so in a wonderfully thoughtful, accessible way! A great gift to us readers!”
–Robert Coles, Author of The Spiritual Lives of Children

“In all the interviews I’ve done, Mimi Doe is the one who left me most at peace with my life. She has a way of talking that soothes and relaxes you, and makes you feel like you’re succeeding at raising your children well. I look forward to my next interview with Mimi as I know I will come away refreshed and energized”
–Susan Sierra
Producer, Host
Parent Talk Radio Show

“Mimi Doe writes beautiful, practical books, and NURTURING YOUR TEENAGER’S SOUL is perhaps her best. Filled with insights and great advice, this book helps us both reclaim our teens and let them flourish with purpose and dignity.”
–Michael Gurian, Author of The Wonder of Boys and The Wonder of Girls

“Every parent who wants to help their teen navigate these tumultuous years with a sense of self, family, and community should read this book. Mimi Doe provides practical, real guidance for parents to tap into their own spiritual strength and in turn help their adolescents achieve their full potential.”
–Judith Orloff, M.D. Author of Positive Energy and Intuitive Healing

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