Home Schooling – Continued….
I realized that when I wrote the other day that I made a lot of points about the parent side of things but never shared what I had based my opinion on. However I did make mention of parents bringing me their children to do Bio-Energetic testing on because the children had health issues. However what I didn’t mention was that I’ve worked with a few adults that have shared the pain they felt as children because they were taken away from their friends. This same pain still runs through their body at the ages of 20-30-40 and so on. I hadn’t thought much about the impact of this until I recently was with a client and the tears came streaming down their face.
I should be clear about what I’m writing. Although this is the impact that home schooling may have, (and by no means am I saying that this is what it’s like in all cases) it’s also about the choices that we make on behalf of our children based on what ‘we’ as adults feel is right for a child.
So as I sit listening to the words of adults speaking with the same pain and now shame from the their past of being home schooled, there is no denying that it makes an impact on our children more so that I personally could have ever imagined. I would have thought that home schooling would be a great option…but then again, that’s because I’m a parent. 
The clients that I’ve worked with share how they started off in school and really enjoyed it and loved being with their friends but get pulled out of school after just 2-3 years and are home schooled. Then after being away from other children for 3-4 years, arrive in high school and they have a hard time ‘fitting’ in and then get told (or labeled) that they’re ’slow.’ The mother in a couple of instances states to the child (and these memories are as fresh to these individuals as the day they happened because the pain is still very real), says that “I’m afraid that you’re going to get hurt at school and I think you’d be better off here at home with me.”
Now I’m curious if we were to ask our children if they harbored the same fears as we do, I doubt very much that we’d get a ‘yes’ from them. I know from my own experiences with my daughter that my fears are just that…they’re mine. She rarely shares those fears that run through my body. Ahhh, yes – run through my body. And there’s a very important fact. A child doesn’t harbor fears that are the same as ours because they don’t have them running through their body and that doesn’t change – unless we start sharing our fears with them in great detail and repeating them until they go, “ya…o.k. you’re right!”
Imagine after being at home for 3-4 years and then all of a sudden you’re with 500 (or more) other kids? How do you think that it would make you feel? I’m thinking of it and I’m shaking my head. So now these children do have fear running through their bodies. The fear of making new friends. The fear of fitting in with children that are used to being around others. The fear of communicating with groups of other children. The fear of going from classroom to classroom and seeing another teacher every hour for a different subject. When you really sit down and consider what must go through a child’s body, it’s really scary.
I shared with someone today how my husband and I were considering putting our daughter in English High School. She has been in the French school since day one and is now in grade six and next year off to the ‘big’ school. I personally couldn’t see a benefit to changing schools. My husband however thought that should she decided to continue her education that she would find it easier switching from an English High School to an English University. I could see his point and decided to ask her what she thought. Well…she was mortified. All of my friends are going to the Carre Four. I’m not going to the English High School. It has nothing to do with the language and everything to do with the interactions that she has with her friends. School is the beginning of socializing. And if we’re not used to socializing - then what we get called is, “social misfits” and this is exactly what one of my recent clients shared with me.
As I engage more and more with clients who all were children at one point in their lives, it becomes clear to me that I must make conscious decisions when it comes to my child. And I must include her in the decisions that will affect her life. I also look at her as an individual and not a child.
I spoke of this before where Meagan calls me Amy and not mom all of the time. It allows her to see me as an individual and on the very same token, when I hear her call me Amy – it also allows me to see her as a different individual.
Our children are individuals very much the same as we are. The only difference is their size and their experience. However what I’ve learned now is that just because I’ve experienced something in my life one way, it doesn’t mean that her experience will be the same. Our children need to experience things themselves just as we did once. And even beyond that. Our children want to experience things for themselves. After-all, isn’t that how we live and grow?
Letting Go Of The Past AND…Growing Forward.
Amy
