Home Educating the Puddle Girls…

I probably don’t stand up nearly enough and shout about the injustice of bullying, something i experienced for the majority of my junior schooling. Not just simple taunting, but physical bullying, bullying aimed to humiliate me and exclude me and bullying that simply wasn’t handled well enough by any of the people who were supposed to take care of me.

Bullying, the fear of bullying, was my main reason for keeping Fran out of school; i really didn’t want her to be subjected to the unrelenting campaign that i experienced, intended to make be feel different and worthless and unwanted. I’ve never been good at standing up for myself, though i have got tougher over the years, but it is still a weak spot that people can - and do - exploit. Some people can sniff out that characteristic from a mile away and even now, they can still spot it in me. I wanted to be sure my child was strong enough, that her skin was thick enough, that she had the words and the clarity (quite literally as well as figuratively) to defend herself before she had to deal with it. i wanted to know that she was able to say “and your point is….?” before she had to deal with the idiocy and smallmindedness of others on her own. You might call it hiding her away; i call it good parenting. I learned the hard way that if you are undermined from early enough, you don’t develop a thick skin by default. Some people handle it, some don’t. i didn’t.

So this quote, on the BBC today, fills me with some comfort -

The idea that bullying is in some way character building and simply part of childhood is wrong

Barry Sheerman
Education select committee chairman

We need more people to be making this clear; you do not need to be knocked about and roughed up to learn how to defend yourself; what you need is an inner strength that makes you strong enough to shrug and turn away, unscathed by the comments. Simply being slugged on a daily basis doesn’t teach someone to box; it might teach them to run away fast, but that isn’t necessarily a great character trait either. Being laughed at daily doesn’t turn someone into a comedian unless they were already talented at that; it turns them into a person who believes themselves to be an object of derision - if they are clever, talented, they might well learn to turn it back into humour, but being laughed at daily sure didn’t turn me into Victoria Wood. I’m not a great believer in the “it made me tough/made me funny” hard luck turned good stories; i think those people were always going to come shining through and the kids who hang themselves in despair at daily torture were never going to rise above it, their sense of failure only made greater by feeling they should be able to overcome it.

When i was perhaps 7, my mum held up her hands and said “practise hitting me, then you can hit her back” - but i knew there was no point, i wasn’t capable of doing it, however much i practised. I was too afraid, i knew i would be the one who ended up in trouble, i knew i would just antagonise them enough to get hurt worse. Being in school for 14 years didn’t teach me any of those “learn to deal with it” skills; i learned them as a mum and a woman and really not much before. Even now, i have to step back at times and force myself not to go on the defensive.

When Ffran was 4, a boy laughed at her speech and her chin dropped. 2 years later the Rainbows made her feel uncomfortable and she trusted me enough to tell me and be sure i would sort it out. You can’t sort things out at 6, that is why people have a mummy. Now, at nearly 9, it rarely happens, but when it does she is simply sensible enough to explain once and then if they can’t get over it, she can make a value judgement and decide if she wants to be with that person. I’ve never seen her turn tail from something because someone makes her feel bad, she’s never left a group because she can’t handle the people there. All that progress without a school in sight to toughen her up and teach her ‘real life’.

A while ago, i looked up the name of my bully on Google; she is now a lawyer.  I sincerely hope she works for the good guys.

BBC NEWS | Education | Whose classroom curriculum is it?

I’m really not very up on all this stuff about new legislation for HEers, in fact, i’m ashamed to say it only hazed in on the centre of my field of view yesterday; that’s how distracted i’ve been

But this article struck me as interesting, not least because there seems like there might be enough ammunition available to make any actual ruling made over us look pretty silly pretty quickly.

Since they are welcoming comments, i wondered if anyone more up on it than i am might care to meander in that direction, or if not, give me enough info that i can

I very much hope the 2 HEing families whose experiences/options drive this post/thought process won’t mind me airing my thoughts. I won’t link to them, but they and doubtless plenty others, will know who i mean; i'’m sure they’ll understand my meandering are not in the least critical of their choices/possible choices and purely a open-air chewing over of what might be a crunch year for us here.

For a long time, i’ve aligned myself most closely with 2 people who HE, who i love dearly and whose children are some of my childrens favourite people. As a loosely threaded set of people, it has bonuses all the way through, mutually i think, for children, husbands and women in varying combinations. They are people who, as HEers and parents, i largely look up to and try to model myself on and i feel i’ve learned a lot from them both.

One set of children returned to school last year, another child looks like beginning imminently. And so it strikes me that perhaps the 9-10 year is something of a crunch year for HE, one which is seeing children go to school who i really didn’t think would, or parents turning to school who i didn’t expect to.

It’s got me thinking. We enter that crunch year, if it is that what it is, this year as Fran turns 9 in 5 months and if she wants to try school, it seems like Year 5 and 6 are the optimum time to do it. We live near a variety of village schools, it could be done without breaking my heart totally and in terms of her surgery agenda, it might be a good time.

I don’t want her, or any of them, to go to school, but my needs are only 1 in 6. I don’t think Max does either, though local friendships worry him at times, and as far as i know Fran is dead set against it. Neither set of news about friends has wavered her openly, though we’ve had a few talks of trying it at 14 in the past. Maddy used to say she’d go at 8 but doesn’t now, though she wants more friends, Amelie plays schools lots but her opinion of nursery was so poor that i can’t imagine school would be an improvement. And Josie is tiny, though she could (and might) go to playgroup and there is a Montessori nursery in the business park opposite.

So now i am thinking about what might begin to change over the next year that might make her want to give school a try and whether there is anything i can do to minimise any deficiencies in life that might make her think the grass is greener elsewhere. I can see the friends thing, but honestly i don’t know what you do about that; endless casual contacts don’t make close friends and a few good friends are worth the weight of a classroom of people you barely know and don’t get to know. Well, i think so, but then i’m biased because i thought the social aspect of school to be fairly pants and i can’t imagine going into Year 5 in a village, with a definite speech difference still current, is the best way of being absorbed into a friendship circle with ease. Chalet Schools do not exist.

Educationally we could have provided more over the last year, responded better. I know Fran would like to do more science hands on but i’ve got that in hand with a sub to Young Scientist Club and in reality i doubt the days of freely experimenting scientifically at school still exist. She does plenty of sport generally and a variety of clubs, music is underway, IT exists in plenty, art and craft in plenty, stories and reading time in plenty. Fran still relishes her playing time above all else and i imagine that missing her sisters and playing less would be a crucial factor in any choices she made.

Fran has had nearly 3 years now of having a certain amount of routine to our HE, something i don’t remotely regret. It doesn’t entirely come naturally to her or me but i do think it has given us a basis to work from, things that are done, levels of concentration that can be achieved. Almost without fail it normally improves our day to start it with a bit of concentration on something and the last 3 months have missed it badly. If she went into school now, with the exception of writing which she’d still struggle with, she’d be well up to speed, in as much as anyone as flighty and dizzy as she can be ever is I doubt she’d find herself needing much extra attention to keep up academically.

So i’m wondering… i’ve still not got as far as providing the “education i think my children should have;” even if i think we do okay. I’d love to do the full on classical thing, i think Fran would love it too actually. Our HE seems to be perfectly “as good as” the NC in terms of what is achieved in far less time, but actually i’d like it to be so much more, more value added, more fascinating, more connected and consistent so that if the lure of school does become greater for whatever reason, she feels some sort of regret about leaving behind something more meaty than she encounters at school. I’d *hate* the NC to be more interesting than home.

Of course, only time will tell. I’m not going to say “i’ll never send my children to school” as anything i say “never” to seems to happen within 6-12 months without fail, but i do feel like perhaps i need to be prepared for it to rear its head as an option sometime in the next year. I think it’s a measure of how my confidence has fallen that i can’t help wondering if we are next on the list. I know i’m a bit burned out, with 4 kids, HE and work, i know i could just think “argh, go on then, i can have a break then” and i know i’d just hate myself for it. Fran is just getting interesting, i’d hate her to leave me at home all day!

I’d be curious to know from a wider audience who have children now happily in school; if you look back, can you see any places where any dis-satisfaction, curiosity about school took root? And by the way, it isn’t that i want to stifle curiosity, it’s just if my children decide to go, i’d like it to be for positive reasons as opposed to because they want to plug a gap in their life. If you follow me.

And if you happen to be the 2 people who made me think all this over, could you go and reread my first paragraphs and not get mad at me

Last night i Dysoned, and then Vaxed, the living room. As it takes a while, i got to thinking about the rather odd perpetual spiral that had brought me to be cleaning a carpet.

It’s a funny thing; once upon a time, women were chained to a life of drudgery in the home with no rights to a career, endless childbearing and childrearing, cleaning and cooking and being the dutiful wife. If they weren’t doing it for themselves, they were doing it in someone elses house for some other woman who didn’t have to do the cleaning but wasn’t actually any freer to do as they wished, by and large. Then along came the vacuum cleaner (or so my GCSE history text book told me) and *zing* emancipation - housework became less of a chore, there was more time for other things, women got to leave the home for small and part-time jobs or education, and in a sweep of generalisation, you get to my mother’s generation - a woman on the crest of that particular wave and relatively early on in the high-powered, well-paid, positive, educated, career choice movement.

So i get an education and choose to do with it as i will, which is far from the ideal my parents probably had in mind of a highpowered and well-paid job but in fact has turned out to be absolutely, exactly, without compromise, what i wanted. My children are not having to endure school as i did (whether they would have had to endure anything is of course a moot point, but this isn’t about them), i got to have pretty much as many children as i wanted, supported by a loving husband and here i am, 3 years into running my own business, just as i wanted to do, in my own home and with a decent future spread out before me.

And here’s the thing; what started with a vacuum cleaner (so the text book would have it) ends with one - the vacuum cleaner that heralded freedom for woman, freed me up to do my own thing, which turned out to be staying at home with my children, with enough self-earned money to buy a carpet cleaner, pay someone to wash my kitchen floor and help me out with the job that earns that money. Turns out the vacuum cleaner has also meant she can dump a job she hates and do one she enjoys instead, learn to run a business and gets twice as much time at home with her family.

All in all, that (slightly simplistic, i just know at least 6 people are immediately going to point out the flaw in it) circular, spiraling argument for the deliverance of womankind from domestic chores has landed me just where i like being. At home.

In the last few days Maddy has acquired the ability to add up vertically across tens and also to read. Startling really. I think she’s done it even quicker than Fran did and certainly with a lot less effort. Of course, with Maddy you never know if she’ll still remember next week, but i took todays sudden explosion into sounding out new 4 letter words and reading out sentences as a good sign. She finish ETC1 anyway, which has been a long old slog really but then ended at considerable speed. When she suddenly “got” the adding up and carrying too, i decided today was a “good brain cell day”.

Fran was busy with some ECYr4 stuff; not convinced it will stretch her much actually, but i’m distracting her while i work out how to do division the MPH way, as (surprise) it isn’t how i was taught. Um… Alison? Yesterday we strayed into long multiplication and i had to stray back out again as i got into danger of saying “because you just do”. Ah ha - we have RaineDrops visiting this week… Barbara can do it! Fran is also reading Castle Diary (and Famous Five and something else.. lol…) - she pronounces it to be “brilliant”.

Amelie and Josie mainly tormented each other, or their sisters, or me. Not my best bit of parenting there today.

And here follows a long and self interested waffle about my counselling session so far, which you don’t have to read at all, unless you are waiting for next years Big Brother to start and therefore have nothing better to do. But i’m putting it here, because it is part of me and my life - and its my blog, so i can if i want to

I had another counselling session today; so far i seem to have managed to come away with something obvious but extraordinarily meaningful to me from every session. The first was almost her last sentence that week to me “depression is always to do with loss; if you are depressed, it is because you have lost someone or something.” That got me thinking very hard, because the first time i really remember feeling utterly beside myself, completely full up with sadness, was when i was 7 and my mum told me about the twins she had miscarried when i was 2 or so. She was utterly bewildered by how upset i was (why did she tell me? I have no idea) - sometimes the most obvious bits of your life don’t begin to jigsaw together till you look at them with the aid of someone skilled (and i would say M is a very skilled counsellor). Seems like maybe my life got bound up in the whole baby/perfection/grief thing from quite early on, especially when you add my anxieties about my toes in to it.

So anyway; that got me thinking about the reactions (via depression) i’ve had to some life events over the last 15 years or so and looking thoughtfully at what i’ve “lost” that has triggered them.

The last session we talked about control and blame; i got a bit blown away by that session, but eventually the lynchpin of the session came back to me, best explained by a comparison she drew. When things go wrong i can’t really control, i know i do tend to blame myself (i guess i’m specifically thinking of Fran and Josie’s births here, though we didn’t discuss that at the time) - her comparison (in reaction, not gravity of situation) was that a typical response from a child when it suffers abuse is to blame itself, because to take responsibilty for something bad which happens exerts some control over the circumstance, and therefore brings it into a place where you can try to overcome or own it. Not sure i explained that very well.

I think that probably does relate to those 2 births and perhaps more recent circumstances too; i go looking for ways in which i fail and i take those upon myself and beat myself over the head with them, because then at the very least i don’t have to acknowledge that sometimes sh*it will just happen. In retrospect, i’m not sure i’m being very fair to myself And given i’ve established that i like being in control, situations which leave me lying on my back with my abdomen cut open, are probably likely to be mentally problematic

Todays was a long old meander (we’ve not even started discussing the real reason i’m there yet, mainly cos i can’t actually get 2 words out about it without dissolving into incoherent tears) - but the crux of it was, when i thought about it, is that my life has evolved into blog posts and i’ve somehow taken on board a huge portion of living with Aspie like people and spiced it up with “re-read that blog post 6 times and edit it for correctness that has been defined by other people before pressing publish” - and i’ve started to do it in my life and in my head. Instead of being me, instead of feeling, and being spontaneous and open hearted, i’ve listened to some extraordinary repressive stance on how i’m allowed to be. Why exactly have i done that? I’ve got no idea.

I’ve listened to people who think they are allowed to project their opinion of how i’m allowed to act and think. I’ve not just started re-reading my life before i publish, i’ve started letting myself censor it, because of something i think i care that people might think. Wu-huh?

So that was an eye-opener; but todays soundbite, todays thing to carry forward was that “if i’m generous enough to let people lump their baggage on me, because it suits them to make someone else hurt, they’ll spot it and they lump you with it.” It’s been happening to me since the playground and it’s been happening again for a couple of years. And i’ve simply got to stop letting it. So long as i don’t go around deliberately hurting people, i’ve got to accept that i’m allowed to be as i am and if people don’t like that, i’ve got to accept that that is their issue, not mine. I’ve got to stop listening to people who tell me what i can write, or think, or feel, or do. But most importantly, i’ve got to learn to walk away from those situations; i’ve got to stop modifying myself to be “acceptable. It isn’t doing my self image any good. Not quite got that one sussed yet. But i’m working on it.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Altered city: New York five years on

Seems incredible that this is 5 years ago now, something that happened when Maddy was still a toddler and Amelie was just a few weeks worth of pregnancy. Like the article says, everyone has their story; mine is standing open mouthed at the television watching it before the second plane hit, while my children who were too tiny to apparently understand became increasingly manic around my feet, presumably sensing my horror. Mine is seeing my normally taciturn husband coming in from work, not knowing what had happened and standing with his hands to his head as he watched the news in horrorstuck disbelief. Mine is going off to run my normal Slimming World class, full of generally cheerful, giggling women who wanted to talk about weightloss and seeing woman after woman coming in tearstained and shocked, one who had come in to be with people because she was unable to contact her son who was in NY and was terrified for him. Mine is receiving a call from a friend to say that she was okay, although she had been on a bus to go sightseeing up the WTC when it was hit. Mine is reading the emails on my favourite email list at the time, an American CM one and just feeling wretched for the ordinary mums and wives who were feeling so fraught, shocked and attacked, some of whom knew people, or knew people who knew people, who were on the planes that were crashed.

Whatever anyone might think of the events and the politics which have ensued, i guess the bit that touches me still is the way it affected so many families either directly or indirectly and how profoundly life has changed, for good or bad, because of that. Families of the people killed, families of peole who knew them, families around the world who feel vulnerable, innocent families who now get victimised because of something done in their name by people not actually acting on their behalf at all.

One bit in that article touched me particularly as a mother, the bit about children drawing out and acting out their experiences. Fran and Maddy horrified me at the time by building towers of videos and crashing planes into them, i hadn’t even registered that they’d seen what was on and i felt awful for exposing them to it but i just asked Fran if she remembers it and she doesn’t. You can only hope that the children who won’t forget it will get enough support that one day they’ll look back with some sort of bearable peace.

But as a person, this part spoke to me the most, in fact, the only reason i’m blogging this is to give myself an excuse to quote the man,

“As a kid, you worried about the monsters under your bed, and you’d hear a noise and it would spook you a little bit and your mom or dad would come in and say ‘everything’s okay, don’t worry’. You check with a flashlight under the bed and there’s no monsters hiding underneath there.

“Well, I got a bunch of little gremlins.

“I think anybody who is in New York, or who lost somebody or who paid witness that day, has a bunch of little gremlins under their bed, and every once in a while those gremlins leap out and they taunt you and they bite you and they want to play with you.

“So you play with them and then you put them back under your bed and maybe it’s five minutes, maybe it’s five days, maybe it’s five months till they come back out and play, but you’ve got to confront your gremlins and then say ‘You know what, folks, it’s time to move on, I’ll see you in six months’.”

What a very wise man indeed. Thank you.