On Trust and Protection…and Unschooling

My son is turned 1 on Saturday. 

I wanted to write my birth story, but I was caught up in the present, birthing A Living Family and processing my nostalgic grief as my children enter new stages of independence.

My son is literally changing in his sleep on a daily basis. By his birthday he has become a practically new child compared to who he was at his sister’s birthday only a month ago. He scrambles up the side onto the top of a two level step to be at the counter in the kitchen. He sees a cloth and wipes. Sees a spoon stirs, whether the pot is real or imaginary. He climbs up the step onto the radiator to the windowsill to look joyfully outside the window at the goings on out there. The whole world is opening up for him as he discovers all the things his body can do now. He craves the experience of doing and feeling.

There is no getting around it: My son is ready.

I know I am needing to let him go, even though I am not ready. My whole experience of letting my child fall and get up again (literally) has my mind lingering on Free Range Kids, “a commonsense approach to parenting in these overprotective times.” At least I don’t feel completely alone letting my 1 yo do things others are more protective about. (Of course my mind goes to Janet Lansbury’s post “Would You Let your Baby Do This?”) My husband and I also talk regularly about the concept of“protection vs. trust” that Scott Noelle of Enjoy Parenting happened to share his thoughts on “Protection vs. Trust” just after I had gotten my out in this post.

Children, all humans in fact, do have a need to explore and experiment, just as my son wants to explore and experience gravity by dropping things.

I feel a deep need to trust my children because I need them to trust themselves in order to be safe. My true, deep fear is that they are alone and stuck in a situation. I want to know my children have a body knowing and a connection to their own intuition so they can protect themselves or ask for guidance or help in the way that they need. I see my daughter stuck up high somewhere. godaddy site down . I hear her say, “Aaaa! I’m scared! My body says [in a high, little voice] ‘I’m not safe!’ ” I say (in a mostly calm voice) “Hmm, I wonder what your body is needing to do to feel safe.” She will then usually squat down or find a stronger foot hold or grab on more strongly. She recently talked herself through climbing down this dome that she was scared to climb last time she encountered it.

So after drinking in the courage, bravery, self-talk and absolute gleeful joy at having accomplished the task…I look back to my 1 year old son climbing up in the kitchen to cook or look out the window. I want that joy for him….

I choose to take the risk and let go….to see him fully.

I see my son doing things that “I shouldn’t let him do.” Things that many parents wouldn’t let their child do “because he is only 1 year old.” When I stop and weigh his need to explore the edge of his experience with my feeling of fear and my need to trust him, I take on a wait and see approach. I am grateful for the voice of Sandra Dodd, of “radical” unschooling fame, popping into my head: 

“Read a little, try a little, wait a while and watch…”

Sandra Dodd never uses the word “just” because it does not add to the meaning but detracts from our ability to fully see what we are looking at…”just 1 year old,” “just a child,” “just a baby.” If I’m a radical unschooler by “allowing” my son the space to do what he is capable of doing within the safe space I can create for him, then I would say I am indeed seeking to experience life as a radical unschooler. I want to feel trust at the very root (origins of the root “rad”) of my connection and relationship with my children. I don’t “let” my children climb independently and then “unsupervised” out of carelessness or laziness or unguided faith. I hold a space for my children to manifest and express in this plane of existence all that they feel moving and alive in side of them. I want to see my children for who they are, not see what I want to see in them or of them. I am grateful for my daughter, for paving the path starting from baby-led weaning and moving to climbing. I am grateful for my son, for inspiring me to look and look and look and look and to ask before doing, for encouraging me to treat him as a full human from birth. I am filled with gratitude for the glorious joy I have experience seeing them. I am, in fact, filled with gratitude to be on this whole path of birthing intuitively, parenting peacefully and living naturally because I now know what it feels like to connect to my wisdom, beyond my fears, so that I connect to my children. 

Joyfully.