Connections ezine of unschooling and mindful parenting

—Gail

They are my favorite part! And I'm not an up on stage person, but it is all about just celebrating who we are and what we love. The shining children blind you! At one, smaller one my dds got up (surprised the heck out of me) one daughter lifted her leg straight up over her head; my other daughter did a "dance move" that was a splitish combo twisting backwards! Everyone clapped and cheered, and they were so pleased. There was a pokemon interpretive dance that was so awesome, but you'd would see it NO WHERE but an unschooling talent show. So it's not about judging just sharing and feeling the love. No pressure at all.

—anonymous

I'm just smiling and grinning reading this thread ....

You've already gotten great answers, but since it's a smaller regional conference that you're considering, I wanted to tell you that that's an even more ideal situation. My son was not at all interested in the talent show at the big Live and Learn Conferences—not even in watching them. But at a smaller talent show, he went on stage multiple times, and he felt so good about it.

He also loved giving support to other people on stage, and really appreciated their talents—that's the atmosphere that happens at these things.

And yeah, it might still be hard for your daughter. I know some kids want to do all sorts of acts and get nervous while preparing, and it feels like a really big deal to them. But like another poster said, what better place to work out those issues? No one will think poorly of her if she's too nervous or gets flustered or is upset with herself— she'll be free to work that out without the judgment of others, which is rare for a "performance" type of event. Something to think about, anyway.

—Amy

On dealing with fears:

This is how we Shine...in ALL these ways. It's during the dark times that we learn about the Light.

I agree ... and I'd like to springboard off of your springboard, Anne. This thread is really matching up with a lot of things I've been thinking about. I don't have rock-solid answers, but I'd like to share my thought process, and some suggestions that I'm going to try out in my home, too.

On the nature of darkness and fear:

A lot of good things happen in the dark. In nature, roots grow underground in the dark. Soil is made in the dark. Much of the life of lakes and seas and oceans is in the deep dark parts. Dark is what gives us dew, allows us to see the reflected sunlight in the moon, and the stars—both so different from direct sunlight, such a different experience, but very much part of life here on planet Earth.

Dark is often home to sweet mysteries like sex (and conception—new life!) and restorative sleep and dreams that help us integrate our reality. I think that we learn about the light in the dark times because dark and light have a very real and necessary relationship in our world—everything that comes into the light has a relationship with the dark, and vice versa.

And yet, we very naturally fear the dark, fear the shadows which blind our day vision, fear our own children's fear, and their experience with the dark and mysterious. Fear seems to be part of that experience with the myterious—but that raw material of fear can transform into many other things, many helpful things like compassion and empathy if it's given attention and a place to be ... and many difficult things if the fear is repressed.

The ability to fear is the ability to have a full emotional and bodily response, to be able to experience life, to be vulnerable in a way that is not the heroic ideal that our society prefers and is more comfortable with, but is, in fact, part of being human and whole. We don't usually think of it as an "ability" to fear, but realizing it as such can be helpful.

(Possible resources: There's an old German fairy tale about The Youth Who Set Out to Learn What Fear Was. And Tanya Wilkinson's book, Persephone Returns has a really nice chapter on how that tale ties into the human psyche, about the desirability of fear in being fully human. I can't go into the whole thing here, but it might be useful for some parents to check out.)

Witnessing someone else's fear—especially our children's fear— can be incredibly painful. It can bring up a whole host of feelings for us: old shame for feeling fear when we were a child, lack of trust in our own ability to handle the crisis, our own old fears that may not be quite resolved yet, guilt that our child is suffering, sadness that they are losing some part of their innocence.

It strikes me that all of this—the child's fears and the adult's response—is a huge part of growth, for both the child and the adult. As Anne said, we need to live it ... I would say we need to process it ourselves so we can be solidly there for our children. Working with that energy can be a very soulful, connecting process.

***

Suggestions:

I loved all of Anne's suggestions about drawing a circle of protection, seeing the light of it, etc. And as I'm writing this, I wonder if there's more ... I'm coming up with some things that I'd like to explore with my son, too.

Things like: storytelling about the "bad guys," and wondering what they would say if we asked them what they wanted. Remember in the movie, The Sixth Sense, how they finally deal with the little boy's ability to see dead people? He starts asking the dead if they have something they need to tell him, and he starts helping them. What was terrifying at the beginning of the movie has no power to hurt him by the end—in fact, his visits from the dead are continuing opportunities for compassion and connection and growth and a real connected-to-all-of-humanity joy.

That approach is very in line with Gandhi's principles of non-violence, or ahimsa, as well, as I think about it. Whatever or whoever threatens you—you can relate to it/him as a person, outside of the violence, outside of the threat. People have avoided being victimized that way, in real life. As an attacker approached or threatened them, instead of reacting as a victim or trying to be a forceful hero, they asked the time, or offered to feed them, or asked the attacker for help, and the whole situation changed.

Maybe a parent could share more of those stories with her child, and that might help loosen things up, might offer more options of how the scenarios he's running in his head could go. (If you get the book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Third Helping, it has a very powerful true story about a family in a motor home that is broken into.)

When I was dealing with some similar fears a few years ago, I used to practice my response in my head, in case I was ever awakened by an intruder—"Oh, do you have the time?" (And you know what I'm realizing right now, as I write this? I practiced that a few years ago, and for the first time ever in my life, those fears have really, truly gone away. I hardly ever think about those things anymore. It's as though the peaceful, surprising response has seeped into my psyche such that I know it will be there if I ever do need it. I have a friend who might also say that I no longer draw violence to me through my fear, and that my calm comes from that now. Hmmm, I don't know—I'll have to think about that.)

So maybe a parent and child could make up a list of things that they could say, things that would surprise someone and might help stop them from hurting anyone, like, "We have cold pizza in the fridge—would you like some?" You could post the list on the walls, where the child could see it if he ever needs it. Along with the talismans and the circles of protection—I think it's so helpful for some kids when they have something they could do, something they could say, and to have it be something surprising and small and kind of trickster-ish can really resonate with a child.

Or maybe the parent will know that talking about real situations like that will overwhelm their child, and they'll need to approach the topic in story form only. I think dealing with this kind of fear is a major developmental task for children, and so they will be ready for different stages of it at different times, just like with reading and other developmental tasks. I certainly am not advocating that parents to push too much, too soon. I'm just trying to make a place for the fear, the dark and the mystery in a soulful, complex way—as much for my own parenting and living as for anything else.

—Amy

I've really enjoyed this discussion and your post, Amy, in particular (I printed it out to read over) because it feels like a direction I've been heading in for a while in regards to viewing fear differently than I did before in my life.

For me, I've struggled a lot with fear in my life and always viewed it as unavoidable and so to be endured, but negative and opposed to what I wanted and where I wanted to go. I first started questioning this view when I read Gavin DeBecker's book Protecting the Gift about "stranger danger" issues. When I ordered it, I thought the "gift" he was referring to was our children. So it was a huge shock to me (I think my jaw hit the floor) when I read it and found out that the gift he was talking about was FEAR. Fear as a "Gift"? It just bowled me over and got me thinking in a new way about fear, how it was helpful, how all the fears in my life had, at the same time as they "held me back" also had necessary and important messages about what I needed. Fears had performed necessary protective functions, protecting me from situations I wasn't ready for, feelings that were painful, physical pain in some instances. Thinking about it in this new way I could see that the way I had moved forward from fears in the past was by recognizing and listening to those messages and working on those issues that required the protection until it was no longer needed.

And so with my children, I have been looking at the fears as something important with a function, a necessity, a "voice" that needs to be heard. I think lately I've been trying to move more to a reaction to and view of fear, in myself or my children, in the same way I have come to react to and view conflict....as an incredible opportunity to learn more about ourselves and to connect with our world. I know for me, I've moved through some really Major with a capital "M" fears in my life and boy, when I get to the other side there's this incredible amazing connected to the universe feeling that comes out of having gone through the process. Interestingly I think that this is similar to what can happen with moving through conflict...When I was in the forming cohousing group our family was a major part of for two years I read an article that commented that many people in cohousing reported feeling closer and more connected to others in their community with whom they had gone through a successful conflict resolution process. More connected to those people than to others they might consider "friends"...That struck me as so interesting and powerful. That accepting and reaching into and sharing and moving through those "dark" feelings, that giving them an honored "place" and thereby transforming them creates such a richness of connection and life.

I really loved the rich and fertile imagery in Amy's post about darkness and light and I'm really working within myself on a move from treating fear as putting up with what I perceive "is" with a sigh and a wish it weren't so toward making a welcoming, non- judgmental, open and curious space for fear and other feelings and issues I formerly viewed negatively or put in "opposition" to myself. Not because I want to "stay" in conflict or fear (ugh!) and not to invalidate the pain and difficulty of being there, but because it feels so good and rich and right and validating to recognize and honor these feelings for their potential, for what's "growing" underneath them, for their messages and as important parts of myself and my children.

—Joan

I'm loving reading all these posts! Amy the inside of my mind looks a lot like yours on this, and the wonderful way you put things into words helps me organize my thoughts.

SHINING one's light into the dark of the unknown! And the unknown is actually longing to be enlightened. This is what the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty is all about.

The fear that can accompany venturing into Unschooling, or any other pursuit not widely accepted by society for that matter, looks like another great example to me. I have had several friends in the past, very shiny explorers of the unknown, who unfortunately let their fears overpower them, broke down (dis-integrated) and joined some ultra-fundamentalist evangelical group so as to revert to a path that was all laid out for them and accepted, where the dark was hidden from, suppressed, denied and projected onto some external element e.g. the devil. I experienced each of these instances as a loss to mourn the very same way as if they had literally died—they had lost their shine and thus become dull and lifeless and could no longer relate to me.

It's occurred to me that this whole thread about fears is a beautifully appropriate one right now as we are heading into Halloween—what better time to talk about it? What a great way to observe the Holiday, going back to its roots. Departed souls, dwindling daylight, harvest the wisdom of experience....

Aloha,

—Nicole
(meditating on the yin-yang symbol, that beautiful metaphor of balance, integrity and the dance)

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