ccuthbert

NEVER CALL CPS UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE THERE IS DANGER THAT YOU CANNOT PREVENT. THIS IS TERRIBLE ADVICE.

This whole thread makes me feel sad, for you, your mom and everybody who had such strong emotions to THE LETTER. Olle, I hope your mom is sincere in her love for you. You know better than we do if that's so. If it is, try to be patient with her as you figure out what you want your family relationships to become. It's very hard to change family relationships. We tend to fall back into the same ol' habits of thought. Once you know what you want, stand firm, but try to understand that your parents are very unlikely to change much. You're going to have to work around that. Best of luck.

st434u Just like Ruben Z, rendez vous in the spare bedroom solved the privacy prob. We had a family bed. Both children left at the age of... dare I say it??? 11. I had a Japanese friend who said he slept in his parents' bed until the age of 7 and I was flabbergasted at the time. ;-) Muffles, We read aloud at least 2 hours a day and often 4 or 5. We didn't have a TV and the children didin't have open access to computers until about age 12. Reading aloud was our entertainment. I wrote an article called "12 Reasons to Read Aloud to Your Children," if you're interested...

I rethought "radical unschooling" every day of my life for the past 23 years. Although it has been difficult at times, I attribute that to the fact that life in general is difficult. I would like to address two issues mentioned in the snippets above--hope it doesn't seem tangential. On the nuts and bolts level of every day life and getting children to do such things as brush teeth... When parents and children live their lives together v. living parallel lives, there are fewer problems such as this. What I mean by "live their lives together" is going about their daily routine together. Here's something radical for you: when our children were little, we bathed together. I didn't choose this consciously, just sort of evolved first with my daughter. I would get in the shower in the morning and the next thing I knew, there she was wanting in, so I let her in. I'd finish my shower, then plug the drain, fill the tub and the two of us would be in the tub together for a few minutes, then I'd get out and dress in the bathroom and we'd talk until she was done playing. Later, when my son came along, the three of us got in the tub together. After a few years, they stopped showing up at the shower. We always got ready for bed together and brushed our teeth together. I don't remember ever telling them to brush their teeth, forget about fighting over such things. They knew it was something they just did--like breathing. We also never had fights about bedtime because we didn't have a children's bedtime. We all went to bed together and read aloud till we fell asleep. If you are truly sharing your lives, not living parallel lives, your children do what you do mostly when you do it because that is what they know. It doesn't usually occur to them to do anything differently. This extends to things other than personal habits. For example, I took music lesson when our children were young and brought them with me. They grew up thinking that that is what people do, and always took music lessons until they had to pursue their careers--for our daughter it was college, for my son it was full time work. Ok, yes, their rooms are disaster areas, look like a nuke went off in there. I simply close the door. Frankly, that's their prob, not mine. I just can't understand fighting over this kind of stuff unless it's a control issue. Life is just too short... A very important skill in managing life with children (anyone, really) is picking your battles, a skill UNHEARD of among most mothers, imho. If you are such a control freak that you bark orders about everything all day long, you will be roundly ignored and rightly so. If you save your "suggestions" for the times that count, your children will listen and follow your advice. I made the conscious decision to yell only at danger, real danger, and my children always responded to my tone of voice immediately. Also, I remember (with a lot of emotion) being yell at for misbehaving in public as a child and feeling humiliated and vowed never to do that. What I did instead was whispered in my son's ear, "Knock it off," when he was acting like a knucklehead. Used judiciously, this works like a charm. The more important comment that you snipped above is about making decisions on major issues such as education. This is completely different from the day-to-day, how do I get them to do xyz problems. Our view was that moral issues should be discussed with our children from a very young age, we would explain our reasoning and when they were adults they needed to do their own moral reasoning and make their own choices. But while they live under our roof important, moral choices are made by us because of our role as parents who have the responsibility, the knowledge and (one hopes) the wisdom to choose. They must follow until they are independent. So, for example, will the children go to compulsory school? Absolutely not, no way, no how, because school, particularly gov't school is pure evil. (Voluntary schools such as college are another matter...) That decision cannot be made by a child who will want to be like everyone else and is easily swayed by his "friends." When he moves out, if he wants to go to school, by all means. But under my roof it ain't happening. The keys were effectively explaining the nature of parental responsibility, and showing our children that we do have the knowledge and wisdom to make decisions for them by the quality of the actions that we take every day of our lives. We are their role models, we have to act like it. Is this hard? You bet, but life is hard. Is it force? No, because we have persuaded them through reason and our actions that we have the moral authority to make family decisions. There has been only one area of disagreement on moral choices in our house, kind of interesting. I've said that I will not allow sleep overs by members of the opposite sex. My daughter thinks I'm a dinosaur. My son says, "It's your house, Mom, you make the rules." Both abide by my rule without argument. ;-) On the whole and despite my many failings, failures and mistakes, I am very happy we unschooled our lives and if I had it to do all over again, I'd do the same

stigskog, You are a wonderful father for staying with your son. I believe you are doing absolutely the right thing and it would be a shame if you gave into those such as your wife and the people on this forum (?) who think it's ok to hog tie a child to stay in what is tantamount to a prison. This is called rationalization. Maria Montessori was a a genius. If you read her books and look at the schools that claim to be following her methods, you will see a huge gap. Might I gently suggest that you read this essay I wrote called "Raise Your Own" http://archive.lewrockwell.com/cuthbert/cuthbert10.html IMHO, for the long term wellbeing of children, there should be no daycare whatsoever. I realize that there are financial considerations and I am sympathetic to people's difficulties. Nevertheless, daycare is harmful, period. Just about anything would be better--preferrable a grandmother if mom can't care for her child all day. Stick to your position and keep peacefully parenting your son. You won't regret it.

Steve, I would very much like to encourage you to consider that at least part of you sad feelings may be physiological. If you are open to some alt. health, I can suggest several things: 1. sun every day, and if you don't have any--ie you live in Seattle--get lights that are used for people who have light related mood problems 2. exercise 3. niacin. You can take niacinamid which won't cause a flush. All the b viatims are very important for our emotional wellbeing, niacin and b12 especially 4. If you can find a praticioner and have the money I strongly encourage you to try emotional freedom technique, eft. It lifted my daughter's sadness completely off her shoulders in 40 minutes 5. support your thyroid, that is iodine balanced with selenium (brazil nuts), plus tyrosine and zinc. 6. try to get good sleep, and learn how to meditate. Help yourself rise above your past, if you can. Pls avoid going to anyone who perscribes drugs for depression--that is quackery. Geez, I know too many people struggling with sadness and depression right now. Makes me feel sad, too. Uh-oh... Best of luck "I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition." Martha Washington ps if you are interested in more details, let me know...

Dear Rayne, Been there. My son had temper tantrums for a while. My husband traveled, too, and I had no family to help. It was very draining to be responsible for children 24/7/365 with little or no other adult presence to provide insight, companionship and adult-level conversation. I had two children at this time, my daughter is two years older and has the temperment of a saint. The fact that she was there made things much easier during this difficult period, bc the two of them got along wonderfully and they occupied themselves for long periods of the day. A HUGE pressure with temper tantrums that I don't know if anyone mentioned is that nosey neighbors will call CPS on you, and that's what happened to me. We survived that "interaction" without much trouble, but it really scared the daylights out of me, so that whenever a tantrum came along after that, I was near panic. Before the CPS visit, I would let the tantrum play itself out. Following, I was in mortal fear of a knock on the door come to take my sweet guy away. I tried lots of things. I tried carrying him upstairs and asking him to stay in his room away from me until he could calm down. He would just come downstairs immediately, still crying. I tried saying, "Look, you're upset with me. I'll go upstairs in my room. You come and get me when you've calmed down," with a similar result. I tried hugging him, asking him what he wanted, pleading with him. Then one day, I scooped him up, ran up to the bedroom where we had a reclining chair, turned off all the lights (it was just before dinner in the winter so it was dark outside) and we sat in the dark and quiet, snuggling in the recliner. He calmed down immediately and we dozed for a bit. I'm pretty sure that the tantrum trigger was he was very tried but didn't want to nap (he never really napped even as a baby) and just couldn't handle any more stimulation. So the quiet, dark room was just what he needed. The tantrums ended soon afterwards. I think you just have to try a lot of strategies. Asking him what's wrong simply won't work in many situations because he doesn't have the congnitive abilities nor introspection to figure it out and tell you. That's what parents are for. It's hard, no doubt about it. But realize that it is temporary. Just try to avoid the situations that you think will trigger the tanturms. For example, I NEVER went grocery shopping with both children. I waited until my husband got home and went late at night by myself. Also, we never took long car rides. Anything over about an hour he just couldn't handle. I don't believe that trying to help him through his tantrums is indulging him. But he may be responding to cues in you that you don't know you are giving. Here's another story that my sister told me. She was visiting my Aunt Pat, who had 7 children. One of them threw a holy tantrum on the kitchen floor where my Aunt Pat was cooking. She ignored it for several minutes and then calmly said, "That's enough, now." My cousin calmed down and toddled off to wherever. That was Aunt Pat--I never heard her raise her voice. She spoke softly, barely above a whisper, always serene and smiling and she took everything in stride. My mother was that way, too, and she had 9 children. There are many things that these two women figured out very early and that's how we all survived. I am sure that our culture is losing the vast wisdom of past generations of mothers. It's really freightening. I mean, don't ya think it's crazy stupid that women have to BUY A BOOK about caring for their babies written by an old fart of a doctor whom they never met??? This is beyond tragic. Anyway, having an only child creates a situation where there can be too much concentrated attention on the child. I always tried to pay attention obliquely for large parts of the day for a couple of reasons. I wanted to make sure I wasn't smothering them, that they were developing some independence, that they would learn to rely on themselves and each other for things to do rather than on me (or anyone or thing outside of themselves). Children today need to be constantly entertained and they grow up thinking that the pursuit of pleasure is somehow equivalent to the pursuit of fulfillment. I wanted our children to know how to be comfortable being alone with their thoughts. At the same time, I wanted to be there for when they needed the attention. I wanted them to choose, not me. I think having more than one helped me step back and allow them the initiative. I also wanted them to know that I did adult things outside of their care, and I could show them those things and discuss these activities with them. I wanted them to see the adult world, what they essentially wouldn't see if they were sequestered in prison all day. Anyway, I'm rambling pretty far, here. I hope some of this is useful. Best of luck. I'm sure you'll get through this just fine. It's simply a bear in the meantime, I know.