Purging darkness

As many of you may know we have been so hopeful about the promise of a new second level school in our local area, and active in our personal involvement in the campaign to make it an Educate Together school. It has been a strong flame of hope for us. Regular readers will know just how big a deal school is for me, for us as a family. And so I feel sick, angry and shocked at the announcement today that the new school will be the only one of nine in the country, awarded to a Catholic patronage.

I don’t want to defend or attack any individual Catholics or to cause hurt. It is not about you or me. Catholicism is not my path. Nor my family’s nor that of so many families in the local area. And every school in this area, bar one private school is already Catholic. And so I feel frustrated that at the time when our children, the next generation of this new world, start moving into their adult consciousness, the only places on offer to them are all not of the consciousness we choose to impart to them. The place they learn day in day out about their feelings of love, arousal, sexuality, spirituality, their paradigm and sense of self and self-worth… will all be in a place which is so dissonant with our own values.

I feel angry, angry, angry. Because we were promised that these new schools would bring diversity, would reflect parents’ and children’s needs which were not already being served by existing schools.

I am angry because of reasons that I do not want to go into here, and I am a writer who could be sued for libel, not an impervious religious body that still holds vast power. But I do not feel that they have, through numerous past actions in the local area, only recently admitted, proven themselves to be a body to which I would trust my children’s bodies or souls.

And so we are left reeling, as are hundreds of parents in the local area, wondering what we do next, where we turn, what our options are: to move 40 miles to be close to the new Educate Together school which has been approved? To commute that distance every day? To home educate? To start a home-ed co-operative or private school, to move to the UK or further afield…. None of the options hold any desire for me… And nor do the schools on offer here. And there are SO many parents that I know personally who are in the same situation.

So here I am, in the dark time of my cycle, the moon darkening in the sky and I feel full of frustration, full of anger and darkness. I am taking part at the moment in a very powerful women's e-course, and we are purging shame and guilt and darkness there too. It runs deep. So deep. It is pervasive. And it gets rooted young.

So much of it is not individual, but collective, built up generation by generation, and now, those of us that are wanting to shift it, to get to somewhere fresh, somewhere creative and vibrant and life-affirming in our own psyches, in our collective culture, we are purging the darkness, speaking shame, shining light on it, sharing, and moving beyond.

But some days it really feels like I don’t have the energy to keep purging, to keep pushing and shaking and resisting the old ways. Trying to knock down old walls, and campaign for new ways. Trying to persuade and convince, and apologise and not offend the old-wayers. How much simpler it would be just to bow my head and accept, as so many have done for generations. To be grateful for what I have. To make the best of it. To stop being so demanding, so entitled.

Or to be happy to lay down my own life, my own career and soul-work to home-ed if it’s so important to me.

Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

I am angry. But I know I am not alone in it. There's a lot of us. Angry. Frustrated. And finding our voices... watch out world!

PS So me being me I have gone into overdrive and in the past couple of hours have:

• Set up a petition - you can sign here 
• Contacted the regional newspapers with a press release.
• Written emails to the Minister for Education and our local Representatives
• Spread the word via social media so others can share their voices.

I don't know what can be achieved. But I know I won't go down silent or without a fight.

Changing Gear

We are changing gears.

School is back tomorrow. And our littlest starts pre-school.

Five mornings a week. Three hours a day. Can you believe it? I can't!

I genuinely never thought this day would come. I see the mornings opening up for me. I will get to work every day. Every day, people!!!! I cannot tell you how thrilled my creative self is. (Though I'm being realistic and not counting on this actually happening for the first month as she settles in!)

And then the mama bit of me feels it's the beginning of the end. How can my baby be big enough to head off? I keep holding her tight - that sparky, funny, cute, clever little monkey child. She's off on her little way into LIFE without me!

My mind keeps jumping ahead to next year, when we'll be sending all THREE of them off to big school. I can hardly breathe at the thought... but part of that is the expense - nothing... nothing prepared me for how expensive it is to send children to a supposedly "free" school in Ireland - we're looking at about a grand next year - and that includes one child in handmedowns! Scary!

So having spent nine weeks getting used to having them round all day, every day, we'll be back to packed lunches and early mornings and uniforms, and remembering which day to send them in with their sports kits, and hassling over homework.

And quiet days and a tidy house. Time to think, and be still and not race and rush... until I'm late for picking them up... again.

So there we have it, less mama-ing and more creating - eeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkk!

More time to be doing stuff like this...

This is part of the Irish Parenting Bloggers Back to School blog march. If you’re interested in how much it costs to go back to school in Ireland you can read this excellent infographic from Barnardos which is based on a survey they carried out earlier this Summer. You can also read from the selection of Irish Parenting Bloggers over the next couple of days:
Sunday, 25th August: The Clothesline – It All Adds Up
Monday, 26th August: The Mama’s Hip – Homeschooling haul and chatter
Monday, 26th August: Awfully Chipper – Back to school in America
Tuesday, 27th August: Learner Mama – Back to school – A costly business
Tuesday, 27th August: Office Mum – School Costs & The Double Income Contradicton

Tuesday, 27th August: Musings And Chatterings – Crests and costs – starting big school part 1

Thank fuck for school

Its Monday morning. The house is quiet. Our two older kids are at school.

And I think: thank fuck!

I bitch and whine and whinge and moan about school. About the amount of colouring in, religious dogma, early mornings, lack of creativity and imagination...

But here's what I love about it. Last week I was sick all week. And someone else had my kids all day. Took care of them and even taught them some stuff. For free. And I didn't have to feel guilty about asking favours or plonking them in front of the TV.

Do you remember my annual back to school jitters, which this year found us a hair's breadth from quitting and home schooling? Ironically, the thing that perhaps confirmed our need to continue with school was a post written by a home schooling friend about ten reasons you shouldn't home school. We fit 8 of them.

So in the spirit of joy pockets, I want to honour the good in our current educational choices.

1) My children can read, write, spell and add really well. In this world where even a basic education is still a luxury that so many children do not have access to, the fact that we get this for free is nothing to sniff at.
2) It gives us structure to our days, which I know would be lovely not to have some days. But being the structure setter every day is tiring. And if we don't have a plan my kids don't get dressed and we don't do anything. Which is not OK with me on a daily basis.
3) Someone else has responsibility for if my kid can read, count, recognise the flag of Namibia and speak pidgin Irish. And do cross country races. And algebra. Cos all these things are important, right?
4) The parents. What a wonderful, caring, supportive bunch they are at our school. Love 'em.
5)The garden - a strange one, but true. Gotta love a school with a veg garden, kid made scarecrows, hens and a compost heap. And fields to play in.
6) A school where big and little kids play together. Where everyone knows everyone else. Where the principal knows my daughter's name in the first two weeks. Where we all feel safe.
7) My children get to learn about and from other adults who have different strengths, skills, characters and knowledge to me.
8) The range of activities is so much larger than I can offer at home.
9) Very importantly for me and my cautious kiddies: they, and we, are stretched out of our comfort zones. We do stuff that we might not try at home, or that we might not persist with if we were following our own whims. This actually is a good thing.
10) School's so close. Less than five minutes walk. No car journeys, we walk thru the seasons. And I can pop in to see them at break time, just because I love them and they're mine. And that's OK.
11) They don't have to put up with me all day. And when we get together again in the afternoon we have more time, love and enthusiasm for each other.
12) I get my work days. I cannot tell you how important they are to me.
13) And I get lovely quiet one to one mornings with my little Ash. Which is especially important as she's the third child. So we get to do play group, play dough and nursery rhymes.

So I am grateful. Very grateful.

Damn Compulsory Education - Part 2

So I keep being asked how it goes. With the whole school thing. (For Part 1 see here)

The short answer is... it goes.

The long answer is it's been a pretty shit week in my world. I have felt in conflict with my husband over the whole education thing. This was really, really hard. I felt sick, shaken, yuck - I hate that feeling of discord. I felt, if truth be told, like I was in the wrong - in his eyes, in the teacher's eyes - and all I was trying to do was the best for our daughter. As of course was he. I was ready for her to quit - for the rest of the term, the year, for ever. He was not, he felt we needed to give it time... And so we took his path. And I felt like my vote was not being counted. I felt like I was abandoning my sacred mother contract to protect my daughter from trauma.

Monday we got her to line up in the school yard. She freaked, bit me hard on the wrist. Went in with the assistant teacher, crying. Me promising to follow on once I'd collected her little sister from the other side of the yard. I didn't, because the crying subsided. I felt shit.

Monday night she wet the bed (her third time in a week.) Tuesday morning she wakes covered in big fly bites. She stays home. She plays so well with her sister all day. We really need to home school I think, this could work.

Wednesday she has an hour melt down in the morning. She goes in at break time, we settle her in the classroom whilst the other kids are out playing. Cries for five minutes. The sun is shining, it's a friend's birthday party, I take my son out early - all he misses is "power walking" - this is a valid sports choice for 6-7 year olds apparently - WTF?!

Thursday she's fine going in for her dad.  I have a heart to heart with my dad. I go and talk to the teacher, ready to warn her that we're going to pull her out. I ask the teacher how she has been, "Oh great, wonderful, the only problem was the first day until you had gone..." ("that's right, pile it on woman, the whole clingy mother making it all worse shite", I think) "I would have told you if we were having problems..." So I begin to tell her about the melt downs, the wet beds... but to her it doesn't matter, it's not on her watch so it doesn't count.

Friday she goes in at the start of school, we settle her in the classroom before the other kids come in. She's fine.

I have really enjoyed my days at work. Really enjoyed having just little Ash home with me in the mornings. Enjoyed having more energy to enjoy and focus on them all in the afternoon. Felt sad that the sun was shining and my kids were shut in a classroom. Felt cross at forcing our son to do piles of pointless homework on sunny evenings. Delighted at how enthusiastic our daughter is about her homework, doing it a day in advance, with great care. How quickly she is learning her letters. She loves her uniform, you can see that she feels more grown up. I hate making packed lunches. Grind my teeth over filling in school forms.

It's a mixed bag. Truly.

I have been torn between the two competing camps of home ed and schoolers, comforted by the few who find themselves in my position - who crawled out of the work on Facebook, by email, at the playground and the school gate to say - you are us, we know your pain, we're there too. Families who are taking the home ed route - and feeling ill at ease. Families who are taking the school route and feeling deeply conflicted. I know that I am not alone in this.

Here's the truth - there is a lot of feeling going on - mamas and kiddies and papas, yearning, resisting, mourning, regretting, hurting, being scared, feeling overwhelmed.... and school doesn't do feelings. And our class teacher doesn't do feelings. And that's what I struggle with. You go from the home environment where we judge by feelings, intuition, careful watching - to a school environment where the only thing that really matters is on the page, not in the heart, on the page, not in the brain, on the page, not in the soul. Where the currency is stickers and ticks and smiley faces.

Oh that I wish there were clear answers, here where we live. But instead we live in a muddle of compromises. And it's alright. And whilst it's alright we'll stick.

But I reserve the right to twist at any point.

Damn Compulsory Education

We are struggling at the moment.

Really struggling. To send our two children to school. It is compulsory education. For them, for us.

This does not feel good. 

For two mornings in a row we have spent 1 1/2 hours cajoling and forcing them into uniforms. Cajoling and forcing them to walk the 100 metres to school. Cajoling and forcing them into their classrooms. And then, after another hour of endlessly prising the younger one's hands from my neck/ skirt/ arms/ hands, walking away from my child who was screaming for me- albeit left one to one with the very lovely classroom assistant.

I know she is safe. But she does not.

I know that she will be OK, but she does not.

She looks like a rabbit in the headlights. A trapped tiger. Her need to escape, to be with me, to feel safe is primal. She wet herself.

The teacher wanted me to up and leave her straight away. She tried to bribe away her tears with stickers. I could sense her desperation as more and more toys and books were pushed her way and questions asked. "Don't feel your feelings" was the lesson she was teaching her. Shut down. Shut up.

She snapped at me for waiting outside the door and "starting her off again." And so I sat with her as the list of rules and controls was explained to the other children. Don't speak, don't swing, don't wriggle. Don't use the toilet unless you ask...

This is compulsory education.

26 little bodies dressed the same, sat in rows, bribed with stickers to sit still and shut up and colour inane shite.

"School is boring" - my 7 year old informs me. "I know, my love, I know. This is not my vision of education." I think.

I wish we could run free in the woods, with the river as our guide, the seasons as your teachers. I wish we could paint all day, and get up when we want. I wish I didn't have to force and cajole your precious bodies and spirits to satisfy the powers that be.

But I have learnt too, since becoming a mama - I am not the patient, all loving, full of energy mama I thought I would be - I get tired, and over whelmed. I long for peace, to do my work. I am a good one-to-one mama. But there is not one. there are three. Three different characters, different needs - each I want to serve and honour - but the cacophony of competing desires overwhelms me. I begin to sink.

I need to honour you. And I need to honour myself.

We have agonised over school for many years - see here and here.

We have agonised over school for her all year - she is young for her year - but academically and developmentally well above the older kids. She is too young for this year, too old for next. She was getting bored at playschool. Her free pre school childcare year had been used.

She is her - she is highly sensitive, with suspected Sensory Processing Disorder - which is not a "thing" here in Ireland, just in the US.

If we "give in", then what do we do? Do we allow them both to home school. Do we try to find the money for playschool - which we do not have. Do we teach her that when she tantrums she gets her way?

If we don't then we are complicit in forcing and traumatising our daughter. We are not honouring her fears and needs. But will home schooling really be that different - then all the responsibility for their learning will be on my shoulders.

We are trying a gentler approach, of quarter days, to ease her in.

But oh, how I wish there were an easy answer. For her, for him, for us all. One where we all won. One where our days were full of learning, joy and excitement at the world - not fighting and forcing.

Damn you compulsory education!

She's a big girl now! - Starting school

For Delphine, Helen, Bree, Lydia... and us!

The time of starting school is here. For those of us who have chosen that path. Today it was Merrily's turn to start playschool. So many friends' children are starting school or playschool this week.

Days of jittery tummies and secret tears - for mamas and kiddies... and even daddys! Another crucial weaning has arrived. Perhaps we have been counting down the days. But now it's here. And we're not quite so sure. We mentally barter for another day, or week.

How can it have come to this? Our little baby, who we held in our arms a blink ago is here with an oversized rucksack on their backs. Containing a lunchbox made with care, full of their favourites, infused with love, as though each bite of peanut butter sandwich will communicate our love, our best wishes for our precious, brave child venturing out alone in this uncertain world.

There they are dressed and ready. Shiny shoes and a jumper a size too big. The front door echoes as we pull it closed. The queasiness rises. We clutch their hand, smooth their hair, sending up silent prayers.

When we get there, we attend to practical details - the location of pegs, toilets, familiar faces. we hover, and hover. Then move to go.

We steel ourselves. Take a breath. We know they'll love it. We know they'll be fine. We hope. They cling to our skirts, our hands, our hearts. We settle them again. Take our leave again. Decisive now.

This is the time we wish we were homeschoolers. Then there would be none of this.

Perhaps we peek in the window, or listen at the door. Perhaps there are tears. Theirs or ours.

The morning is a held breath. The minutes like hours. We fill them with distractions - at a cafe, the mamas gather and share their nervousness. Clutching phones just in case of a distress call. But silence remains. We don't know what to do with ourselves, with this new found time and breathing space. what silence the absence of a child creates.

We return to collect our precious charges. In a few weeks we will be rushing to be on time. Today we are early. Mama and dada racing each other to be the first to see the girl, to clutch her to us, to interrogate her teacher.

She runs out. Noticeably more grown up and sure of herself than the little girl we left there this morning. She knows the shape and size of her own courage. She had fun. We exhale together and share her joy.

And we'll do it all over again tomorrow.

Did your child start school, playschool or kindergarten this week? Or will they be starting this week? How was it for you? And for them? And homeschooling mamas how is it for you at this time of year?


Wanna read more on school?
This was on me making my mind up about school v home school - lots of great responses too!
And this was the very first post on the subject - this time last year when my son started big school.
This was about my son learning to write - and how school helps and hinders - what is writing for really?

To school or not to school... one year on!

Chicken pox arrived in our house at the most opportune of times. Our school-going son is daily questioning his school going, and as a wanna-be home schooling mama, and wanna be writer, I find myself completely torn. I shared the agonising decision almost a year ago about whether or not he was going to go to school here...

I am sure I am not the only parent in this dilemma - some have gone down their chosen route without a doubt and with a spring in their step, or without questioning, it is not a decision... for me, for us, it really is... and neither option quite fits any of us...

I have read a huge amount about home education, un schooling, flexi schooling and various school education options over the years. I have a bulging book case on the subject. So I am not looking for information. But we do need to decide one way or the other - though as I said last year, and as my friend MF says, no choice is forever...

I write this with an awareness that my readership is split between home educators and schoolers, and I am very clear that I do not want to disparage either's choices, or make this a battle ground of ideologies. Let there be no mud slinging here please! This is a space for dreaming aloud, and so it is with this intention that I am sharing my own dreams and struggles... I would really like to hear what the deciding factors have been for you in your own lives, and where your struggles have been rather  than any blanket judgements or proseletysing one way or the other.


The issues FOR US - if I went into detail on each this post would be VAST! So forgive me for just listing them:

• Family approval/ acceptance - it shouldn't matter but it does and none of the parents are particularly supportive of home-ed
• Energy/sanity - I NEED headspace as a Highly Sensitive, and am looking forward to pre-school and school as allowing me to have more.
• Myself as a writer and person, beyond mother and teacher - This is a big one for me. Having had my first child at 25, and had three in close succession, and being a creative minded person, I really feel the NEED for my own work and creative headspace. Other homeschooling mothers have said I can do it whilst the kids are at home, but with all due respect they are not writers themselves and so do not know this. I can do the sort of bitty writing I do now, but I want to be able to get more concentrated time. I am not hugely attracted to unschooling as an approach, therefore home ed will require more of my time and energy.
• Our family income - I like to be able to contribute to our family income. It matters to me.
• What about later? Exams, getting back into the system - what if he is academic like us, his parents, I don't want homeschooling to limit what/ who he might be and pushing him towards creative work being his only option...
• Isolation..Being the odd one out - him and us on the estate, in the village, we are already very different by religion and hobby choices, and lifestyle, I don't want him to be stigmatised because of our choices.
• Not being comfortable with unschooling approach -  have read a lot about it, seen it in action, and for me it is not really the answer either... I have seen a huge amount of maternal anxiety over it... it is not, I don't think, the path that I would want to take.
• Mother as teacher - When discussing this earlier in the year with another mama who is a very hands-on do loads of stuff at home mama, but has also chosen the school route, she said, and I agree, that our role with our kids is mother and trying to shift into the teacher role is challenging for both parties.
• But he gets it at home anyway- Both of my parent's attitudes is that what happens at home is most important, and that my kids already get lots of good stuff at home, and so what happens at school is of less importance. I agree to a point, but if school is dominating home life and routines, if school is a large chunk of his day, if we could do better and he could be happier at home, then shouldn't we...
• Biological equilibrium- going to the toilet and eating when he needs to are a big deal. As is being able to rest when he needs to. School does not allow this.
• He is a highly sensitive child - needs time alone. School ahs really helped him to gain social confidence - but it taxes him beyond comfortable limits. He often returns totally drained.
• What did you learn at school today? "Nothing" is his standard reply.
• fairness with all my kids - I have three children, I don't want to give my first born something that I am unable to offer all three
  My own limits of knowledge, child development and educational stuff - I am, like any parent, concerned about being judged by others: parents, authorities etc... and deemed a failure.
• Providing a really good education... this goes both ways

Irish- school wins
Other modern languages - we win
Outdoor education -we win
Acctive learning - we win
Team sports - school wins
Reading and writing and maths - we would do it differently but equally well we would do it with more creativity, school with more efficiency
History, geography, humanities, science - we would win on creativity, breadth and tailoring it to his interests and for in depth project learning
Art, creativity - us,
 Home economics- that'd be us again
Spiritual/ religious education - don't even get me started there
Music - us
Morals and love - ummmm , us!
Sense of independence
Sense of community...


No more school means:
No more inane work books, time filling, queing, being silent, putting up hands, making him do pointless homework, stickers and stars as rewards, packed lunches, early mornings, money spent on uniforms and school stuff - probably about 600 euro this year, planning all activities around school, endless birthday party invites to Go Safari,  early to bed school nights, worrying about what goes on in the playground...


BUT...


No more writing mornings and possibly less writing evenings


More kiddies fighting, driving to after school clubs to "fill in the gaps", mess, noise, planning, DEMANDS ON ME.


BUT...


More time with kiddies, learning together, rewarding learning experiences seeing him grow, providing him with individualised learning, sense of self as learner,  sense of pride in work and ownership, being known and really appreciated, the removal of competitive learning and comparison which he is very sensitive to. Setting him up for a life of learning.

So here I am, swinging my legs on the fence. Knowing that both options have many positives. Knowing that I have a right to choose my own "career" over my kids and not feel bad. Knowing that his school is not really damaging him, it is a benign village school. Knowing that really it is all small fry, that it doesn't really matter.. and yet... and yet...

A Wishing Day

Today has been a sunny wishing day. Timmy has been home from school for the past two days, awaiting spots, which never arrived! I have enjoyed our couple of home-schooling days. Since we can't formally flexi-school, then we are freestyling it. We take a day out of school, now and then "for family reasons" and have a special day of craft and educational outings. A day for the soul and creative spirit which doesn't get much nurturing at school.

So we made wishing eggs, inspired by my dear friend Laura at Nestled Under Rainbows. The eggs came from our happy-ish free range hens who live under the trampoline. we wrote wishes on paper, put them into the empty shells and wrapped them in bright tissue paper and raffia ribbon. Wishes included... "I wish I was a digger driver", "I wish for a pants super hero birthday party at my house" and "I wish it was Christmas"!!!

They are now adorning our seasons table and will be taken out and hidden in the woods at Easter time where the fairies will find them and grant our wishes. We are waiting for the arrival of our very own fairy: the cherry blossom fairy, who will grace our nature table any day now. The buds are swelling in the garden outside and we're counting down the days till our first o-hanami (Japanese cherry blossom picnic) under the cherry trees in our very own garden in the Pink House. But for now we are enjoying the bright yellow daffodils, and blue wood anemones and grape hyacinths we planted last September.

Making his mark

Our five-year-old boy is learning to write. There are messages everywhere... signs on doors: privit proprty, bois room; recipes (see here) and notes such as this is not a shoping list under his dad's to-do list; plant labels; shopping lists; thank you letters; Valentines cards; even a couple of his own books: the great big book of of dinosors in the wurld and another volume on aliens. They were all done quietly by himself, fuelled by his own inspiration. I love the free flow of his thoughts and words onto paper and his quirky spelling. I love his drive to communicate, his need to express himself through writing. He loves this too, the magic of seeing letters spill from his pencil onto the page. And the double delight of his parents being able to read his missives. He is making his mark on the world...and he loves it!

Today his dad made him a paper hat, at his request. We found it later, annotated thus:

Jesus in a spaceship

My son started at the local school this September. 95% of Irish schools are Catholic. Irish schools have a required 30 minutes daily religious instruction.

However, we are not religious.

How will this work we wonder...

And so today, a conversation started in our house.

"Who lives there?" I asked "Jesus?" I can't remember exactly where this place was we were talking about, but I was being playful.

Keeping inside the lines: Why colouring in dominates early years education and what we can do about it...

WHY HAS COLOURING in taken over education? As a secondary level teacher myself, I was shocked when my son started school this September. His homework – homework, on the first night of Junior Infants! – was to colour in a snake. On the back of the sheet was an almost identical snake that he had coloured that day at school. This has continued as the weeks have gone past. “What did you do in school today?” I ask. “Colouring in,” comes the reply. And what's for homework? Let me guess...

Giving from the heart

Despondent after another identi-kit party at an anonymous warehouse, sorry, play-centre, where the hostess gathered the vast gifts, no doubt mainly plastic and cardboard packaging, full of overpriced plastic toys, made by badly paid Chinese workers, I despaired. I didn't know the child, didn't know what she would like and yet the obligation to give, to be seen to be generous, was there. I had settled for a cute embroidered notebook, handmade by an Indian women's cooperative, and sold at a local shop and some suitable wooden non-toxic crayons – given in a re-usable gift bag. I have a suspicion that the daughter may have flung them aside in disgust and the mother probably felt like the trade off between money paid for my son's entry to the party and the size of gift did not tally.

But what to do? I do not buy big plastic gifts for my own children, and I baulk at the packaging on most "mainstream" toys.  So I'm not going to start giving them at the 20 or so birthday parties of strangers' children from school, which my son is lucky enough to be invited to a year for three key reasons:  1) We don't have the money 2) Its not our thing-: ecologically, socially, or values-wise and 3) I strongly believe that kids just don't need that amount of toys they have, it is just an accumulation of waste and early training into consumerism.

So what to do?

And then it hit me - give to kids who do need something. I recalled friends telling me of children in India, Africa and Nepal hounding them, wherever they went, for a biro or a pencil. And here at home, my son has been given his third pack of cheap pencils in a month, in the party bag he received. 


So next party I am going to give a sports kit - to children in Africa, and the birthday child will receive a card informing them of this and a picture - this way children who really need something to play with will get it and the birthday child will have a gentle education into the world beyond their own...

Sponsoring an animal starts at £40 a year one off payment: helping to save the habitat of an elephant, panda, otter, dolphin, dormouse... It's pricey, so maybe give it to the class and then give a card to each child with a copy of the certificate? WWF and many others do animal adoption. As do local zoos and safaris, where the child could visit "their" animal.

You can give a flock of chicks for €13 (OXFAM) or a duck for £12 (practical presents.co.uk) to families in need.

And then the wonderful  http://www.oxfamirelandunwrapped.com

You can give a sports kit FOR €9 or school books FOR €15.

Or 3 bags of seeds for €7 and then give a bag of seeds to the birthday child themselves as a way of connecting them to the child, and to nature and get them into growing things themselves.

Or give handmade, fair trade, co-operative made goods...

Or something educational, or start a passion for craft...

Tell me
How do you solve the gift dilemma, where you hardly know the person but a gift is expected?
To what extent do the gifts you give reflect your values?

To school or not to school?

My son turned five this summer, and so the need to act on the issue of schooling is now upon us. Not that I had been avoiding the issue. Far from it. 

From the moment he was born, in fact, since before I was ever pregnant, my project was to find a gentle, loving and progressive way of allowing him to develop and unfold. I have shared this dream with many others who unwittingly cross my evangelical path, filled notebooks with plans, scoured the internet for resources and filled bookshelves with a wide range of guerilla education ideas. Steiner, free schools, home ed, alternatives of every colour and creed have been considered. I have helped establish a playgroup, visited home ed meetings, we went to the Steiner school parent's evening when he was just three weeks old. We even threw ourselves into helping to establish a local Educate Together primary school in our nearest town, Midleton. 

And yet here we find ourselves about to take our child to the gates of the local village school, a state  Catholic school to boot. We are, I feel abandoning him to the 'system'. There is just nothing like the alternative small schools of America here, nor the interest to support one. Though I was delighted to see today that the local home schooling community also dream this dream, but the result of their dream is visioned to be in Cork City 45 minutes from here. 

Whilst I have a strong desire to home school, I also have my reservations and anyway, it does not fit with my reality as the mum of three kids under five, who strongly desires to be involved in her own projects, especially editing and writing for Juno, and also desires to retain a little sanity. For me a possible middle ground is flexi schooling, but not unfortunately a possibility on this rather conservative minded island on which I live.

What I want to do seems so natural to me, so right. But I don't want to do it alone. I don't want it to be a choice between my children's or my own best interests. Both my husband and I dream of commmunity education, where we live and share education of our children with our community, allowing us both to be deeply involved in their education, rather than asking a school's permission to educate our own children, and at the same time being able to follow our our work paths and dreams, rather than choose one over the other.

So for us, our "next best thing" as Pam England calls it, is a little village school, a hundred yards down the road from us, with chickens, a herb garden and a hedgehog heap, a caring head teacher. Through it we are rooted in our local community.  Not our "community as we would wish it to be full of lots of alternative thinking types", but our community as it is which we inhabit. Though Timmy is fourth generation Pearce in this village, we are still blow-ins! I speak no Irish and hardly know one end of a hurley from another, I have never labeled a uniform or covered a copy book, so for me this is a journey to a foreign land, in the land of my birth. A journey I was not even planning to take. A bit like parenthood I guess!

It feels right for me, that although he is out of my grasp, it is only just: my Madonna's cloak (in Steiner parlance) does not have to open too wide to let him go, as his school is so close. I feel if Armageddon came down to Shanagarry one Tuesday afternoon, he is close enough for this mother hen to swoop in and tuck him under her wing again, under the safe mantle of this multi-coloured Madonna's cloak, and away we go!

So whilst he will go to school come tomorrow, with much trepidation, tears and misgivings on my behalf, I keep reassuring myself that it is not a final decision. We can and no doubt will choose and choose again, whilst we strive to make our vision of inclusive, creative, alternative community education a reality here in East Cork.