In The Messy Space

My free time has been filled with reading books about Sudbury Valley School, which is one of many democratic schools like the one I'm working to start. More personally, I've been faced with the challenges of a  2 1/2 year old who whines and cries for me if anyone else so much as looks at her. Ladybug is sensitive, but this has been a new level of needy, and it's been going on for about two months now. My strategy of leaving the house in the mornings for outings and play dates has been shot to hell, because Ladybug screams when she sees other children. I know it's a phase. This week, I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel as her behavior mellowed.

I mention my struggles with Bug's behavior because it's nearly impossible to study an educational philosophy that espouses hands off, child-led learning and not wonder if you're being overly-directive as a parent. Is that why she's so upset lately? I've been pushing her? (Nope. It's just a phase.) I try so hard to be relaxed with her. As my blog description attests, I really believe that it's best to follow her lead.

Planning a radical free school while struggling to teach your toddler to control herself is a recipe for self-doubt. I guess parenting is a recipe for self-doubt, if I'm honest. And that's just the point, isn't it. Parenting isn't the same as running a school. There's some overlap in skills, undoubtedly. Legally speaking, schools act in loco parentis, "in place of the parent." All schools have to consider the role of the parents, and the best ones find a good way to keep the parents involved.

Schools must find the right balance of parental involvement, just like parents are constantly walking the line between enforcing rules and letting children grow more independent. It's not a smooth process. Before you have kids, you might decide that you will let your children do things for themselves, even though it will take longer, so that they can learn. Great! Simple, right? Well, what about the things they want to do but physically cannot? And they insist, and you let them, so they struggle and get all mad as they fail. And this process is healthy and good, but your blood pressure is rising because your kid is melting down and screaming her scream that has specially evolved to make you lose it, and you're already late for wherever you're going. Then you wonder if you wouldn't have done better to skip the struggle this time.

As I reread this meandering post, the themes I see are doing your best while feeling uncertain, learning by making mistakes, and struggling with the simplicity of principles versus the mess that is reality. Learning isn't a linear process that can be cleanly plotted out by a textbook publisher or parenting manual. Instead, in a democratic free school or a toddler homeschool, there will be a messy struggle to grow. It's the space for struggle, the time to run behind schedule, that leads to authentic growth. In the messy space, we and our children find ourselves.