Zoom call Libby and Rebecca supporting our child’s education, whether homeschooling or they’re in school.
2.40 – 5.40 mins: Genevieve reads out a poem by Dr John Edwards. The Things We Steal from Children The things we steal from children sent by Anne Sturgess.asd. Gifted Education Conference: Melbourne, 1999. Optionally, you can read it here.
6 mins: Some of the more common motivations of parents to home educate or choose a more alternative schooling option is that we don’t want them to be in the cookie cutter system that’s designed globally and delivered to a large group of children with very minimal direct feedback and encouragement to the individual student.
8 mins: G talks about how when she was home educating she would often manage her anxiety about whether or not home ed was meeting their needs by reminding herself that giving her child even an hour of truly connected present and patient time which meets the child’s needs for the kind of engagement and feedback which is critical to learning.
9 mins: Rebecca talked about one of her inspirations to decide to home education came from when her sister’s son was in the movies and needing private tutoring. That was when she learned that 2 hours one on one tuition provided enough time for him to accomplish his curriculum education tasks on a day.
10 mins: The anxiety and worry that parents experience relating to their child’s education that often they don’t realize are shared by other parents. Parents whose children are in a state school and haven’t questioned the impacts on their child are at a higher risk of missing some of their child’s developmental needs. All parents (regardless of schooling choice) need to feel empowered to be able to support their child maintaining a healthy relationship with their journey of learning while continuing to believe in themselves.
11: mins: Genevieve talks about how there is often a deep inner journey that parents embark on when they truly question the current education system and the extent that it supports or compromises their child’s development. The child can grow up and leave school, but the restrictions internalized from those years lives on inside of us all until we unearth and challenge those beliefs and feelings.
13 mins: The inner voice many home ed parents have of “who are YOU to think you can do a good job of home educating your child?”. Genevieve talks about having to find and reclaim her inner authority to feel confident to be the facilitator of her child’s learning process. So much of the parent’s inner conflict can bring a lot of parent child conflict into the home-schooling day. Yet the more parents can relax and trust that it’s ok that their child’s learning looks very different from children in the classroom.
Part II
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Part II is audio only because the picture froze with the recording.
First couple of minutes: Whether a child is home educated or in a traditional school, there’s so much that parents can do to support the child developing and preserving their individuality. All the PP tools help kids preserve their dignity, better listen to their inner voice, know their thoughts and feelings and maintain value of their feelings and needs.
2 mins: When a child comes home from school (or elsewhere) with a complaint about how they were treated, it’s important to listen with an open mind and heart rather than taking the opportunity to instil that they should be being good and obedient etc. The importance of preserving the child’s developing mind and heart whichever education system a parent chooses. PP tools and culture at home helps children stay connected to their intrinsic motivations and drives despite the reward and punishment and evaluative systems of the school culture.
3 mins: Genevieve talks about some parents who she has counselled who found they weren’t able to maintain peaceful parenting practices while home-schooling because of all the extra stresses and triggering that the pressure of home ed evoked for them.
3.5 mins: The importance of being gentle with ourselves in our limitations. To be gentle with our children’s limitations, we need to develop the ability to be more gentle with ourselves.
4 mins: Our conditioning trained us to consistently push past our limitations, our inner voice and needs. We’re trying to turn all that around to support our child’s inner voice and individuality while healing the wounded part of ourselves.
5 mins: The importance of being realistic about the change that we can create, we’re dealing with negative conditioning that’s been passed down to us over many many generations. We’re supporting our children to be stronger in themselves and know when to hold strong and not just be obedient to authority figures.
6 mins: Rebecca talks about how so many of the world’s leaders don’t model peaceful communication and conflict resolution and this needs to come from us. “I know I’m not the only person whose ever lost it with their child and watched myself not be the best person I could be”
7 mins: Parents need the tools to deal with situations where we’ve got it wrong in our parenting, this shows our kids that we’re people who make mistakes as well. The importance here of parents being vulnerable when they’ve acted in ways they regret.
9 mins: Genevieve talks about, despite wishing there wasn’t any ruptures (conflicts) when her kids were young, as they’ve got older she’s been able to see that because conflict resolution has happened in such a healthy way in the family, it’s equipped her children with great skills to work through way through differences, difficulties and misunderstandings with others (inside and outside of the family) as the years have gone on.
11 mins: G shares a little story about a wee rupture with her son and how he was able to hear the feedback from her without being defensive and how this ability to talk about a misunderstanding or upset and take ownership without getting overly defensive (nearly always driven by shame) that we want to equip our kids with and the practice and communication skills come from the ongoing unpacking of conflicts and misunderstandings in the family.
14 – 17 mins: Genevieve refers to the Still Face Experiment on Youtube and Ed Tronick’s description of the good, the bad and the ugly. The good and the bad being the daily good stuff and not so great stuff, but all in the realm of normal family interactions, but the ugly is “when you don’t give the child any chance to get back to the good”. My understanding is that Ed Tronick is referring to when the child isn’t helped to come back to the warmth, connection and trust in the relationship. When kids don’t have the opportunity to unpack and clear up misunderstandings, this makes it very difficult for them to keep their hearts open to themselves and their parent. Babies are much more capable than we ever imagined, yet they’re also much more vulnerable. That initial responsiveness between parent and child are key to the child’s success as they grow and develop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTTSXc6sARg The actual video is at the end of this page.
18 mins: Kids in schools generally don’t have the opportunity to genuine resolve differences and misunderstandings with their teacher. And without that the walls and blocks can build up which can hugely affects the child’s ability to think well and learn. It’s our opportunity as parents at home to help our kids work through that which couldn’t be resolved with other people.
19 mins: Rebecca asks about the steps and tools to repair conflicts and to keep the healthy lines of communications open.
https://www.peacefulparent.com/repairing-the-connection-after-conflict-with-your-child/
https://www.peacefulparent.com/preserving-childs-innocence-restoring-innocence
We talk about the importance of repairing the rupture in the connection after conflict.
Family meetings: the more you do it the more you create the culture of sitting down, creating space for each person’s thoughts and feelings to be heard. If you can keep it positive, it creates a space of emotional safety.
In Module 7 of the Step by Step eCourse; Moving forward, the unit Repair provides guidelines and steps to follow to ensure that you’re creating the opportunities to properly repair the warm connection, clear up misunderstandings and restore trust in the parent child relationship. https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-7/repair/
Family Meetings: https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-3/family-meetings/
Plus family meetings article: https://www.peacefulparent.com/family-meetings/
Article; Keeping the lines of communication open with your child. In this article there’s some guidlines about the messages that parents can give their child that inadvertently shut their child down and deteriorate the emotional safety in the relationship.
20 mins: Rebecca talks about how all parents are thinking that every other parent is doing it well or better, yet we all need to give ourselves grace for being our imperfect but good enough parents. It’s a challenge for parents to maintain their dignity despite the high bar of peaceful parenting.
21 mins: When the relationship has deteriorated a lot it may not be possible, there may not be enough emotional safety to go to the tools of unpacking. (This topic gets tackled more in Part III). Parents often feel that their child has to earn the parent’s trust again and this can be the case, yet essentially it needs to be the parent taking the lead in regaining their child’s trust again.
https://www.activelylearn.com/post/effective-feedback-for-deeper-learning
What do you do when you spend a lot of time in the “ugly”, when the relationship has degraded so much.
https://www.peacefulparent.com/repairing-the-connection-after-conflict-with-your-child/ the next time your child is giving you feedback that’s a little bit hard to swallow, try to hold that you’re giving them a HUGE gift of allowing, supporting and validating their feelings, their right to have “negative” feelings in close relationships and a right to explore, identify, put words to and express those feelings.
We invariably want to feel at peace with family members and allowing resolution of difficult feelings is an essential part of the process of keeping the channels of communication open, clear, authentic and free of a backlog of pent up resentments, fear and distrust. ~ Genevieve
Part III
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Part III is audio only because the picture froze with the recording.
First 3 mins Genevieve talks about how difficult it is to categorise what are reasonable expectations for different children according to their age group because there are so many diverse factors that can impact the individual child’s abilities. Because G has worked with so many parents of children with a huge range of special needs, she’s learned to be wary of sharing what she believes to be the normal milestones as it can result in parent’s feelings very discouraged. Example of a 7 year old being home schooled and G advises that expecting him to focus on a home education activity for more than 15 minutes without break or distraction is unrealistic.
3.5 mins: Avoiding ruptures and working through differences to avoid the bigger ruptures and to teach healthy conflict resolution skills. Here’s a link to the Parent Child scripts that tackle different challenges relating to different ages from infants through to teens. They present how the challenge can be approached using problem solving or loving limits, and the scripts help parents start to decipher when to use the different tools. Visit the resource library and click “Scripts” in the list of options below the search box. https://www.peacefulparent.com/resource-library/
8 mins: The Repair unit in the Step by Step eCourse. https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-7/repair/
9.5 mins: Below is the video that Genevieve refers to where a mother of three boys who are usually fighting a lot and the mother then gets into shouting and conflict with the kids, but using the PP tools she manages to not only not lose it at the kids, but help them through in a way that helps them resolve their difficulty and better enjoy each other’s company that evening.
https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-1/offtrack-behaviour/
Family Meetings: There’s a family meetings video in the Step by Step eCourse video library (the last unit); https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-7/course-videos/
Peaceful Parenting Toolkit; Unit 7 in the Discipline without Punishment Video Series gives a synopsis of the main peaceful parenting tools. https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-1/peaceful-parenting-toolkit/
14 mins: One of the main advantages of family meetings or mini meetings is that we very purposely decide on a time and dedicate ourselves to sitting down with our child to give full care and attention to hearing everyone’s thoughts and feelings. Most of the time we’re multitasking trying to achieve and meet so many needs at once. Family meetings create a greater level of emotional safety and presence and set parent and child alike up for more success in communicating more effectively.
Another resource that helps parents maintain more harmony, avoid the ruptures and explore what’s being triggered in us is the Stress relief for parents download. https://www.peacefulparent.com/module-1/ecourse-resources/
This is also the Unit in the Step by Step eCourse which gives you all the Summary Cheat Sheets together to print out. They each give a snapshot summary of different tools which can really help with implanting them into the psyche!
17 mins: When parents attempt to talk to the child about their feelings, kids are generally trying to negotiate how safe it is to share, it’s as if our children are asking; “do you really want to hear the truth, can you handle the truth??”.
18 mins: Genevieve talks about how sometimes so much pain builds up and hasn’t been resolved that the relationship can break down. Referring to Ed Tronick’s Good, Bad and Ugly in Part II, G talks about when the tensions have moved from the normal good and bad into the ugly and what needs to happen to repair the trust and connection in the relationship.
20 mins: When parents become so hurt that they’re unable to avoid being reactive, they need to prioritize their own deeper healing work. Do the Mama Meltdown eCourse, visit the Self-Healing Group and find some of the resources that might help or share in the general forum.
21 mins: If parents want their child’s genuine willingness to cooperate, if you want them to act from their intrinsic motivation, then parents NEED to do whatever they need to do to be able to get back to that softer more open heart so the parent can genuinely open the communication in a way that the child feels safe that their parent will remain kind.
22 mins: Parents need to find or recommit to that which opens their heart, that which brings the tears of release and relief, that which reconnects them.
23 mins: Genevieve shares an example of an exercise to discover what was being triggered in her when she mediated her children’s conflicts and how this dramatically changed her ability to maintain more compassion and patience for her children around their difficulties. (The first track of Genevieve’s Stress relief for parents cd also facilitates this process – link above).
26 mins: Sometimes when things become quite toxic relating to a certain thing with our child that’s become a power struggle in an extreme way, we need to cut our losses and make the necessary changes. Sometimes the good positive outcomes that the parent is hoping to achieve with their choice with their child has become more negative, e.g. bed sharing, extended breast feeding, homeschooling. Parents need to work really hard at first trying to find that inner peace around it and if that just seems too hard or impossible to achieve, then a hard decision might need to be made.
28 mins: Creating a sacred ring around the emotional space with your child when they disclose their very sore feelings relating to how it feels when their parent speaks or acts in a certain way.
30 mins: All home educating parents go through at least a certain amount of inner conflict. It’s difficult to be under the societal pressure to home education well. Rebecca talks about the guilt of not spending more time on the PP education, yet being kind and realistic about the limitations.
In the last few mins of the video Genevieve talks about what’s needed to help our children feel safe to open up to us, to share their honest thoughts and feelings. The importance of remembering that our children, deep inside, are always craving harmony with their parents. It can look like they’re doing everything to create disharmony, it can look like they don’t respect or care about their parent, but despite how many painful feelings that build up, they need for things to be harmonious just as much as their parent. If the parent can remember this, it helps them stay in their adult, helps them keep working to reach their child’s heart, helps them soften their heart and become their child’s rock of strength.
When it comes to discipline where do we draw the line. This is about exploring where we draw the line and shifting the ideal and never lines to ensure that we keep our children safe from our anger as much as possible. https://www.peacefulparent.com/when-it-comes-to-discipline-where-do-you-draw-the-line/