Why don't more parents believe in their ability to educate their children?

Have you ever known anyone who has suffered from a stroke? Or a long illness or injury? Learning to talk, walk, lift limbs and move them again - these things we take so much for granted can take months and months of struggle and effort.
What our babies and toddlers learn is often overlooked or underestimated. They do a similar feat and it is no wonder they get frustrated! Learning to walk involved falling down, over and over. It involved bumps and bruises, tears and tantrums, hurt pride and a willingness to get up again and again.
It's funny how we just trust children to do these things with support, in a really natural and easy way. I mean, we know it's NOT easy, but we scaffold all these major transitions and cater for them domestically and in a non-trained way and treat school as the place where kids learn the real stuff, the hard stuff. But THAT is the hard stuff. Parenting a child and helping them learn to use a toilet, patch it up with a friend, get themselves dressed, or learn how to calm down after having a nightmare - that's the hardest stuff of all.
Yet when parents take the leap and decide to home educate, they often get really scared. Suddenly, having helped their child do the hardest things in the world, they don't feel qualified or expert enough.
Want to know a secret? Learning to read and write and memorise stuff is, in comparison to learning to walk, a piece of cake. Anyone can do that stuff! Not so easy when you expect or demand children to do it at a very very specific age... or against their will.... but when allowed time and freedom to learn at their own pace, it's a doddle!
Parents have happily outsourced the education of their children to others for a relatively short period of history. Before that children managed perfectly well to become quite proficient at all kinds of things.
But we live in a different era now. The explosion of information and the internet makes teachers of the traditional kind redundant. Anyone can teach themselves nowadays by reading books, watching documentaries, completing ecourses and surfing around on youtube educational channels. Even simple play is more complex and educationally rich than ever before. Families are free to draw on the expertise of a plethora of different people in their communities and beyond. There are interactive, hands-on museums, home ed groups that meet regularly to do sports, visit museums, learn drama, play music together, all sorts of things. Every area is different and of course, there are after school clubs and activities of the traditional kind - scouts and swimming and so on. Home ed has never been so easy, with yahoo groups for support and even facebook communities of home educators to support, advise, inspire and guide one another.
Until people actually do it and take the plunge, it seems a very daunting thing to do. We have been hoodwinked into thinking education must be a formal thing, taught by teachers who have studied subjects to a very high level - the truth is information is no longer held by a few elite key-holders. The keys belong to everyone now. Anyone can find out and study anything they want to know very easily.
Are children motivated to learn? Intrinsically yes they are. They are wired to make connections and piece together what the world is, and how things work. Squeezing that learning into 9-3 on demand in a schooly manner is a harder job. But if you relax, and take the approach that children have their entire childhood to discover this stuff, if you trust that they will come to it when ready, then they just do. They do because the world just IS interesting! It is full of wonder. It is literally wonder-full. It is full of surprises and secrets and discoveries yet to be made. With home ed, instead of focusing on the 'right answers', families can pause to really explore the QUESTIONS themselves, looking at many answers. This is the beauty of home education.
Answers are limited within the school system to what the examiners of the day, deem to be correct or worthy. With home ed they become limitless.
Home ed challenges you to think creatively around things. It helps children to become solution-focused, rather than focused on problems. When you start to think like this you soon find a way of bending around problems. Your thinking gets bendier, full stop! You stop seeing the limitations of things and try and work out alternative ways of getting to where you want to go.
This attitude helps home educated teens get into colleges and universities and apprenticeships, and helps them actually stand out from their peers in a positive way. People often think their children will stand out in a detrimental or negative way because they were home educated, but in fact it can be a real plus to skip out on the usual route, which every other kid has done, sometimes without any real passion. When a home educated kid wants a job in something or they want to do a course, it is usually because it is driven by a sense of real purpose or passion.
I have written this post to encourage people to really believe in their children and themselves and to not succumb to feeling patronised or undermined by folks who have invested their own belief in the traditional school system. Of course children can get educated that way very happily and many will do well. But if a parent resolves to educate their child at home, they should know this one thing - home educating your child is one of the most rewarding, life-enhancing, pleasurable and easy things you can do. You don't need a degree. You don't need to know every subject. You don't need to invest hundreds of pounds in reedy-made curriculums.
You just need to trust in your kids, trust in the flow and process of learning in all its unpredictable glory, trust in people, trust in life. Open up to possibilities. Find ways to bend round things. Look for positives, for solutions, for the things that make your children happy and make them light up.
Home ed has so far (been going at this for 13 years) been the most incredible learning adventure for our family. I hope this post inspires others to take the plunge and bend round the things in their life that are making them unhappy, including, if appropriate - school!

Blooming in our own good time

People have been asking me recently about how we unschool and how it works, and what to say to those who doubt that children will really learn in this way.

I've been a home educating parent for 13 years and over the course of that journey I have walked a long road of discovery, and my understanding and definition and experience of education has evolved a lot over that time. So I'll try to explain my own observations and philosophy as best as I can.

When we first started out on the path, we had just two kiddos and they were not yet school age. I had no idea at the time that one day I'd have five children and they'd all be not just home educated but in fact unschooled.

I really hate labels and in some ways I don't like defining ourselves as unschoolers, because people can get so tangled up in philosophy that it rules and defines their life. Which is what some people actively want. And that's fine, for them. For me, I find it's just the best description of what we are doing and how we are living for the greater part of most days and as a rule of thumb, I agree that leaving kids to their own devises is more conducive to meaningful learning than trying to force knowledge down their necks.

So how did we end up in this educational scenario where we don't have a timetable... or subjects... or terms... or 'year x' and being so relaxed about learning that we are not even remotely trying to replicate school?

In the beginning, I wrongly assumed like lots of people do, that unschoolers 'do nothing' or 'slack off' and that it was just a very lazy way of living. And viewed from one perspective, unschooling IS a very very relaxed way of living. Which makes some people really uncomfortable....

Travel during term time is no problem for unschoolers!

I realised pretty early on that when you sit a child down with workbooks, no matter how engaging you try and make it all, that knowledge can quite quickly forgotten, unless the child is actually interested and truly ready for that knowledge. It's like trying to force feed someone whether they are hungry or not. I was astonished to find in the early years of our home ed life that having spent hours trying to cover certain things, only a month or two later the children had entirely forgotten it. So I stopped using workbooks, and started relying instead on the other materials we had in the house.

Over time, we built up a very different kind of curriculum based on free play and discovery through experimentation. Instead of teaching spelling through books, we just bought books and books and more books and filled our house with them. We read stories to the children a lot. We invested in audiobooks so that the children could enjoy the pathos and drama and intonation and musicality of language and stories. We took them to the theatre to feel and see and hear stories in a way that was alive and vibrant and multi sensory. We played lots of board games, which have all kinds of writing and lettering and numbers on them. We bought apps on the iPad that were fun and actively sought out games that would involve maths or spelling or critical thinking without feeling remotely 'schooly'. Scribblenauts alone has sparked hundreds of "how do you spell x/y/z" questions! We bought science kits, craft kits, and invested heavily in construction toys of different kinds. We watched youtube videos of science experiments of different kinds and found a world of fun websites on all kinds of subjects. We let the children play and play and play and build on knowledge and make connections for themselves between all the different resources at their fingertips.


Without heavy instruction or a systematic approach using all the current tricks of ramming phonetics down their necks, the boys have all learnt to read, at different ages, and at different times and in their own very unique way. Currently our six year old is the latest to join the reading gang. I've seen first hand how pointless it is expending energy trying to teach them to read before they are really ready (frustrating for them and us) and by contrast, how easily they have learnt when it has been on their terms, at a time that was right for them, and when doing things that interest them.

Because we haven't pushed it on them, they find reading a really rewarding and fun activity. It seriously took some nerve to be so relaxed as to allow one of our sons to reach the age of almost 9 before he properly learnt to read, in the face of so much social expectation and myths about children's intelligence,  but now, just six or so months later, he has a voracious appetite for books, and has consumed more than 20 Pokemon paperbacks in just the last couple of months. He can pick up any book you like and read it, and one of his favourites are National Geographic Kids Magazine and The Magic Treehouse series. Because we trusted he would do it in his own good time he picks up books because they are interesting to him and because he feels excited by them. Anyone who meets him will tell you that he positively beams when he talks about how much he loves to read. What is really lovely is that he feels that he totally owned that process - it happened because it was sparked by an inner readiness, an inner drive that was curiosity, need and desire to do it. How many kids can say that? How many boys at the age of 9, actively love reading, and tell you so with shiny eyes?


We have made a really big effort to take the children to see and experience the world first hand by going travelling all over Europe in our motorhome, visiting all kinds of interesting places and meeting all kinds of interesting people. They have encountered folks with such wide-reaching passions and been taught informally about all manner of things.... Joining up the dots of how the world works, how people tick, gaining skills,  and all in a really relaxed way, on out own terms and without stress - it's just the most natural thing in the world to learn when you act like school doesn't exist!

Our social life has evolved very much too. We have all learnt so many lessons about ourselves and what situations we enjoy, who we feel comfortable with and who we don't and how to handle that. We no longer force the kids to join clubs they're not interested in just simply so they can make friends with random kids, but have relaxed about trusting in the kids to simply form friendships more naturally and in a less contrived way. Being a gang of five kids is pretty cool for even just those days in at home, as they are a close-knit and are good friends for the most part, but they also play very happily with any new kids we meet, and have a regular gang at home ed group that they knock about with and have done for some years.

The kids have started recently getting involved in online gaming playing with some friends in a server and using Skype to chat for hours in the evenings. I wish we lived nearer to friends and it can be a pain having to drive everywhere to meet up with our really close friends, but I'm glad that we have such a spread out tribe, and it makes for a more diverse social scene than perhaps the school playground where kids tend to gang up and stick in small cliques of children very similar to themselves in age and social class etc. I think our HE world represents a good spectrum of different types of folks with different philosophies and a high ratio of adult involvement which keeps things (for the most part) friendlier than the average playground might be. Sometimes situations arise within the community that everyone learns from and when people inevitably don't get along, we learn to deal with that, which is an important lesson for later life. I do feel it is a gentler and more nurturing environment in which to discover some of these realities of life, and processing the complexities of human behaviour is a difficult process enough so I am pleased the kids have a chance to do that within the safety of a fairly small community that has a high ratio of caring and watchful adults to keep things happy and safe.

I had no idea Finn could sew because he has always resisted being taught - then he goes and makes this... just because he wanted to!

It's hard to have faith but I am witnessing for myself that whilst we can create an illusion of being in control of a child's development, it's a process that will happen when it is believed in, and simply supported. We all know that using tweezers to try and open up the petals of a flower before it is ready, is unnatural, and that if we want a flower to bloom it's so much better to water the plants and feed them and try and create the right conditions for them to flourish. And then sit back and be patient. Nor would you expect all the blooms on a bush to open on the same day!

As William Wordsworth put is so beautifully

"How doth the meadow flower it's bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its very root, and in that freedom bold"

Poorly babes, yummy things, cool new games and happy music!

Since we got back to England last week the kids have picked up some nasty viral bugs that have been doing the rounds... Bleh! So there's been a lot of fever and vomiting going on and even a meningitis scare. Indie was rocketingly hot all day yesterday and complaining of a violent headache, whilst being sick over and over... when he said he felt dizzy and like he was sinking into the floor I properly panicked so we had a trip to hospital with him. The doctor confirmed it was an airborne virus but not meningitis - he said the way you can tell is that with meningitis a child won't be able to raise their chin and neck backwards or look up... good to know this kind of thing, it's useful for future reference. Poppy and Herb are now ill, Herb has been puking all day, Poppy seems to just have the high temperature but no sick. She's been glued to me a lot this week and I can barely so much as go for a wee without her. It's been an intense week, I tell ya!

So there's the worst of it, but what happy things have we been up to?

We've been rediscovering the joys of baking - Herb obtained his granny's recipe for flapjack, which is THE best recipe in the world, and made a batch on his own. I helped Indie and Alf to make cakes to sell at home ed group (before the kids got ill) and we spent time doing the maths to work out how to price them. Indie and his friend Rosina made a chocolate fudge cake with icing which was delicious.

Herb played chess at home ed group and beat everyone he played against. I played chess against Indie (9) and had a mini internal debate as to whether I ought to go easy on him and do a few 'oopsy silly me!' type moves to give him a chance, but decided no, I will fight him properly because it's patronising and won't help him get better at playing. And then he actually beat me!!!

Finn has been working on a board game that has been gestating in his mind for some time, and gotten into Skyping his friends and playing online role-playing games with them.

Alfie has been loving an app I downloaded on the iPad called Thomas was Alone.

It's a simple concept but so so brilliant. I am amazed at how good he is at working it all out, what goes on in that mind! What's particularly cool about this game is that the characters in the story need to work together so they can all complete their mission. Pretty true of life, huh?

Poppy has been nursing lots and extra cuddly since she came down with the virus and really enjoyed a session when we watched a whole bunch of Caspar Babypants on YouTube. We hadn't seen this one of his before... I think it'll be stuck in your head and you'll be humming it in no time. Check out his other vids too. We love CB!
Enjoy!

Live life your way!

I couldn't resist coming back for another blog post.... I enjoyed the last one so much so here I am again. And it feels like the right time to publish what was going to be an article for EOS, but which was too dear to me to change or compromise in any way, which is what they were asking me to do...

I really wanted to write a piece to empower people to believe that they too can achieve all kinds of things in their life if they are willing to make the right changes, sacrifices, effort and decisions, because usually we hold the key to our own freedom. The chains we claim hold us back in life are often self-built, and completely imaginary, made out of our own fears. Not always, but often, they are.

I often get told "Oooh, you're so lucky to be doing what you're doing!" And I agree. Up to a point. I am lucky to have been born as a white female in a relatively wealthy country, which is relatively tolerant of people's religious beliefs, of race, or sexual preferences or lifestyles. I am lucky to live in a country where people can make choices and generally speaking, not be attacked, imprisoned or even killed for making the choices I make. I am lucky to be healthy, and for my family to be healthy too. But the rest? The exact life I live? Is it really just luck, or being 'jammy'?

It always hurts my feeling a little when people imply that I am somehow exceptionally privileged to be living the life I am living, as if my life just got handed to me on some golden platter or is some kind of extended golden handshake. As if there was no reasoning, or decision making or hard-work or sacrifices that have gotten us where we are now. Because nothing could be further from the truth! The fact is, we've made choices at every turn to align ourselves with the life we wanted. It wasn't pure accident. We've engineered and steered our lives, and if the winds have blown for us, it's because we bothered to make good sails!

So anyway....here's my article......... I hope you enjoy it xxx

Live the life you love

Sitting in bed and looking out at the view from my window this morning, I am faced with a beautiful misty mountain scene. We are high up in the Alpujarra mountains in southern Spain – quite a feat for our 32 foot bus. It was a pretty hair raising adventure getting her up the twisting and turning ribbon of a road that clings so precariously to the mountains edge, like the slowest roller-coaster ride. It took some balls, I tell you.

When I look back over the last few years there have actually been quite a few times when we have taken a leap of faith, into the unknown, and made choices that required growing some … cajones! Deciding to home ed was one of them. Having our second child at home was also another leap into unknown territory. Moving our family to an area where we knew no one, and starting again, is another example.

Professionally speaking, Pete has spent his entire working life pushing passed boundaries that might have put others off. Fronting up to bosses and asking for a promotion, offering an ultimatum to allow him to work from home, quitting an unstable company and setting up his own whilst I was seven months pregnant with our third child. It took further guts to close that company whilst it was thriving and providing our family with a high standard of living. A move some thought was madness, as, in closing the company he gave away his clients and assets to the employees who had worked for him. And on one level perhaps they are right, but how many old men look back upon their working life and wish they had spent more time in the office…. missing those precious early childhood years?

Taking risks and leaps of faith have become central to how we roll as a family – and of course, this means occasionally that we fall flat on our backsides, or have to make sacrifices in order to achieve a bigger goal. This is part and parcel of life’s twists and turns and no one could ever take such leaps without life slapping you in the face with the some amount of hardship, failure, rejection and sometimes even a string of bad luck. Ever the optimists though, and like those weeble toys, our default setting is to accept these setbacks with as much grace as we can and bounce back up. We don’t stay down for long.

When our last bus burnt to the ground in a glorious blaze it would have been easy to give up our life on wheels and call it a day. We very nearly did. With only three weeks until our departure date for a trip to Austria and Italy, we had to work out just how badly it mattered to us to travel and live in this way. We decided it mattered so much, that we could not cancel our trip and we took a huge risk and bought a new bus – before our insurance money had come through. Using our precious savings to do so, we took a punt that we’d recover the money. It could’ve all gone wrong, but we reclaimed it eventually. Some things in life are worth gambling on!

In the last year there have been a number of circumstances that prompted our family to truly follow our hearts and these things have taken us on a journey that has seen us coming up against the system and the conventional way of doing things, and forging our own path.

When faced with the scenario where we were told the homebirth service had been withdrawn in our area, we searched long and hard inside ourselves and talked over many solutions and scenarios before taking the leap and joining the ranks of those who call themselves ‘freebirthers’. A decision which we researched extensively and was not taken lightly, but which was born of our refusal to sacrifice all that we held sacred and true about birth. But even after spending the last decade studying, living, breathing and talking birth with other women, in the same level of depth as a midwife might do (out of my own passion and curiosity), and having birthed three of my babies at home – it was still a big deal to cut loose, to deliberately do something so ‘audacious’ as birth my daughter without the approval or assistance of the NHS.

Sometimes we are faced with situations in life that are simply non-negotiable to us. And for our family, having to go and have our daughter in a hospital and for our other children to miss this unique life event, would have been a sacrifice too far. We took responsibility for her birth into our own hands, quite literally, and it was truly the most beautiful experience of our lives as a family, and I will always be grateful we went against the norm, and found the courage to do it.

Many months after her birth, I am now fighting for other mothers who are not inclined as I was to give birth without assistance, and am campaigning to reinstate the homebirth service so they can have that option. Not every mother has the confidence, experience, knowledge or desire to freebirth, especially first-time mothers, and I have been lobbying the hospital for several months.

Bypassing the usual complaints procedures and preferring instead to write an impassioned plea to the homebirth policy-makers has been one of the most empowering experiences of my life and has opened up so many doors and connections that I would have missed out if I’d taken the conventional route, or not complained at all and kept quiet about the injustice of the hospital’s actions. My own bravery sparked the bravery of others.
Finding the courage to share my letter online prompted scores of women to write to me with their own birth stories, some of them never shared in public before, some of them so painful to recollect and write, confirming for me that I had absolutely made the right choice. It was heart-breaking to read about how these women had been so poorly treated, or how their hospital experiences in general had left them feeling so traumatised – sometimes even years after their babies’ births.

I decided to collate all these women’s voices into a dossier to send to the hospital and it has, over the last couple of months, grown into an 80 page document called Birthplace Matters, with comments and support from a number of prominent midwives and figures in the birth world. In fact, some of my most ardent supporters in this campaign have been the midwives themselves.

Today, an article about Birthplace Matters featured in the Lynn news. Who would have believed all this could have started from just from one little letter? And who knows if we will win? Even if we don’t – I have learnt something so valuable from taking a stand and following my heart. I hope my legacy will be that I believed passionately in something, that I stood up for my beliefs, united a lot of people together, and didn’t give up, but kept persevering. When I took to the streets of Kings Lynn with my family and some other mothers, carrying some home-made placards and leaflets and a petition, I was shaking like a leaf, my insides all in a swirl. My inner critic was saying “Who do you think you are, Paula?” and “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” and yet I put a smile on my face and once I got talking I discovered it was the easiest and most natural thing in the world when we talk to people about things that matter, things that are truly important to us. And you know what? The good people of King’s Lynn blew me away with their solidarity. Imagine if I’d chickened out? What an opportunity would have been missed.

What I hope we are teaching our children, is that some things matter so much you have to follow your heart even if it means bucking convention, being scared or facing ridicule or criticism or being blocked or even persecuted for it. Home educators well know that not all family and friends are delighted with their informed choice. Yet when we make an informed choice, it is a way in which we reclaim our lives from simply following what we are told by society we must do. Can we really call it a life unless we are prepared to live it on our own terms?

Often we can choose our life without resistance from anywhere or anyone. But as Nelson Mandella so beautifully said "When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw".
I agree.

Either way, whether it comes smoothly or by effort, no-one will hand us the exact life we want on a plate. It is ours to reclaim, to fashion for ourselves. Our decisions, our challenges, our opportunities are unique to each and every one of us.

This last year has taught me that unless we are sometimes disobedient, unless we say boo to that goose, unless we say NO to what we cannot condone, or YES to what we truly desire, our soul slowly withers and we become small and sad, resenting others who live the life they want and waiting for that lottery ticket to solve all our problems.

Grow some balls. Take some risks. Get your priorities in order. Go out and do what you want to do. Live the life you want to live. Grab life with both hands and own your choices. Love your life and don’t complain and wait for it all to fall in your lap.

When you make up your mind to act decisively, the universe has a funny way of showing up and helping you out.
Only you can take those first brave steps towards the life you REALLY want, so what are you waiting for?

A properly crazy year! 100 things we did in 2014

Phweesh, what a crazy crazy year. It has been a wild ride. Occasionally frustrating, sad, stressful, as life can be, but overall…. Wow! Here’s what I have compiled to help us remember what we did and who we met. In spite of some sad things going on in the lives of friends and family, I’ve loved this year so much. Welcoming our daughter into the world with no midwives present was a really life-changing and defining event for us and made us step up in so many ways to what is important to us in life! The experience of taking on that kind of level of responsibility was intense beyond anything else that has ever happened to us, but it has totally strengthened us all and given us a lease of life, energy and passion that spurred us into action to do so much cool stuff!

Earlier in the year I watched a heartbreaking series of photographs a husband took of his beautiful wife over the months that she slowly deteriorated to cancer. It made me sit up and take note that life is unpredictable, short and precious. I have decided to really live life to the full this year and live truly authentically in my own power and by living more on my own terms, not everyone else’s… because we don’t know how long any of us will be here on this planet….we all live on borrowed time.

I’ve met some wonderful people this year in the process of producing a document called Birthplace Matters and becoming a grass-roots birth campaigner, and I will continue to campaign for others so they can have midwives at their homebirths, since not everyone want to freebirth like myself, eh?

I truly feel that putting off what's important to you or swallowing bitterly what others serve up to you is madness. And, in waiting to fulfil dreams and lifelong goals, we might not ever get to do them. We only have today, we only have the here and now... So this year has been a year of living, doing and daring. It’s been absolutely amazing and I don’t have a single regret.

Bring on 2015!

Who knows, I might get to do some hands-on doulaing again.... that would be fab!!!!!


So without further ado, here's the amazing list of 100 things our family did in 2014

1 Met the girl of our dreams (literally) when she swam up to meet us all in our birthpool at home, surrounded by just us, and she has rocked our world ever since. Love her soooo much
2 Celebrated 20 years together as a couple! Wow. I’m so glad to be with Pete after all these years, we’ve journeyed together through good times and shit times and I love him completely, with all my heart. He knows me inside out and loves me flaws n all. Woohoo for real love!
3 Our Winnebago burnt down in a glorious blaze….so…. we searched our hearts and decided life on wheels is part of our lives now…. and got a new bus!
4 We went around England and visited…. Wales, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, San Marino, Vatican City and Spain and traveled thousands of miles in our bus - with five kids!
5 We stayed in a real actual castle and celebrated 70 years of the lovely Dennis
6 We slid down wooden slides into the Salzburg salt mines
7 We canoed on the beautiful lake at Zell am See In Austria
8 We walked across the three dragons bridge in Ljubliana
9 Took a land train up to Ljubliana castle
10 Walked across the famous Rialto Bridge in Venice
11 Saw models of Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions in a church that was in an Indiana Jones film
12 Took a super cool 70’s style boat taxi across Venice waterways
13 Met a long lost cousin at St. Mark’s Square, Venice
14 Went to the Peggy Guggenheim museum and saw Jackson Pollock paintings amongst others…
15 Took a funicular ride up to San Marino
16 Swam in a lake at a really cool campsite
17 Visited Emperor Hadrian’s Palaces outside Rome – Villa Adriana
18 Took an open-top hop on – hop off bus tour round Rome
19 Took a family Pizza making and Gelato course in Florence and got a certificate
20 Visited an artisan Gelato making café and had a private tour of their kitchen
21 Walked across the famous bridge in Florence, Ponte Vecchio and looked at the tat
22 Had an old-fashioned photograph taken by an American photographer who then sent us a copy months later
23 Visited The Leaning Tower of Pisa, and touched it, even though you’re not supposed to!
24 Went through 92 tunnels in one day
25 High fived hundreds of runners who ran past our bus on a fun run
26 Went to Parc des Lutins – an awesome treetop adventure playground park
27 Visited the most Fabuleuz gastro-circus-musical-eatery in all of France
28 Went cherry-picking on the family farm of an artisan cherry grower called Jeremy
29 Camped by an AMAZING river where the kids paddled and swam and birds and crickets sang long into the night
30 Turned up at a really cool campsite where there was an awesome pool party in full swing
31 Saw the World’s Biggest Tyre at the Michelin factory in Clermont-Ferrand
32 Took a train and stood on top of a dormant volcano and felt on top of the world at the Puy-de-Dome
33 Visited a pottery museum in an old chateaux
34 Visited the fabulous medieval castle Guedelon (BBC now showing a series about it) in France which is being built using medieval tools and techniques and saw demonstrations of all the crafts and skills
35 Walked around the medieval city of Troyes
36 Visited friends and family in Brighton, Worthing, Dorset, Nottingham, Norfolk and Suffolk
37 Went to The Green Gathering festival with friends
38 Operated a lock for a canal boat to pass through on the River Avon
39 Went to the MAD museum in Shakespeare’s Stratford Upon Avon
40 Visited the chocolate box town dubbed Little Venice, of Bourton-on-The-Water, in the Cotswolds
41 Camped up by the rivers Cam and Trent for two special birthday treats
42. Did some glassblowing at Caithness Crystal
43 Visited a lavender farm
44 Had fun with my sister and cousin who stayed at our house this year
45 Heard the Shantymen sing their beautiful songs in The Lord Nelson Pub at Nelson’s birthplace village with some dear friends
46 Hired a beach-hut at sunny Hunstanton for a fun day with friends
47 Went laser-questing, wild swimming and kayaking with The Styles family
48 Did archery, pellet-gun shooting targets, multi-climbing sports and multisports sessions
49 Became a grass-roots birth activist and produced a document of people’s feelings about Natural and Home birth called birthplace Matters
50 Made placards and organised a demo in King’s Lynn
51 Was in the Lynn news in an article about Birthplace Matters
52 Met some Witchez, in Brighton and learnt how to make Kopytka, inspired by said Witchez
53 Took a horse riding lesson
54 Hung out with my cousin and niece and auntie for some cuddly times
55 Spent hours and hours and hours smiling at my daughter and hours and hours feeding my tongue-tied sweetie, which has been incredible, intense and so beautiful
56 Climbed up Glastonbury For at sunset
57 Hardly drove my car since Poppy wails in her carseat unless I am literally right next to her!
58 Met the lovely ladies at The Fire Pit and Norfolk Sling Group
59 Paid our respects at a War memorial In Normandy
60 Walked around the streets near Notre Dame Cathedrale in Paris and soaked up the atmosphere
61 Visited the world-famous bookshop Shakespeare and Co in Paris
62 Took a ride along the Seine
63 Walked all 1710 steps up and down the Eiffel Tower – phweesh!
64 Walked round an abandoned and very magical sun-dappled castle
65 Visited Futuroscope a fantastic futuristic amusement/science park, on the warmest Halloween ever and time-travelled – bwaaaah!
66 Freecamped right next to the wild Atlantic ocean and got lashed by rain and wind
67 Went to WOW! Park – a really cool treetop adventure place with scramble walkways in the treetops and climbing frames in the sky
68 Camped on the top of a cliff near San Sebastian
69 Visited the fantastic Eureka Science Museum in San Sebastian and saw a film in Basque in the Planetarium
70 Blew bubbles in the street with a street artist in San Sebastian
71 Went to Madrid and hung out in the rather pretty Park del Retiro
72 Visited the Science Park and saw the Egyptology displays of Tutankhamun replicas in Granada
73 Visited Escape Park – and solved a Sherlock Holmes/Dan Brown style mystery in a staged apartment, saving the kidnapped man by working out a complex riddle of clues
74 Walked around The Alhambra complex and enjoyed the walk down to town from the top
75 Drove the hair-raising drive to a tiny village called Atelbietar and stayed in a gorgeous house high in the Alpujurras – no cars, just houses and a truly fabulous family living off-grid in a place of jaw-dropping beauty 
76 Slept on a dam
77 Visited the National park of El Torcal taking the most awesome and scary helter-skelter journey up the mountain in our bus
78 Met up with friends by the sea and went fishing, swimming and playing
79 Quit my writing job for Education outside School Magazine
80 Went rollerskating
81 Went to an awesome indoor skatepark
82 Slept on a clifftop in Nerja and watched the sunset and sunrise
83 Watched an Alpha Romeo advert being filmed
84 Boys went to Wildwise camp in Devon and made Atlatl spears and learnt to walk silently and track animals, be careful with knives and fires
85 We got our bus stuck in Bovey Tracey and some lovely people helped us!
86 Visited the House of Marbles
87 Went Geocaching at Wandlebury Country park
88 Said hello to our old house in Littlehampton, the place where Herbie and indie were born
89 Learn how to make iron hooks by getting hands on at a blacksmiths
90 Gave thousands to good causes
91 Met for the first time, the wonderful…. Awen, Jess, Cameron, Lanaya, Josh, Vero, Jeremy, Alison, Lizzie, Rachel, Claire, Sadie, Nancy, Bessie, Ali, Josh, Ruth, Lucile and Fabian, some others I have sadly forgotten names of but were lovely, many awesome midwives and mamas through the process of writing Birthplace Matters, and will hopefully meet more before the year is through – Vanessa B you are next!
92 Improved our Spanish and French
93 Saw a bitch with her full-moon born pups just hours after the birth :-)
94 Cried big fat tears but laughed even more
95 Went to a 3-D Symphony Orchestra in Granada
96 Grew a bit fatter (not all of us… just me! oh well)
97 Offered a spot writing for Education Otherwise, the most well known Home Educators Charity in th UK
98 Offered and turned down a fab job because it’s not quite right, right now… maybe one day…..
99 Applied to two magazines for paid article work – watch this space!
100 Planning surprises yet to come…. 

Still planning more adventures for Herbie's 12th Birthday, Christmas and New Year.... as I write, we are in Spain... still travelling...so much fun to be had still... must keep remembering to live in the moment, count my many blessings and laugh lots....

Big kiss and merry Christmas y'all

xX Motherfunker Xx

Half asleep in blog pyjamas

Do all blogs have a life span? I wonder this as my zest for writing here ebbs and flows. I wonder if Feet On The Ground has run it's course, and if I am too content to be bothered to write anything much, or with the same urgency.

This year has been a year of things not going as I expected but actually going better than I could ever have hoped. We planned to move, and now I am feeling settled again and the wanderlust wind has blown over, leaving behind a calm that's been really enjoyable. I've found a kind of contentedness and peace I haven't had for a long time. Our home has a kind of more grounded rhythm that has organically emerged out of the unsettledness, the itchy feet, the urge to wander. Like a ghost laid to rest. Part of it is of course, the babe. Grounding us all, the baby is perhaps a much needed anchor to stop all our flitting and flightiness.

Since we came back from France, Pete has been enjoying just being. Being a house husband and dad and not having some big project to have to strive towards. Rediscovering a playfulness he had perhaps lost touch with. Like the pleasure of painting till 2 in the morning. Or making fudge. Or reading comics. Really unwinding. Our friends perhaps think we're mad, 'dropping out' of the rat race for a while. Maybe we are. But maybe it's even madder to stay in it and get ill in the process?
How long will this playful period last? Who knows? We don't have an infinite amount of money in our pot, and in time, some income will need to be generated again for the future. Organically, new projects and jobs will emerge - when we are all ready. But for now, we're spending our kids precious childhood just enjoying seeing them unfold as people, being close to them, being playful with them and enjoying them before they're all grown up and all being independent. I can't imagine any single job more rewarding than that right now.

My birth planner feels as if it needs longer to cook, like a baby that hasn't yet reached its gestational age to be born, and allowing myself the freedom not to rush to publish it as it is now has been quite a relief. I read a quote somewhere from an author that said such and such book took them 7 years to write or something like that, and it was a really big moment for me to know that I should publish the book when it feels ready and not before!

All things have their natural time and rhythm and perhaps this blog has reached the end of its road.

It feels like perhaps this baby is slowing us all down and preparing us all for the chnge of pace, re-focusing us all on what is important in the here and now, giving us permission to just be and to just enjoy the simple things instead of trying to do big stuff. Right now, it's what we all need.

And when we're good n ready we'll kick some writing and computing ass and be ready and up for the intense rush of being so outward facing again. For now, we're turning inwards and bloody loving it.

Gently letting go of Feet On The Ground and channeling all my magic into home life, and loving my peeps. Adios for now and big love to you all.

Xx MF xX

To thy own heart to true!

Now we have been home for a week, and our feet are back on the ground, I've had time to absorb our trip away. Our latest travels have highlighted how much I truly treasure the freedom that we have and to hold onto it very dearly, and to live and love life more unapologetically on our own terms.

In terms of the trip itself, although our last journey to France and Spain was fun, travelling this time round was a much more liberating and easygoing experience. The weather was so much kinder. We did not share our bus with mozzies, ants, or nits. This time rather than doing most of the talking, the whole family spoke French to various degrees, with greater ease and less self-consciousness. We knew the bus more intimately, and she didn't break down on us! This time, we did more of our own cooking because we had our gas cooker. We had a new solar panel which helped charge batteries in between hook-ups. We were outdoors more often and did more active sporty things, and we ate pretty well. It felt like we really got into our groove for the whole trip, and enjoyed every place we stayed in, without exception. Winging it for a month felt less intimidating and daunting than trying to figure out where to be and what to do for 9 weeks. So we've learnt a lot from this trip. Each time we go away, we learn so many different things about ourselves, each other, about life.

One thing that truly struck me whilst I was away is how far we've all come in the last year, in our own different ways, both visibly and invisibly.

For my own part, I realise just how much less I care about conforming to any set of ideals or any group of people's ideas. Whether that's within society at general, or amongst my peer group, or wider circle of friends, or within the doula or birthing community or as a home educator. The need for others approval, or permission or whatever, to be exactly who I am, unapologetically and unashamedly. There is a so much judgement around about how to do everything the 'right' way, even within the supposedly most liberated of camps. And whilst I was away, I took a deep breath and I let it all go. I let go of even trying to live according to anyone else's vision or definitions of how to do things. I felt to my core, the total liberation of being unapologetically true to myself, to my family's needs, and wants and personalities. Without exception.  Without checking first with anyone if that's ok. And truly respecting others to do the same. To really not give a crap about others choices. To not feel offended or annoyed by them, to feel the need to change them, or the world. So many forums and online places and discussions are full of people lamenting about others choices - all that time and precious energy wasted on wanting or needing others to be just like you, think just like you and act just like you! It's actually pretty crazy!!!

I feel a real sense of peace and liberation to really own this truth.

Travel wide my friends, travel wide!

"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken" ~  Oscar Wilde

Hula hula

Today's the day we went on a gondola ride on a subterranean lake, deep down in the earth....

and Alf learnt to hula hoop!!!

Learning on the road

Well it's been an amazing few days and I just wanted to write a little about learning on the road, and some observations I've made about the kids in general.

Our trip has been centred around variety, and exposing the children to as many different scenarios, activities and sights as possible. Being children, they have a strong need for rest and playtime, so we don't drag them round too many sights, and always balance intense city/town trips with chill-out days. No matter where we are or what we're doing though, they're soaking up the whole experience like the big sponges that they are!

The skills and language they are acquiring seems so easy and natural, and completely in context. Confidences slowly gained in different activities. Dots joined up in their understanding. Whether we are doing ordinary and mundane things, or really exciting trips out, they're learning. They're learning by playing, by living, by exploring, by asking questions and discussing many possible answers. By trial and error. By accident. When we're not trying.

I have been quietly despairing for a few months that after spending a lot of money on swimming lessons, that Finn and Herbie seemed to only mess about in the pool, and both boys were doing doggy paddle every time we went to a pool. I had visions of them never learning to swim 'properly'. And suddenly, through no real effort, this last week, they are swimming lengths using the front crawl as if they'd been doing it their whole lives and I simply imagined there was a time when they couldn't do it! My jaw literally dropped as I have watched them swimming about with such strength and confidence, and it's been another one of those moments when I realize that I should have had more faith in them, and trusted that they would do it when they were good and ready and not a minute before - like everything else!

Herbie went off to a Boulangerie on his own yesterday and bought us a couple of baguettes and went off to do the recycling asking the campsite owner where to go, and wandering off quite some way to do it.

Alfie has learnt to ride a scooter on this holiday, and to whistle, and has been doing both with such delight - at every opportunity!

Indie has been showing more independence and testing his skills to the max in tree climbing, scooter-riding, and wandering off on his own.

Finn has been playing Civilisation on his DS, and conquered all of Alexander the Greats lands, which I gather is no small feat,, and has also been playing a Farm simulator game, where you have to manage and run your own farm. He absolutely loves it, and has has taken great pride in building up his farm and improving it over the seasons.

They've learnt some simple horsemanship after each having a pony trek ride throught the forest, and watched the beautiful and sad black and white film from the 1950's called White Mane about a wild white horse, in the Camargue region, whilst we stayed there.

Finn used his birthday money and some from our educational fund to buy a genuine leather repo Centurion helmet for his museum, after a visit to a very impressive Roman amphitheatre in Orange. His knowledge of the Romans has come from so many fun and interesting sources - we try to keep things light! We've learnt a lot of really ordinary everyday things about the Romans from Asterix, and after visiting the amphitheatre, we watched Life of Brian, which went down a storm. All dots joining up - using comedy and humour along the way.

After going to the Louvre in Paris, we bought The Da Vinci Code on DVD and the older boys watched it, which prompted of course, many discussions about, religion, conspiracies, the Knights templar etc etc. And revisiting the mediavel fairytale citadel of Carcassonne (where they filmed some of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves) has highlighted yet more religious history - relating to the Cathars, Knights, the Holy Grail and Franco-Spanish history.

Playing Yahtzee has taught the children to count quicker in units, tens and hundreds - all so easily and non-schooly and no workbooks involved. Ditto working with money, or discussing the relative depth in cms of this swimming pool or that - such ordinary everyday parts of life we take for granted, yet they all make up an understanding of the world.

Regular, ordinary life on the road, whether we're rolling or stationary, teaches all of us so much. Every day is a new adventure. One day we learn about sweet production, the next Flamingoes. It's all just so beautifully, beautifully random. I love this lifestyle on the road, and I know it will be over again soon. We sail home next Monday. Then we'll be adventuring in a new way. Catching up with friends, signing up to new activities, day tripping less often but day tripping none the less. It's hard to imagine pumpkins and soups and brown leaves and October whilst here in the beautiful Lot and Garonne region, in 26 degrees heat, but my thoughts turn to our winding journey northwards, homewards. Our adventures here may seem extraordinary, but back home there will be different adventures to be had. I'm looking forward to them already!

Action-packed!

I can't believe how much we've been doing this holiday so far. After what has felt like a fairly quiet, and fairly at-home (for us) summer, we've been out and about and doing things non-stop it feels! There are stressful times as with any holiday with six people all in one bus, but there tends to be a common factor on those days that are less than fun: bad weather. Bad weather tends to make us all a bit grumpy as we aren't so free, and the dog hates it too!

We took a look at the weather forecast and made a decision after Park Asterix to head south. Who in their right mind would go rainy caravanning when they could head for the sun? It was a no brainer. So here we are in the South of France. We like it here. A lot. We had planned to explore Brittany, but it is so close to England really, and it's not running away anywhere! We figured that we can go for a couple of weeks some other time.

So what have we been up to? As I mentioned before, we went to Park Asterix - It was absolutely brilliant, so much better than I could have imagined, partly because of all the rollercoasters and proper rides, but even moreso because they know and love the books and characters, Herbie in particular.

and after the busyness of a day there, we camped up in a beautiful wild spot in the forest about 45 minutes from there. It was lovely to walk and smell the mushroomy september smell of forest and wake in the night to absolute darkness, the kind you only get when you're totally off grid. Perfect.

We woke up to hard rain and decided to head south. Our next stop was Troyes. Troyes is a beautiful mediaeval timbered town....

and we stayed at a campsite nearby, with red squirrels darting here and there around us. So beautiful to see them. The most amazing thing in Troyes was also the most unexpected - for the first time in my whole life, I saw a hummingbird! In a pretty herb garden. It was the kids who named it - I was like, "wooooh that's awfully big for a moth.... and how come its wings are beating so fast?" It would never occur to me that it could be a hummingbird - they live in tropical places, right? And yet it was. I got to see up close, for a brief moment, tiny downy feathers, and the unmistakable way they sip at nectar with that long sucky thing (must look up proper word for this), I can't tell you how completely and utterly excited I was. I feel so privileged to have seen it! Such a delicate thing, such a tiny and perfect creature. Wow.

After this we made a stop at Lyon - to visit the building where the Lumiere brothers made the first ever film, although when we got there most of the building was closed for renovations - thankfully there was lots of visual stuff in the park all around it and in the street, so it wasn't a totally wasted journey...

We freecamped that night in a hillside village spot, and moved on early next day. Next stop: a lovely chilled out, remote lakeside campsite near Montelimar. - Montelimar is the 'Capital of Nougat' and the signs on the motorway say 'Nougat' with a huge arrow - what's not to love? And what a sweet place it was. Nougat factories lined the road going into Montelimar, and one place our trusty DK France for Families book recommended was the amazing Palais de BonBons - a nougat factory where you could see the production line up close behind a glass screen set within a fantastic multicoloured eye-popping museum and shrine to all things candied, chocolate or sugared.

It struck the right balance between being fun and educational, with an indoor working beehive, artworks made out of sweets, and the World's largest nougat plus Guinness World Record Certificate to prove it.

Whilst we stayed here all the boys went to a really fun outdoor go-karting track as an early birthday treat for Finn, who has wanted to go Go Karting for ages, and even Alf had a go, who drove on a petrol powered one with his helmet on, going about 20mph! He loved it. The other boys went on a bigger track with more powerful cars, lots of fun.

I've so much more to write, about ponies and amphitheatres and forest exploits and photos to attach, but am tired and the laptop's about to run out of juice, so au revoir for now!

Love and baguettes,
xX Le MF Xx

La vie est belle...

Last time we  went on a trip we kept a diary but aren't bothering this time, so I'll do the odd blog instead.

So here we are in Huttopia - a lovely leafy woodlandy eco-friendly campsite near Versailles in Paris. Indie has been in his element zipping around on his scooter. Him and Alf have made pals with some English kids, so they're off playing with them. Today we hung out here after a busy day yesterday... Pete took the young'uns to the Chateaux of Versailles, and I went with Finn and Herb into Paris on the Metro. It was loads of fun! We went to The Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa (She really does seem to look at you wherever you stand!) and The Last Supper ( Peope tell you it's huge, but it's really really huuuuuuuuge) , and ambled around a while in the museum - wow, so glad we went!

after admiring the glass pyramids, we took a walk along The Seine, and hopped on a water bus that dropped us right next to the Champ de Mars, and its stunning monument - The Eiffel Tower - which we didn't go up - the queues were very very verrrrry long, and we were tired already. So instead we walked around the park and admired it from the ground!

Tomorrow, we're taking the boys to Park Asterix after teasing them by driving past it on the way into Paris and shrugging our shoulders when they said OH pleeeeease can we stop??? 

hehe...

since they are big fans of Asterix and packed all their Asterix books for this trip, along with their fave Tintin's too!

Can't wait to go visit 'Armorica' and 'Obelix's Standing Stones' later in the trip ;-)

A bientot for now xxx

Summery snapshots!

Hallo!

I was going to do a 'Wahoo we're going to France in our 'Bago' type post as that's exactly what we are doing tommorow - for three weeks...ish! - but looking through some summer pics, I realize I've barely blogged about our summer, so thought I'd do that first!

Here's some snapshots from Pete's phone.... must find mine and upload some more....if only I could find where I left my phone!

dressed up smart for a friend's wedding....

beautiful boys :-)

with pals at a dr.who exhibition. the others really need to lighten up!

the one on the left looks like he's desperate for a wee!!!

don't blink!!!

indie admiring the sunflowers he grew from seed

indie is 8

a rubbish photo of his amazing cake!!!

the beautifulest baby girl that I caught earlier this year

mel and co from the foolhardy circus - what a lovely bunch o peeps they all are

my lovely friend knitted me this to say thanks for being at her birth...go with the flow.... :-)

homegrown always tastes best :-)

and we have been blooming in other ways too!!!!

************

I had meant to post more pics.... there's all sorts from over the summer but they're on all different computers round the house (and I'm too lazy to move my pregnant ass n go to it) .... so you'll have to wait for another time for more!

Will keep in touch as we travel in France anyhoo - for now, au revoir mes amis!

Big love

xX MF Xx

Is computer time really so bad for our kids - or are they simply in a state of flow?

I actually wrote this piece a little while ago but remembered it again after reading a blogpost by the very lovely Ross Mountney. So Ross, maybe this will help you see a flip side to computer time... x

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Last year I made a discovery which has changed my perception and understanding of creativity. Whilst trying to think up my doula name 'Go With The Flow Doula', I stumbled upon a philosophy based on the concept of ‘ Flow’, as defined by the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

Wikipedia

‘Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does….’

‘…According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate experience in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task although flow is also described… as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or one's emotions.

Little flashing lights and buzzers were going off in my head - yes! That's it! That's how I feel during birth. And after reading this, I started thinking in wider and wider terms about the whole concept of being in flow, and what it meant to be doing a flow state activity. I looked up Mihaly’s work further, and found he had a talk on TED called  ‘Flow: The Secret to Happiness’ . Seriously, watch it. This guy is talking so much sense.

I can relate to this being the secret that makes all of us happy – doing activities during which our whole being vibrates with purpose and joy. I could see now what united every creative individual and every person who loves their work - moments when they feel truly in flow, creatively dynamic in an internal invisible way. 

I thought of all the times as a writer I have become so engrossed that I didn’t eat or drink or go to the loo for hours at a time. How I felt I had just one purpose in that moment – to write, to keep the words flowing, to express myself with a kind of urgency, purpose, and zeal that made me forget the world around me, not even noticing my numb bum or aching back till I’m done!  There have been times like this when I have felt so engaged in the activity of writing as to forget myself. In such moments, I am no longer me, Paula Cleary, but simply fingers dancing on a keyboard, moving almost as if by a power of their own, independently of me. It’s like I need to get out of my own way to let the creativity truly flow, that I am simply a vessel for something bigger.

And I think this is how all creative people feel when they are ‘in the zone’, or ‘in the groove’ – they cease to exist for anything other than that moment, that piece of work, everything else disappears into the background, as if falling away behind us.

As Mihaly describes in his TED talk, this is the state that is common between all people ‘in flow’ – whether they are dancers, painters, poets, composers or sportspeople. It is the state that describes how Michaelangelo become so engrossed in his work whilst painting the ceiling of the Cistine chapel that he did not sleep or eat properly - painting for several days at a time, non-stop.

And I had a kind of aha! moment one day while I was watching the boys playing minecraft on their computer, and was getting annoyed with it. Something started to happen as I sat and watched. 

Sifting past my angry feelings, I realised: Maybe these kids are not being' zombies', they are simply in an absolute, pure, state of flow.

The reason I felt annoyed with them was because they didn't want to break out of their state of flow to eat the dinner I had lovingly made. Or talk to me and validate their need for my presence, company, knowledge or supposed wisdom.

How many times have I been exactly like this when I am writing? It's not personal at all - this is how people are in flow. Nothing else matters, only the task in hand! You don't want to be interrupted, you can barely hear or see anything else. The world falls away to the sides and behind you.

The reason I felt annoyed with them was because I felt redundant. I was not needed. To educate, or keep them company, or direct them towards something 'purposeful'. They were doing it without me. My own ego was more of an issue than their computer playing. My hurt pride at the barely recognized, lovingly cooked-from-scratch, dinner effort. 

But I know first-hand, that during my own flow state, food seems irrelevant, minor. My chatter and interruptions are as much of a nuisance and barrier to the kids staying in flow as when people are trying to talk to me when I'm writing. How many times have I tried to break their flow fearing they were just being 'zombies'? I suddenly realized what I had been doing. They were having the time of their lives, completely in flow, on fire, in the zone. Chatting their own language amongst themselves for hours at a time, unaware of anything else -blissfully happy!

As adults, we perhaps spend less time in the flow state - but for kids it's easy peasy. They can literally spend hours engrossed in Lego, role-playing, making mud-pies, daydreaming, or playing dollies. Kids are experts at flow - perhaps that's why they are so much happier than many adults. They know how to shake off the reality of the world and go into a make believe place, or at least a creative fantasy space. Isn't that what all artist and designers do?

As parents, we judge according to some imagined ideal of worthy activities and less worthy. We decree that screentime is time poorly spent, unimaginatively spent. Children however, don’t make such distinctions. They simply know what activities light their fire, and which don’t. Maybe it's not their imagination that is lacking at all during screentime....but ours!!!

Perhaps we need to look at this in a new way. Instead of lamenting that our kids are lost to us for those hours they get sucked into this really powerful flow/ creative place, maybe we ought to actually back off and let them be? What if we ask them why they love their games so much, what it makes them feel like, try to engage with the passion they feel about them.

What if, we made a point not to interrupt our children when they seem really ‘in the zone’ or ‘on fire’ or energized by their games?

What if, instead of tutting, and making them leave their games at a (to them) really crucial stage of gameplay, we let them eat or drink in front of the computer – even though we’d like to chat to them?

What if we didn’t take it personally when they play for hours at a time, ignoring us when we interrupt them with what feels to them to be ‘mindless chatter’, and actually recognise and respect that they are in a powerful state of flow?

What if we put our own ego and need for company aside and let them play when they are ‘in the zone’ – and use that time to do our own ‘flow’ activities.

And what if, we have more productive conversations instead about ‘flow’ with our children, about what it looks and feels like, and equally, about what it feels like when apathy and boredom have set in? 

What if we talked productively about learning when to walk away from an activity when we are no longer ‘in flow’ with it – about how destructive it feels when we’re no longer enjoying an activity because we’ve stayed too long with it? 

Isn’t that perhaps kinder than simply trying to control and portion our children’s computer time for them? Surely they’ll need to learn self-limits at some point in their lives – if we do this for them till adulthood, exactly when will they feel empowered enough to learn for themselves?

Maybe, by supporting our kids flow state activities, and fostering our own, instead of feeling rejection, judgement or resentment about it, we can feel happy for them, and enjoy those times when we're really connected and together - the family meals when everyone talks together, the spontaneous moments when we bond and grow and express our love and gratitude to have each other in our lives, and the times we can be in a state of flow together at the same time? I have realised lately how much more harmonious and loving everyone is to one another, how much more connected and fulfilled everyone feels when they are allowed whatever flow activities float their boat without judgement or bitterness.

Perhaps, if we parents can really see it for what it is - a positive flow state time of happiness, fun, and creativity - we can actually be closer as a family than if we fought and controlled and rationed and went 'against the flow'....

What do you think dear reader?

I love to hear your thoughts!

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P.S. After happily being allowed to play Minecraft for the last two hours, Finn has just walked up to me, given me a kiss, and said "Wanna hang? I'd love to do something together with you mum, how about a game of chess?" I kid you not!!! :-)