Pebblekeeper

Last evening, I had a long happy jokingly and serious discussion with a stranger about “What will the boys BE when they grow up”. We were at a community event, volunteering, chatting it up during the waiting times. When people meet my boys, they start asking me a lot of the hard questions. What are we doing – to make sure they will BE something.

As a homeschool mom, there is a lot of weight put on my shoulders.  Living in a town where homeschooling high school is not a popular choice, I have to put on a pretty thick oilskin coat to let the question drip off my back. I smile, and answer, listen and respond.

I chat with homeschool moms, and recently – there seems to be a theme of directional learning.  Comments such as – I think my son will be in a STEM type job, so we will focus on that. I think my son will be a pilot so we will focus on that. I think my son will be a Biologist so we will focus towards that.  I have had these conversations.  Last night’s went in this direction too.  There was a round table discussion on what they thought my oldest would do /be / become.

And for a moment last night, I felt the pressure again.  What am I doing to make sure they will BE.

During our trip to Santa Cruz, I had a huge parenting turning moment, too large for this single post – I will share that a determination was set in my mind for my youngest, to lift the boundary gates with him more. To allow him to be really utterly crazy.  Go his own way – and see what he does with it.

And here I where we come to my time this morning, that I wanted to share with you. I was praying about our day, and feeling this weight of my responsibility to DO so that they will someday BE – and a friend sent me a TED video to watch. It is a of a homeschool ballerina who is also a neuroscientist.  She talks of her path and it is pretty powerful. The link is :

The Myth of the Scientist: Crystal Dilworth at TEDxYouth@Caltech .

I was feeling fresh again, renewed in my heart that I need to just keep letting the boys engage in their passions, and not ‘direct them to BE’ when I took a moment to visit a group on Facebook that I have not looked at in a couple of months and saw another video.

Hackschooling Makes Me Happy: Logan LaPlante at TEDx University of Nevada Logan is a homeschooler, an avid Skier, and a 13ish year old kid talking at TEDx. His description of Hackschooling speaks very descriptively of my aha moment in Santa Cruz of Jon’s Surfing. When Jon wakes up this morning – I am going to have him watch this video. I hope you take a moment to watch it too.

The other part of this morning – is a conversation going on in FB Land of moms trying to figure out how to get in their 180 days of lessons from their packaged curriculum, when they want to spend time in their living books, field trips and adventures. And it turns back around to our Charlotte Mason, Ecclectic, intentional learning lifestyle. Hard to explain in a single respond comment. But I know. I know that there are so many moms, with a heavy burden, of making sure their child will BE someone in the future, and they are not seeing that their child IS something right now. AAAHHHH. Hard to put it into words. Just watch the two videos above. I hope they encourage you today.