mmmmmm...

made yummy cookies today - invited both the boys to join in but neither interested. they were enjoying having a wonderful time with paints and straws at the kitchen table. discovered a great site called Poisson Rouge which is full of wonderful things to do and explore. Robin is hooked and loves to show everyone. He even tried to describe it to our neighbour and couldn't find a word in the English language which expressed how amazing it was so he made one up! i wish i could remember what it was but sadly it slipped right out my mind.

also today had train tracks out and had fun walk to nursery in the rain - we told them about Poisson Rouge so they found it on their computer and Robin mostly played that i believe. we took a tram to the university and walked up to Weston Park Museum where we met chloe and her girls and mirja and her daughter. there is the most amazing bug exhibition on at the moment with a wonderful film that i'd like to go back and watch by myself!

home on the bus and andy made the most delicious japanese miso noodle soup. yummy yummy yummy!

today was a most enjoyable home-ed day!

some thoughts on socialisation

so these are very raw thoughts. i realise from experience that it's unlikely i'll come back and blog them once they're refined so i'm going to spill it out now.

(if you get bored at any point there's a paragraph at the bottom that sums up what we did today! pics to follow)

i have often considered that our culture expects our children to be far more social that 'natural' at an early age. we accept the 'clingy' phase as if it is some truth simply because the majority of kids go through it.

i remember at nursery the staff peeling a child from my arms because the child didn't want to leave me and me feeling between a rock and a hard place because no one at the nursery empathised with my view that my child was just letting me know that he wasn't ready and that was fine with me (although in reality, struggling with the difficulties of pregnancy i found myself making huge compromises and walking away from a crying child because i felt so unable to keep giving when i felt so crap). now i wish i could turn back the time on that. both my boys have generally been fairly social but also making it clear when they feel unable to be in a social environment. for a long time i didn't realise robin's aggression was his way of saying 'i need mummy to intervene/rescue/comfort me' and that is sad for me.

looking at robin now we have lots of thoughts and wondering about him and how he is socially - what others expect of him and what he can manage. on the RU site today someone had posted a reply to a thread and said the following which really turned a light on for me:

I think with any child, autistic or not, it's good to look at things from the mindset that they might have sensory issues and their social skills and understanding of situations are not fully developed yet. That's true for all kids: their nervous systems are immature and they just haven't been on Earth that long. Autistic kids have more trouble with this stuff, but all kids can have sensory overload (adults too, but kids get it more often) and they're all still learning social skills and empathy. I think it's something all parents should keep in mind.

for along time now God keeps calling me back to a place of trust. LOVE TRUSTS. trusting God, trusting myself, trusting andy, trusting the kids, trusting others. not blind trust such as leaving my kids with a stranger but trusting that my children/husband/myself is always trying their hardest at any given time. i've been reflecting recently on this thought that at any given time my boys are trying their hardest. in a culture of high behavioural expectation and high social expectation it is a challenge not to slip into regularly practiced coercive and controlling parenting. examples would be directing my child to say hello/goodbye when they are choosing not to. telling my child to share when that child has choice and my response could be to support the other child for whom disappointment is now their reality.

further thoughts on the reflection of trust is our response to our children when accidents happen. a child knocks a bottle of milk onto the floor and it smashes. so often parents, including me, respond without thought and give the child a lesson in being more careful, thinking of what they are about to do before they do it, waste of food, danger of broken glass on floor etc etc. i have caught myself doing things such as this on a number of occasions and in the last few months i have tried to observe myself and catch my response so that instead of the above i respond as if my best friend was visiting and had done the same thing. if my best friend came over and knocked the bottle of milk onto the floor i would say, "not to worry. i'll grab a cloth and dustpan. i've got loads more milk/i'll pop to the shops and pick up more milk in a minute. you take a seat and i'll sort it out". freedom, peace and joy in place of anger, shame and distrust.

for me, the hardest part in all this is staying peaceful in it all rather than letting years of other programing take over on autopilot. it is hard to start questioning the 'truths' of our culture's way of doing things and then responding to what comes out of that questioning. it sets you apart and sends you off down a road less traveled.

i want to start talking about the socialisation of home ed which is something lots of home edders get asked about. i'll do that in a new post another time!

TODAY we had a BBQ, boys enjoyed playing with pots and soil and stones, creating rescue re-enactments on the earth patch, counting out sweets to meet a 25p budget, watched woodlice and ants go about their business, pulled a wriggly worm out long and discovered that it could no longer wriggle, made up songs, sang favourite songs, remembered forgotten songs, shared a favourite film with a neighbour, talked about where glass comes from and how you can make glass from sugar at home, talked about where robots come from, who makes robots, where does grass come from, and plastic and rubber and can you make plastic from olive oil - what about from chicken or noodles? then decided that olive oil, noodles and chicken couldn't make plastic but could make yummy tea. spied a bumblebee in some long grass, filled the pond with water after noticing that some tadpoles were drying out when they got stranded, set up an animal hospital for a stuffed toy, played football.

it was a good day!

fun things

the boys had great fun a couple of days ago turning themselves into soldiers, which in their world simply means decorating their body with felt-tip pens and glitter! Robin had a great time posing for the camera and Jos kindly did his own thing but keeing Robin's modesty intact at all times!





so then the sun was shining and we decided to grab our swim things and head down to the Peace Gardens and play in the fountains. It was so fun. The boys have such different characters - Jos goes straight for the water and introduces himself eagerly whilst enjoying the thrill of the cold water and the surprises that the fountains bring. Robin, on the other hand, takes his time with the water but heads off to seek out the surrounding areas and check out all the other people who have come down for the afternoon. I did not partake in the swimming costume thing in the centre of town but I did facilitate some water play with bottles and took some good photos! Robin is a budding photographer and took the one of me.

hee hee hee!

just changed status on facebook to 'blogging again' and the security words for my post were 'growth' and 'extoll' - how apt for an unschooling approach!

sunny days, everythings, a-ok!

the last couple of weeks i've been thinking a lot on radical unschooling (RU). i have no idea how to define it succinctly but this is what is said on the christian unschooling site

At the time when John Holt coined the term unschooling, it simply meant 'not schooled', as in, educated elsewhere than at a school — or home schooled. However, I don't believe that homeschooling as it exists today was exactly what John Holt had in mind when he encouraged parents to teach their own children. John Holt had a vision for an education that was rather different to what existed in the schools he encountered.

Today, the term unschooling has come to refer to a specific type of home education, i.e. education that is in the control of the one doing the learning. And I think this term more accurately describes the kind of learning experience John Holt had in mind.

In the UK, this educational approach is better known as autonomous education. Unschooling has also been described as child-centred learning, self-directed learning, delight-directed learning, and development-directed learning.

Unschooling is the freedom to learn what you want to learn, when you want to learn it, how you want to learn it, where you want to learn it, and for your own reasons.

Essentially, unschooling is self-education.

i started thinking about it because of lovely niki who told me about all this fab stuff she had found on the interweb about it. i have to say i am rather grabbed by it all and am thankful for a wise husband who slows me down and ensures that as a family we make gradual changes.

i think i'm going to start blogging again regularly, partly for myself, partly for the LEA (if ever needed!) and then for anyone else who wants to follow and see where we're up to and what the next crazy thing we're doing is!

here are some links that i've really enjoyed in the last couple of weeks:

sandra dodd
Dayna Martin youtube
Radical Unschoolers Network
Christian Unschooling

niki wrote the following quote up on their easel and it has been flowing back and forth through my mind since:

6[Remember] this: he who sows sparingly and grudgingly will also reap sparingly and grudgingly, and he who sows generously [[a]that blessings may come to someone] will also reap generously and with blessings.

7Let each one [give] as he has made up his own mind and purposed in his heart, not reluctantly or sorrowfully or under compulsion, for God loves (He [b]takes pleasure in, prizes above other things, and is unwilling to abandon or to do without) a cheerful (joyous, "prompt to do it") giver [whose heart is in his giving].(A)

8And God is able to make all grace (every favor and [c]earthly blessing) come to you in abundance, so that you may always and under all circumstances and whatever the need [d]be self-sufficient [possessing enough to require no aid or support and furnished in abundance for every good work and charitable donation].

2 Corinthians 9:6-8 (Amplified Bible)


so there we go. join me on the journey if it isn't too crazy for you! i would really enjoy reading your comments too!

fingermaze meditation

i discovered this meditation today. it's beautiful - lasts about 7 minutes.

it's from a brighton community called beyond.

it's all that skinny kiwi's fault!

no blogging since july and then andrew jones goes and puts me up on his post about female Christian bloggers. the thing is he got my link wrong - directing people instead to our fab new web design company of the same name - Moogaloo - so i obviously felt i had a responsibility to correct him in his comments, and now to blog so you don't feel your visit here is wasted!!

thing is, i have been on an amazing journey this last year and a bit and it isn't over yet. i have been thinking many things but somewhere in the life od a superwoman i find blogging time sparse. God has been showing me all kinds of stuff to do with Jairus' daughter and Jesus' attitude to planning, how to approach prayer, what God's doing when it looks like he's doing nothing at all, cementing understanding about looking not at what is seen but at what is unseen - particularly to do with where His word lines up with our experience, the dark shadow of parenting that most of us are too scared to shed light on so it continues to lurk in the background of most (probably all) communities where kids are included. oh, and tons more stuff.

i recently learned from God, through an art therapy session, that my life right now is like the ritual of making a proper cup of tea using a tea pot and that a tea cosy is a metaphor for what's going on with me in the process. i actually knitted last night for the first time in ages. it's gonna be a crazy cosy with hair and eyes, inspired by the unexpected mix of some stuffed fabric chicken andy and i discovered last december at the tip of cornwall and a wonderful shop on orkney that andrew's wife debbie introduced me too called tait and style. i was like a little girl in a sweet shop!

so, hopefully your visit here, if you even did visit, didn't fill you with irritation that you came to a blog that noone bothers to update any more. andrew really should be more thorough in his research!!!! perhaps this will encourage me to keep blogging and maybe i should email my friends and tell them the change of blog address too!

Today is slow Sunday

didn't know this til i read andrew's bog today but it reminded me of how much i enjoyed carl honore's book 'in praise of slow'. there's a video and some more info at resurgence.

so now i am turning off my computer and embracing the slow pace that appeals so much but gets drowned out by my daily doings.

have a good day. enjoy it slowly.

happy may day!!

click here

this is a photo taken today from the bbc website showing traditional morris dancers celebrating the dawn of may day. morris dancing is an exceptionally cool dance which uses sticks and handkerchiefs.

(editted by andy so we dont get sued by getty for using one of their photos without permission!)

Ta Muchly!

those of you not in the UK might like to know that 'ta muchly' is english slang for 'thank you very much'. it is also the name of a business my friend has set up while she has two very small children. her products are lovely - she makes them all while her little ones are sleeping or otherwise engaged.

her website is www.tamuchly.co.uk.

i'd really encourage you to have a look and start stocking up for the rest of the year's birthdays, celebrations and even Christmas while we're at it!!

robin and jos and me are loving it!

here is a video of a woman called totoshko who is a friend of my brother oli. she lived with my parents a bit while staying in cheltenham. anyway, the boys and i were looking at some photos of them while they were staying with my folks a couple of weeks ago and there's one of them with totshko. so we looked her up on youtube and here's her 'moment':

today is wednesday.

if honesty is the best policy then what does it say about our government policies and procedures when honesty seems to be disputed at every point. i've just received some documents through today, regarding the government process that's the bane of our lives (currently), and reading them just reminds me how much our honesty is questioned constantly, refuted and just simply denied. then i even noticed that there was at least one error in the minuting of the document i was reading. sometimes it feels that because the system we are in is so 'day in day out' to the professionals involved, the details aren't important to them and yet when it comes to challenging our 'honesty' they are very quick to jump on the details.

but then i try to hold it lightly in view of the fact that it'll all come out in the wash when God does his laundry - it strikes me more and more each day how ridiculous, and yet genius, it is that God's foolishness is greater than our wisdom. i just love it that God admits that He's foolish (whatever that means) and therefore that foolishness is part of being made in the image of our creator. ooh - what a shift in the way we saw each other if we started to celebrate each other's foolishness!!

if abraham lived today and God told im to go kill isaac, what would he have done, and what would have been the consequences?

on sunday i watched the london marathon round at my next door neighbour'shouse and i sat and cried through a lot of it. the thing that got me was the interviews, when the tv presenter was stopping certain people running and interviewing them asking what they were running for ad how much they were hoping to raise. most people were running because they had been directly or indirectly affected by some kind of challenge/battle and part of their chosen fight was to raise money and run the marathon. this gutted me because in my current battle it's not one i've chosen, it is one that i only believe i can win because i choose to keep trusting God (and if i don't win this battle i choose to trust God in that too). i felt a whole bunch of self pity, grief, deep sorrow and a kind of over-whelming helplessness.

so right now i am putting my hope into the day when the battle i am in ends and i can choose a battle to fight. it has even crossed my mind to choose to fight the same battle agin (but this time on my terms) and perhaps run the marathon and raise money to support others going through what we're going through.

the title of this post isn't there just to be funny. it's really a serious reflection. we look at the story of abraham and isaac and see his amazing faith, his conviction to obey God, God's provision in the light of said obedience. but today? would od still ask someone to do that and what would be the consequences? the child protection procedure is a giant beast writhing around in he lovely multi-aency culture we see ourselves in where using bubble bath on a seriously eczma'd child (becasue you believe God told you to and interestingly washed the eczema away for just over a week) is seen to be a pointer to significant harm/risk. sadly one of many misunderstood actions and words taken to the same end point.

or Lot in sodom and gomorrah who turns out his virginous daughters (likely under 18) to the crowds so that the 'stangers' are spared the lustful desires of the town's men. where do we look at that and reflect on sexual child abuse and the sexual culture of that city in general, rather than banging on (excuse the term) about gay relationships when it has always seemed to me that the story of sodom and gomorrah is much more about hospitality than anything else, which is the context where Jesus himselfs refers back to it (Matt 10:11-15).

going now. enough there to chew on.

here goes...

i am thinking about a few things at the moment. whether i'll blog much about them or not i'm not sure. but one of the things i'm reflecting on a lot is how i feel about the fact that i don't get many comments. you see, i realised that as write a blog and also keep a personal journal, the blog is something i do for others as well as for myself. of course, i like the fact that a blog is always stored on t'internet somewhere so should anyone ever wish to publish my works or write a film about me anything i've blogged will be already archived and nicely ordered and all links will make sense and as it's typed there'll be no hurdles such as my often illegible handwriting - i have taken to writing in my personal journal while people pray for me and i can barely read it myself at the end. however, somehow it makes that praying experience an active one for me when sometimes i've felt quite passive when people have prayed for me - even at toronto (so stone me!).

i think my point is that where i used to feel validated by comments i now feel validated just for being me. i am coming home to myself as naomi aldort suggested to me yesterday. but your comments still mean a great deal to me - they are the relational side of my blogging. if what i was blogging was just for me i'd put it in my personal journal but i put it here for you too - i suppose i hope it might spark discussion, edify you, encourage you, inspire you (did you know that i inspire you? - private joke with the lovely niki foote so noone be offended by my apparent arrogance!). i'm certainly not expecting comments like the blog of the inspirational (and currently bored) andrew jones but then i don't feel my blog deserves that level of following!

maybe a lot of this is linked in with my experience of facebook and why i decided to kill off my profile. even if it is linked it's not the same - facebook really was messing with my experience of being me and who my friends were. i don't miss it at all - but then i am all about relationship, and what's more, relationship that goes deeper than what you're up to on a saturday night and the fact that you wished me a happy birthday because facebook reminded you to! for the first few months i was on facebook i wished people happy birthday as a result of facebook's reminder and then i stopped. i started just wishing happy birthday to the people i would try to wish it to anyway. this, admittedly is not as easy since i lost my address book. but i hope my address book will turn up when we move house.

got to go to diggerland now for jos.

you can't help but feel happy when you soo this...

snow in april. i miss british seasons.

want to blog but feel i have little to say right now. we are just sitting down to watch casino royale with yummy daniel craig. i'm going to carry on doing some knitting too.

lovely jen comes home this month - i am very excited!

following the little blue van.

we have some very lovely friends called brian and whitney who live in the states. they are an inspirational family - brian for single handedly converting the world to homebrew, and whitney for being a beautiful woman of great depths of love and insight. i popped onto their blog today and saw the following youtube video.



i have commented a couple of things on brian and whitney's blog but i have lots of other thoughts about this issue of us a species having the power to determine the future of virtually all other species. that is a profound and serious responsibility - one that God gives us at the very beginning of all things. God says to adam, "Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth." (the message)
The Cambridge dictionary defines the phrase'responsible for as "to have control and authority over something or someone and the duty of taking care of it or them"

So we don't only have control and authority over creation (which is the part that humans seem to have no problem exerting, sadly to creation's demise. we also have the duty to take care of creation - of the plants and animals and birds and fish etc etc. definition for 'duty' by the way is "something that you have to do because it is part of your job, or something that you feel is the right thing to do".

so if you stand under the authority of God then looking after creation is part of our job even if we're not in a place of feeling it's the right thing to do. i know a few christians who still think that there are more important things in life than considering your consumer choices, such as food, clothes, oil, and more or the way you live your life with the little things such as only boiling enough water for the amount of coffee you're making, drinking tap water not bottled, using energy saving lightbulbs, recycling.

but then there are many many people who don't knowingly stand under the authority of God and yet are responding to being made in the image of God by taking on their duty to take care of creation because they feel it is the right thing to do. we have an awesome friend called treehouse claire. ok, so really she is called claire, but she lives in a treehouse on a protest site so we call her treehouse claire. well, claire is the only christian on that protest site and yet it would seem to me that her site-mates are stepping up to God's blessing of responsibility for taking care of creation and trying to protect it in radical ways.

i am in the middle. very radical when you put me next to some people but next to others i have a long way to go! although, raising children does seem to me a phenomenal opportunity to model and pass on the values of taking responsibility for creation. my journey though has been one of taking little steps and i think that's the only way it can happen. so many people feel defeated by the sheer enormity of the task at hand when they look at the state we have gotten ourselves into. but when you take one little step of change and it becomes part of your daily life you can then take on another small change. so examples of small steps might be:
1. start buying eco cleaners and washing detergents.
2. buy organic food.
3. buy food from local businesses not supermarkets as much as possible.
4. recycle.
5. turn lights off and switch to eco bulbs.
6. only boil as much water as you need.
7. put a lid on your pan and make sure the flame the pan sits on isn't creeping up round the sides of the pan where it is ineffective.
8. drive less (this is my big challenge)
9. give money regularly by direct debit to organisations working for change.
10. buy the good shopping guide and use it!

ok. lots of stuff there. hope it isn't too full of hot air! i'll try and find some interesting links that will say things with reliability and hopefully be more inspiring.

one last reflection on the blessing God speaks over adam and eve. i think the order of his commands is interesting and spot on for where we are today. we have prospered, but in a way that has led to extreme inequality of wealth distribution, thus poverty is one of the most significant issues facing the majority of the world. we have reproduced. we have filled the earth, not only with people but with large amounts of disgarded waste, toxins and greenhouse gases. we have taken charge but in way that is gradually killing the planet and already killing people around the world due to famine, drought, changing climate and abusing people due to consumer demand for cheaper food, cheaper clothes, more oil, exciting holiday destinations. so the next command God gives is to take responsibility and with that i would challenge myself and the world to take on board God's words in 2 chronicles 7:14 " Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land." new living translation).

phew... time for a cup of tea!

we're sooo proud!

just want to show you this fab video.

the drummer is ben - jos' godfather and one of our dearest friends. this band are amazing live and recorded and they look pretty delicious too!

if you like it tell poeple about it - nothing bad will happen to you if you don't tell and nothing good will happen to you if you do - this isn't one of those cahin mail spam things!!

along a similar line to the post below...

yesterday robin and i were in London. we had a great day. met with shannon and did big lick ice-creams and saw big ben. also went to the southbank centre where i bought a book for andy. it is such a great book that i am directing you to it on amazon

a story about a dinosaur, written by robin and mummy

The dinosaur was rustling. There was rustling in the dinosaur's tummy.
It was a beetle and a ladybird and a grasshopper.

I wonder how they got there...

The dinosaur stretched eight bits and ate them up in his mouth.
He said "yuk, these taste yucky!" so he spat them out into his potty.

I wonder what happened next...

The dinosaur did a poo on them.



ps. the only bits mummy added to the story were the 'i wonder' questions. i love robin's imagination - it is always so colourful!!