The homeschooling diary - An year of homeschooling iya

An year back I had decided to pull Iya out of school to home-school her. In this past 1 year, I have faced immense amount of opposition - direct on my face types, subtle types, the fire-is-on types, cold war types, sarcastic commenting types and so on. I've also had many parents and their children ask me with fairytale type wonder how I could manage it and what I had been doing with her.

This blog is dedicated to all those who have questions, doubts, sincere questions and sincere doubts about home-schooling and about what Iya and I have done in the past one year.

In the past 1 year, Iya and I did a lot of things together. We studied things meant for much larger classes. We studied things meant for much younger classes. We did loads of art and craft. We traveled for weeks together with no particular agenda. We worked on social change projects.We worked on our spiritual development. We had loads and loads of fun. We studied with a schedule. We studied without any schedules. We learnt while eating dinner at the dinner table. We read lots of books - fiction and non fiction. We played a lot. We also fought a lot. We got angry a lot. We slept late and got up really late. We slept early and got up really early. We didn't sleep at all some nights. We had sleepovers. We went around exploring the city - sometimes with friends whose mum made them bunk school so that we could all have fun together and sometimes just by ourselves. We found a great new set of friends - some of them home-schooled. We spent a lot of time with the new friends. We learnt a lot of new things through different activity classes. We lost a pet. We got a new pet. We shopped till we dropped. We watched movies one right after the other. We cooked together. We cleaned together. We laughed together. We cried together. We each took time off each other. We each wanted to take longer time off each other. We designed new board games. We played many other games. We went to paint streets at night. We went to demonstrate for a social cause early morning.

The list can go on and on.

But in a nutshell, the past one year was exhilarating.

All that I was guided to do during this past one year was based on intuition. One day I'd wake up knowing that it was time for Iya to start learning something new academically. So, I would design a lesson plan and for a month or so, we'd follow that. Then we'd take a break from that routine for 2-3 months, where no structured learning was happening and we were both taking each day as it comes. Then again a phase of structured learning was happening.

The journey so far has been wonderful. But wonderful does not mean it didn't have its own share of ups and downs. 

We had a lot of doubts. We had a lot of disagreements. We had plenty of moments of extreme emotions.

There was a time when my family including me, started questioning if the extreme emotions were because we had too much of each other, which was a by product of homeschooling. That made me wonder that if iya was schooled, wouldn't any of us have felt any anger? Or frustration? Do parents who send their children to school always have only roses, and no thorns?

And I realized that these emotions had nothing to do with home-schooling. These emotions need to be balanced. But it has nothing to do with homeschooling or schooling Iya.

The only one limitation which I felt in home-schooling Iya, was that I felt that Iya learns some concepts better in a peer group than individually.

But each child is different and learns differently. Also each child learns differently in different ages. A few years older, and Iya might want to be completely self taught.

Whatever I have experienced in the past one year, has given me some insights into home-schooling and I shall now share that for the benefit of those parents, who are seeking answers to some of the questions that I had had before I started home-schooling Iya.

So, here is a list of questions to ponder upon while musing about home-schooling:

1. Do you have enough time to give to your child? Having enough time, does not mean that you are bound 24 hours to your child, but rather that time is free to use as you (and your child ) please and it can be bent to suit your changing needs.

2. Are you open to learning? Homeschooling is not just about your child learning - it is also about you learning. Your learning may be academic (as in, you might have to revise all the stuff you learnt at school to able to teach it to your child) as well as non-academic (like being able to listen to your intuition, develop faith, patience and Joy).

3. Are you open to unlearning? To be able to home-school, you need to unlearn a lot of things - a lot of conditioning that you've had since you were a child. Are you ready to unlearn so that learning can happen afresh?

4. Do you have a plan to take some time off your kids everyday - for sometime? If you do not have any help/ classes/ plan to have time off your kid, then its like a concentration camp for both you and your child. To be able to come to your child with a freshness, you need to take time off her/him. So ensure you have a plan to have enough time off each other each day.

5. Are you dis-satisfied with the school your child goes to? There are many alternative education schools nowadays that are almost as good as or even better than homeschooling. If your child goes to one of them, then you may not want to pull them out of school.

6. Are you going to hire tutors for everything your child will learn at home? If yes, and if those tutors are like the conventional school teachers, then you are hardly going to make any difference in the way you are educating your child.

Once you have answered these questions, then you can work on the home-schooling plan.

There are many ways to home-school your child:

1. You can home-school with an online curriculum. There are plenty available online.

2. You can home-school without any standard curriculum but your own self built curriculum.

3. You can un-school - where you don't teach them anything at all but let nature and their own natural instincts teach them things in Divine Perfect Timing.

4. You can teach them a bit and un-school them a bit.

You can choose what suits you best. And you can change your choice when you feel one no more fits you. But overall, you need to follow your intuition on what is best for you, your child and your given circumstances. You need to have the strength to make changes when you feel the need for a fresh approach.

Also, I have learnt that home-schooling has to have a lot of freedom in scheduling. That is the beauty of it. School routine gets tiring for the child - the same thing everyday. Home-schooling doesn't have to follow that. You can have a lot of freedom in the way you structure your day - and in the way you structure it the next day or the next season. Winters have shorter days and so the daily schedules have to be made lighter to fit it easily into the daylight time. Summers have longer days and so more stuff could be done during the day. Winters could have a lot of outdoor day activities but summers would have to be a lot of indoors during the day. And the monsoons - you can actually go out and get wet without having to fear that you'll fall ill and miss school attendance :).

Home-schooling is not about learning everything the way school going kids do.

Home-schooling is not about competition or comparison.

Homeschooling is not about rote learning.

Homeschooling is not about just following orders - but rather learning to take lead in decision making.

Many parents comment that home-schooling needs a lot of discipline from the child and parent and since they or their child lack that discipline, they dismiss the thought immediately. But home-schooling does not demand any more discipline than a school going child does. In fact I would say it needs far lesser discipline. What it needs is freedom. Freedom to explore. Exploration of not just academic stuff but also of your own emotions, your feelings, your wishes, your choices. The exploration can be guided. The exploration can be mentored. But exploration has to be there. Discipline which cuts off the enthusiasm that comes with exploration is what schools do. That kind of discipline, probably needs to be kept away.

Is school better or is homeschooling better? I can't say. But I know for a fact that if you want to home-school your child, you have to have time to spend with your child. Whether you study in that time or not is not important. It is not about spending all the 24 hours with your child. That can become suffocating for both parent and child. But I wouldn't recommend it for those families where both parents are working. 

Lastly, I feel that each family has different circumstances. Each parent and each child has a special purpose in their life. For some, home-schooling is suitable. For others outsourcing of learning in the form of schooling is suitable. There is no right or wrong here. 

Some eat food made only by their moms. Some eat food cooked by their hired cooks. Some eat food served in restaurants. Each choice satisfies hunger. What one chooses in a moment is right for that moment. What one chooses in another moment need not be the same as what they chose in the earlier moment.

An year back, home-schooling Iya was the best option I had. The coming year, looks like schooling her is going to be my best choice. The year after this, looks like she'll be joining her own alternative education school.

As time comes, the path will be clearer. The answers will be shown. 

Home-schooling your child does not require you to hold a road map for the rest of your child's life - not anymore than it requires of a parent who schools their child, to hold a road map of their child's life.

Here is a 4 minute audio visual of a well spent year, homeschooling Iya.

Growing up with Star Children

Blessed with 2 star children, I am going through a phase of intense learning and growing up.

What are star children?

Many people ask me if by star children I meant children of famous movie stars and celebs?

So, no dear parents, star children are children who are born on earth from another dimension of space and time, from other stars, from other planets or other constellations. (Yes, this does mean that there is life on places other than Earth :))

Many souls are being born on Earth at this time to help it in 'The Shift' which it is going through right now. This shift is about elevating the energies of Earth as a planet.

These souls are called star children, and also go by other names such as indigo children, crystal children, rainbow children and so on.

Star children have very sensitive energies. Just like a sponge soaks in all the water around it, so do the star children soak in all energies around them - good as well as bad.

Parenting star children means to be aware of their sensitive energies, and to make the required changes in your habits, behaviors and lifestyle so as to help the children deal with their sensitive energies better and in turn raise your own vibration levels as well as that of Earth's.

Parenting the star children also means growing up. Spiritual growing up of the parent :).

I have 2 star children - one daughter aged 6 and one daughter aged 1.

In the past 6 years, my life has changed and I've grown by leap and bounds.

I grew up spiritually.

I was like a little baby - so demanding about everything.

I wanted my food to be a particular way, I wanted my job to be a particular way, I wanted my house to be in a particular way, I wanted my life to be in a particular way. If I didn't get things my way, I would throw a tantrum of fear, anger, restlessness, feelings of unworth and so on.

But once I had my first daughter, I became a toddler, and then rapidly and steadfastly I became a young teen - spiritually.

By the time my second daughter completed her first year on earth, I turned into a fine young adult - spiritually.

These are some of the life lessons that helped me grow from a  baby to a fine adult in 6 years.

1. Practicing yoga, mindfulness, meditation are the 3 most important methods that helped  me tune within and connect better with my children.

2. Unbiased self analysis went a long way in helping me dissolve barriers between my higher self and my ego self, between me and my children, between my material life and my spiritual life. Not only did I do a lot of self analysis, I also made changes in areas where I realized it was 'me' that needed to change and not the situation or the people involved in the situation.

3. Taking notice of my intuition and taking action on it. Intuition is a way of communication between the higher self and the ego self. So when you act upon your intuition, you are actually working on the advice of the higher self. I took a lot of notice of my intuition and acted upon it, however weird the option seemed to me at that moment.

4. Taking time out for myself. This is a very important point that most parents ignore. I realized that to be able to give my daughters better quality time, I needed to take some time off from them, doing what I loved doing. Once that was realized, it was easier to decide what I wanted to do in my time-off and what my children would be doing in my time-off time.

5. Switching to a healthier lifestyle. We've all had unhealthy lifestyle phases - phases where we ate too much of junk food, smoked, drank alcohol, slept too late, got up very late and so on. But we moved ahead. We changed our behaviors. I made many lifestyle changes as guided by my daughters, so that I could be more in-tune with the true reality.

6. Balancing between conventional parenting patterns and intuitive parenting. Conventional parenting has an answer for almost every thing - but does that apply to the star children? My intuition did not agree to many of those patterns. For example, conventional disciplining, food habits, schooling, sleeping times etc were all questioned by my intuition and taking in the guidance from my higher self, I parented my children intuitively. I realized that conventional parenting techniques were not working for these sensitive star children.

I'm going to use one of my favorite analogies to explain this better:

If your body is getting insufficient rest or improper nutrition, you develop certain medical symptoms like aches and pains, blood pressure, acidity and so on. These medical symptoms are ways that your body is demanding you to take notice of it and take better care of it.

Similarly, when we are not listening to our higher self that knows all and can guide us, then we get children, who demand that we go deep within to find answers to the impossible situations they put us in.

When your body develops the first medical symptoms, you may choose to ignore it or numb it down with temporary medicines.

Similarly, when the kids first start being demanding, you may choose to quieten them down with anger and threats and do nothing to change yourself.

But when the body starts developing more severe symptoms, you are finally forced to take notice of what your body actually wants.

Similarly, when the kids become more and more demanding, and you've shouted and slapped them several times out of anger, you can choose to do something about it and start looking at the situation from another angle - that of your deeper, higher self.

What an analogy, you may think, but doesn't it make sense?

The children today want us to take notice of our Self.

These children are mirrors of our Self and what we think and feel within.

You can try this out for yourself some day.

One day when you feel particularly angry with your child for their behavior, quietly and truthfully analyse yourself. See if somewhere within yourself, you are having feelings of unworth, anger, irritation, helplessness and so on.

Chances are that you will mostly see a pattern building up.

When you feel angry within, so does your child.

When you feel insecure within, so does your child.

When you feel frustration within, your child also displays frustrating behavior.

So what are they then, but mirrors of your own emotions?

And what better way could God show you what you are feeling within, than by sending you mirrors that reflect your deepest thoughts and emotions!!