Seeing the Forest

As homeschooling parents, we often get caught up in the curriculum. The lessons. What we teach, when we teach it, the methods we use, the materials we will need. We often forget about the most important component of the lesson.

Us.

We are one of the most important aspects of the homeschooling journey. Depending on how you look at it, we could even be more important than the child.

Hear me out.

If our children are dependent on our striving to be worthy of imitation so that everything they sense is impressed into their body and soul in the gentlest and appropriate way, we hold the keys to the most important task, do we not? Each phase of childhood calls on us to be aware, to seek a higher understanding and to look at ourselves to see if our behaviour, our responses, our energy, is filling the space with opportunities for our children to grow. It is not our words that speak the loudest, but our actions.

Within this higher understanding is our task to know where are children have been, where they are and where they are headed so that we can appropriately meet them in support and love. When we focus on this, we can carry them in authenticity through their school years and beyond. Higher understanding allows us to flow with rhythm instead of chaos, lean into the seasons instead of push against their impulse, respond with clarity and thoughtfulness instead of habit.

Last night I wrapped up the final session of the book study group for Life is the Curriculum by Nancy Aldinger. Each participant shared what it was that resonated with us most from our readings after the seven weeks of study. For me, even though the book focuses on the ages birth to seven and I’ve got teenagers, what resonated was the fact that while WE are the curriculum during those years when children are literally learning how to be human by imitating how we live in the world, that role never ends. We ARE the curriculum for their whole lives. It is the foundation of our experience as parents and must be held within us through all the phases, and I hazard to say, even beyond our role as parents but as participants in the evolution of humanity. Who we are fully, not just as parents, is what children connect with.

So, where am I going with this?

When parents come to me for support in their homeschooling journey, they often represent two ends of a spectrum. On one end, the parents feel anxious about what to teach, feeling overwhelmed and confused as to where to start. On the other end of the spectrum, we have parents who have all the lessons and activities, everything planned to a T, but the lessons fall apart or are never implemented.

What each of these ends lack is a focus on “who the parent is”. It is the inner work that Steiner speaks of in the quote above. It doesn’t matter a lick if we have all the bells and whistles planned for our lessons if we haven’t factored in ourselves and worked on our higher knowledge and understanding. Without this it will never feel right.

When we focus on only the pieces; the main lesson, the handwork, the music, the movement etc, we loose sight of the bigger picture. We see only the individual trees and not the forest.

When we focus instead on who we are, what we bring, and where our children are on the spectrum of development, we start to see how those trees talk to each other underground. We see the seeds that are planted. We see how one supports the other, and that as separate beings they fail to thrive, but it is the forest that helps them excel.

We are the light that shines on the forest. It is up to us to strive to be the best light we can be.

With love and light
Marina