A good friend of mine has recently decided not to send her children back to school next week and to start on the HE journey instead.  Naturally we’ve been corresponding a fair amount by email - I’ve only met her a handful of times IRL, but she’s stayed with us once and we are in contact quite a lot.  I’ve never met her children but she’s, obviously met ours.  She’s been considering HE on and off for some time but she says that meeting with other HE families has been one of the things to make her confident enough to take the plunge.  She says that our family seemed so relaxed and happy when she met us and wanted that for her family again.

Lovely of her to say so, but I thought we were a pretty stressy family!  Either we’re all very good actors, or we do have an underlying peace within our lives.  I tend to think that maybe we are a very happy, relaxed family but is it just because we HE?  No, I don’t think so, and I don’t think it’s because we are brilliant parents either (because we are so not brilliant parents!  We are constantly getting it wrong, are grumpy and impatient, and all the things that all parents are!).  I think it’s because a lot of the stress within families comes from trying to conform - whether families are doing this consciously or sub-consciously.  And I think that this starts from the minute the first baby is born - or even before that.  I’ve written before about the effect of disempowering on the whole of parenting (or what I believe about it anyway), but I also think that the pressure to conform is also heavily to blame for a lot of the unpleasant side of parenting nowadays.  The pressure to have your baby in hospital.  The pressure to have your baby sleeping through very young.  The pressure to have your baby take a bottle, even if they’re breastfeeding.  The pressure to stop breastfeeding after some ridiculously young age.  One of the best things I ever read about parenting was in a book called The No Cry Sleep Solution - we were keen to get Flopsy self-settling once she was about 5m old (because, of course, the world will come to an end if she keeps on feeding to sleep - or she’ll still be doing it when she’s 18 years old) but didn’t want to leave her to cry.  But what this book said was ‘does it bother you?  or does it bother everyone else?  If it doesn’t bother you, and you’re only doing ’sleep training’ because you feel you ought to, then don’t do it’.  It changed my whole outlook about parenting forever.  I didn’t mind feeding her to sleep.  In fact, I quite enjoyed it - the lovely way she’d be all wired and hyped up and then her body would gradually relax in my arms until she was fast asleep and all warm and cuddly and lovely.  She fed to sleep for the next two years when she weaned and then *gasp* somehow managed to get herself to sleep just being cuddled.  Except we’re not allowed to cuddle our toddlers to sleep - they need to learn to go to sleep alone (even though adults aren’t expected to).  But luckily for Flopsy, by this time we couldn’t care less what the rest of the world thought - we could do what was right for Flopsy and we stayed cuddling her to sleep.  At the age of 5, she can get to sleep on her own if she wants to, but she usually likes one of us in the room with her.  That’s fine by us - she doesn’t take long to get to sleep.  She doesn’t like being cuddled to sleep now, mores the pity I think, but we’re quite happy spending 10 or 20 minutes listening to our children’s breathing slow and settle before we get our hour or two together downstairs without demands for this, that and the other!

What I’m trying to get to, in a very long-winded way, is that once you stop bothering what other people think, you are free.  You are very, very free.  And your children are too.  You have the freedom to do what is right for your child regardless of anything outside of your family.  You have the freedom to continue breastfeeding for as long as you and your child are happy to.  You have the freedom to let them sleep in your bed for as long as you and your child are happy to.  Oh hang on, but aren’t adult beds too small to have three (or more) children squeezed in there - how does anyone get any sleep?  Oh yes, it doesn’t matter.  We have the freedom to say ‘who says we need to stick to a king-size bed?  why don’t we just put a single alongside and have a room that is just full of bed that we can all snuggle in together?’. 

How does this lead on to HE?  I so often hear of parents actually trying desperately to change their children just so they will manage in school.  Of course, that’s very kind of their parents - you don’t want your children to find school difficult when you could make life easier for them by ‘making’ them more confident, or learn their letters very young (or not, maybe - maybe holding them back so they’re not top of the class even).  Or you could even use your ‘freedom to do what’s right for your child’ to decide not to send them to school.  You could say ‘I don’t want to mould my child to fit some institution.  I want to see my children blossom and grow in the way they’re meant to and in the time-frame they’re meant to’.  This will be different for every child, which makes school the worst place to send them because school doesn’t allow for children to all be different - to all be ready to read at different ages, or to be ready to be confident at different ages, or even to just be different!  School tells parents that they’re concerned because their child has only one friend.  Or that they don’t have any special friends.  Or that they like spending a lot of time on their own reading.  Or that they can’t be dragged away from the painting table.  Why are any of these things a concern?  They’re just a sign that all children are different and like different things, and make friends in different ways.  But so many parents trust the teachers, because they’ve got the training, and start working out ways to change their children to fit the mould a bit better.  Not us!  We have the freedom to decide not to change our children.  They don’t go to school or nursery and we are not interested in other people’s concerns about our children.  We are only interested in *our* concerns about them and how *we* can help ensure their happiness and security in the way that is best for *our* children.  And we have the freedom to do that because we are used to not conforming - it was long, long ago we threw off the shackles of doing what the rest of our society does.  I think that’s what makes our family seem relaxed and happy - the fact we *all* know there is no pressure to do things just because everyone else does them.  Flopsy knows she doesn’t have to read to us if she doesn’t want to - she hardly reads to us at all now, but she reads to herself all the time and enjoys it and that’s what’s important.  Mopsy knows she doesn’t have to stop her painting if she doesn’t want to - she only needs to stop when she’s finished. 

And the other thing is this.  We have the freedom to see a worrying change in our children and wonder why it is and do whatever it takes to sort it out.  We have the freedom to know that a child exhibiting signs of insecurity, however self-confident and happy they seem the rest of the time, probably is insecure and the reason needs to be discovered and sorted out.  I’ve heard parents say how much their children change when they go to school, usually in negative ways ‘but I know they’re happy there because they say they are’ or ‘because the teacher says they are’.  I’ve heard parents desperately asking for help for their newly bed-wetting 4yo ‘but I know it’s not school [even though it started when they went to school] because they love school’.  I find it very hard not to shout OPEN YOUR EYES!!! at these parents.  Just because a child seems fine on the outside, does not mean they are fine on the inside.  Children often don’t realise they’re not fine, but their subconscious mind cleverly finds ways of telling us that they’re not fine and, as parents, we should be picking up on those signs and doing something about it.  But how do you do something about it if you don’t trust the signs, or if doing something about it means not conforming and that’s something you haven’t freed yourself up to do yet?  How lucky those children are whose parents are not only aware of doing things differently in order to make things right for their children, but also have the freedom to do the things that are right for their children.

And I’m not suggesting for one minute that it’s easy to break away from ‘the done thing’.  I’ve been doing it for three children now and am fairly non-mainstream in nearly everything, but I still struggle with some things.  I struggle with letting them have messy hair.  I struggle with letting them wear very odd clothes (I have relaxed enough to let them wear fairly odd clothes, but some things I just can’t stop myself persuading them not to wear!).  I struggle with letting them eat what and when they want when we’re out with other families sometimes (not always).  There are other things, I’m sure, that I have to keep reminding myself aren’t important in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not as important as my children’s happiness and security but I keep on trying.  And I’m loving it!  I’m loving being a mum.  I’m loving having my children around me the whole time.  They drive me crazy; I get bored; I get impatient and lose my temper; I say things I regret immediately; I do things I regret immediately; I badger them about things I shouldn’t; I get it wrong; they irritate me BUT I wouldn’t change a thing because, despite all those things they also delight me; they charm me; they make my heart melt; I enjoy them; I enjoy learning with them; I enjoy watching them play; I love them snuggling up to me in the night; I love all the kisses and cuddles; I love sharing books with them; I love helping them play on the computer; I love taking them places and sharing their wonder at new discoveries; I love watching them making friends; I love seeing them making up wonderful games with eachother and with their friends.  What a lot I’d miss if they were in school or pre-school.  I hope my friend loves it as much as I do