It quickly became apparent among the waiting parents that we were all homeschooling families. One of my son's fellow unschooling friends was there, and I could have guessed the rest were too by the adult level of articulated tech talk spoken by voices years away from deepening and the polite, almost matter of fact, non cliquey way the kids related to each other, some of them having just met for the first time.
They were gracious and very grateful to the parents for bringing the kids and repeatedly thanked the kids, but more than that they never talked down to the kids or told them how to behave or made them walk to each testing room in a straight line or anything remotely stupid and schoolish. They treated the kids with genuine courtesy and (sit down) as social equals, whose feedback and insights were invaluable. About people who treat kids that way, I can get star struck.
To be valued for who and how we are goes beyond a mere biological need to survive with one's tribe. It is what each of us ought to do for each other, a mutual recognition of the American Declaration of Independent's self-evident truth, "the pursuit of Happiness."
To be valued for who and how we are goes beyond a mere biological need to survive with one's tribe. It is what each of us ought to do for each other, a mutual recognition of the American Declaration of Independent's self-evident truth, "the pursuit of Happiness."
Hopefully my son will continue down this path where being valued for being himself is the norm. My husband and I only found that experience outside work environments when we found each other 6 years ago. For him there have been stupid assumptions and endless bad lawyer jokes. For me, well, I think the only time my grandparents were proud enough to accurately understand and explain to their friends or to other family members what I do was during the time in my life they could say, "She's in college." I'm betting they never admitted I majored in art.
I love the creativity of cartoons. I can still remember getting up early on Saturday morning and literally counting the minutes until The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show came on. Wile E. Coyote has long been and will always remain one of my heroes because no matter how many times he falls off a cliff, he goes back to the drawing board with a new set of Acme plans.
The awareness of yesterday's CN experience was not so completely the norm in life for my son to take it for granted. On the way home he seemed to surprise himself by declaring that he might want to work there one day. When he was 5 he dreamed of being a cashier at Whole Foods because he was in love with their cash registers. At 8 he wanted to be a Lego set designer, extracting promises from his step-dad and me to visit him in Denmark. At 14 he's promised, with a smirk, to make us proud by living at home, playing games all day, and never having a job. (Actually, I've asked many fellow unschoolers if they know of any unschooling families who's kids grew up and did that, and no one knew of anyone or even knew anyone who knew of anyone in that situation, and believe me, we are a keenly aware tribe.)
My first thought of my son's newest goal was being thrilled that CN is close to home. It wasn't until hours later that I realized most people would have thought, "Yeah, you and how many other millions of kids?" What I said to him in response was, "That could be cool! Great that you've made connections with people there."
*Contrary to how field trips often go, we once had an ex-schoolteacher museum guide start out in controlling and pedantic mode, but to her credit, as soon as she caught on that our kids could think critically and well articulate their questions, she adapted her presentation style, and everyone, including her, had so much fun that she extended the tour an extra hour and hung out with us when we had free time afterwards to explore the museum.
1 comment:
Love, love, love this blog post!
Post a Comment