For the past couple of months I have taken a rather long hiatus from blogging. The reason is that I have been suffering from severe morning sickness, leaving me virtually immobile, stranded watching YouTube videos and reading Norwegian fantasy novels as well as The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff on my couch, barely being able to eat, let alone write.
Having worked in education for so many years and spending the past 5 years loudly voicing my perspectives on the radical changes that I see needs to happen in how we see and conduct education, I find myself in the humbling position of becoming a parent for the first time.
I’ve always felt/experienced that I was ‘born to be a mother’ and have always felt very comfortable towards the idea of having children, along with enjoying spending time with children. When I am at dinner parties I always tend to levitate towards hanging out with the children or the animals rather than the adults, because children and animals are more genuine and therefore more interesting to be around. And then of course I decided to become a professional child-caretaker within which I also created an idea of being an ‘expert’ or ‘child whisperer’ of sorts. It is definitely an occupational hazard I have seen in parents that come before me. I remember in teacher conferences we had with parents, the most dreaded parents were always the ones who were teachers themselves, because they thought they knew everything. Now when I am pregnant, I have been shocked at my own experiences, because they have indeed mostly been negative, filled with fear and doubts and anxiety towards being good enough. On the contrary, I’ve always ‘known’ that being pregnant and having the child would be natural for me, like I would be ‘the best’ at it, and reality is showing me something very different, which is actually cool because it is humbling, and I am much more grounded towards it than I think I would have been, if I had had an harmonious and angelic pregnancy, and I am probably also better equipped for when the child comes, because I’ve had to let go of my idealized ideas of myself and stop being delusional about it. Considering the change in my circumstances, it is obvious my blog will take on a slightly different direction, given the fact that I will now include a personal perspective on parenting. I am however still as committed as ever to the process of deconstructing the education system from within (also from within the family system) and contributing to creating radical changes in how we see and approach both education, as well as how we see and approach children in general.
Living in a country where unschooling is illegal, I will continue to share my perspectives on the failure of the Swedish school system (which is no different than any other school system in the world. The only difference is that in Sweden, you have no choice to opt out). I will also be sharing the concrete and specific considerations my husband and I have towards how we will approach education on a practical level for our child.
I will share perspectives regarding general childcare and upbringing, probably more so than I have in the past, as this has been and continues to be an area that I am passionate about, and that I am obviously more directly involved with now.
Living in a country that has made modern western science into an orthodox religion, I have found myself feeling very alone when it comes to the principles that I consider to be both natural and commonsensical to raise my child according to, because they are considered to be not only ‘alternative’, but in fact even ‘weird’, ‘strange’ or ‘dangerous’. I am here speaking about something as natural to me as co-sleeping with one’s child, wearing one’s child in a sling and breastfeeding for a longer period of time than what is normally prescribed in this society. I will be sharing my experiences and insights as I start exploring these areas of parenting and child-relating on a more direct and intimate level, and I will share the processes I walk through to deschool myself from fears and beliefs and judgments that prevent me from doing what is best for myself and my child. I will continue to focus on sharing honest – and more importantly: self-honest perspectives on parenting, education and children.
I hope you will join me on this journey to life, not only as teachers, but as parents and adults in general, who wish to give our children a different world to grow up in than then one we were brought into – and who understands the imperative of changing ourselves to make this happen.