Nisarga

Author: vidyut

  • The Unschooling Gods

    I had joined these online unschooling information communities, where parents from all over the world can interact. There are many knowledgeable people there as are many people just stepping into unschooling. It is an incredible space.

    However, like anywhere else in the world, intolerance abounds. Or perhaps it is intolerance in me at listening to generalizations on how unschooling should be.

    My current discomfort is with Sandra Dodd. Yes, her site is still on one of my highest recommendations for information on the subject, but I find that like any other human, she is rather set in her view of unschooling, which makes it rather difficult to listen to some of her opinions on unschooling.

    I guess, what I will have to do, is start my own ‘brand’ of unschooling, which really is what every parent does, whether schooling or unschooling or other.

    This post is about my belief in respecting a child. It is about not knowing what is best, and doing what I think would best support my objectives. I can only ever find out.

    Two statements made by Sandra recently remain in my mind as hallmarks of how we can become rigid in our thoughts and how we stop learning when we begin “teaching”.

    They are (there is no link to provide, as this was said in a group post at AlwaysLearning on yahoo Groupsburrowing into hearts):

    “If she can’t give enough to make unschooling better than school, she should put the child in school.”

    and

    “If she can’t give enough to keep the child from being an absolute mess, she should give him up for adoption.”

    I made a response to these on the lists, but I have no belief that it will be posted, since said Sandra also has the ability to block posts. It will take a person willing to reflect to actually absorb the response statements like this get.

    I may lack experience, but I find this utterly crass. This goes well beyond unschooling as a practice and into the realm of telling a parent what to do with a child based on own judgements of what constitutes “good enough”.
    Considering a mother newly getting into unschooling. Things are in a bad space for her. She is finding it difficult to keep supporting all an energetic childs initiatives can be, unconditionally. She is already questioning how her children behave and worries that things are not right. How do you think a suggestion for putting them up for adoption rather than messing them up hits her in this frame of mind? Being experienced is little use if it cannot be ssensitive.
    Sandra, I bet you were right where we are in the beginning and didn’t actually begin knowing it all. How would you have felt when you didn’t know what was to come and things were rough, and some ‘expert’ suggested that your child would be better off without your contributions if you were not able to ‘crack it’? You still don’t know the future. What if they get messed a few years later? Will you give them up for adoption?
    Or, in other words, I don’t know if I can make unschooling better than school. I don’t know if I can keep my child from being an absolute mess whether I school or unschool, raise him myself or give him up for adoption. All I know is that I believe that I am making the most respectful choice I can make for my child. By the time I am forced to accept that I did indeed mess my child up, it will be too late, since of course, I’m not intentionally messing him up. My child would also have some security in what was happening, however messed it was. Would he cope with whatever parents he would get through adoption? How do I know the adopted parents won’t mess him further? I will never see my child as messed, so I cant trust my own judgment. I want the best life for him, even if it means I should keep my toxic self away. So tell me, wise one, should I send him to school or adoption? By these standards, does anyone deserve a child at all?

    It is not that Sandra doesn’t care about the well being of a child. I know she does, or she would never have made this phenomenal effort. I think, somewhere down the line, responding to so many questions, providing so much invaluable advice, working so hard to extend support to new beginners, she has lost that much essential space for self-awareness that makes it possible to keep our own selves nourished. When that space gets crowded out, our actions start being automatic based on what we usually say, and they take on a life of our own, while we still continue to see ourselves as sensitive and caring.

    I have no doubt that she actually means this statement as well-intentioned advice to mothers who question the need to give their children the freedom to do whatever they want and learn from that. What she means is that if you grudge your children that, there is no point making this huge effort toward unschooling, because you will have ended up making all the effort, but with the same result as school. I also took it like that. I just think that it comes from a place of being God, and I resent her implication that she knows what is better for my child.

    I still have a lot of respect for Sandra. Her words are invaluable support for someone beginning a journey, like me. I read them, I reflect on them and often they empower me to have a more enabling attitude toward growth. Mine and the others too. So don’t go, “Oh, I was reading her because you recommended, and now I’d better stop before she wrecks my self-esteem”. Read her, read everyone. Just trust yourself. Trust that you are doing the best you can, and that is always good enough.

    It is also a learning on how there is no point idolizing a person to a place of infallibility and then being outraged when they turn out to be human. It is a lesson for me to see the humanity in me, in others.

  • The amazing ride

    I was going through the gazillion photos we have amassed in the recent months, and was at a loss how to begin ‘sorting them’. What struck me is that how far we have come in this short span.

    Here’s the story in pictures.

    Vidyut Kale - smiling womannewborn baby's hand and mother's fingers baby in grandma's armsburrowing into heartsI wish we had logged the hours we spent just being with him usCheck this guy out now duh!/p>

  • A dream for my son makes me better

    I was on the phone with a friend. She is into all this vision-mission kind of stuff, and very generous about sharing her learnings in life. It does get a little difficult to get her to see another perspective, but what I appreciate is her generosity in sharing all she has.

    It was very rewarding to speak with her after many years. She is a teacher (ouch!) of the new style – more interactive, more experiential…. When she heard how involved I am with Nisarga – I’ve quit working mostly to be more with him, changed my work to what I can do while he is sleeping or otherwise engaged, I love spending time with him, I desire to support him the best I can in life, etc. She made a few very important suggestions.

    One of them is what remains with me with overwhelming intensity. She asked me to have a ‘role model’ in my mind as what I would like my son to grow up into, and tell her about it. Such a person must be someone I respect and find inspiring.

    For all my unschooling talk, my role model was the late Prof. Randy Pausch of the Carnegie Mellon University. A guy complete with a Ph.D. who did jobs, who taught students…. I think it thrilled her, till I described him further. I have met Dr. Randy Pausch exactly once, in a YouTube video. It is an hour long video of his lecture now famous as the last lecture.

    I have never met him, and he is now dead. He died of cancer. So what is it in this man that a mother wants her child to grow into? It is his humanness. It is his passion, his determination, his generosity.

    See for yourself:

    Here is a link to the transcript if thus lecture that was seen by over six million people and continues to be an inspiration.

    As I look at this dream for my son, I am forced to see that I must begin living it myself, if I have to bring it to reality. I am a better person for going through this ‘exercise’.

  • My son clings to me!

    Okay, all the warnings are coming true.

    The last two days, Nisarga has shown a distinct preference for being held, and will nap on me, but not if I set him down on his bed. The difference is, that its not the end of the world as predicted. I’m enjoying it. What more special experience than to have my child, my beloved son be so attached to me? What better compliment could a mother get?

    I’d worry that something was wrong if my child was as okay with others or left alone as he was with me.

    The more Nisarga grows up, and the more advice I get, the more I wonder about what is so wrong with the world? I have lived close to animals. I’ve lived under the sky with my herd of horses, I’ve lived with dogs, I’ve lived close enough to cows to see their idea of parenting, I’ve lived with village women who work in the fields with their babies in a sling on them. Feels good. Feels natural.

    In the city, I have often encountered parents who apologize for their babies when they don’t want to come to me. Why? I wonder. Its a smart baby that doesn’t want to go to strangers. Try approaching a young filly when the mare doesn’t know you, and see how quickly you get run off by the mare and how the other horses in the herd take places around the mother and child pair. You are a stranger. The child is to be protected. It is simple. I understand the baby’s instinct completely and I respect him/her for being wise enough not to want to have anything to do with me without knowing me. I wonder at the parent who sees her child’s discomfort as inappropriate.

    Where, as kids grow up, does this get lost?

    I do introduce myself to children I meet, but really, its fine if they simply stare at me without approaching or approving of me in any way. I am absolutely delighted if my son takes his time to get comfortable with people. Everyone tells me that at the age of 6 months or so, he will start getting fussy about whom he interacts with. I see it as him growing up and getting smarter. I see nothing wrong with that, or feel any need to ‘prepare him’ by getting him used to being handled by lots of people.

    Sure, that makes it important that I am available to him all the time. Isn’t that what motherhood is all about?

    I see many parents outsourcing their parenting responsibilities, and then when their child grows up, they call him or her rude for not caring about them. Fact is, they do care. They did bond. It was just with the people the parents outsourced to. They did mourn their absence when they went out of their lives. However the parents themselves are not those people.

    I don’t see anything as right or wrong. I only see that it is unrealistic to expect children to take on responsibility for relationships that never were. My child will learn from life itself. My teaching him will not be a special thing. My child will survive with what is provided and get used to that whether it is a life as a beggar or prince. Parenting is not about that either. If I want my child to care about me, I must care about him in ways I see as caring.

    It is totally absurd that we expect our kids to not get too attached to the parents. What is this “too”? Is it even possible to get too attached to the sole stability in our life? What is wrong with this picture that we will leave crying toddlers in day care, send unwilling children to school, make them depend on strangers for their needs and then want them to maintain respectful, intimate, emotional relationships as adults when they don’t really need us?

    To me, this means respecting him, caring for his physical comfort, caring for his emotional comfort, supporting his choices. And then I *may* hope that if in my old age I am bed ridden, he will use warm water to wipe my bottom in the winter and turn my bed to face the window and not wake me up from naps to give me baths at his convenience or send me to some day care or hospice for convenience in the name of competent care. What he will do will still be his choice, but what I expect will be more fair.

    Nisarga is free to do what he likes. I am here for as long as he wants me.

  • Unschooling Nisarga

    Okay, its world war three, and as usual, I’m in the thick of things. This time, it is a stray comment that Nisarga will not go to school. This has sparked a minor wave of arguments. Many have shaken their heads wryly thinking that its yet another of my strange ideas. Those who know me better have started their own campaigns of explaining how school is necessary to a well rounded childhood (as though they have explored options), how it will be difficult to sustain year after year the strain of educating the child, and more.

    I find schools overrated.

    I have been in one as a child. While not traumatized, it isn’t something to write home about.

    My reasons for deciding to unschool Nisarga:

    1. Schooling is a huge investment in time. Compared with the time I invested in it, I have got precious little back. That is not to say I didn’t learn anything. It is simply saying that much of what I learned is rarely useful in life, and many things I learned actually harm my well being in real life.
    2. Schools teach us to quantify people based on a standard scale. We don’t really need much of what we learn in school, and most of what we need to learn in life, we learn from life. Yet, kids start believing themselves as clever or dumb based on what some ambitious bunch of teachers decides as life skills.
    3. The education system has no real way to impart necessary knowledge. One may argue that maths, science, history, language, etc are the foundations of learning. One may argue that they are certainly not. The fact is that very few schools actually prepare you for life. With calculators all around, I see no reason for my son to waste some of the prime developmental years of his life learning methods to divide 679676876 by 5875. Been there, done that, and never done it in real life. Always used a calculator – on my phone, my computer…
    4. Many subjects of knowledge are not covered though we pretend they are. Art for example is a joke. So is language, where a student will actually be considered ‘less’ for using slang, or ‘street language’ which is really an important part of speech in real life.
    5. Students are carefully molded into prescribed human beings and measured according to their ability to conform. This is actual damage.
    6. Think of all the life experience that he actually can learn things of interest to him that he can fit in in the coming 16 years (basic schooling). Travel, experimentation, art, science, people skills, computers, television, whatever. Whatever works. Once we aren’t obliged to measure our worth from standardized and useless examinations, there remains no real need to limit ourselves to prescribed learning and tentatively dabbling in our real interests. I see no reason why a kid can’t play video games all day and then grow up to make a living out of it. Or to play with colors and become an artist. Or to take apart things, improvise and then become an engineer or scientist. Or to become all of the above because he wants to, or to choose something else altogether.
    7. I suspect that schools often serve the purpose of keeping the kids occupied for parents who would much rather not have the hassle of dealing with their growth. This is not needed for me. I enjoy growing with him

    I am not planning on teaching my child anything at all. Let alone school. I will share what I find important if he finds it interesting. If he doesn’t, there is really no need for him to learn to do maths (for example) till he needs it and figures it out. Or to know about all the countries in the world or to read history only to forget it. The big thing I am going to do to support his growth is to stop interfering with my own ideas of what is best for him.

    For all those of you concerned that I’m going to ‘ruin’ my child, I appreciate your concern, and share my trust that he is a person and if learning turns out to be essential, he is capable of making a choice to engage in it as much as he likes.

    If you have read this far, and see some value in what I say, I’d like to share that I have also discovered that unschooling is practiced by many people over the world. That is how I realized that my “no intention of sending my child to school (since before I even married)” actually had a name, and my instinct was indeed leading me to something many involved and caring parents found value in. You may find out more on:

    • http://www.naturalchild.org
    • http://sandradodd.com/unschooling
    • http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/

    This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole new world waiting to be discovered.

    This is unorthodox. I know. But then I have never really been famous for following the rules.

    PS: If you wish your child to excel in maths, this article is a must read.

  • A beautiful year

    Its the 31st of December. I look back at this year and wonder at how much has changed. Last year, this time, I was not even actively thinking of a baby. A working professional, parties galore, life was good. Now, I have a young son. I am a stay at home mom. Making new discoveries about relationships, motherhood and sharing what I know of the world with this little one. Life is even better.

  • Thank you Google!

    Just got an email from Google with my New Year gift. It was a link to a page with an animation of the earth spinning, and this message:

    This gift is for someone very special: Everyone

    Because charities are experiencing their toughest year in decades, we have committed $20 million to helping those who help us all. Our gift to you is a gift to them.

    Followed by a list of charities around the globe.

    I keep being surprised and touched with the way Google is sensitive to people. Be it a no-clutter search page for those in search of something, highly intuitive features to their services, or something out of the blue – like this gift. Not to mention I just love their whimsical sense of humor too.

    Of course, like all mass emails from Google, the reply field was ‘no-reply’, so I thought I’d post my thanks here.

    A big thank you to you, Google! I can’t afford to support on such a scale, much as I want to see it happen. You have brightened up my new year. This is the best ‘mass-gift’ I have received. EVER.

    Thank you once more

  • Breastfeeding in public

    I am a huge supporter of breastfeeding for many reasons, but the chief ones are:

    • Its the best choice of nutrition for my baby
    • Immunity or at least resistance from a lot of stuff – don’t really know from experience – Nisarga is my son – we have no use for doctors other than regular vaccinations and gas. Or maybe that is the experience.
    • Its quick and convenient – nothing has a response time faster than unbuttoning and putting baby to breast. I have absolutely no intentions of going to the kitchen to fix formula, clean bottles and so on with a hungry baby on hand

    Bonus:

    • Lose your pregnancy weight faster
    • Have a baby who absolutely prefers you over anyone else in the world
    • Save money in products, doctor’s fees…. breastmilk is the best in quality and free!

    That said, one of my first purchases was a breast pump. At that time, with a new baby, I didn’t really know how available I’d be, and I wanted to keep a supply of milk on hand ‘just in case’.  It has proven invaluable countless times, allowing the baby to be fed when I hop out to a shop or when I’ve had too much sleep deprivation. I had initially planned it to store milk for going out for work for a couple of hours too, but I’ve lost the inclination for that.

    I am quite happy with India on the breastfeeding front, seeing how we are used to seeing women feeding their babies anywhere and everywhere. Sadly, this is now vanishing with ‘education’. Apparently the more educated you are, the more tempting your breast looks to people with evil thoughts. Good that I stopped before getting too educated.

    Initially, I used to carry bottled milk to feed the baby when heading out in public. I was not very expert at it, and didn’t really want the baby to suffer from my incompetence and needs of specific kinds of support to be able to feed well. This really had nothing to do with public places. I would still have prefered the bottle if totally alone and secluded without adequate time and fidgeting support.

    Now that I’m comfortable and the baby is a pro at this whole breastfeeding thing, the bottle is strictly for when I have to leave him behind to go somewhere and it is always a backup plan. Plan A is always to feed him and get back before he gets hungry again, or take him along.

    I am getting used to people slowly recommending starting formula, and foods and what nots. With all my criticism of the older generations for unthinking child care practices, its actually my contemporaries who make these ‘helpful’ suggestions. My parents and in-laws have never so much as said ‘food’ with relevance to the baby at this age, and will probably disinherit me and adopt Nisarga if I even think of formula.

    Yet my friends have recommended giving all kinds of things sooner than six months:

    • Water: Babies get thirsty
    • Juices: For digestion
    • Formula: For putting on weight
    • Cow’s Milk: For convenience
    • All of the above: for public places

    Somewhere along the line, women can wear barely visible clothes in public and its trendy, but breastfeeding is obscene. What’s wrong with this picture? I have yet to see a single person – even street lechers – look at a breastfeeding woman with lust. Curiosity, sure. Appreciation at the beautiful bonding, often, but never really “hey sexy babe, show me your boobs” variety. Even if they did, how does it matter?

    I eat in public when I’m hungry. Can I expect an infant not to?

    A friend of mine got really distressed when I shared these thoughts and went into a flood of advice about using my breast pump and carrying a bottle along. Sure, I’ve done that. I’m not saying its a bad idea and it works so that someone else can feed him if necessary. Yet, there’s only so much milk a bottle contains, and only so much my breast contains. I find it far more graceful to have Nisarga feed than huge wet blobs on my clothes.

    Then she suggested finding a private place like a restroom. You mean breastfeeding is so shameful that it must be hidden even if it means that you go into an entirely unhygienic place to FEED? Would YOU eat in a restroom? Ever seen what a restroom in a mall is like? What do I do if I’m travelling? Stop a flight, bus, car?

    I miss living in the village where you could see a woman sitting in a field under the sky with a baby to her breast for all to see. I have yet to meet one who looked for a convenient bush to go behind. We appreciate photos of women breastfeeding in art shows, but deny that beauty in ourselves.

    In a family gathering, kids and moms had a room to camp out in and I was breastfeeding Nisarga. Suddenly the door opened to have an uncle asking something from a cousin inside. With Nisarga barely a month old, we had a certain celebrity status, and everyone took moments to speak with me. This uncle saw me, and chatted. A sister-in-law with a grown up son was sitting nearby shell shocked. I was feeding and talking with a male at the same time!!!

    I carry along a scarf or something suitable to drape. Its more to prevent Nisarga from getting distracted than for me to hide what I’m doing. Its a certain intimate boundary that feels nice. It certainly wouldn’t stop me if I had nothing to cover up, and Nisarga was hungry, though at his age we haven’t been out enough to get into that situation. And I definitely wouldn’t go into a public toilet to feed my baby. I’ve never been obsessed with how much of me is seen or hidden, and my husband can sit right next to me and not bat an eyelid. Where is the problem?

    How is it that parents willing to go to fantastic extents to get admissions to some exclusive school, or be seen by only a child specialist with exhorbitant fees, or have every excellent toy for their child don’t value something that is the very fabric of life itself? Or is it because it doesn’t have a monetary tag attached? Or is it because its so ridiculously easy to manage, that its not important?

    This is one area where the traditional old-timers have it right. Feed baby. Feed often. Don’t worry about the rest till your baby grows up.

    What do you do/support/plan?

  • Cultures and co-sleeping – My baby is not a product

    I had hurriedly read through Dr. Aletha Olter’s site and recommended it earlier, but now, I think I need to revise my opinion of Aware Parenting and downgrade the status from definitely recommended to take with a pinch of salt. Heck upend the entire salt shaker on it.

    Here’s the reason:

    Important warning

    There have been reported cases of infants smothering while sleeping in their parents’ bed, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission does not recommend sharing a bed with an infant. The danger of overlaying is highest during the first 3 months, and the danger of infants becoming wedged in a crevice is highest between 3 and 7 months. However, there are many reported deaths of infants sleeping alone in cribs. So wherever your infant sleeps, it is important to take safety precautions. If you sleep with your infant, the following bed sharing safety tips should be followed.

    Bed Sharing Safety Tips

    The following safety tips apply to anyone who shares a bed with an infant (not only the mother).

    • Do not take any drugs that can affect your sleep (alcohol, tranquillizers, antidepressants, illegal drugs, etc.)
    • Never smoke in the room where your infant sleeps.
    • Use a firm mattress. Do not sleep with your infant on a soft mattress, or on a water bed, bean bag chair, or couch.
    • Take precautions so your infant will not fall out of bed.
    • Avoid crevices between your mattress and the wall or headboard.
    • Never place your infant on a pillow.
    • Always lay your infant on its back to sleep.
    • Do not use a feather bed (duvet).
    • Do not place any stuffed animals in the bed (or live ones!).
    • Do not sleep with your infant if you are obese.
    • Tie your hair back if it is very long.
    • Do not let your infant share a bed with another child.
    • Do not place your infant near curtains with dangling strings.
    • Never leave your infant alone in an adult bed.

    Huh? What’s that all about? Are we talking about a person or a product? I almost expected a disclaimer “No refunds will be provided if…..” US Comsumer Product Safety Commission now has an opinion on where you put your baby to sleep? And what is their authority on the subject?

    Regardless, since I’m not a citizen of US, I’ll leave that battle to someone else, and instead take a look at what seems to be working just fine for us.

    We sleep together – this baby and I. We are lucky to live in a culture that supports mother and child closeness in its early life so much, that if someone is to be kicked out of a mother’s bed, its more likely to be the husband than the child. There is no surprise what so ever that Nisarga and I cuddle together every night. And that’s exactly how we like it.

    I have always thought that its a rather inconvenient (not to mention emotionally distant) practice to put infants to sleep away from their mothers. I feel its better for the peace of mind of everyone to be in ready access to each other, and I include the father in this. I can’t imagine Raka sleeping peacefully in bed with me with the baby elsewhere. We need that little guy right there as much as he needs to fidget and touch his mother or father if he wakes up. And we have lovely nights. He sleeps late (like us), but once he does, we are all out like a light – straight until morning.

    In fact we all sleep so well, that the early recommendation of feeding every two hours was followed really badly by all concerned till we finally gave up on it – all the three of us. I can’t imagine the chaos of a baby coming fully awake from hunger and then getting all wound up with crying by the time I leave my room and go to his and attend him. Now, I just sleepily pull him closer, feed him, and we’re both out.

    The recommendations on this list read really alien and grating to the instinct. Where would a baby be, if not in my bed? And if I don’t leave him alone in bed at all, what do I do? Sleep all day, or drag him along? And what is the age when I stop “sterilizing” him from life?

    Tie your hair back if its very long? How in the world is it the business of anyone to recommend this as a safety tip? You think I wouldn’t notice if it strangles him or something? More so, that Nisarga wouldn’t notice it? He’s more likely to pull it off my head, which is a good reason to tie it up, but not really a safety thing surely….

    The idea that a culture would allow a product related function to make recommendations on how to treat your baby says it all as far as I’m concerned.

    It only gets worse when its endorsed by a website titled Aware Parenting!

  • Our first tooth at 3 months!!!

    I have been busy with a super needy baby for the past couple of days with no time to haunt this blog at all.

    He has been fussy and clingy for the past couple of days, which is fine because I enjoy holding him, but sad because he seems so unhappy. I was wondering constantly about what his problem was. If you remember, I’d written a post the over a month ago, when he wasn’t even two months old thinking he was teething. Everyone assured me I was mistaken and that he was too young. Then, it seemed to ease and I believed I was mistaken too about the symptoms.

    He’s been super drooly since then and tends to have whiny moods, which too everyone assured me was a part of growing up.

    Today, as I looked into his mouth, there it was – a tiny white ridge over a very drooly gum. Its still not out, but its right there. Apparently, it will still take time to come out, and that’s what his discomfort is all about, but I’m glad to know that I did understand his body language correctly.

    I feel so helpless sometimes to understand what my little man is trying to tell me.