EASY HOMESCHOOLING STARTING POINTS:

Simply Do Nothing…Together

By Linda Dobson

Maybe it’s because the Information Age’s frantic pace makes family time
as difficult to find as it is loaded with responsibility. Or maybe it’s because
“experts” everywhere justified “quality” time as a replacement for plain ol’
time when women were lured onto the economic merry-go-round.

Whatever the cause, it’s hard for many families to simply be together today.
If you  work all  week, week-ends  disappear in a blink of an  eye as you
“catch  up”  on  chores,  errands,  and  other  important  tasks  that  don’t  get
accomplished Monday through Friday. So you feel that whatever time you
do have “left over” should be devoted to “doing” something with or for the
kids.  (That  inner  urging  to  attend  to  the  children  is  quite  natural;  it’s  the
guilt  and  the  self-incrimination  that  are  unnatural,  created  by  external
forces.)

What You Gain When You Simply Do Nothing

One  of  the  healthiest,  most  loving  things  you  can  do  for  your  children
and your Self is to give them your attention, your time, your ear, your heart.
“If  a  child  is  to  keep  alive  his  inborn  sense  of  wonder,”  Rachel  Carson
wrote, “he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it,
rediscovering  with  him  the  joy,  excitement  and  mystery  of  the  world  we
live in.”

You  can  offer  your  child  that  ideal  companionship  by  spending
unscheduled, unshackled, unadulterated time together. It’s perfectly fine to
let simple activities creep in. Make popcorn, take a walk, paint rocks, or star
gaze, as long as you can do it as a team talking, laughing, sharing, dreaming
together.

Just as  quiet  time  benefits  an  individual,  quiet  time  as  family  enhances
you as a group, a whole. Bonding occurs, filling, as it should, the need all
humans  have  to  connect  to  others.  And  a  child  who  fulfills  this  need  at
home doesn’t need to go out and join gangs, engage in premature sex, or do
something “wrong” in order to forge connection with peers who happen to
be  rebelling  against  the  injustice  they  feel  with  confusion  and  anger  and
hate.

Simply Do Nothing To Better Know Your Children

Remember  the  billboard  that  used  to  say,  “The  family  who  prays
together stays together?” This thought, carried one step farther, might read:
“The  family  that  does  together,  stays  together.”  For  a  family  “doing”
together  is  not  only  physically  united,  but  emotionally  and  spiritually
united,  as well.  You  get  the  chance  to  know  your  children  as  people;  not
three  year-olds  or  sixth  graders  or  learning  disabled  or  gymnasts  or  even
“the  smart  one”  or  “the  bad  one.”  Just  as  people,  the  way  you know  your
friends.  You  learn  “where  their  heads  are  at;”  what  excites  them,  what
bothers  them,  what  they’re  afraid  of,  what they’re  proud  of,  how  they
perceive the world, how they perceive themselves, why they hope for what
they hope for, why they dream the dreams they do. This “knowing” is
available to you and yours.

Simply do nothing…together.

“Simply Do Nothing…Together” is part of “A Dozen Simple Starting Points” from Linda Dobson’s The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community and Self. The 15th Anniversary e-book edition, just $4.99 and instant download, at the link right above.

A recent review of The Art of Education is available at Unplugged Mom.

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