Re-Defining Childhood

This awesome article was sent to me via email earlier this week. It really hit home with so many reasons why I "teach" Shayna the way I do ! I wish I could give the "homeschooling mother - author" proper credit, but all I know is it is by "Robin."

Re-Defining Childhood
By Robin

I am not in a hurry for my children to grow up. I am not in a hurry for the day to end or the week to grow old. I am not in a hurry for the sun to set or rise. I am not in a hurry. I don't need to make our lives part of the rat race called “life” as others would created it, as I could create it--the self imposed crunch that inevitably restricts who I am, who they are, how they grow up, how they experience each day of their lives. I am not in a hurry.

I am not in a hurry for my children to learn to read or know their multiplication tables by heart. I do not need for them to know where Utah or Zimbabwe is on the map or the 50 states and their capitals today. Do you know? I am not in a hurry for my children to know how to conjugate verbs, actually they already know, as they already know so many things if I look for the knowings and acknowledge them.

I am not in a hurry for my children to define themselves by the grade, the marking on a paper, which is supposed to tell them (and me and the world) how much they know, how much they are worth in the educational market of "Excellence." I am not in a hurry.

I am not in a hurry for my children to judge themselves by some extraneous measure called learning or education that some ones somewhere decided can be put on a scale and measured in time specific. Newsflash! You can try, but it is like trying to carve water. You can’t unless you change it into ice, and we weren’t all created to be ice. I am not in a hurry.

I am not in a hurry to push time, force the day, and make the year spin faster that it should. I am not in a hurry. I am not in a hurry to mold my children into standards of excellence. I am not in a hurry. I am not because I know they are OK, fine, beautifully unfolding, becoming, growing up and learning all the time.

I am not in a hurry because I know that human beings, children (often called students) need me to not be in a hurry. They need time--time that contains the safe place and nurturing ground that I think is supposed to be called childhood. Although children do need direction, more importantly they need support; they need less expectation and more acknowledgements of their accomplishments; they need less judgment and more encouragement; they need less predetermined mold and more room and space and time to grow the way they need to.
I am not in a hurry because I don’t have to be, and I know it.