Unabler

I had plans to go to the Farmer's Market in Catonsville at the community center and to the library. I figured better early than never with the book return. But I got so comfortable this morning just surfing the blogs I normally visit that I stayed tuned in. I read a blog by a woman who must have been reading my mind because I was really looking for what she had to say. The gist of it is that she always get accused of being an enabler. People say they think she's enabling her kids. Most of us read/hear "enabling" with a negative connotive ear (bear with me). So she went on to explain that to her this is a really good thing. From her unschooling perspective enabling her children means she's allowing them the freedom to be themselves and to seek and learn and discover things for themselves. But she also said how people thought she ought to allow her kids natural consequences and that by enabling them she was denying them this opportunity to learn. So for example if she asked them if they wanted a coat on a chilly morning and they turned her down, she'd just pack it away into the car in the event they changed their minds. Other's would say, leave the coat at home and the kids learn to take the coat when it is offered to them. This has been my thinking to the present.

But there is a flaw in the logic of allowing natural consequences. It takes away grace and mercy. Look at God's example, He knows what is best for us even as we deny it and yet does not leave it up on a hook as a passed up opportunity. Before God there is always opportunity to turn and say LORD! I have not done as you commanded, and/or I have shunned what you provided for me out of my ignorance. Then by grace and mercy we are restored. We can trust the Lord in this every single time. If I leave that coat on the hook as "well they'll learn" then my heart is in the wrong place. I can leave the coat on the hook for them to change their minds, provided we're not leaving the house. If I leave that coat at home, when I know it's best for them, and I don't have it for them when they come to ask for it (obviously acknowledging my wise counsel) then I am not doing my job as a parent acting as Christ did. Consequently they can not trust me to care for their needs when as children they most need it. Not only that, but a coat at home is not a natural consequence. Swimming in a leech infested pond afterwarnings to refrain, and coming up covered with little black blood sucking ucky things is definitely natural consequences. The attitude is different. The pond owner would probably do everything in their power to deter you, even tying you to a tree if he actually knew you planned to go against his warning. His heart would be in the right place even if yours wasn't. So if you got untied and jumped in anyway, well you better bet that naturally there'd be consequences.

The other flaw to natural consequences thinking is this: I live in the reality of many chances. Few things are offered to me that I cannot find again in some other way, but I teach our children the law of no second chances.

So let me come around to why this revelation is so important to me. It is important because I have disabled my children, and separated them from me. They can no longer trust that I will provide. For example my DD and DS would get up well before me and fix their own breakfasts often leaving a mess in their wake. So I started making terrific breakfasts when I got up and refused it to them because they'd already had breakfast. Of course this is upsetting to them and they would say I didn't know you were going to cook that. I would reply that they were told not to eat before we got up, and yet they would still disobey us. Not able to think of another way to keep them from gorging and destroying before I got up this is the method I referred to. Then DD got the point and stopped eating early, at which time I stopped fixing larger fun breakfasts and she would wait for me to cook. Then she would end up not eating at all because I hadn't cooked. So she only learned that I wasn't available to make food for her. I should have continued to make breakfast--even if not large--at least a family affair, but I didn't. Now she's back to the old habits because she couldn't trust that I'd do right by her.

This is just one example, but it happens quite a lot. I'm struggling to find my way through this trial. I should have asked them back to clean up their mess and allowed them to continue in self-reliance instead of emotionally manipulating them to behave as I desired. I could have even warned them ahead of time that a large breakfast was due the next day. In a way I disabled my children.

On a less sour note DD and I had a nice time drawing together this afternoon. She wanted to learn perspective drawing, and so I showed her some different things about drawing in perspective. It was a nice time together, and we both enjoyed it.

I'm ever evovling my thinking.