Sometimes my heart forgets the reality of childhood for so many.
The normalised disconnection. The captivity by a different name. The lack of freedoms. The standardisation. The contextless learning. The removal of autonomy. The expected conformity.
The acceptance of so many unnatural things. Like children being grouped by postcode, by age, in rooms, indoors, in desks for too many hours. Disconnected from family, from siblings, from the real world, from themselves.
Childhoods robbed and twisted into something so far from what children need and how they thrive.
I forget. I forget because it’s not my children’s reality.
They don’t know uniforms or homework or bells or expectations. They don’t know socialisation that is forced and limited in time. They don’t know hierarchy – of ‘subjects’ or of social cliques.
They know OF these things, but have been spared of them personally.
I forget that what we are doing is ‘radical’ because schooling to me is the ‘out there’ choice.
They get one childhood. One childhood. That fact always swirls in my mind.
Sometimes I forget that what we have chosen is so far from the norm. And the remembering does not stir anything but gratitude and a sureness in me.
What a childhood 😍
Oh my goodness yes!! Every once and a while in smacked with the sad realization that how we live is rare and odd. My heart hurts for other kids, for the kid I used to be.