I keep finding that I think of things to blog about then by the time I get round to jotting them down something else has become more interesting or insistent. So over the last couple of weeks I’ve been about to write about this or that and never got round to it. Such is life I suppose,and it’s life that keeps getting in the way and changing my priorities for me.

Well, anyway, the item at the top of my list (for now, so I’d better note it down while it’s still at the top) is that sometimes it can seem like you’re banging your head against a brick wall trying to achieve the seemingly unachievable then all of a sudden things start to fall into place (makes a nice change from things falling apart) following the unlikeliest of proddings. This week it was the imminent arrival at our place of a beautiful chaise longue. I have long coveted one for our imaginary conservatory which we are going to have built. One Day. It’ll be perfect in there. As I’m sure you are aware though, what you covet doesn’t usually come along at the right moment, if at all, so when one was offered to us we had no choice but to jump at the chance. I had imagined that we had a little time to organise ourselves in time for it’s arrival, but apparently not. The owner wants rid of it, so we need to fit it in to an already pretty cluttered house. It’s going in our bedroom. On top of the dog bed, in front of my chest of drawers. I’m joking. We’ll have to move the dog bed to oh, wherever. I started doing my usual ‘well, if it’s going to happen we need a plan and I need it clear in my head before we even start’ and I got accused of being negative and as Daddy Bear and I tried to work a way through the morass the conversation turned to the contents of our wardrobe and how we had promised ourselves that we were going to go through all the stuff and radicalise it. Then we found ourselves actually getting down to it. Radicalising, that is. Clothes were dragged out, tried on, cooed over or groaned at and before we knew it we had a whole black bin bag full of unsuitable clothing. I was left quite a few items of lovely clothing from my mother in law. It really is lovely stuff, Jaeger, Viyella, seriously good quality, but I had never been sure whether any of it was actually ‘me’ or could be made to become ‘me’. Most of the keep stuff was quite a surprise as I started thinking and experimenting with what clothes could go with what in a ‘me’ kind of way. I am now much more at ease with my wardrobe and planning what to wear at a later date. After that things started to come together, things got done, new furniture we had ordered was delivered and put in place and things I had planned on doing for a while actually got done. I now have a home made magazine holder for the loo. I am very happy about it on so many levels. Not least of which is the fact that I envisaged what it would look like, sourced and bought the necessary eyelets, put them onto the old airplane headrest cover and hung it up. Now I have some loo reading, and a sense of achievement. Priceless.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way I parent. I’m a big fan of Faber and Mazlish mainly because, when I read this book for the first time, I was struck by how much of it I was already doing instinctively, yet there was still a lot to learn about parenting in a positive way. I think I occasionaly approach TCS (Taking Children Seriously) but it’s mostly a combination of relaxed parenting and my own particular spin of respect and compassion. With a dollop of Cesar Millan too:-) It works for dogs, but it also seems to work for children, especially when I remember to do the exercise part. I can’t manage the four-hour hikes that Cesar does every morning, but we get fresh air and pack migration as often as possible. I digress.
What I was mostly thinking is that doing it this way demands a lot of energy and effort from me. And a lot of tolerance, patience, compassion, thought and negotiation. I should apply for a job a the UN. It’d be a breeze. The other day I had picked up a big bag of bird seed from the garden centre and the girls and I went through a whole long rigmarole of which child gets to sit where in the car. Although I was quite pleased at how I handled it and got the girls to agree on a workable solution, part of me was screaming ‘ Why shouldn’t I just do it the way my parents did it?’ You probably know what I mean. It would have been a case of ‘Right! You sit there and you sit there. And shut up!’ Never did me any harm, I thought to myself. Then I gave myself a chance to reflect on that thought. Actually it did do a lot of harm. It set my brother and me against each other. While our parents were around we were nominally obedient. Out of sight of my parents he was quite sadistic towards me. I can see now how obvious it is that that would happen. If you repress children and give them no say in their life then they are going to react against it in the only way they know how, which is to repress someone else in their turn. I truly believe that is how bullying happens in schools too. This kind of parenting also allows children no way of learning how to be anything but dependant and helpless and that sets up endless internal conflicts on reaching adulthood. My kids are lively and noisy and bolshy, but I’m almost certain that they are not mean or spiteful or sneaky with each other because they don’t have to be. They get to work out how things should be in front of me. And I hope they realise that all feelings are acceptable, but that some actions aren’t. And that it is possible to work things out in a way that respects everyone’s needs as far as is workable.

It’s been a lovely day. It started with dental appointments for all the kids with glowing reports about their teeth, even Big Brother who is notoriously bad at brushing but has been remembering and doing it well lately, then off to Durham for a Breastfeeding Picnic to raise awareness about the disparity between Scottish law and the rest of the UK. Morgan puts it so much better than I could here:There were about 20 mums there and it was so nice to be in the majority for a change. Being a ‘long term’ breastfeeder can be a bit of a lonely old life at times, but there I was surrounded by other breastfeeding mums all enjoying the sunshine and having a good time. I met a wonderful young man called Daniel who sat happily on my lap and smiled up at me for ages. I also got distracted by the cute student eye-candy on my long walk back from the toilets in the cathedral:-) Then after the picnic it was off to a cafe bar to spend a great afternoon of adult chat with a Ma/Phd student discussing bed-sharing. The hours whizzed by and I think we covered every possible topic relating to attachment parenting. A whole day surrounded by like-minded people. Priceless.

Whilst watching a tv programme on unassisted birth, (Extraordinary People: Outlaw births) I started to think about the parallels between unassisted birth and unschooling. I know I was supposed to be thinking ‘Oh look at those strange people, putting themselves and their babies at risk by turning their back on the medical profession’ but being fairly literate media-wise, and having taken part in a similar documentary (’Honey I suckle the kids’. That title sucks. Literally) I ignored the obvious bias and just watched the mothers talking and followed their stories.

Like unschoolers, or autonomous home educators, these mothers were following their own instincts, trusting their bodies and their babies and arming themselves with enough knowledge to cope with most eventualities. The process would probably scare the pants off most people (in the case of unassisted birth and unschooling) but the results spoke for themselves. You only had to look at the faces of the mothers and the body language of the newborns to see that both had come through an incredible experience. In one case the mother was in labour for only two hours and was exceptionally quiet throughout.

I suppose that for birth there is a kind of half way house, that is a midwife attending a home birth, which we did three times as a family, but I just couldn’t think of an equivalent in terms of education. You either have the hospital birth/ send your child to school or the unassisted birth at home/ home education. There is nothing in between, no ‘midwife’ attending to help you through if anything ‘goes wrong’. However the more I thought about it, I realised that the comparison doesn’t work, for this part at least. We the parents are the midwives of home education. We are the ones with the expertise. We know our children and we make sure that each child gets exactly what he or she needs from the experience.

It is also quite a private experience, in both cases. No one really sees us ‘educating’ our children. We go out and mix with all kinds of people, but there is really no one else in our house (or walking round with us ) examining what we do, checking our pulse or our blood pressure, telling us when to push or not (I’m getting into the medical analogy now). Occasionally someone makes an attempt to tick their boxes by ensuring that we are indeed in labour/ educating our children otherwise than by attendance at school, but for the most part we are left to get on with it without interference.

I guess alot of people would see either stance as being quite arrogant or foolhardy. Who are we to question the received wisdom of birthing in hospital or sending our children at school? Who do we think we are, believing that tried and tested methods of birthing or schooling don’t apply to us and our children? After all a lot of teachers/midwives spent ages in training and a lot of educatonal theorists/obstetricians spent years honing their skills so that teachers/ midwives could be taught exactly what works in a classroom setting/ hospital birth. There, though, is the rub. These methods may well ‘work’ in schools and hospitals, but things are different at home. The methodology is different. And what we do works for us.

There is also no predictable way to do it. Each birth/ child is different, and no one can predict how it will turn out. I suppose it comes down to a deep conviction that what you are doing is right for your child(ren) and your family, and the only way we can tell that we’re doing the ‘right’ thing is by the way it feels. For the most part, with us, it feels just fine. There are a few pangs along the way, a few false starts, a few shifts of position, the odd scary moment and, as in labour, I do get to the point when I feel I can’t take it any more. That of course is a very important moment in childbirth/ home education, because you know you’re about to see the fruits of your labour.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time is probably familiar with my ‘tidy-enough-house’ dilemma. I like to be spontaneous when it comes to the kids’ learning but the irony is that one can only be truly spontaneous when one has a rough idea of where things are, and that takes time and effort.  I’ve also noticed how my mood improves when the house is relatively tidy, and how muddled I feel when the house is in a more chaotic state. However, I just don’t like housework. Perhaps I feel it’s beneath me, or maybe it’s just a hangover from my childhood when I had to follow someone else’s agenda and timetable. I had a bit of an epic struggle this week with a small but very significant part of the house. I call it ‘my area’ (maybe I should change that to ‘my space’!), and it’s about six foot square with large windows looking out onto a lovely bit of the garden where the bird feeders are. Since we moved here two and a half years ago, it has gone through a few metamorphoses ranging from general dumping ground to depository for other people’s stuff to ‘this bit belongs to me - see? I’ve even got a storage unit (erected by me) to prove it’!!!

I had an external deadline to work to as we were having a new phone line put in and I just had to get it tidied, but when faced with the prospect of getting down to it I went into a kind of meltdown. It seemed to me to be the embodiment of a problem that’s been getting worse and worse lately. I try to get things sorted, but when faced with what seems an uphill struggle I panic and freeze and feel totally overwhelmed by the task. I’ve been trying to sort the playroom (ie tidy, find a place for everything, throw away stuff we no longer need or use, gather stuff from around the house and put it where it should be) for the last 18 months. It just feels like such a mammoth task, and every time I get it sorted to a certain extent, life intervenes, I turn my back and it’s all back to square one. I feel like Sisyphus some days.

 Well, with some emotional help from Gary I calmed down enough to make a start, but not before I’d retreated under my duvet to try and steady myself. I got stuck into it and the strange thing is that once I’d started to make a difference to all the piles, I actually began to enjoy it. It felt like a fog was lifting. Having the deadline both helped and hindered. It meant that I absolutely had to get it done, but it definitely contributed to the anxiety attack as well.

I never really know how to organise myself as there seems to be so much going on at once that it’s hard to see what really needs doing and what can be left for a while. I did take on board something I read recently in a book called ‘Undoing Depression’ by Richard O’Connor. In it he talks about the difference between things being ‘urgent’ and ‘important’. Too often we are governed by the tyranny of urgent tasks because they are in your face and demand your attention right now, but there are also important things, things that could really make a difference to your life, and even lessen the number of urgent tasks, but these important things keep getting pushed to the back of the queue by urgent tasks. I took from this that sometimes you have to risk the anxiety of ignoring the urgent tasks and actively decide to tackle the important ones. Like ‘my area’. It’s going to make a real difference now that I have a space to retreat to with a lot of my stuff around me, especially now that I have found homes for a lot of it.

Evne though I hate hearing myself saying ‘Not now, darling’ or ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ I may just have to weather that for a while until I feel I have achieved more of the really important things in our life. Either that or take a leaf out of one home edding mother of six’s book, whom I read about some years ago. She would get up at 4am apparently, so that she could get all the housework done before the kids got up, then she could devote her entire day to the kids learning. I certainly admire her, but I know for a fact I don’t have that amount of stamina.

Although I would describe ourselves as an autonomous family, especially where the children’s learning is concerned, one area where I’m unashamedly NOT autonomous is sleep, or rather bedtimes. This is because, if the kids were allowed to let their bodies tell them when to go to bed, we’d have 3 different bedtimes and 3 different waking times which would effectively mean that I’d be on call most of the evening and starting the day pretty early due to their differing body clocks.I definitely need some ‘me’ time. I suppose to be strictly accurate I need some ‘no kids’ time in order to wind down properly and recharge my own batteries.  However we have been really struggling with how to get them to go to sleep at night. The usual bedtime for the older two, aged 9 and 6, is 8.30 with lights out at 9. This doesn’t mean that they go to sleep easily. We’ve tried to make their environment conducive to sleep by making sure they eat well and exercise during the day, disallowing screen time an hour before bedtime, having a gradual wind down period, reading stories (most nights), not having tv or computers in their rooms and generally making sure that their bedrooms are comfortable places to sleep. They are allowed to have music or a story cd while they are in bed, which gets switched off at lights out time, and they each have a night light to offset any anxiety issues. Even with all this they take an AGE to go to sleep, some nights I even go to bed before they’re asleep. I’ve been trying to get them up earlier in the morning but I’m so bleary eyed myself that I find it hard to drag myself out of my nice warm bed.

 Today was slightly different though. The two older ones got themselves up at stupid o’clock, I believe it was about 6am, an hour which I had heard of, but never quite believed existed. They played together pretty well in that we didn’t hear them until nearly 8am and the day progressed well enough. At about 9.30am my 9 yr old called me to say that his little sister was asleep on the settee. This I had to see. Sure enough there she was propped up and asleep. Time for a sneaky photo I thought. She woke about half an hour later and we all went out for a picnic and a visit to a park with friends. On the way home Big Brother fell asleep in the car for a few minutes (hope that doesn’t bode ill for his bedtime tonight) but the girls stayed awake, until we got home. Then I realised that Big sister aged 6 was again asleep on the settee at about 7pm. This hasn’t happened for so long I couldn’t believe my eyes. I managed to carry her to bed and sincerely hope she sleeps through and doesn’t get a second wind later this evening.

 I think I need to go and get out my copy of ‘The No Cry Sleep Solution’ (the one for older children) by Elizabeth Pantley and see if I can update our bedtime/sleep arrangements. That’s one of the hardest things about bringing up children: you need to constantly reassess what you’re doing as the children get older. Everything is fluid, nothing stays the same for long. At least I have some good help in the books that I have found useful in the past. As well as giving some good advice, none of it judgmental, the authors have helped me to hone my thinking skills and arrive at our own imperfect solutions.  All I need is to feel awake enough to actually think clearly.

As promised, well hinted at, in my first post, here’s my attempt to explain to myself what I’m doing or trying to do by writing this new blog of mine. I have had an awareness since I started this blog that time is kind of stacking up against me in a ‘gotta post, gotta post!’ kind of way. My first attempt at blogging  here :http://lizngary.blogspot.com/ (hmm, there’s my first snag, I don’t know how to put a link in there) was good enough as a first attempt and I’m quite happy with the posts in terms of tone and message, but I just couldn’t seem to keep it up. Maybe I wasn’t sufficiently motivated, but I think it just probably wasn’t the right time for me to be blogging. Is there ever a right time, I wonder? With a little help from my friends I had a bit more success being part of a collective blog here: http://loozingit.blogspot.com/ . I had a clear reason and aim in mind, ie formulating a healthy eating plan, and that helped me to keep on track, both with blogging and healthy eating.

So I’ve been trying to work out exactly why I feel like blogging now, when so many others are reaching the decision to stop blogging, whether temporarily or permanently. I guess that blogs, like email group members, will tend to come and go and I should base my decision to blog on my own feelings and motivation. I’ve also had more of a chance to have a look around at the blogging world and read various different kinds of blogs written by people in differing communities, so I’ve had a chance to think about the look and feel of this blog (and I have big plans, hindered only by a lack of familiarity with the software which is making the process frustratingly slow and painstaking).  I do have my 3 fairy blogmothers (thanks you lot) to help me overcome any glitches, as I have learnt that good support is essential in any undertaking.

I have been examining what I want and what I don’t want from blogging and from this blog in particular. I think I’m clearer about what I don’t want. I’ve been dismayed in the past by bloggers who seem to think that they are only writing for a select few, perhaps a group of friends. Now this is absolutely fine, as most of us probably envisage a small readership and expect comments only from people we ‘know’ quite well either in the real world or in cyberspace. What I didn’t think was fine was that they seemed to forget that, unless you password your blog, it is open to anyone who wants to read it. As such I believe one has a responsibility to be respectful, especially if you are blogging about real people in real time. I’ve also felt very humbled looking at not only other peoples’ blogs but also their lives. They all seem to have so much going on in their days that it made my head spin and I felt inadequte by comparison. Now I know that comparisons are odious but I just don’t feel up to presenting our life that way. So what do I want from this blog? Well recently I have had experiences which I could have taken to an email group or discussed with friends, but it either didn’t feel appropriate or it wasn’t possible and I felt the need to examine my thoughts and feelings soon after the event. I think that’s what I’m hoping to do, strew a few thoughts and ideas on this table I’ve created and push them around a bit till they resemble something.

Well, as I have hungry kids pressing me to cook, I’ll end with just a brief explanation of the title of this blog. Most obviously I chose this title, or rather my dh Gary suggested it, because we live in a wooden house in the far north of england. We love our ’shed’, it is a fascinating place to live and I’m proud and passionate about living here. However I do feel the need to get away and roam on a  regular basis. It doesn’t have to be far, it can be a walk in the wonderful countryside near us, or a drive to visit other home edders. The view of ‘our’ valley as we come over the hill on our way home is a great reward for taking ourselves away for a while. And it gives me new perspective every time I see it. If ever I get wobbly about having moved our family 300 miles from our old home I only have to sweep along down ‘Mile Bank’ and I feel like a queen surveying her realm. 

This is my second attempt at blogging. I’m still not really sure what I’m expecting from it or how I’m going to go about it, in fact one of my first posts will probably be ‘To blog or not to blog’ detailing the journey I’ve taken to get even this far! At the moment I’m just standing back and admiring the view.