A Personal Evolution
What you are reading now is a satellite of my main blog, Moving On; Thoughts of a Modern Day Heretic, and is being written in partnership with my elder daughter (throughout my blog I refer to my husband as Dh and my daughters as Eldest and Youngest). Before we go into the meat of what will be discussed on this satellite blog and why, here is a bit of background of the journey that led us to the point.
On this date, 18 years ago, I was pregnant with Eldest. It had been 8 years since I left the family farm; I had already moved 7 times (with many more moves to come) and been married for almost 6 years to one of my best friends from high school. With our first child on the way, I was already as experienced with children, from newborn to preschoolers, as possible without actually having had children myself. I had no romanticised illusions about parenting. Being a product of the public school system and having worked in a daycare, most of my parenting views were rather different from how I, myself, had been raised; though I valued much about my own upbringing, it would have been, by today's standards, viewed as dysfunctional and even abusive. When faced with the notion of parenting my own child, I was confident that I had the skills and knowledge necessary. I made great effort to educate and prepare myself for the experience as much as I knew how to at the time.
On the Ides of March, after 71 hours of labour and largely iatrogenic hassles, my daughter entered the world. While my own doctor was fabulous and supportive of us (much to the dismay of the hospital staff), our hospital experience was pretty disastrous. As soon as I could, I brought my daughter home, physically and psychologically damaged by the experience, not realizing how badly our daughter was affected by the drugs given to me during labour - drugs I had been assured would have no negative affect on her, or I would never have given permission to use them. As nursing problems escalated, the medical profession failed us again. It took the help of another mom - the local La Leche League Leader - to find out what was going wrong and help us fix it. By the time our baby finally had her first proper nursing and a full meal, she was a week old. When I was finally able to see my own doctor some time later, he was horrified by our treatment, but the damage was already done. Enough damage, in fact, that I could only nurse one sided.
After the effects of the drugs wore off and my daughter emerged from her stupor, I found myself with a completely unexpected situation. Not that I was a part-time single parent, as my husband was shipped off to sea or on course over the next few months. I was prepared for that. What I wasn't prepared for was a child who was "more." I had never encountered a child like this before. I knew no one who had a child like this - which is saying a lot, since I knew families of 10, 15 and even 17 children. Suddenly, all the things I knew about newborns flew out the window. The parenting books were useless. I was flying by the seat of my pants. In the end, all I had to go on was my own instincts. What I was "supposed" to do was let her cry it out. Train her to self-sooth. Set a schedule, even for nursing. Make her sleep alone in her crib. Leave her with a sitter, and so on. Somehow, I knew that doing these things would make things worse. Instead, I carried her constantly, often strapped to my body. She slept with me in my bed. I nursed on demand. As everything I thought I knew was turned upside down and shaken, I started to joke that God looked down at me and decided I was just too darn confident and gave me Eldest to teach me some humility. ;-)
Once again, the medical community failed me and it was La Leche League that filled the knowledge gap. Through them, I discovered something called the High Needs Child, and a whole new world I never knew existed was opened up to me. As I delved into this alternate universe, my faith in the medical community was irrevocably damaged. I discovered that, just because someone had a "Dr." in front of their name, that didn't mean they actually knew what they were talking about.
Like most people, I had a lot of assumptions on how things would go. This included the notion that I would be sending any children we had to school. My husband and I had already decided that one of us would be a stay at home parent and, since he was the one on a military contract and I was the one with functioning mammary glands, that meant me. We still assumed that, in time, our children would go to school and I would return to the work force, part time at first, as they got older. Very early on, however, I realized that school would not be a good fit for Eldest. In fact, I was pretty sure it would be disastrous.
The La Leche League Leader (LLLL) that helped us so much in the beginning was a home schooler - something I'd heard of vaguely and already rejected. On meeting another LLLL that was home schooling, I asked more about it. Actually, I had only one question. "Is it legal?" That was all I needed to know, though my husband needed more convincing. A bit of research was enough to assure both of us that it was the right choice for our daughter. By the time Youngest was born (at home, with two midwives attending), it was already decided that she would be home schooled, too.
Though we decided on taking full responsibility for our children's education, we still had a few preconceived notions to overturn. Despite knowing that school would be a bad fit for Eldest, I still had the idea that school-at-home was how we "had" to do things. Once again, Eldest helped overturn my notions. All attempts to enforce learning were dismal failures that did more harm than good. Before we knew it, we were walking the path of unschooling, otherwise known as child-led learning. I quickly discovered that, the best way for my daughter to learn was for me to get out of her way. She began teaching herself to read by age 5 and was reading fluently by age 6. By 10, her favourite books included encyclopaedias and university textbooks. In "kindergarten" she was making her own microscope slides and helping her toddler sister view them. As we moved back and forth between city and country in different provinces, they got to explore Buddhist temple gardens, museums, libraries, oceans, lakes, open fields, busy streets, and more. They got to visit wildlife sanctuaries and bogs on the West Coast, then slog around in ponds and ditches in my home town. They got to visit museums and science centres and build rockets. Inspired by a TV show, they built working model trebuchet and battering rams out of popsicle sticks, masking tape and elastic bands.
Over the years, I saw my role as providing opportunities for my daughters and exposing them to new ideas and experiences. After that, it was up to them. If they were interested, we explored more. If not, we moved on to other things, possibly going back to them another time. More importantly, I saw my role as teaching them to love learning, and to see learning as a life-long journey. Rather than teaching them what they "should" know or following some set idea that they had to learn certain things by certain ages, we explored and learned things together, and they often went far beyond anything I would have thought to expose them to myself, had I taken a more authoritarian role.
More than anything else, we talked. Science and philosophy, politics and history, religion and culture. All of these things were explored, not as isolated subjects, but as real-world experiences. I tried to teach them to question and search; to not make assumptions, and to explore all points of view. On some topics, I made my own beliefs and thoughts clear, and why I held them, while encouraging them to examine things for themselves before drawing their own conclusions. As I explored my own interests and shared them, I also tried to encourage my children not to assume that only the "experts" were good enough or smart enough to be the ultimate authority on any subject; that they, themselves, were intelligent and capable enough to question things and work out their own conclusions.
As the children grew older, they took on a more active role in their own education. They turned to me less and began following the threads of their interests on their own, which has lead to some fascinating pathways.
Now we come closer to where we are today, and the creation of this satellite blog.
In following her own threads of interest, Eldest began to explore evolution. Thankfully, she never really approached me on the topic. All I could have done was talk to her about Darwin, since as far as I knew, evolution and Darwinism were one and the same. Instead, she used that greatest of resources, the public library system, and explored the topic herself. Then, as we tend to do, she brought up her findings with me and we talked.
For the first time in my life, I was exposed to the notion that there was more to evolution than Darwin.
As we had explored the culture of scientific communities, my initial disenchantment with the medical establishment spread to include other sciences as well; everything from climatology to sociology, biology and physics was explored. What we discovered was that, far from being the bastion of rationality and open minded exploration, the world of science was filled with people every bit as dogmatic and fundamentalist as the most extreme religions; where reputation and status is every bit as important as in the world of business, and that power plays, authoritarianism and manipulation is as rife as in the worst of politics.
Few scientific fields, however, can compare to Darwinism for such cutthroat demonizing of those who dare question the approved consensus. We began to see some very disturbing trends, which I'll cover in more detail later. The tendrils of fundamentalist Darwinism is far reaching, touching on just about every aspect of our lives in ways I never would have imagined.
In this satellite blog, we will be exploring and discussing the things we have found.
I want to make it clear that we are not trying to convince anybody of anything. We are not trying to convert people to our way of thinking. We are not here to argue for or against the topic with anyone. These are our thoughts and our conclusions, as we follow the data and evidence we encounter. As I am able, I will include ways for people to join in the discussion (watch for a Feedback tab later), but due to the contentious nature of the subject, comments will not be allowed. Resource lists and other information will be added to the blog on separate pages as time permits.
I hope you join us on our journey.
