Dutchess Discloses

Is Cumbria LA showing BadManners?

2010-11-17T17:40:00.001Z

Cumbria has for a long time been a county with a well functioning EHE (Elective Home Education) department within the LA, headed by Marie Barnes, who is both approachable and knowledgeable about EHE and alternative education. Thanks to her positive attitude and the hard work of local home educators in years gone by, the EHE department was well informed about both the legal and educational aspects of home education. Their website and leaflets held adequate legal information and referred to existing home educating networks and contact details.
It wasn't quite paradise, with still the odd occasion of door-stepping and intimidating behaviour by SS, EWO's or other insufficiently informed civil servants, but once people found their way to the EHE Department or a well informed fellow home educator, matters could be addressed and redressed.

However, things are changing. Rapidly. For all Balls' CSF Bill got drowned in the wash-up and Badman's Review made its way into history deservedly labelled as 'rushed, badly researched, disproportionate and offering little in the way of evidence to justify his recommendations', a substantial amount of damage was caused. And while we were kept busy with Badman, DCSF managed to sneak CME Guidance 2009 in - more or less creating the hole in the wall for the back door to registration. The consequences are now noticeable all through the country. Even in our beautiful and reputedly laid-back Cumbria.

Jayne Richardson, local contact for home education in Cumbria remarked: 'In the last four months I've had more complaints from home educators about ultra vires behaviour by Education Welfare Officers and CME (Children Missing Education) officers, than in the four years previous.'

And it's not going to get less. A few days ago we were informed that, following the recent spending review, Cumbria County Council have terminated the contracts of all external consultants, which means that the three well trained, experienced and mostly well liked Home Visitors of the EHE Team are out of a job. To our relief Marie Barnes is still in post, and the EHE Department remains under the remit of the School Improvement Team, rather than Education Welfare. Marie is now facing the task of quickly putting a new team together, recruiting from people currently working as School Improvement Officers. We trust she will try and choose open minded people, but we know for a fact that it takes more than a day's training to acquire a good understanding of EHE, and to appreciate the huge difference with the school system.

I have been attempting to help Jayne with the increasing amount of work coming her way as a consequence of the changing attitude, and the picture I'm getting about the current situation is rather worrying.
Here are some examples of what I've witnessed in the past five or six months:

* Home educators have been door-stepped by EWO's, in some cases accompanied by police, after a visit to A&E and/or other health care providers, where they were asked which school the child went to and had answered to be home educators. We are very concerned that the question is asked in the first place, and that it might lead to people hesitating to seek help when they need it.

* We were told that visits to new home educators are being increased, because the LA have reason to believe that schools are advising 'badly performing' students and students with attendance issues to deregister and home educate, to avoid legal procedures. Apparently some schools even assist in drawing up deregistration letters. The LA feel this issue needs to be addressed under CME Guidance. Am I the only one who thinks this problem has nothing whatsoever to do with home education, but lies entirely with the school system and should be addressed there?

* The above behaviour has a negative effect, not only on existing home educators, but especially on people who deregister to home educate because for various reasons they have decided it will provide their child(ren) with a more suitable education. In one particular case I think the decision to deregister may have saved the child's health, if not its life.

* Newly deregistering people are being told that the LA 'has to offer a visit within 14 days'. This may be their policy, but it certainly isn't required by law. It is completely ignoring the often traumatising experiences and the processes that people have gone through to come to the conclusion that deregistering and home educating is the best possible choice to make in their situation. The official excuse is that they want to offer these people the 'Home Education Package'[opens PDF] as soon as possible, to make them aware of the existing networks and contacts. I see absolutely no reason why they can't send these packages in the post.

* This 'Home Education Package' that the EWO presents newly deregistered home educators with, contains a form called 'Notification of Elective Home Education (Form HE2)' [opens PDF], which they kindly ask you to return. You have to read the enclosed leaflet to know that you are not legally required to do anything, but that it would help [the LA] considerably if you were to complete the form, or write to the Director of Children's Services instead. Everything is geared towards getting people on the books.

* We have found that in spite of an official deregistration letter, children are kept on the school roll. When asked, we were told that this was done because they didn't want people to lose their place, when after a 'cooling off' period they decided they'd made the wrong choice and wanted the child to go back to school. How patronising is that?

* The travellers' community is often brought in as a reason for employing CME Guidance. Surely we must understand that those children are missing education? I have not enough insight into the travellers' community, nor into that of Hasidic Jews or others who have ways and beliefs different to mine, to pass any judgment on them at all. But generally I'd say that they have as much right to raise and educate their children according to their own customs and values as you and I have. Or are supposed to have, anyway.

Time and again I am shocked that, rather than recognising there is something structurally wrong with the school system and considering that maybe schools are not providing suitable education, these civil servants choose to doubt the ability of parents to decide on the best suitable education for their children. And what makes them the expert on OUR children?

The biggest shock to my system, however, came when Jayne and I were invited to talk about home education at a training session for Local Authority's Children's Services Staff - most of them were EWO's, who also 'did' CME. I was taken aback by their limited knowledge about the daily practise and reality of home education. I had expected to discuss EHE legislation, but instead we were answering basic - and prejudiced - questions about socialisation, qualifications, covering the curriculum, suitability of parents as teachers, etcetera. Yes, they knew that home education was a legal option and it was the parents' responsibility to provide a suitable education, but it took some talking to convince them - if we managed at all - that home educated children were by definition NOT missing education.
Having said that, I do appreciate that we were given the chance to explain our way of life and education from our point of view. And I hope we will be able to keep the lines of communications open, because I sincerely believe that the only hope we have of solving the lack of insight and knowledge, and breaking through the barriers of prejudice, is to educate, educate and educate.

We happened to be there on the day the budget cuts were announced and the woman who ran the session explained that everybody was tense, because they weren't sure how safe their jobs were. When we were leaving she gave us some brochures and a draft document of the Council's Policy on Children Missing Education. (A document, by the way, that the previous government asked them to draw up. I haven't yet read through it thoroughly, but up to now I don't see the change in attitude towards civil liberties and freedom that we were promised under the coalition, reflected.) Apart from announcing that we were probably not going to like what we read in there, she also commented: 'At least CME keeps us in work.'

That last statement brought home the reality of the situation home educators are facing, not only in Cumbria, but throughout the whole of England. The Civil Service, expanded to monstrous proportions under NuLabour, is undergoing huge cuts and trim-backs from the current government. So are quango's, such as NSPCC and other institutions who, horribly, exist because of cruelty and abuse of children. If they want to survive, they will have to prove their right to existence. For that, they will have to achieve, produce numbers, be seen to act.

At a meeting with the EHE department and the Strategic Development Officer CME last June, we were presented with statistics showing a huge increase in numbers of Cumbrian home educated children 'known to Social Services'. To this day we haven't received the requested clarification and specification of the numbers, but I hazard a guess that these were very 'Badmannered' stats. They'll have included, for instance, children with special (educational) needs, who've applied for certain services, or families who've been involved with Social Services for other reasons than child welfare issues. Also, if in a family with four children one is known because of special needs, there will automatically be four ticks in boxes.
'Known to Social Services' most definitely does not equal 'At Risk'.

I'm sure quite a few people in Children's Services are personally nice people, and some of them even have the best intentions. Or think they have the best of intentions. Because how very badly informed are they to justify the existence of CME by saying, as one of them did (echoing the likes of Graham Badman): 'You must agree that as long as it saves one child, it is worth it, isn't it?'

No, I don't agree. Not at all. Because I know for a fact that while you're out trying to save your job and looking for that one child to save, you're damaging and possibly destroying the life of many, many others - and their families.

And do you, professionals, really need me to point out that as a matter of fact there are sufficient mechanisms in, for example, the Children Act, for Social Services to get involved if there are grounds for concern.
And while we're pointing fingers, I'm assuming you know that the inquiries into high profile cases such as Climbie, Ishaq and Spry found that there definitely were plenty of grounds for concern – as well as full access given to the children for any professional who asked for it. So much for the theory that 'official visits prevent abuse'. In all cases it was found that the officers in question had enough information to take sufficient preventative action under the law as it stood then, but chose not to take it.

So excuse me, while I dive into the mess that is English legislation surrounding education - and specifically home education. Excuse me, while I talk to my MP and other politicians to point out that in exercising the current legislation not only money, but quality of life and possibly life itself is being wasted. Excuse me, if I don't sit around waiting for others to try and secure themselves a living, whatever side of the fence they're on. Excuse me if I don't read or listen to endless ramblings that distract from the main issue, which is:

The urgent need to secure the freedom to home educate.

And as long as we provide our children with an education suitable to age, ability and aptitude and all special educational needs they may have - and as long as there is an 'absence of due concern' - we want to get on with it, without state interference.

About passion and politics - an answer to Graham Stuart's comment

2010-03-31T14:32:00.000+01:00

Graham Stuart commented on my previous post:

Really good piece and thank you for your kind words. In my defence I didn't criticise emotion I just suggested that Neil's letter had more emotion than insight. It was passionate and angry, which is fine, but seemed (to me) to allow that to obscure the need to fight off the immediate threat from Balls' plans.

Perhaps on a separate note I think we do have a functioning democracy which we should treasure and appreciate especially as so many others are subject to oppression and lack what we should hold dear. Of course it's not perfect but non-participation starves our democracy of what it most needs which is more good, honest people who will ensure that we remain a humane and decent society that can respect minorities including home educators.

My response to that comment was so long, that I thought I'd better blog it as a separate post:

Graham, I realise you weren't directly criticising emotions, the mentioning of them just triggered something in me. "Being emotional" has been used against home educators by e.g. Badman, Baroness Deech, Coaker, and others.
Good that you mention passion. That's what I recognise in you. Passion is what drives me and it's the reason why a lot of home educators can do what they do, in spite of all attempts to stop us.
Passion and good old fashioned raw anger are a healthy breeding ground for creativity, for constructive development. I recognise the passion with which you want to make sure Balls et al don't return to office, and I applaud it and would not want to obscure or stand in the way of that. I think you do what you do - being a politician - with a passion and I wouldn't dream of telling you to stop doing it, or even to do it differently.

I didn't sign the petition at the time. My signature - much the same as my vote - represents me, and me is all I've got to give. So I don't give it easily, and certainly not thoughtlessly. I very much believe in living in the moment and I try as much as possible to stay away from "what if" discussions. At the time of the petition I was left with too many questions and doubts. Also, I was - and I still am - of the opinion that politics is not the only answer to problems. So my decision at the time was to not sign. I still think that was the right decision to make, at the time. But I also think the petition was a massive success and raised a lot of awareness about EHE amongst politicians. I can live with the fact that I am not always (*wink*) contributing to the good and successful things in society, in life.

At this moment I do - contrary to you - not see a functioning democracy. I of course base this on my own, limited, knowledge and observations. And it has everything to do with what I hold dear, such as mutual respect for people's uniqueness and autonomy, equality, compassionate care for each other and the world we live in, freedom of choice, freedom of education, freedom of religion, etcetera.
This to my mind incredible process of the "wash up" denies and ridicules all principles of democracy. It would of course be wonderful if the CSF Bill disappears in the wash up, but it will have disappeared for the wrong reasons, not as the result of a fair democratic process. And who knows, maybe it goes through, or partly goes through. I have my suspicions there. At the same time things might go through that shouldn't go through.
And can you explain to me what is democratic about "whipping"? Or about MP's who have their party membership suspended, but are still expected to show up for whipped votes? What about a review or a consultation of which the results are either ignored or purposefully twisted and used for a predetermined outcome?
These are just a few things and I could go on for a while. But even on the basis of what I've experienced in this whole EHE affair alone in the past year, my conclusion is that democracy is a farce in this country, at this time.

Yes, I agree. There are countries where people are oppressed and have no rights at all. But at least the regimes in those countries don't pretend to be democratic. And whereas I would like for everyone to have those basic rights and freedoms I was talking about before, I would never see the fact that other people don't have them as a reason not to stand up for my own.

Also, I do not consider what I do - and what Neil does - as non-participation. On the contrary. Wouldn't Balls et all be delighted if we would really non-participate? I would consider myself to non-participate if I would do what others tell me to do, without questioning why, without awareness of their or my own motives, without consulting my own conscience.

The Dutch Prince Royal, Willem Alexander, recently said in an interview that he raises his children to not only ask questions, but to always be mindful and critical of the answers and never stop asking questions until the answer truly satisfies you. I like that. I have tried to raise my own children in a similar manner. And I am trying to live in that way.

My biggest question to politicians in this country at the moment is:
Give me one reason why I should trust you to make decisions about me, my family and all the people and principles I hold dear.

I have not yet had a satisfactory answer.

So, what's wrong with emotions?

2010-03-30T17:55:00.004+01:00

I was genuinely surprised by the starting lines of Graham Stuart's initial response to Neil Taylor-Moore's open letter, where he said "it may contain more emotion than insight".

Watching him argue the EHE case in both the SC and the House of Commons, I've often thought how he stood out from many of his fellow MP's, and especially the likes of Ed Balls, Diana Johnson etcetera. I have my own private little conspiracy theory about the latter ones, as I am convinced they are not born from human parents, but produced in a secret robot factory, where they were fitted with a rather limited text programme and NLP-based software to direct their body language and facial expressions. Their manufacturers have made sure these replica human beings know how to manipulate human emotions - specifically fear - but lack any ability to feel or process them. Ears obviously had to be installed, but can only be made to listen with very specific plug-ins - not available to the general public.

But I digress.

Watching and listening to Graham, I felt he had actually listened to the people who were subjected to this whole terrible Badman and CSF-Bill exercise, and it seemed to have touched not only his common sense, but also his heart - yes, his emotions.

What is this issue with emotions, anyway? Why is it that whenever people respond against a political or strategic decision, it is dismissed as emotive, emotional - and immediately associated with hysterical, unreasonable and therefore invalid. Emotions are what make us human, aren't they? What is wrong with emotions being part of the equation when making choices or decisions? Or when responding to measures and legislations forced upon us?

It's not as if politicians and their strategists are not aware of the importance of emotions. After all, fear is a very powerful emotion and it is often appealed to in order to get certain policies implied. Need I explain how people are being persuaded to surrender their liberties and personal freedom out of fear for "terrorism" or "global warming", both apparently threatening to destroy our society and our planet?

Recently, I have been reading about what happens when people are being trained to overcome and/or ignore their emotions and their intuition. Their primal human nature. When I expressed my shock and horror about a documentary on French television someone pointed me towards the Stanford Prison Experiment. It is appalling to think what kind of a world we would live in if we did not carefully balance fact based rationalism with emotion and intuition.

I personally think Neil's letter is well balanced, and as a whole provides a healthy balance to the de-humanized and target-driven scenario played out by the government and, I'm sorry to say, the majority of parliament. The way I see it, politicians - for all their undoubtedly honourable initial intentions - are caught up in the Westminster Experiment and have lost, or are at risk of losing touch with reality and real living human beings, complete with feelings, emotions and intuitions.

Depending on what you want the eventual outcome to be, one has to make a choice of conscience, I think. To acknowledge emotions as an essential part of every individual human being and to engage with that would probably require a more intense and probably difficult investment of time and energy. But in my humble opinion it would be constructive and creative, and would - in the long run - lead to a more humane society, with room for individuality and personal freedom.

To ignore and deny emotions would necessitate a de-humanized system to control and suppress basic human nature, with no room for individuality, let alone personal freedom. It would - even in the short term - lead to an utterly regulated society. But by its very nature it would lack creativity, a main ingredient for constructive development, and therefore such a society would - in the long run - be self-destructive.

I am no scientist and I have no other foundation for the above than my personal views and observations, my own life experience and that of the many people I've met, shared and exchanged views with in my life, the many books and articles I've read. I am not very good at reproducing facts, but that doesn't mean they haven't influenced my thinking. I do know who I am, though. And I do know what I value in life, and what I would like to share with my children. True emotions are a large part of that, love the major and most sustaining one.

I will not be tempted into devaluing or excusing my emotions. They are as much part of me as the remainder of my functioning rational brain, and I trust both equally. I will continue to endeavour to keep the two healthily sustained and balanced.

I truly appreciate Graham Stuart's efforts to keep communications going with people within the EHE community. From what I've seen up to now he is willing and able to process feedback and integrate it in his work as an MP and a member of the SC and the APPG. Based on what he has said in public so far, I have no reason to doubt his sincerity.

How and if I would vote if I could (I can't, because even though I live and pay taxes in this country, and my life and family are directly subjected to and affected by its laws and regulations, I am still a Dutch citizen and as such not allowed to vote in the UK) I really don't know. I wouldn't vote Labour, that's for sure. I couldn't vote LibDem, because of their insistence on compulsory registration for home educators. I suppose if Graham Stuart was my MP, I might vote for him, but it would be a purely emotional vote. So Graham might reconsider the value of emotional arguments ;).

Rationally and tactically, I might be inclined to vote Conservative, because I do believe that they will ditch the CSF Bill and I also believe they would not want to spend budget on regulating EHE.

Emotionally and out of principle, I would spoil my vote, and if that would mean another Labour government and their dreaded totalitarian regime, I would welcome, support and participate in revolution and civil disobedience.

But adding it all up, and in all rational and emotional fairness, my trust and belief in British democracy as a whole is non-existent. By voting for any of the existing political parties I would condone and lend support to a system that has been utterly corrupted and has lost all resemblance to democracy.

In the Netherlands, I wasn't prepared to go for the "would you like one leg broken or two" option, and I fought my own small scale revolution by taking on the authorities in a court case. I won, and we moved to the UK, where the law already recognized home education as an expression of basic civil liberties, of which the freedom for parents to choose how to educate their children is a very important one.

The fact that my children are now at an age where they could not possibly be forced into any kind of education not of their choice, does not mean that I will quietly stand by and let our basic freedoms be squashed. I will not quietly stand by when I see humanity taken out of society. For myself, my children and theirs, I will speak up, stand up and - if needed - fight. Again and again.

Because we're worth it :).

The ET Syndrome and Neil TM

2010-02-11T00:58:00.000Z

I wonder if other home educators on occasion also get the feeling that we are some kind of interesting phenomenon, observed and discussed by all and sundry and Lords and Ladies and politicians, who'd preferably keep us in zoo-like places, to be monitored, researched and - of course - controlled.

When I read this announcement from the University of Birmingham I suddenly understood how poor ET must have felt.
Only, home educators are NOT aliens and we are NOT some rare species on the brink of extinction, however disappointing that may be to Ed Fabian Balls and brethren. We are proper human beings, alive and thriving - in spite of all the efforts the abovementioned liberty and free-thought hating elements are making to try and get rid of us. And they are pulling out all the whips and plugs, throwing overboard every last bit of common decency and scruples, in order to achieve their evil goals.
Rather than wait what the University of Birmingham would conclude from their research into the "suitability" and "efficiency" of our lives, Neil Taylor-Moore wrote to them, offering them his opinion and a chance to actually include the knowledge of real life and still relatively free home educators into their review.
Here's his letter:

Hello,

I don't know you, and you don't know me, but you have decided to make me and what I do your subject for discussion. I am a home educator.
I and my children are sovereign beings, and not someone else's "human resources" to be managed, or for that matter discussed, unless we present some problem to the rest of society, which we do not. We have no interest whatsoever in your opinions of that which in all probability you have no experience, and even less in your debating the meaning of suitable and efficient, with which there has been little problem in this context for the past 61 years.
Case law has established the meaning of those terms that originated in the 1944 Education Act, and there is no problem with that requiring any debate by academics or anybody else. In fact it is hard to see that this exercise is anything other than a Badman, so called "review" inspired determination to interfere with the established common law meanings of those terms, generalisations which, precisely by avoiding being rigidly specified by inevitably bogus criteria, preserve essential liberty, as indeed does the 1996 Education Act, s437, which alone enshrines the LEA duty towards those electing to educate their children otherwise than in school.
Frederic Bastiat, in "The Law", recognised that the business of the law is to prevent injustice, not to ensure justice. Law, he said, should therefore be negative. That is what s437 of the 1996 Education Act is.
It tasks the LEA, not with "ensuring" "suitable" education, it gives it a duty towards the home educated, *only* "if it appears that a child..... is *not* receiving... suitable" education. This distinction is crucial because upon it hinges the preservation or destruction of essential liberty. In this negative context of only acting if there is an appearance of neglect or failure of s7 duty, discussions about the meaning to be applied to suitable and efficient, are necessarily irrelevant. It only makes sense to define them further than their common usage meaning if the LEA duty is an ensuring one, through some regime of inspection. But it is not, and there is no statutory provision for such.
That it is not, is part of the content of the meaning of a "free country" that my parents' generation were sacrificing their lives to defend in the penultimate year of WW2, when these words were first drafted into statute.
It is as it should be, preserving the presumption of innocence, and empowering the authorities to interfere in private family life only if "it appears" that something is wrong, and there maybe default of a parent's s7 duty. It does not prescribe.
It really is that simple, and that right, if you are prepared to forgive the 1870 transgression and insult to human nature of making education compulsory, and compounding the insult by pretending school, not just education is compulsory ever since, in order to hide the law. Why was school not made legally compulsory? - force of public opposition to such a measure prevented the government from getting its way, so it lied about it ever since, coining the phrase "compulsory school age", instead of "compulsory education age", which would have been the truth. This was the same opposition which can neither tolerate education "otherwise" from being defined, controlled, inspected, licensed and denied by a state hostile to our precious liberty, no less now than then.
Not until this past year have I ever in my life felt so colonised, nor the lives of my prospective grandchildren so threatened as I do now by a seemingly endless stream of rent seekers recognising a fresh feast when they see one. It's a horrible feeling. It is the experience of tyranny, where once there was freedom. This year has been open season on home educators, and everyone has an opinion as to what should be done with us.
Teachers unions, academics, government, children's charities and social engineers of all descriptions, and all with one thing in common, a complete lack of experience and total ignorance of what we do, but bristling with their own prejudices which have been invariably grossly misinformed by the education establishment, which has a natural tendency to feel entitled to own anything and everything that comes under the umbrella of "education".
I realise that this communication might seem offensive to some, but I would ask you to have the humility and decency to recognise the scale of the threat currently facing the family and everyone's historic liberty to raise our children as we see fit, within the existing constraints whereby the state may be called upon as parent of last resort only, in cases of irremediable parental default, or worse.
There is no "problem of home education". No problem has been demonstrated, but much slander and invention by a hostile state education establishment with clear totalitarian ambitions has been heaped on us.
Why discuss the meaning of suitable and efficient, as opposed to discussing, say, "Freedom in education"? But really, why discuss that which has nothing to do with you whatsoever, at all? You are talking about us behind our backs, and that's not nice. Is your discussion without reference to us intended to inform policy making, which is also made relentlessly without reference to us, except in so far as it is to make a pretence of consultation, and then adopt the prior plan A in its entirety anyway?
This is what we have already been subjected to, but despotism has always needed intellectual mercenaries to dress up its tyranny in order to make it appear respectable. I am sorry, but that really is the only word to accurately describe what is going on here, whether you are aware of it or not.
Please don't fall for this abuse of your talents by power. Think instead how you might help us defend pluralism and liberty for everyone, and roll back this slide into totalitarianism that we are already embarked upon. Leave suitable and efficient, and those who are lawfully entitled to reject the state's model of education, alone.

Sincerely,

Neil Taylor,
home educator to three no longer so called school age children, and someone who has been privileged to see the difference that can make, and which explains why I said earlier that I have never felt so colonised in my life before. That is part of the hidden curriculum of compulsion schooling, to prevent you from noticing your own colonisation by its very ubiquity. Nobody is intended to escape it, and that is how any other possible perspective is prevented. Home educators disturb state compulsion schooling's absolutism, and the system needs absolutism in order to prevent the truth about who we really are - and what we are capable of, if unmolested - falling into too many hands, and giving the lie to so many underpinning wrong beliefs of the system.
And that is really what all this Children Schools and Families Bill and the bad man "review" is about, and why Birmingham University has been co-opted into this scam to dress it up in respectable academic garb.
Please have more respect for yourselves as well as us, than this.
I would be pleased for this short plea to be read out at the start of this conference, and if it is I would be pleased to hear from anyone involved.

Child Abuse, WMD, football coaches and butchers

2009-11-04T22:03:00.001Z

The Select Committee of Children, Schools and Families have published the submissions made to them as memoranda here

Below is mine (no. 122)

SUBMISSION TO THE CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES SELECT COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: Elective Home Education Inquiry

1. Introduction of yet another home educator

2. The scope of the terms of reference for the Review; child abuse and WMD

3. The constitution of the Review Team, football coaches and butchers

4. Tampering with, and manipulative changes to questions and text, invalidating the whole review
4.1 The 6 questions
4.2 The 60 questions
4.3 Question number 6 / a.k.a. number 7

5. More spinning and twisting...
5.1 Recommendation 7, What Badman says and what Balls wants
5.2 Submission from the Church of England, the whole story

6. Independent and unbiased, out of the question

7. Conclusions

Dear Members of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee,

Thank you for your invitation to submit evidence regarding the Review of Elective Home Education and the resulting Report and Recommendations.

1- Introduction of yet another home educator

I am a home educating parent, not a lawyer, not a politician and English isn't my first language, so writing a submission to your Committee is quite a challenge. Of my three - home educated - children, two are already over 18 (both in employment and continued education) and the youngest is making her way to university, so at first sight there is no personal necessity for me to testify. But the reality is that I live in this country and it is most likely that my future grandchildren will live here, too. Therefore I feel it's my duty to speak out and provide what evidence I can about the way the Review was conducted and the Report was put together, and about the possible impact of the Recommendations and the licensing scheme that would result from it.

I hope you will excuse me for mistakes in language, and for not being all scientific and providing you with the results of in-depth research; I do not have the means, nor the time, nor the knowledge for that.

2- The scope of the terms of reference for the Review; child abuse and WMD

I have never had a problem with openly discussing the prejudices people quite often hold about our elected way of learning. But Baroness Morgan gave the prejudice a whole new angle when she commissioned the Review to Graham Badman and explained in the media that one of Mr Badman's tasks would be to identify what evidence there was that home education was possibly used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. Established within our own community as we are, the statement and review have raised quite a few unbelieving eyebrows and critical questions with people who know us, but beyond our own community we - and home educators in general - are often subjected to the 'no smoke without fire' attitude. It is a known fact that this kind of information, when coming from a figure of authority through the national media, is often perceived as truthful by the general public. It is also a fact that Mr Badman found as little evidence of child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect amongst home educators as Lord Butler found of WMD in Iraq. I won't go as far as comparing the consequences of these two Reviews, but I will state that our family and a huge number of home educators feel that they are being attacked on false allegations.

Under the pretext of welfare issues this is yet another attempt to get a government controlled grip on the completely legal educational choice of a minority group.

3- The constitution of the Review Team, football coaches and butchers

A majority of home educators have inside knowledge and experience of the school system and for quite a few of us that is actually the reason to home educate. Others choose to home educate because there are no schools that provide the kind of education they prefer. Whatever the reason to home educate, it is safe to assume that knowledge about the school system was part of the equation.

Elective home education is a form of education suitable to age, aptitude and ability and to any special needs (a) child(ren) might have, provided otherwise than by a school. It covers a rainbow of diversity in methods, from very structured and curriculum following school at home to child led and autonomous education.

Of the twelve members of the Review Team only one showed insight in the nature of Elective Home Education, none of the others had any actual experience of it, nor have they displayed any knowledge of the nature or workings of current legislation regarding EHE.

The leader of the review himself has knowledge and experience only of education within the school system and is the former Managing Director of Children, Families and Education in Kent, a county with a history of ultra vires practices towards and bad relations with home educators.

Although he's an extremely capable sportsman, nobody would ask Sir Alex Ferguson to judge the finals of the Olympic Figure Skating and nobody would expect a butcher to advice a vegetarian on what to eat.

Mr Badman and the members of the Review Team may all be experts in their own field, but none of them has the qualifications or background to (help) produce an expert report on Elective Home Education and the remit of the Review doesn't allow enough time to gather the required background information, research results and statistics. This has been made even more obvious by Mr Badman himself, who at the very last moment has asked Local Authorities for more information to back up his already written and accepted Recommendations.

4- Tampering with, and manipulative changes to questions and text, invalidating the whole review

4.1 The 6 questions put to home educators and private people were leading, if not manipulative. In spite of that 1600 home educating parents and children (and not 2000 as Mr Balls suggests in his letter of acceptance) managed to put their views across, which resulted in 80% of the in total 2000 respondents stating they were happy with the status quo . Although this outcome was mentioned in the report, it was most certainly not reflected in the recommendations or in the current consultation.

4.2 In sharp contrast to the above, the Local Authorities had 60 questions to answer, although there seemed to be another questionnaire going around, too. Although anybody could answer the 6 questions in the public consultation, the 60 questions were reserved for LA's only. One would expect an independent reviewer to listen equally to both sides and give both sides equal opportunities for input.

4.3 A most disturbing thing happened to the last question of the short consultation. When it was presented to the public as question number 6, it read: Some people have expressed concern that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. What do you think Government should do to ensure this does not happen? (my emphasis). The official analysis of the consultation questions shows a similar phrasing ;

However: In the Report to the Secretary of State, Annex C , question 6 of the consultation, now referred to as question 7 of the public call for evidence, reads:

Some people have expressed concern that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse, forced marriage, domestic servitude or other forms of child neglect. What do you think Government should do to ensure this cannot happen again? (my emphasis).

Two important changes:

1) The 'consultation questions' became a 'public call for evidence', and

2) The different phrasing changes the meaning of the question about possible preventive policy change to policy that would deal with existing abuse.

In my opinion this alone renders not only the consultation and the conclusions drawn from it, but also the whole review, invalid. As I, here below, and undoubtedly others in their submissions, will point out to you there are many more reasons to suspect that the outcome of this review was pre-determined and the recommendations drafted beforehand.

5- More spinning and twisting...

5.1 In Recommendation 7 Mr Badman wants LA personnel to have the right to speak with each child alone if deemed appropriate or, if a child is particularly vulnerable or has particular communication needs, in the company of a trusted person who is not the home educator or the parent/carer.

Apparently, to Mr Balls this utterly disgusting form of intrusion on the life of innocent (as in: not suspected of any crime) children and their family does not go quite far enough. In the letter he wrote on the same day the Report was presented to him, he says: We agree that home educated children must be seen regularly in their education setting, on their own, or with an independent person present as appropriate [...].

So where even Mr Badman leaves room for the fact that there could be instances where it might not be appropriate to demand to speak to a child alone, Mr Balls states that all home educated children must be seen on their own, as a rule. And the 'trusted' person that Mr Badman suggests should accompany the child if deemed appropriate, has become merely an 'independent' person in Mr Balls view.

5.2 In Chapter 4 - Elective Home Education in Context; the Views of Home Educators and Others - Mr Badman writes:

quote
And the Education Division of the Church of England states its concern:
“that children and young people not in formal education are missing the benefits and challenges of learning in community with their peers. Children who do not go to school may not experience the social and cultural diversity encountered there; they will not learn how to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life; they may never meet people with different faith and value systems. All such encounters, even the difficult or painful ones are enriching. We are concerned not only with the five Every Child Matters outcomes, but also with the spiritual well-being of all children and young people. Spiritual well-being arises not only from being cared for in a loving family and/or faith community, but also in encounters with people of different opinions and backgrounds; in learning to listen to a variety of opinions; to encounter diversity and the riches and life-enhancement it can bring. Spiritual well-being depends on living and taking a full part in community life. Children and young people in schools learn about and from the five major religions. This may be a difficult part of the curriculum for home educators to provide, yet it is vital for the Government’s community cohesion agenda that all children learn in a balanced way about the variety of religious values and practices, and to be encouraged to question their own beliefs and practices.”
unquote

As there is no reference to a context, to the unsuspecting reader it seems as if this is what the Church of England has to say about EHE. But the above is one out of ten points. Most other points show at least sympathy for people's choice to home educate and the concluding tenth point states:

quote
We have seen no evidence to show that the majority of home educated children do not achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, and are therefore not convinced of the need to change the current system of monitoring the standard of home education. Where there are particular concerns about the children in a home-educating this should be a matter for Children’s Services.
unquote

By only using point 7 Mr Badman has, in my opinion, taken part of the Submission out of its well balanced context, to give readers the impression that the Church of England is against Elective Home Education. In my opinion that can only be described as manipulative and misleading .

The fact that Mr Badman had to resort to these measures to discredit the value of EHE is more indication that he failed to find evidence to support his negative assumptions.

6- Independent and unbiased, out of the question

The Terms of Reference state: "Seek evidence on how the systems operate in practice from stakeholders, including home education groups, home educating families, local authorities and children's organisations." Yet, Mr Badman has failed to properly investigate numerous complaints by home educators about ultra vires practices of LA's, nor has notice has been taken of the more than 80% of respondents to the public questionnaire who thought current legislations was adequate and sufficient.

He has failed to properly research existing legislation and how it is being implemented by the different LA's. He has not properly researched the local authorities with good practice. I know that my own local authority, which has a very positive relationship with home educators in the county, has offered to provide examples of good practice and information about establishing a good working relationship with home educators, but that offer was not taken up by Mr Badman.

7- Conclusions

7.1 What Badman and Balls are proposing is effectively a licensing scheme for a minority of parents /carers. For these recommendations to become law without being discriminatory would require major changes to primary legislation, which would see all parents/carers requiring a license to provide the education of their choice.

7.2 There is a total disregard for the negative effects these recommendations are going to have on children and there is no mention whatsoever of a possibility to appeal to what could easily be the personal and or prejudiced opinion of an LA officer.

7.3 The way facts and figures have been manipulated, the way words and quotes have been twisted and misused, the lack of research into for instance the Scottish or the North American situation, the total lack of impartiality and the apparently immovable prejudices, all these factors together and more that I am unable to mention here as I have not had enough time to research it and not enough space to word it, make this report unreliable and untrustworthy and therefore invalid.

7.4 As there is no evidence that there are welfare issues that cannot be dealt with under current legislation, and as there is no evidence that the law does not provide enough possibilities to determine whether a sufficient education is being provided, there is no reason to implement any of the recommendations.

7.5 This is a last minute submission and I am aware of many more things that I could and maybe should have said. But the reality of the situation is that I am a practicing home educating mother and foster carer, self employed, with a very busy and intense life. I hazard a guess that the time I have invested on reading up on the Review, filling in the questionnaire, discussing matters with both fellow home educators and non-home educators as a result of false rumours, informing MP's and other interested parties about EHE and gathering evidence for this submission, by far exceeds the time Mr Badman and his Review Team together have spent on it. The fact that they got paid for it and I - and all these other home educators who are doing the same and more - am doing this on a voluntary basis, should be an indication how much we care and how much we want to protect our children and families.

Home Education is not a choice lightly made and home educating a family is not without sacrifices. I sincerely hope that the Select Committee will honour this and recognize that it is time to let home educators get on with what we do best and with more love, dedication and commitment than any system could ever offer: Providing our children with an education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude and any special needs they might have.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

22 September 2009

Home Education - A Cover for Abuse - If Recommendation 7 Goes Through

2009-09-13T00:45:00.002+01:00

I must be going stark raving mad. Or is there an other reason for my hallucinations? Or was it a nightmare? I must admit, I was working on my submission for the Select Committee when it happened. I had just read the initial press release again, the one where Baroness Morgan says that home education could be used as a cover for child abuse. And I was re-reading Recommendation number 7, where Mr Badman explains he feels the local authorities should have access to the home of home educators, as well as the right to speak with each child alone. No parents present.

I closed my eyes - just for a brief moment. My head was spinning and I saw and heard all these words, first separately, then blending together:
Child abuse - access to child - home education - stranger - child abuse - cover - safety - no parents...

And then, all the sudden, I had this image of myself, sitting behind a table, with home educating friends on either side of me. The sign in front of me said: Special Minister of Elective Home Education. On the other side of the table a room full of people with camera's, microphones and notebooks. I was obviously giving a press conference! A lady pointed a microphone at me and asked: "Minister, could you tell us what this review is for? Isn't this an infringement of the right of civil servants to do whatever they want?"

And I read out a prepared statement:

"There are concerns that some civil servants are not performing the tasks the tax payers pay them to do. And that in some extreme cases being a civil servant could be used as a cover for paedophilia or other forms of child abuse.

Quite a few people in government and civil services are undoubtedly doing a fantastic job and I want to ensure that they get the continued support of the people who voted for them and are paying them. But we can't afford to let any paedophile slip through the net - for the sake of our children's safety and our families' wellbeing.

Several thousands of paedophiles are registered, but a much larger number of them are invisible to the authorities. We have to balance the rights of privacy of civil servants' against the pre-eminent rights of children to a safe and loving life, preferably with their own families."

Again a lot of noise. The same words, not only buzzing around in my head, but also in that room full of reporters and journalists. It was just too much for me and I closed my eyes again.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting in my own safe and familiar living room, papers all around me, on the floor, on the settee next to me. In my hand a page of the Badman Report, the one with Recommendation 7. I looked around. No reporters. No camera's. I listened carefully, but I didn't hear those words anymore, only my daughter upstairs, singing and playing the guitar.

Strange games the supposedly logical mind combined with tiredness can play on people. Mixing up things that just don't go together, that don't add up. Well, they shouldn't. No, they can't. Can they? No, a Minister of Elective Home Education, that's just unthinkable.
That will never ever happen.

Why Do You Home Educate?

2009-09-09T10:21:00.002+01:00

My usual answer to that question is:
"Because we like it, it suits us and we all thrive on it."

Then, in the open mouthed and raised eyebrows silence that follows, I ask people: "Why do you send your children to school?" The answer is rarely the same as mine. The few families I know who feel the same about school as we do about home education have usually carefully selected a school, and often the parents are very much involved with the school and their children's education.

Mostly, however, I get one of the following answers:

(a) Because they have to go to school
(b) Because I want to have a life (or job) of my own / I wouldn't want to have my children around all day
(c) It hasn't done me any harm (or even: I had a good time in school).
(d) Because I couldn't possibly teach them myself
(e) Because they need to be around other children / socialize, and learn how to deal with life
(f) Because how else could they get qualifications and a good job?

Of course everybody is - and should be - free to make their own choice. But most, if not all of the above reasons are often based on insufficient information and/or misconceptions.

a. Because they have to go to school

No, they don't.
Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 states:
"The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable ;

a) to his age, ability, and aptitude,

and

b) to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise." (my emphasis)

So, parents have a duty to provide their children with a suitable education. If they choose to delegate that duty to a school, they are entitled to be informed about the standard and quality of education provided. That's - officially - the reason why the State inspects schools. If parents choose to educate their children otherwise, for instance from home, then the Local Authorities have a right to enquire whether the child is in receipt of the above specified education. If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education. (Section 437 Education Act 1996).

b. Because I want to have a life (or job) of my own / I wouldn't want to have my children around all day

On first appearances those are very good reasons to send your child(ren) to school.
If you (and your partner) think you'd be unhappy having your children around and (both of) you prefer to have a fulltime paid job, then maybe your children are better off in school. However, there may come a moment when you realize that for one reason or another it would be beneficial or desirable to be more involved in your children's lives. Then it's good to know that there are ways to have it all.
In our family we've managed to combine work and children in such a way that one of us has always been at home for (or away with) the children. A life of our own very much includes our children, while we also both have our time away from them. And - in spite of all that *grin* we are still quite happily married, having celebrated our 30th anniversary this year.

I suppose it might be a daunting thought to have to 'keep them amused' if your only experience of having them around involves children who are normally in school and after-school activities, where their time is usually managed for them. But the reality of home education is quite different. Life happens in a much more organic rhythm and is not divided up in equal blocks of always limited time. Because we follow the questions and the natural interest of our children they can be involved in what they're doing for hours, days or weeks. Of course we are there to accommodate or - if needed - to help, but not only is that a far more relaxed kind of interaction, it is quite a lot of fun, too.
Within this construction there is space for times when nothing happens - on the outside. I often compare that to the tides. When the tide is in there's lots of activities, questions, outings, big visible waves. And then comes the moment when they're saturated, filled to the brim. Then the tide is out, lots of relaxing, reading, contemplating, no visible waves.

c. It hasn't done me any harm (or even: I had a good time in school)

That could be a very good reason to have no objection to sending your children to school. And there is a good chance that your children have a good time, too. There are children who do very well in school and/or have no problems.
But the same goes here, there might come a time when you find out that school is doing your child harm and that they're not having a good time in school. And then it's good to know you have the choice, as mentioned under (a).

d. Because I couldn't possibly teach them myself

This myth has most certainly been around too long. First of all, children don't need teachers. They need to have the opportunity to learn. And especially nowadays, with technology at our fingertips, anybody can learn whatever they want. But even without a computer and the internet in your home, there are plenty opportunities to find answers to questions, to ask other people, to learn together. My personal experience is that teaching often gets in the way of learning, and this is supported by research - done mainly in the US, such as this Nheri Report - showing that home educated children of certified teachers do slightly 'worse' (a nasty word, I'm sorry) in standardised tests than those of parents who are not certified teachers.
As I've said above, I genuinely enjoy learning, discovering and exploring together with my children. And there are so many wonderful people out there, who are more than happy to share their knowledge and their passions with us.
Another myth is that children wouldn't learn unless they're being told to. Rubbish. There is no end to the natural curiosity and will to learn of a child, or of any human being, for that matter. And I'm sure everybody can easily think of examples, from baby's learning to crawl, walk, talk and sing to adults learning everything there is to know about their hobby's.

e. Because they need to be around other children / socialize, and learn how to deal with life

Of all the myths surrounding the benefits of school, this one is the biggest. And at the same time apparently the most difficult one to debunk. My general take on the matter is that the need for socialisation is so strong within children (human beings) that they manage to socialize, even in schools. Children will socialize. But all in their own way. Some have only one or two true friends, others couldn't live without being constantly in the company of at least a dozen others. Some get on really well with people of their own age, some thrive by associating with people older or younger - or both - than themselves. As with everything, it is very individual.
The point is that for many children the school way of socializing is a way they would never choose naturally. In fact, many students perceive school to be a kind of prison, as professor Peter Gray describes here.

My own children have all very different needs when it comes to socializing, and not being in school has not stopped them from becoming socially adept young people. They all have a social life that suits their needs, they have good and lasting friendships and friends with whom they can share good, hard, happy and sad times. Neither has not being in school stopped them from having friends who are or have been in school.

Nor is it true that not being in school hasn't prepared them for life. I even dare say that not being in school has given them more opportunities to experience life as it is really lived. And yes, they have been exposed to and learned to deal with bullying. They know what competition is. They know what sadness is. They know what happiness is. They know what hard work is. They know how to look after themselves. They know how to budget. They know how to cook and sew and clean a house.
But most of all, they know who they are, they know their own strengths and weaknesses, they know what they want in life and how they can get there.

So, why do you send your child(ren) to school?

I'm not saying people shouldn't send their children to school. I'm glad that we (still) have a relatively free choice. I only hope that after having read the above, people understand that if

- you want to provide your children with an education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs they may have,

and

- you want an education that you and your children like, that suits you and that allows all of you to thrive,

you do not HAVE to send your children to school
everybody CAN home educate, if they want.

An autonomous young person's letter to Government

2009-08-09T13:16:00.003+01:00

After a very intense period of living in the Dutch limelights because of our choice to home educate our children, we made the most of the relative isolation that came with life in The Vicarage. It gave us the chance to 'go back to base', enhance family life, focus on our own developmental needs and strengthen our autonomous learning process. It was invaluable.

But since our move into town we seem to have opened up to the outside world again. Even stronger, I like to think. And more than ever convinced of the value of autonomous living. It is slightly bizarre that a lot of the choices we make now, seem to bring us in direct contact - and even make us work closely together - with the authorities.
Our decision to start fostering again led to tackling lots of red tape, assessment by social workers, over and over again explaining / defending our choice to home educate our children, the scrutinizing of our family life, in short: it was quite invasive. But, it was our own choice, as a family. We had agreed to it and if we'd felt it was too much, we could have ended it.

If the recommendations made by Mr Graham Badman in the Report about Elective Home Education are going to be made law, there will be no choice, and such an intrusive treatment will await people for the mere fact that they have chosen to home educate.

The difference is clear to me and to the other members of my family:
For the fostering the authorities, who act in loco parentis to already damaged and vulnerable children, have to make as sure as possible that these young people will be safe and well looked after. I can see that as being supportive to the cared for children.
In the case of home educated children there is no reason whatsoever to assume that the parents are not fulfilling their legal parental duties to the child(ren), so no reason for the authorities to act in loco parentis. Unrequested monitoring and inspection of home educating families is not supportive and could even be abusive.

Just the idea of this possibly becoming law has caused a lot of unrest and resentment in our family. Not because we are scared that we couldn't continue living as we do; we have no such fear. But the sheer injustice of it, the fact that the government seems to think they have the right to take away basic freedoms of individual people - and we DO all believe that it will not be limited to home educators - and to interfere in the sanctity of family life, thát has raised our hackles.

Another hot topic in our house results from Owen's decision to sign up for the Army. We all know that this is what he has wanted to do all his life and although nobody likes to see a loved one going off to dodge bullets and roadside bombs in a far away country, we do accept that this is Owen's choice about his life. But what makes it utterly painful to bear is that this government seems to have little respect for the very lives of our loved ones. It is disgraceful that the armed forces are not fitted out properly with protective gear and that there are not enough helicopers, because Mr Brown, as a chancellor, has cut the budget (but he himself is transported by an American helicopter when he visits the troops in Afghanistan). The most recent disgrace is the MoD going to court to try and have compensation costs for injured soldiers cut by no less than 75%!

All these things together have now brought Myrna to write a letter to government, stating her dissatisfaction and urging them to change their attitude. It will be sent to Gordon Brown, Ed Balls, the Select Committee of the DCSF, our MP and maybe some other Civil Servants. And we will see how seriously she will be taken, how seriously children's rights are taken by this government.

Here is Myrna's letter:

===

My name is Myrna Tennant, I’m fourteen and I’m Home Educated. My mother works from home as a book translator and my father is a stay-at-home dad.
I moved to England when I was seven because it is very difficult to Home Educate in the Netherlands, you need to go to court to get exemption.
School was never the right choice for me, and it definitely wasn’t the right choice for my older brother, who has Aspergers Syndrome. Because of this mild form of autism he was left out and bullied at his school by the other students and was singled out by the teachers, who never even bothered to try to get to know and understand him.
My mother pulled us out of school for mainly that reason.
We held it out in Holland for a while, but it was a very big fuss and we were frowned upon by a lot of people who didn’t agree with Home Education.
So we decided to move to England, the homeland of my father.
We lived in Penton (Cumbria) for five years. In that time my sister, the eldest of my two siblings, started a job in a nearby Bed & Breakfast and my brother and I went to Archery, while he also went to Judo and Cadets and I started private music lessons and group drama classes. Through these activities and the Home Educators meetings we went to weekly, we met a lot of great people, some of whom are now my closest friends and through whom I also met a lot of other amazing people.
We moved to Carlisle two years ago which was a great change for all of us, moving me and my siblings closer to our friends and activities, and making it easier for my sister to get a good job.

These days, we have recently been approved for child fostering, my sister works full-time for Mencap after having finished college, and has just found her own place to live. My brother is studying Jujitsu together with my father after passing his GCSE’s with flying colours (with the help of our part time private tutor in Science, Biology and Maths) and will soon be joining the army. I have now been a classical singer for five years and am soon taking my grade seven exam in singing and my grade five in theory, and I also play flute and guitar. I have sang at a wedding and frequently get asked to sing solo at concerts. I spend my days going to my music lessons, singing with my lovely choir, doing art and spending time with my friends, band and boyfriend. I plan to start studying Japanese and join my brother and father in Jujitsu and will also be taking my GCSE’s when I feel I’m ready to do so.

So you see, we’re just like any other normal family. I have the best family, friends and boyfriend I could have ever wished for and I wouldn’t change my life for the world. Of course we have our rough times and I have had my unpleasant experiences in life, but what person hasn’t? Life can not be lived without regrets; only a person who is truly ignorant and arrogant could say he’s never done anything he regrets.

So before you make assumptions about autonomous learning and invade people's privacy and their homes and sit kids down to talk about if they really want to be Home Educated, why not think about why you are really doing this? Or maybe you could even consider going to a school and asking the kids there how they enjoy school? I have a lot of friends who go to school and I don’t often hear nice things about it. What I hear about school is how teachers no longer enjoy what they do, kids are only bored and take nothing in anymore, they rebel, they bully and they stereotype. They divide themselves up into groups and don’t let anyone else in who doesn’t go by a certain way.
And this takes effect on how kids act outside of school. Some of my friends may fit some people's opinion of the stereotype “emo” or “scene” or “goth”, and therefore I have often had people shout insults at me and my friends, and even had things thrown at me for absolutely no reason but the way we dress or the music we enjoy. I even sometimes get bullied for being a classical singer.
And that is what the government is doing to the Home Educators, they are singling them out and treating them like there’s something wrong with them, just because of the decision to keep their child out of school, even if on many occasions that choice is made because the child is bullied in school, like my brother was. And therefore we get treated differently, badly. All that the government is doing is stereotyping and putting labels on things, just because they have the power to. The government are just bullies in the way that they use their superiority as a way of belittling people, while they could be using it for so much better things.
Instead of making everything cosy for yourselves, how about giving some thanks and support to the people who serve in the forces.
How about doing something about the homeless, the sick, and the children who are actually being abused?
Of course, I will not deny that there is a chance some people could use Home Education as a cover, but think about how little parents abuse their children, and then think about the percentage of those people who could be Home Educators. Will you really use that small amount of people to change the law for tens of thousands?
The only reason you’re saying that Home Education is a cover for child abuse is so you will get more people on your side for campaigning against it, because you don’t agree with it because it doesn’t fit in with your idea of perfect.
Well, the world is just not perfect is it?

It’s going to take a lot more than petty assumptions to make us back down, we fight for our rights, like any other person would.
We fight to keep things as they are now. There is no need for changes, there is a good law that protects people who need protecting. And we will protect the law that allows us to Home Educate and do Autonomous Education.

Government, spend your money on things that make a difference for the better. Start making things, stop breaking things.

====

Here's the evidence: There is no evidence!

2009-06-20T17:24:00.004+01:00

Thanks, Ann N, for pointing me towards chapter 8.14, where Mr Badman admits - albeit in a roundabout way:

"8.14 - With regards to other specific groups within the remit of this inquiry I can find no evidence that elective home education is a particular factor in the removal of children to forced marriage, servitude or trafficking or for inappropriate abusive activities. Based on the limited evidence available, this view is supported by the Association of Chief Police Officers. That is not to say that there is no isolated cases of trafficking that have been brought to my attention."

That paragraph has most certainly been written with an intention to confuse, if nothing else. And my fingers are itching to pick this bit of manipulative writing to bits...
If only I had a bit more time... I might do it still, later...

But in spite of all the misleading phrases, in the end it says:
There is no evidence to support the allegations on which this review was started, that elective home education can be used as a cover for abuse, forced marriage, servitude or trafficking.

NO EVIDENCE.

Hello everybody!! MP's!! PM!! Media! Watchdog? Ombudsman? Anybody! (Other than Ed Balls and Baroness Morgan, because they knew this all along):
This Review was based on false allegations and the Report with its repulsive Recommendations should be declared invalid. Immediately!

Home Educators were harrassed and - especially the children - put in a potentially vulnerable position, which has definitely caused great distress, to say the least.

Who else can treat a minority group like this and get away with it, without consequences? What, not only get away with it, but even still make an attempt to get their own evil way?

Hello, Britain! Wake up! This charade has lasted long enough!
They've taken our money for their second homes and luxury meals, they're trying to take our freedom and they are aiming to take control of our lives, our children.

We need to stop them. Now!

B&B - Cheating and lying

2009-06-19T17:45:00.004+01:00

I bet my last penny that if the allegations of child abuse in home education could have been substantiated in any way, it would have been not only on the first page of the report, it would also have been blown out of all proportions in the national media.

But the review didn't find any such evidence! **edit** See my next post with the quote from the report where Badman confirms the lack of evidence**** There is only a mention of the opinions and unsubstantiated assumptions of NSPCC, NASWE and LSCB in Chapter 8 [Safeguarding].
Still, that doesn't stop Ed Balls and Baroness Morgan to blatantly lie to both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Here's what I found today: [opens website from which the following documents can be downloaded]
**edit** As the site apparently is not always accessible, I will copy the Statement of Ed Balls at the end of this post****

The Written Ministerial Statement (House of Commons), by Ed Balls - and
The Written Ministerial Statement (House of Lords), by Baroness Morgan of Drefelin.

The documents are similar, only the second one has an introduction by our dear Baroness Morgan.

The venom is in the tail.
I quote:

"The review also found evidence that there are a small number of cases where home educated children have suffered harm because safeguarding concerns were not picked up, or not treated with sufficient urgency, particularly where parents were uncooperative or obstructed local authority investigations."

And here again, as with the Submission of the Church of England in my previous post, there are no proper references given in Mr Badman's report. Sloppy, to say the least. No college teacher or professor would accept - or grade favourably - this report if it had been done by a student. Yet Ed Balls not only accepts it, but is trying to use it as a foundation for policy and new legislation.

Leading by example is one of the main principles in teaching, I would say.
How can the government even begin to expect me to trust them with anything, let alone the wellbeing, health, safety and - for crying out loud - the education of my children, if the example they're setting is one of low quality, cheating and lying?

Graham Badman and Ed Balls, sorry (well, not really), but both of you failed.
Miserably.

**edit: added - Written Ministerial Statement (House of Commons) by Ed Balls**

DEPARTMENT FOR CHILDREN SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES

Review of Elective Home Education in England

The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ed Balls):

On 19 January 2009 I asked Graham Badman to carry out a review of elective home education in England. The terms of reference for the review emphasised the government's recognition of parents' well established right to educate their children at home. They also set out our commitments to keeping home educated children safe, and ensuring that they receive a suitable education. I am grateful to Graham Badman and the review team for conducting a thorough review which carefully considered extensive evidence provided by home educators; local authorities (LAs); and representatives from a wide range of organisations and individuals working with children and parents involved in home education.

The terms of reference commissioned Graham Badman to investigate the barriers to LAs and other public agencies in carrying out their safeguarding responsibilities; whether LAs were providing effective and appropriate support; and whether there was evidence of home education being used to cover child abuse. From this evidence, he was asked to identify whether any changes were needed to the current regime of monitoring home education.

The review makes a compelling case for substantial changes to the arrangements for supporting and monitoring home education. It recognises the wide range of philosophical and practical reasons that lie behind parents' decisions to home educate. It acknowledges that in some cases home educated children have been withdrawn from school under a range of difficult circumstances: this is reflected in the relatively high proportion of children with special educational needs who are home educated, and other cases where children have been bullied of had other experiences that leave them unable to attend school. These children and families need support from their local authorities in a way that enables them to access appropriate advice and guidance, receive specialist services, and use extended school provision and facilities such as leisure centres and libraries. The review argues for fresh thinking and further consultation with children, their families, local authorities and others involved in home education to identify ways to commission services for this very diverse sector in order to support the best possible outcomes for the children concerned.

The review also found evidence that there are a small number of cases where home educated children have suffered harm because safeguarding concerns were not picked up, or not treated with sufficient urgency, particularly where parents were uncooperative or obstructed local authority investigations. It sets out specific steps that should be taken to address these risks as well as improving the monitoring of the education provided: a compulsory registration scheme; a discretion to local authorities to prohibit home education where there are safeguarding concerns; and the right for LA representatives to interview home educated children to establish whether they are safe and receiving a suitable education. I am today launching a public consultation on these proposals so that they can be introduced to Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity.

Copies of the review and our initial response have been placed in the House Libraries.

Rules for some... Yet another reason to declare Badman's Report 'not valid'

2009-06-18T19:07:00.006+01:00

Maybe not many people have seen the very first page of the Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England, but it's quite an interesting one. I've copied it here below:

==========
© Crown Copyright 2009

The text in this document (excluding the Royal Arms and other departmental or agency logos) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium providing it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright and the title of the document specified.

Where we have identified any third party copyright material you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

For any other use of this material please write to Office of Public Sector Information,
Information Policy Team, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU or e-mail: licensing@opsi.gov.uk

ISBN: 9780102961133

==========

Please take note of the part I've highlighted, before you continue reading.

On page 13 in Chapter 4: Elective Home Education in Context - the Views of Home Educators and Others, Mr Badman writes:

==========
And the Education Division of the Church of England states its concern:

“that children and young people not in formal education are missing the benefits and
challenges of learning in community with their peers. Children who do not go to school may not experience the social and cultural diversity encountered there; they will not learn how to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life; they may never meet people with different faith and value systems. All such encounters, even the difficult or painful ones are enriching. We are concerned not only with the five Every Child Matters outcomes, but also with the spiritual well-being of all children and young people. Spiritual well-being arises not only from being cared for in a loving family and/or faith community, but also in encounters with people of different opinions and backgrounds; in learning to listen to a variety of opinions; to encounter diversity and the riches and life-enhancement it can bring. Spiritual well-being depends on living and taking a full part in community life. Children and young people in schools learn about and from the five major religions. This may be a difficult part of the curriculum for home educators to provide, yet it is vital for the Government’s community cohesion agenda that all children learn in a balanced way about the variety of religious values and practices, and to be encouraged to question their own beliefs and practices.”
==========

Mr Badman may view it a 'fundamental problem' that home educating parents do not have a 'representative voice' [page 14, 4.10] but that doesn't mean we don't communicate with each other. And although the Report (intentionally?) doesn't mention the source of this quotation, it was soon mentioned on some of the home ed lists that it was part of a ten point "Submission from the Church of England Education Division".
It took some doing, as the link on the available websites only produced encrypted documents, but eventually my much more computer literate husband managed to create a legible file for me (I have a pdf and a Word file, if anybody is interested) and I managed to copy the complete Submission into this post, at the end.

For the record, the fact that I copy it on here does not mean that this Submission represents my personal opinion (and this obviously especially goes for point 7).

May I draw your special attention to point 10?

==========
"We have seen no evidence to show that the majority of home educated children do not achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, and are therefore not convinced of the need to change the current system of monitoring the standard of home education. Where there are particular concerns about the children in a home-educating this should be a matter for Children’s Services."

==========

And may I now remind you of the first page in Mr Badman's Report, in which it says "the text in this document (......) may be reproduced (.....) providing it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context".

As a whole, I find the submission of the Church of England to be mostly sympathetic of Elective Home Education, with some points of concern, which I'd be delighted to discuss with them.
By only using point 7 Mr Badman has, in my opinion, taken part of the Submission out of its well balanced context, to give readers the impression that the Church of England is against Elective Home Education.

That's more than Bad. That's Evil.

Review of Elective Home Education
Submission from the Church of England Education Division

Church of England Education Division
The Church of England Education Division is a provider of statutory education in over 4,500 Church of England primary schools and 220+ secondary schools and academies and of voluntary education and training of children and young people and adult learning.

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the independent review of Elective Home Education. We believe in the absolute value of each child and young person as being made in the image of God, and that we have a responsibility to safeguard the vulnerable, whilst offering the freedom needed for growth and development.

We also believe in the importance of relationship within families and within communities, and that children and young people need to encounter a diverse range of people to enable them to learn to live in community and communion and to develop relationships outside their own family and close community.

Children and young people need to be equipped to challenge oppression and injustice and where they are the victims of such oppression and injustice and have no voice that is heard, the Church should be advocates for them.

As Christians, we cannot condone the use of home education as a cover for any form of child abuse. We are not aware of any research that shows how prevalent this is or whether it is widespread. Prevention of abuse under the cover of home education seems to be the main reason for this review, and in making it so, has the effect of tarnishing the reputation of the many parents who choose to home educate their children from the best of motives.

Parents are in the vast majority of cases the best people to decide what is appropriate and best for their children, and those who choose for whatever reason to educate their children outside the state or independent system do so for many reasons.

Our main concern about home education lies in (3) above: that children and young people not in formal education are missing the benefits and challenges of learning in community with their peers. Children who do not go to school may not experience the social and cultural diversity encountered there; they will not learn how to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life; they may never meet people with different faith and values systems. All such encounters, even the difficult or painful ones, are enriching.

We are concerned not only with the five Every Child Matters outcomes, but also with the spiritual well-being of all children and young people. Spiritual well-being arises not only from being cared for in a loving family and/or in a faith community, but also in encounters with people of different opinions and backgrounds; in learning to listen to a variety of opinions; to encounter diversity and the riches and life-enhancement it can bring. Spiritual well-being depends on living and taking a full part in community life.

Children and young people in schools learn about and from the five major religions. This may be a difficult part of the curriculum for home educators to provide, yet it is vital for the Government’s community cohesion agenda that all children learn in a balanced way about the variety of religious values and practices, and to be encouraged to question their own beliefs and practices.

We have seen no evidence to show that the majority of home educated children do not achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, and are therefore not convinced of the need to change the current system of monitoring the standard of home education. Where there are particular concerns about the children in a home-educating this should be a matter for Children’s Services.

Church of England Education Division
February 2009

Professor Stephen Heppell

2009-04-04T11:54:00.003+01:00

As posted on Gill's blog in the comment thread about "Mr Badman, Professor Heppel, bullying, Notschool and Becta" in response to Professor Heppell virtually kissing Gill:

Something has been bugging me for a few days now and I cannot let it go. If only because I want a clean conscience. And because I want to walk the talk.
One of the things I've said in my letter to Baroness Morgan is that I would do anything within my power to stand up against abuse.
Now, I have a growing feeling that I am witnessing at least the onset of abuse and although I feel very uncomfortable watching, I am still limiting my response to trying to override my instincts and instead reason and rationalise. But hurt and damage is being caused. Trauma's are being formed. There is definitely an unequal situation, wherein one party - at least potentially - has power over another. The less powerful party is not entirely defenceless, but knows that in the end the other party has access to ultimate power.
If the situation I'm describing would be between an adult and a child, the authorities would (want to) be involved, the child would be in a protective programme and the adult would be up in court.
But in this case I'm not sure who to turn to for justice, because the more powerful party is representing the authorities and the less powerful party is represented by adults. In the end, though, children will be the victim of this abuse in the making.

Professor Heppell, I am a very visual thinker, and the image of you offering kisses to Gill - after first saying "Would you rather I'd left it to the Ofsted members" - was a final straw for me. It turns my stomach, to be honest.
I am all for engaging in dialogue, for exchanging view points, for open and non-violent communication. But the only fair way to conduct that is if both parties set out to respect each other and take each other one hundred percent seriously.
Please take a step back, Professor Heppell, and look at this situation. Look at it as if it concerned a situation with on one side a teacher who knows his grading is going to determine the future of his student, and on the other side the student, who is being asked to hand in his free spirit in exchange for a good mark.
Look at it as if it concerned a situation with on one side an employer who know his employee is depending on him for the income that supports his family, and on the other side the employee who is being asked to smother his free speech in exchange for an income.
Look at it as if it concerned a situation with on one side a (grand)parent who knows the child can't live and can't go anywhere without them, and on the other side the child who knows that if he doesn't do what the adult wants him to do, there will be no food, no home, no love.

I'm sure you don't want to be part of any of these situations, Professor Heppell. So please take a step back and consider what your position as member of the reviewing panel is in relation to our position as the party being reviewed for something we are falsely accused of.
Gill doesn't need your kisses - Gill deserves your support, your understanding and not in the last place: your apology.

My draft A4 to Mr Badman

2009-04-01T23:57:00.004+01:00

I've written and re-written my A4 to Mr Badman.
It's strange, in one way I feel there's already many people writing extremely good pieces, so maybe I shouldn't take the focus away from them. On the other hand I really feel it's about me, and about my family, and about the future of my children and their children, so I need to add my bit to it.
Obviously everyone's dilemma is what to write in such a limited space. How to phrase all that's so utterly important to us in so few words? I wonder if Mr Badman realises that each and everyone of us conscious and elective home educators could talk for hours and hours about the why and how of uninterfered-with home education. How can you make someone understand the essence of autonomous education if they are walking an entirely different path in life?
Anyway, I've decided that this - here below - is what I want to send. Any comments or corrections to English are most welcome.

Dear Mr Badman,

Thank you for inviting home educators to write to you regarding the ongoing review of Elective Home Education and thank you for your promise to read it all.
It was hard to decide what to write about, as I could easily fill a book with relevant facts, figures and feelings. As I expect you will be inundated with facts and figures by other home educators, I chose to write to you on a more personal level.

After all that's gone on and been said since the start of this review - and the previous consultations - it's hard to withstand the tendency to feel suspicious or hostile. Everything I believe in, live for and love dearly, seems to be under threat of being changed to such an extent that it would change the very core of my existence. And that's scary.

However, one thing I've learned since we chose to home educate our children autonomously, is that the only way to deal with fear is to stand up to it and face it. I will not let fear get the better of me, I will not let it rule my life. I will have faith and trust that my well considered choice to take full responsibility for the education of my own children gets the respect and recognition it deserves and is entitled to.
From that faith and trust I am now asking you to not let the overwhelming sense of fear that seems to rule our society nowadays, stand between you and sound judgment. To please look beyond and recognize that one very good way to conquer fear is for people to take responsibility for their own lives and, as a possible consequence, for the education of their own children. In whatever way they see fit.
And that by doing so the well-being of young people is improved and the chances of them being abused or neglected are reduced, not only within their own families and communities, but - eventually - in society as a whole.

As the absolute expert on my own children and after twelve years of autonomous home education I dare to say they wouldn't be the well balanced, confident, competent, independent and happy young people they are today if there had been a compulsive need for monitoring. Or if any outside and non-committed party had in any other way interfered with or tried to take control over their self directed way of learning and living. Being able to home educate in our own autonomous way has been very beneficial for our children and for us as a family.

Nothing and nobody can ever totally eradicate evil from this world. I am absolutely sure that existing legislation and guidance in this country is more than sufficient to tackle possible child abuse and threats to children's welfare as good as possible. There is enough evidence to suggest that LA's and other agencies involved in education and child welfare are not sufficiently informed and therefore not efficient when it comes to relating the existing legislation and guidance to elective home education. Improving that would surely result in a better outcome for all involved, and would certainly prevent a lot of unnecessary aggravation and harmful experiences to home educating families.

Please, Mr. Badman, let us get on with what we do so passionately and with more love, dedication and commitment than any system could ever offer: Providing our children with an education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude and to any special needs they may have.

Showing off...

2009-03-30T23:37:00.005+01:00

Myrna made the local newspaper when she won the Sam Bellingham Memorial Trophy after winning four of her six classes and the sing offs in the Carlisle Drama and Music Festival 2009. The name above hers on the Cup is... Andrew Johnston!

And then there was life...

2009-03-20T01:31:00.003Z

I intended to do a post with 'evidence of ignorance', but life took over. Besides, I haven't received any additional info, nor did I have time to gather it myself. And looking at what's going on other blogs, on Facebook and on various lists, I am trailing behind and it would be a shame to waste good energy while I have plenty to do anyway.

Meanwhile, in spite of efforts to break home educators down, home ed life in this family has never been stronger. And busier for that matter. We've had amazingly intense weeks here, with lots of extremely exciting and positive things going on, which I will come back to in a minute.

There is no way I would ever concede the education of my children to the state. I strongly believe my children are quite capable of being in control of their own education in order to achieve their own goals in life and I've gladly taken it upon me to provide for them in any way I possibly can. I also believe that love, trust and respect are the strongest foundation to build a well balanced life on. And up to now the state haven't given me much reason to believe they're in any way capable, let alone willing to give my children the same opportunities as I as a parent can and want to give them. In other words, I do not want the responsibility for a suitable education for my children taken away from me.

At this moment I'm not sure what's the best way for me to help guarding the rights and the educational freedom we have in this country. I am trying to find out in what way I can put what I've got to offer to best effect. What have I got to offer, for that matter? That's not a question in self pity, it's a genuine attempt to self analysis.

- My knowledge of Dutch educational legislation, Dutch political systems and the mysterious ways the Dutch educational system works is of no use whatsoever, that's for sure.
- I am not very good with virtual groups, yahoo groups and all that. In 'real' groups it's hard enough for everyone to find a comfortable place, feel the dynamics and try and create - and maintain - a balanced atmosphere. But you can actually see the people, their facial expression, their body language. In a virtual group all you have is the written words, and if you're lucky you know one or a few of the other group members. You can't see the quiet ones, you don't feel the vibes, you don't see how people look at each other, whether they smile or not, and it's very hard to determine if what looks like an aggressive remark is based on frustration, sadness or bitterness. Also, unless you've been with a group from the very beginning, you won't know what's already been written about, if and how other members know each other, and you haven't got a clue how people really perceive your written words.
- Our geographical position and our way of life don't leave much room for meeting up with lots of other - politically active - home educators and the fact that I have to earn a living as well as eat and sleep, doesn't leave me with an abundance of time.
- In spite of everyone saying my English is good enough, language is a handicap. I still think in Dutch and writing in English is a challenge.

So what have I got to offer?

- My personal experience, I suppose, and the things I've learned in my own life. Mostly through trial and error.
- My passion for autonomous education and the fact that in the past ten years I have had to stand up for that on several occasions, in court, in the media, on seminars about education, in one to one situations, etcetera. Mostly in Holland, but I'm gathering quite a bit of UK experience :).

So where does that leave me as in making a constructive contribution to securing the legal right of freedom of education in this country?
I'm still not sure. And until I am I think I'll just stick to what I feel good and comfortable with and that's enjoying our autonomous life to the fullest. And every now and then I'll stick my nose into political matters, or I'll make a comment of the list I'm on because I really feel connected to something or someone.
But most of all I'll try and live in the moment, be calm and assertive when it comes to making sure my 'pack' is safe and happy and all the while love my children to bits. And my husband of thirty (!!!!) years, of course.

The past two weeks I was overwhelmed with happy and successful moments. Moments where my children were happy, ecstatic because they reached goals they'd set themselves. Because they had achieved what they wanted to.

Our eldest (19) started in her new job and after only two weeks got offered a fulltime job, including paid training to get the qualifications she wants. She is over the moon, feels self-confident and strong.

Our son (17) has been promoted to Lance Corporal in the army cadets and at the same time got given a few quite responsible tasks. He was commended for his commitment, for his dedication ánd for his ability to stay calm under pressure. Not bad for an Aspie, hey? Plus he got his grading to orange in Hontai, the classical form of Jiu Jitsu and he was asked to help train the youngsters twice a week.

Our youngest (13) took part in the Carlisle Music Festival and managed to win four of the six (singing) classes she took part in and get a second prize in one. Then she had to sing in the finales and won that, singing O Mio Babbino Caro. So she won the trophy for best under 18 vocal performance (which went to Andrew Johnston last year, by the way :)).
As a result we might get an article about home education in the regional newspaper, because she seems to have made quite an impression on the journalist who interviewed her.

Of course there are lots of little and big moments where I know, see and sense that autonomous home education was the best choice for our children. And I certainly do not measure the success of our home education by the prizes my children win or the qualifications they earn. But it's definitely good to see how capable they are to carry themselves in this world without losing one little bit of their unique selves.

A letter to Baroness Morgan

2009-03-07T01:03:00.005Z

Again, I am going back to what started the current review of home education.
Although it said in the DCSF press release that the review "will assess the effectiveness of current arrangements for parents who home educate and of local authority systems for supporting children and families" it is obvious from all that is happening now that not the quality or the functioning of the local authorities is under scrutiny, but much more the whole concept of home education itself. That's weird, to say the least, because there is ample evidence of failures of local authorities - with sometimes disastrous consequences - but none concerning home education as such. Therefore I have drafted a letter to Baroness Morgan and I am still gathering relevant evidence to convince her of the fact that local authorities and other agencies involved in education and child welfare are - often - ignorant of existing law and guidance in regard to education outside the school system.
Please feel free to leave more such evidence in my comment box.

Dear Baroness Morgan,

As an elective home educator I am well aware of the weight your words carry when you choose to express your concerns about matters related to education and children's welfare.

As a responsible, caring and most of all loving parent I share your ambition to do everything possible to prevent and fight child abuse in any form. Children, I think, are entitled to a well balanced upbringing in a stable and loving environment. If I have any reason to believe children are denied this chance I will do everything possible within the law to intervene.

As a law abiding citizen of this country I feel it my duty to inform you that the information on which you commissioned the current review of home education is not only inaccurate, but could also lead to damage and/or disruption of young people's lives.

Apparently the information you were given led you to believe that "home education could be used as a ‘cover’ for child abuse such as neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude".
Based a.o. on your first press release on this matter it appears that no distinction is being made between 'children missing education' and 'children in home education'. There is a distinctive difference between the two. In the first case children are not going to school and are not receiving any other form of education, while in the second case parents have chosen to provide their children with an education suitable to their age, aptitude and ability and to any special educational needs the child(ren) may have.

I put it to you that the existing legislation and guidance on elective home education is sufficient, but that local authorities and other agencies dealing with education and welfare have insufficient knowledge of it, and are therefore not capable of applying it in an efficient way. That to me is a concern and I genuinely feel the wellbeing of children in general and of those in home education in particular would be better served with a review into the competence and functioning of said local authorities and other agencies. Their incorrect interpretation of law and guidance, together with an insufficient and/or incorrect understanding of home education, not only causes unnecessary grief and damage to home educators, but also leads said authorities to - unnecessarily - feel inadequate and/or incompetent in cases where there might be reasons for concerns.

Rather than using assumptions and suspicions I can support my statement with ample evidence of cases where local authorities and other agencies display ignorance of existing legislation and guidance, as well as of the workings of education other than through the school system.
Furthermore, I could provide you with a list of people with ample knowledge and experience of home education and related legislation, who could efficiently and effectively conduct a review into this matter, supply you with both a relevant report and suggestions for improvement, as well as suitable training/education for LA's and other agencies working in this field.

I trust that after reading this letter and looking at the attached evidence you will share my concerns and take appropriate measures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all children.

Yours sincerely,

In a next post I will list all the links I'm sending the Baroness. Up to now I have:

In this post on Carlotta's blog you'll find the Dorset LA response to the 60 questions they were asked to answer. From the frustrated tone of their answer it is quite obvious they are yet again confusing welfare issues with educational ones.

After a - very brief - item on BBC's Radio 4 programme PM a very lengthy and similarly interesting and informative discussion came to life on the PM Blog. Very significant was comment no. 74 by someone who presented himself as a 'Children Missing Education Officer in the North of England'. The answers to his comment speak for themselves.

Another LA response to the questionnaire that caught the attention because of the apparent lack of knowledge was this one from Birmingham LA. One home educator from that area contacted 'her' EWO about the contents of this response and he knew nothing about it, apparently. It makes me wonder how much the person filling in the questionnaire actually knew about the day-to-day reality of the situation 'on the ground'.

In Lancashire this press release brought to light that Lancashire County Council were under the false impression that they could make local agreements about visits and providing of examples of work with some home educators about all home educators. And of course they, too, showed they were not informed about their legal rights and limitations.

With regard to the ongoing review a shocking case of ignorance and uninformed partiality was displayed by NSPCC spokesperson Mr Vijay Patel in the Independent when he implied a connection between the death of Victoria Climbié and home education. Even though DCSF and Mr Graham Badman have now said they know there is no such connection, the NSPCC has not yet officially apologized and is still involved in the so-called independent review of home education.

Eagerly awaiting further action...

2009-03-06T13:23:00.005Z

Did you read this on any of the lists?

From EO's Spokesperson:

I have permission to quote this statement that I have just received from Graham Badman's office, after I sent over details of the references made in the Independent article by Vijay Patel about Victoria and home education and after I gave them the link to the statement made by the Victoria Climbie Foundation:

"The DCSF, and Graham, know that there is no link whatsoever between the tragic death of Victoria Climbie and home education"

This statement was made to me officially today in an email written by Elizabeth Green who is working for Graham Badman during the Independent Review of Home Education.

I read it. On one of the home ed blogs.
But I didn't read it in - for instance - the Independent. And as far as I'm aware there wasn't a national press release or any other attempt to make the general public aware of the fact that Mr Patel had misinformed them.
I am eagerly awaiting what DCSF and Graham are going to do after more or less acknowledging that they're aware of the biased views of NSPCC, represented by Mr Patel. After all, we are being told this is an "independent review".
For that matter, what is NSPCC going to do? They still haven't made a full public apology for their damaging comment, they haven't sacked Mr Patel, they haven't withdrawn from their involvement with the review.

How on earth can I even try and achieve the five outcomes of ECM for my children when the Powers That Be are doing their utmost to make it impossible!? Not only by threatening to disrupt, interfere with and intrude into our personal life and development, but also by having that done by people who not only have no knowledge of autonomous education in the first place but on top of that have not even been CRB checked!

The last bit of the press note

2009-02-21T16:59:00.002Z

I'll attempt to conclude my scrutiny of the NCSF press note about the Review into Elective Home Education.

After summing up the aims of the Elective Home Education Review the press note again cleverly connects "children missing education" and "home education".
It would have been really easy to construe a sentence with both the popular phrase "right to balanced education" and "home education" in it, but obviously that might have veered the minds of readers in a different direction. It's all about suggestion. Very clever.
And it works, as you can see in this scary example of misinformation (Thanks, Debs!).

The press note ends quoting Graham Badman, who will be leading the review. At this moment I'll give Mr Badman the benefit of the doubt. I've read quite a bit about the work he is and has been involved with, but I do not know enough about these cases to have an opinion about the quality of Mr Badman's work. I know enough of the workings of the media not to form an opinion based on the so-called 'public opinion'. To me Mr Badman is a kind of a judge in a court of justice, and without profound knowledge of the cases concerned, I couldn't possibly form an opinion about the quality of his work, purely based on his verdicts.

Mr Badman, too, acknowledges the right of parents to choose to home educate, and he promises to "discuss all the issues with home educating families, local authorities and other key stakeholders" - who would they be? - "[and] investigate whether the current system adequately supports these rights and responsibilities" - see, that's hopeful, he mentions both rights and responsibilities - "and if not, I will make recommendations for improvements."

So there it is. This to me sounds like an open invitation to elective home educators to provide Mr Badman not only with information about how seriously we take our responsibilities, but also about whether we feel the "current system adequately supports these rights and responsibilities".
The very fact that this review is necessary because (a lot of, not all!) local authorities and other agencies have not enough knowledge and/or understanding of the existing legislation and guidance to adequately remove the bee from the Baroness' bonnet should lead to a recommendation for improvement of the training and work methods of local authorities and agencies.

I know I am lucky to live in Cumbria, where we have some excellent LA people, who are positively supportive of EHE and who make an effort to communicate with our representatives. I have only had brief dealings with them when I was having problems trying to get my eldest into mainstream education - LOL to the irony of that! - and thanks to the interference of the - then - LEA my daughter got the place she wanted. I know many examples of positive cooperation between home educators and LA's in this county. It is possible. And all within the existing law and guidance.

The Editor's Notes of the press release again indicate that there is no intention to provide well-balanced information. There is no mention of Section 7 of the Education Act 1996. There is no mention of the organisations representing home educators in this country. And of course there is no mention of conclusive evidence or even probable grounds for the vile accusations about child abuse.

Of course not. Because there aren't any.

Going back to the beginning of the EHE Review

2009-02-19T01:14:00.003Z

In an attempt to fully understand what has actually instigated this whole review I was re-reading not only the invaluable amount of information on Gill's blog, but also a lot of other articles on this subject.
And this time I made a point of reading that very first press notice word by word. I cannot but have great admiration for the person (spin doctor, I think you Brits call them) who wrote this. It's a clever bit of suggestive writing and I'd guess the author got paid extra for every time he managed to get the words "safe(ty), health(y) and education" in the same sentence. With an bonus for welfare.

Apart from all these clever little tricks - another one is mentioning "children missing education" and "home education" in the same, first sentence - I was amazed to read on what arguments the Baroness Delyth Morgan managed to get funding for this review, involving many - undoubtedly highly paid - experts.

First she confirms the parents' right to choose to home educate their children. She immediately adds that "a very small number do". Of this very small number, she says, "the vast majority do a good job". So, we may conclude that the vast majority of a very small number of people do a good job, in the eyes of the Baroness.
Then we come to the crux of the matter: "There are concerns" - unspecified and therefore subjective - "that some children are not receiving the education they need. And in some extreme cases, home education could be" - note: COULD BE - "used as a cover for abuse."

Well, I'll be the first to agree that we cannot allow this to happen and I will do everything I can to help ensure children are safe, wherever they are educated. Because I totally agree with the first sentence in the second paragraph, that "everything possible should be done to guarantee all children their right to a balanced education in a safe, healthy environment."

As a dedicated elective home educator (EHE) with enough experience within the school system I do not even need to see the statistics to know that the amount of children within the school system who do NOT enjoy a "balanced education in a safe, healthy environment" vastly exceeds the "very small number of children in elective home education", of whom the vast majority is without a doubt receiving "balanced education in a safe, healthy environment", let alone the number of children the Baroness has - up to now unfounded - concerns about.

I wish I was given the job to "look at whether the right systems are in place that allow local authorities and other agencies to ensure that any concerns about the safety [and] welfare of home educated children are addressed quickly and effectively". In the six years I've now lived in this country I've personally met at least ten people, in my county alone, who'd be able to answer that adequately. I think I'd need a day or two - including long tea and lunch breaks - to gather enough information to write a nice and absolutely solid report. And I could without too much trouble put together a team of people who are not only experts on elective home education and the laws and legislation that relate to it, but who could also train local authorities and other agencies to know what they need to know on EHE, as well as on the existing and efficient legal tools to make sure the mentioned concerns are addressed quickly and effectively.

But never for all the money in the world would I want to have to do a similar job when it wasn't only about home educated children. Not only would I just not know where to start, I think it would break my heart. I can just about manage to deal with my own memories and the stories of people around me about unhappy children, unfulfilled needs, abuse, bullying and inadequate education in schools.
Hmm, maybe that's why the Baroness chose to go for home educators...

Back to the DCSF's press note, now.
At the end of the third paragraph it says: "There are no plans to change parents' well established rights to educate their children at home."
Yet, two paragraphs further along DCSF finds it necessary to include a comment of Diana Sutton, Head of policy and public affairs at the NSPCC:
".... We believe the existing legislation and guidance on elective home education is outdated. We support the view set out by the London (LA) Children's Safeguarding Leads network that the government should review the legislation to balance the parents' right to home educate their children, the local authorities' duty to safeguard children and the child's right to protection."
Why include this comment if "there are no plans to change parents' well established rights to educate their children at home"?

I will not go deeply into the Five Outcomes of the ECM here, apart from saying that I find that whole document an appalling bit of propaganda, that aims to appeal to people's good intentions. Who in their right mind would want to say they do NOT want these five outcomes for their children? Shockingly missing from the whole ECM programme is the word "happiness".

Upon reading the task set for the EHE Review I become slightly more optimistic. If the Reviewer takes this literally there might be hope for EHE after all. And maybe even for children in a school age in general.

The first thing to be investigated is:

"Whether local authorities and other public agencies are able to effectively discharge their duties and responsibilities for safeguarding and ensuring a suitable education for ALL CHILDREN."

Ah! Not only children in EHE! But... but... but... Why is the consultation not aimed at parents of all children then? Why is EHE singled out? Do I misread what it says there, or are they really going to investigate all children?

The second:

"Whether home educating parents are receiving the support and advice they want to ensure they provide a good, balanced education for their children."

Well, that might be good news for us! We can either just say: No thank you, we're doing fine! Or maybe we can ask them to suggest making EHE parents exempt from this new everybody has to have a paid job-mania. Or exams and educational material available at no cost. Or... or... Well, my panel of experts could undoubtedly come up with a good long list of suggestions!

As to the third one:
"Consider what evidence there is to support claims that home education could be used as a 'cover' for child abuse such as neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude"

The Reviewing Committee would be wise to first find out where these claims come from and what they are based on. But how on earth can you find hard evidence for something that COULD happen? Uh? Or is that my lack of understanding of the English language?

Anyway, I'll leave the rest of the press note for what it is, for now, as it is way past my bedtime and I must admit that this whole ruddy business has taken away a lot of energy that I usually apply to ensure that my children enjoy a balanced education in a safe, healthy environment.
So may the most important recommendation of the Reviewing Committee be that to ensure that children in EHE receive a balanced education in a safe, healthy environment, their parents should be allowed to get on with it instead of being bothered and bullied by yet another consultation.

Computers and Peace

2008-12-14T22:53:00.003Z

The other day we were discussing freedom and world peace. You know, as you do over dinner.
And I remembered a passage from this book I translated from English into Dutch in 2000, when life was in more of a turmoil than usual for us, because we'd taken the children out of school and were just starting on the path of 'unschooling', at the time totally illegal in Holland. The only reason I managed to do this translation is because the book gripped me right from the beginning. It became a lifeline to me and each chapter brought me a new and very valuable insight.
The book was 'Zen Computer' by Philip Toshio Sudo.

Here's the bit I read out to my dearest and nearest:

"For as much as technology transforms our lives and society, Zen Computer says true transformation - the kind that's authentic and profound - will not come through technology alone, but through the transformation of people's souls, one by one by one. It says salvation arises from self-awareness, not better tools and faster communications; that world peace stems from inner peace; that freedom for all people demands first the self-discipline of each individual. To cultivate self-awareness through the use of tools and communications - this is the hard work Zen Computer seeks to support. Only then will we elevate our humanity."

It was and still is food for thought and contemplation.

Learning from Life

2008-12-07T14:08:00.006Z

Our eldest daughter has a new job.
A job that - in my opinion - really suits her.
A job that she holds no paper qualifications for.
I am so happy for her, because I know this is the kind of work she really wants to do. And in my mind, it's the kind of work she's cut out to do.
She's going to be a support worker with MenCap, working with adults and children with learning disabilities.
Ever since she started to think about what she wanted to do she's said she wanted to work with horses and with special needs people.
She did the Horse Management Course in college, but it wasn't satisfactory for her. Too much aimed at 'the industry', while her interest lies in the connection, the bond between horses and people.

For her work experience she went back to Holland, to the riding school she used to go to when we lived there. They are specialized in working with children with special needs.
By the time she came back to England - not entirely by her own choice - all she wanted to do was earn money and have a good time. Go shopping. Party. Make friends.
She got herself a job in Tesco, which gave her the money and the time and opportunity to do what she wanted to do. But soon she started to realize that working without job satisfaction was only okay up to a certain level. And she didn't want to do it for the rest of her life.
Then we saw this job in the paper. And we talked about it. I could see the sparkle in her eye, I could sense her intention when she went to fill in the application forms. And I prayed that she would get the chance to go for an interview, because I was sure her intention would be clear to other people, too.

The invitation for an interview came. She was really nervous to start with. But then she started to prepare herself. Reading more about MenCap on the internet and in the leaflet they'd sent out. Buying the same perfume her clan-sister uses and wearing it to the interview, so she felt her much loved and supportive clan-sister was with her.
I drove her there and it literally felt as if the car was filled with purpose. I dropped her off and an hour later picked her up again.
She was all smiles and totally relaxed and said that, even if she wouldn't get the job, she was really happy with how the interview went and she was proud of herself. Big thing for someone who's suffered from a fear to fail and insecurity for a long time.
There had been three people and at first she'd felt slightly overwhelmed. But once she got the chance to talk she came into her comfort zone. She'd told them how it had been growing up with a brother with Asperger Syndrome and what she'd learned from that. She spoke of her work with horses and special needs children - and I know how she radiates enthusiasm when she talks about that. They'd asked her if she'd be prepared to do the necessary training and she'd said she'd love to and explained she learned best when it was coupled to 'real life'.
They said they'd let her know within the next couple of weeks whether she'd got the job, but we'd only been home ten minutes when they were on the phone to offer her the job!

It'll be part time to start with and they'll fit it around her hours in Tesco. That's good, because she wants to get her drivers' license and she wants to move out. So she'll need the cash. Once she's completed the training they'll be able to offer her fulltime employment. That's an excellent incentive for her and I'm sure she'll do what it takes.

For me it's hugely satisfying to once again see that autonomous education does work.
It's funny, actually.
As is custom in Holland, we sent birth announcement cards to friends and family when she was born. At that time totally unaware of home education, let alone autonomous education or child-led learning, I'd asked a friend of ours to make this drawing of a man and woman asleep in bed, with a balloon above their heads showing the dreams and expectations they were having of their child.

On opening the card there's this baby, peacefully asleep, and a text above her head:

Isn't it amazing how true this has turned out to be!

Creating confusion and pigeon holes

2008-09-21T22:30:00.003+01:00

I can't believe it! I thought I'd posted on here not so long ago, but it's been almost two months!!
I really need to keep this up. For myself. Because my memory seems to be less adequate than when I was younger - haarrrumphh - and blogging was supposed to be a substitute for diary writing.

I just wanted to sum up a few short conversations I've been having in the past couple of months, about home education. You know when you're somewhere and people start bragging about how well their children do at school and all that, and then they ask you: "What school do yours go to?"
If the children are with me, this is the point where they disappear. They've heard it all, said it all. Been there, done it, got the T-shirt.

So, I answer: "They don't go to one particular school, we home educate."
One of the often heard responses to that is:
"Ow, I could never teach my own children!"
To which I always reply:
"No, I couldn't either."
And then I take a deep breath and get ready to explain about autonomous learning, the Natural Curriculum, and so forth, and so forth. If people are really interested, that is. There used to be a time when I'd find myself explaining all this to someone who looked more and more bored and confused by the minute. They just wanted to 'socialize', you see. Not get involved into any deep discussions...

Socializing is of course a big issue with people who have their doubts about home ed.
One of my favourite responses when people ask if there's not a problem with socializing, is:
"I don't know, they've been too busy recently to discuss it."

The other big Q is obviously about qualifications.
"But how will she get her GCSE's?"
"Natural Curriculum does not do GCSE's."
"But surely she'll need qualifications to get on in life."
"Then she'll get the ones she needs to do what she wants to do."
I very often end up explaining that, when a home educated (young) person really wants to do something, s/he'll either talk their way into it with a portfolio or some other testimonial of their qualities, or actually goes and does the exams.

At a wedding reception I got talking to this teacher woman, who, when she found out we were home educators, had disapproval written all over her face. After the usual above questions, she asked me if I didn't find it difficult to be a mother and a teacher at the same time.
I smiled and said: "Why? Do you find it difficult, then?"
"Well, I wouldn't like to teach my own children."
"Oh? Why not?"
"Because you need a completely different set of tools to be a teacher, compared to a mother."
"I see. That's interesting! So, what's the difference?"

It would take too long to copy the whole conversation here, but I quite enjoyed myself by just asking questions, really. She was talking about discipline, how you needed that as a teacher more than a mother, and obviously, in the end she couldn't deny that as a teacher you need to exercise more discipline because there are too many children to allow individuals to - for instance - ask questions to which the answers wouldn't fit in the time assigned to that particular lesson... and you need discipline because there just isn't time to try and find out why certain children are restless, upset, anxious, happy, or whatever... you need discipline because you can't have them talking and 'socialising' with each other while you're trying to teach... you need discipline in the school yard because their 'socialising' often gets out of hand, because they have to cramp all that energy and wanting to get to know each other in those fifteen or twenty minutes...

It was fun, because it wasn't really me saying all these things, it was her answering my questions. I don't know if she now hates home edders even more, or maybe maybe realises there might be another angle to home ed, that up to now she hasn't seen.

We are in the process of becoming foster parents and one of the Placement Consultants came the other day, to fill in all kinds of forms and have a first informal chat. Myrna is very keen about fostering and wants to be involved with the whole procedure. So she sat in on the chat. Obviously, the subject of home education was raised. And would we not find it difficult to have a foster child who'd have to go to school. No, we wouldn't. And obviously, the woman wanted to know what Myrna felt about being home educated, did she not feel lonely at times? (Maybe she thought that was the reason Myrna was so keen on having a foster child?)

But never mind, because Myrna set her straight with a very convincing and fiery plea for home education, starting by saying that she felt a lot of children in school were very, very lonely indeed, because quite often nobody had time to listen to them, talk to them. Hurray for Myrna, she brought a smile on the woman's face.

Check it out!

2008-07-20T01:03:00.002+01:00

To keep you in the picture I've created a blog on which I post only photo's with short comments. You'll find it here!.

Knock, knock... I'm home!

2008-07-18T23:47:00.011+01:00

After two weeks in Holland I was even more tired than I thought I was and I literally arrived back home with a bang. Having managed to drive to Holland, through Holland and back home without any problems whatsoever, totalling over 1400 miles in a fortnight, it went wrong at the very last moment.
I drove up to the house and saw four vans parked on the drive and on the pavement, belonging to the builders doing the extension. So I went to park on the pavement in front of our neighbour's house. I still don't know what and how it happened, but I heard this loud bang and was checking my mirrors to see if maybe one of the builders had dropped something or slammed a car door. "What was that?" I asked. To which Owen replied: "You just drove into the neighbour's fence, Mum."
And he was right. I hit a concrete post first and then buried the car's bumper into the wood of the fence. Couldn't go backwards or forwards without causing even more damage. I was so annoyed with myself and it took me a while before I could be grateful for the fact that my extreme tiredness hadn't caused more damage than a broken bumper and headlight. Anyway, Ken lived up to his Mr Superglue reputation and that same evening the car was legal to drive again.

Our time in Holland flew by and we didn't get to do everything we'd planned to do, and we didn't get to see the people we wanted to see. But that's not unusual. Every time we go back to Holland it's an agonizing choice of where to go, what to do and who to see. You can't just go and see somebody for an hour or so after not having seen them for such a long time. So it's always a challenge to avoid too much frustration, on either side, and we always end up having to make choices that we'd rather not have to make.
As this trip was also part of Myrna's birthday present, I wanted to make sure that she had a good time. But because I also wanted to spend as much time as possible with my sister we both had to compromise. When having to choose between seeing people or seeing places, Myrna eventually chose to see people, even though she'd looked forward to visiting 'old' places...
I had so much looked forward to visiting our old next door neighbour from Brummen, who'll be 95 this year and who I still write with a few times a year. I thought this might well be my last chance to actually see her. I'm glad I didn't tell her we were coming to Holland, because I know she'd have been so disappointed to not have seen us. In the end I had to choose between just dropping by for no more than an hour and not going and I chose not to go, because I was afraid such a short, unannounced visit would just be too stressful for her. Such a shame, though...

Obviously I also had too little time with my sister. But the time we did spend together was good and valuable. For both of us. I was pleased to see she looked a lot better than when I saw her in hospital and although I know she has a lot of hard and painful work still to do, I can see that she definitely is on the road to recovery and improvement. And I'm sure that in the end she'll come out happier and stronger. It would be nice if within the next few months she could come and spend some time with us here, in England. At least we'll by then have the space to put her up...

While I was in Holland a lot of work got done at home. It looks like the builders are true to their word and will have the whole job done within 6 to 8 weeks! When I tell people we're having an extension put onto the house nearly everybody feels sorry for us 'being in a mess' and 'having the builders in the house'. But I can't agree with that. All the people involved in the building so far have been nice. Hard working, cleaning up behind them every day, causing as little mess as possible for us, and overall just very pleasant to have around. I genuinely enjoy following the whole process and seeing all these people doing what they're good at. I think in my next life I want to be a joiner, because judging from the ones I see at work here it must give such enormous job satisfaction to build or beautify a home. 'Our' builders are always keen to answer questions we throw at them, and we take great pleasure in plying them with coffee, tea and the results of our baking sessions.

I tried to take pictures of the work in progress and I'll publish a few of the ones I took from the outside here below. Photo's of the inside are to follow later and I'll try and not let so much time go by again before the next post :)!!

Never say never...

2008-06-13T10:31:00.002+01:00

I'm sorely tempted to change the name of this weblog back to Never a Dull Moment. Or I'll name it No Time to Blog. Yeah, that might be most appropriate.
I came back from Holland just before Myrna's birthday and we did manage to make it into a bit of a festive day, but to be fair it was nothing compared to the weeklong celebrations she usually likes to have. She was very understanding about it, and I know that's just how it was and all that, but still... I would have liked to make her passage into being a teenager a bit more special. But then again, we could do something special sometime in the summer, when hopefully things have quieted down a bit.

It's probably obvious that my sister is not doing very well. And unfortunately with the hospital system being what it is, I really have to stay on top of things to make sure she's alright and being looked after and cared for in a way that she is happy with. Anyway, hopefully she'll be moved to a convalescent home on Monday and I'll be able to sit back a bit.

My niece, in the meantime, has passed her exams with mainly top marks! I am so proud of her, she has worked really hard for it. And, bearing in mind that after I left she had to look after herself, the dog and the household all by herself, she did such a magnificent job. She has certainly grown up and found her feet, under extremely difficult circumstances!
There will be a ceremony for her receiving her diploma and I'll be going to Holland to attend, not only because my sister won't be able to go, but also because I myself want to be there for my clan-daughter. I've arranged it so that we arrive in Holland for my Mum's 77th birthday (yes, birthdays are a big thing in Holland!) and can go to the diploma ceremony a few days later.
I'm saying 'we', because this time I'm taking Myrna and Owen with me.
We haven't had a holiday for years and even though this isn't going to be a relax-and-only-do-things-you-really-want-to-do kind of holiday, I'm going to try and fit in a few visits to friends and family and to do some nostalgic outings.
With Myrna.
Because Owen is going to stay with his best friend for the whole time. He doesn't do travelling unless he really, really has to. And he only occasionally does the kind of visits Myrna and I plan to do quite a lot of.
Owen is looking forward to being with his life long friend and to do all the things they always used to do. And that includes climbing trees, digging holes, building tree huts, etcetera. Now that they're both sixteen I imagine Owen's friend would also like to do other, more 'grown-up' things... and Owen will go along with him.
This friend's family are very, very good friends of ours, too. The kind of friends where it doesn't really matter if you don't see each other, and sometimes don't even speak with each other for a long time, and then when you do meet or speak, you just pick it up again and carry on.
They've supported us from day one in our home educating adventure. Openly, hands on, fully.
They live in one of the most beautiful spots in Holland, on the embankments of the River Rhine, and they built their extremely eco-friendly house themselves. It's one of those very rare places in Holland where you don't have other people living close to you, with lots of nature, birds, animals and what have you around.
Owen has always felt very much at home and at ease there. In fact, when he was five years old and we were driving home after I'd picked him up, he said to me: "I don't understand why I wasn't born as M's child, because I really belong there."
This certainly inspired us to find a place with an equivalent amount of space and nature around us in this country.

Myrna is looking forward to seeing old friends, too. And to visit places we used to go to when she was little, such as the Open Air Museum and the National Park. She's also very keen to take her keyboard and guitar and sing and make music with lots of people.

A lot of my time will go to visiting my sister and making sure everything that needs to be organized and arranged is dealt with. And I am so looking forward to seeing her and being with her again. We're on the phone at least twice a day, and that's okay, but there's nothing like real life contact, where not everything has to be put into words.

In the meantime it's a busy time here, with me trying to get my work finished four weeks before the deadline to be able to go to Holland, preparations for Myrna's participation in the Lanercost Festival and other concerts, Owen's Duke of Edinburgh activities with the Cadets, AL trying to find a suitable FE course whilst working hard at the same time, and all the 'normal' day to day things in a HE household. On top of that the building of the extension has started. If everything goes according to plan - does it ever? - that'll be ready in about eight weeks time. Owen will move in there and that will make his room available for a foster child.

Aw heck, I'm going to say it again:
Never a Dull Moment!!

I'm leaving the country...

2008-05-11T11:25:00.011+01:00

but only for a while. A short while, I hope.
On Tuesday I'm going to Holland. My sister is in hospital again and I'm going to stay with her children for at least a week. My niece is in the middle of her final exams and these past few weeks it hasn't been easy for her to concentrate on her learning. Fortunately, her mentor is aware of the situation and is helping her any way he can. She goes to one of the best Steiner schools in Holland and enjoys going, she's actually thriving. I think if we'd still be living in Holland Myrna would probably want to go to that school and I wouldn't have any problems with it.
It's a shame there isn't such a school here, at least not anywhere close to where we are.
I find that even though home education is practically illegal in Holland, there is a wider range of school educational systems than in this country. Every major city has Steiner, Montessori, Jenaplan, Freynet schools as well as 'regular' ones, for all religious and non-religious walks of life. There are even quite a few private schools based on the Sudbury Valley School principles.
In this country educating your child outside the school system is a legal right, which cannot be appreciated enough. But - as far as I know, and I must admit I haven't done extensive research into the matter - there is a very limited choice of educational systems in schools. Which means that - unfortunately - the initial choice to home educate (or homeschool) is often a negative one: "I don't want to send my children to school." Instead of the positive: 'I want to home educate my child(ren) because I believe it's the best possible thing for them.'

In my eyes the difference in educational possibilities typifies the difference between the two countries.
Very generally speaking my impression is that in Britain things are more extreme, black and white, either / or, where in Holland there is a larger scale of greys.
Look at the difference in politics.
In Holland there are over thirty active political parties, of which I think twelve have representatives in the national parliament; the other ones are mainly active in local or regional politics.
And, as Wikipedia states, the UK is nearly but not quite a two-party system.

Anyway, I suppose I was just trying to say that my niece enjoys going to school and is very motivated to do well in her exams... which might sound like cursing in church on a home edders weblog ;), but I think it's wonderful and I can see her schoolgoing life genuinely suits her. She has spent a lot of time in our family, also here in England, and she absolutely agrees we're doing the right thing for us, but she's still adamant about preferring (her) school to home education for herself. And since she is a well balanced, confident, intelligent and happy girl I can only agree with her.

Obviously with my impending departure there are lists all over the house with 'things to do before I leave'. Also listed was getting the garden sorted. I'm not a very skilled gardener, but I just love putting my hands in the earth, digging and planting. I know it sounds silly, but I talk to every plant, tell them how pretty they are, why I bought them and how I hope they will feel comfortable and happy in our garden.
Only my little sedum plants didn't last very long. The morning after I planted them they were all dug up and in bits, poor things. First I blamed the cats, but then I saw from my bedroom window how the blackbirds were pecking at them, having a feast! Anyone knew that?
Ah well, such is nature, to eat or to be eaten.

So here's what I've been doing in the garden:

I don't like fencing, but we had this one put in to give AL some privacy in her conservatory. And to create a space behind the house where the dogs can wander around freely. On the street side I planted clematis and heather, so hopefully by next year this side of the fence will be colourfully covered.

Yes, the garden is only small and yes, Owen is a big lad :).

This charming spring flowering clematis grows just left of the front door and was a total surprise for us. There were just a few dead twigs there, until a week or two ago. And look at it now! And what about the hanging baskets (for the sake of symmetry there's another one on the other side of the door) with saxifraga in a colour matching the flower pattern in the stained glass window of the front door.

Myrna wanted a little rose garden, so we made this bed on the conservatory side of the fence with four rose bushes in different colours. And lavender - Myrna's other favourite - at their feet to keep the lice away.

Kitchen herbs are supposed to be planted by the kitchen door, but we don't have a kitchen door. And by the conservatory wouldn't be a good idea, because I don't want to have to go through AL's room - for reasons of self preservation and sanity. So these - mint, thyme and parsley - ended up by the front door....

together with these. The sedum still looked alright here :(.

And so this is what that side of the garden looks like now. Is it what you call a suburbian garden? I don't know. It suits the house and I'm happy with it, because I can just about manage it.

The garden in the Vicarage was so much bigger - about two football pitches - and so beautifully wild, with all kinds of wild flowers, apple and other fruit trees, high grass and all that. We didn't do much with it apart from mowing the bits where the mower wouldn't sink away in the mud. It was heaven for the kids when they were still climbing trees and building huts, and it was heaven for the dogs.

But they seem happy enough with where we are now. At least here we can go on walks along the river, where they can go off the lead without the risk of getting shot by a farmer who's worried about his sheep being upset. There's so many sides to life, isn't there? And different situations can be equally good. It all depends on what you need and want at that particular time.

We're happy here!

Metamorphosis

2008-05-01T22:28:00.006+01:00

I finally managed to get my stories written and sent off to the publishers. Blimey, it took me at least three times the usual time and I'm not entirely happy about the last one. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes back to be rewritten. The brain is still not back to normal working order and I feel every one of my fifty years.
Ah well, I'll try and be British about it, but that doesn't come naturally to me ;).

I need to show you a major metamorphosis within our family.
My youngest girl is definitely and most convincingly not my baby girl anymore.
I knew that, of course. She has told and shown me many times. But still, you know, it's kind of hard to let go...
Now, the outside has been adjusted to the inside.
One day she was looking like a tall little girl, on the balancing wheel in the playground.

The next day, after a visit to the hairdresser, she's this guitar playing cool teenager.

Mystery is her middle name.

Ahhh, another month and she will be thirteen and that'll definitely be the end of me being the mother of young children. I'll try and make the most of that last month.

About that playground.
I'm considering writing to my MP about it (does that sound integrated and British?).
See, there's this sign above the entrance:

I think that's just so discriminatory. Myrna and her friends really enjoy going in there, and even Owen likes to come along every now and then. They're always very mindful, helpful and kind to little ones. (When there are any, that is, because we're usually there in school hours.) They push them on the swings, they hold them when they want to climb, they pick them up and take them to their parents when they fall...
Yet they're all - apart from Myrna - over twelve, most of them over fourteen.

When I have the dogs with me, I'll not go into the play area because I realize some children might be scared of them. So I stay just outside. But I wish I had a pound for every time a little child comes up to stroke or cuddle them. And they are so good with little children, they lie down flat and undergo all the attention patiently. They've never yet scared a child, or caused any damage, for that matter.

On Mondays I take Myrna to the local Music Centre where the choir rehearsals take place. I always stay there until they're finished, not only because I like to hear them sing, but also because otherwise Mrs Y, who takes the choir, would be the only adult in the building. The Music Centre is on the premises of a Primary School, in a fenced off area, behind big iron gates. I don't know how, but the other day a group of about six youngsters - all boys - managed to get onto the school yard and into the Music Centre. Within a few minutes they managed to kick over all the bins, pull the fire extinguisher off the wall and shout offensive and obscene language at the choir girls. I know I can be quite scary and authoritative if I have to, but I can't say they were very impressed. Between the two of us Mrs Y and I managed to persuade them to leave, but not before they'd caused a lot of damage and a real fright with the girls of the choir.
Now, I'm pretty sure not one of these boys was older than ten. I'd say they were closer to eight or nine years old.
Which means that, technically, they would be allowed to go into that playground.
So where's the sense in that? What's age got to do with it in the first place?
IF, and I say if there has to be a sign, couldn't it say something about behaviour and respect for other people / children and the equipment?

I'm sure people who know me have heard me sing this song before, but I'm convinced that our (adult) expectations determine a large part of the behaviour of young people. I'm aware of the fact that children within the home ed community often have a more positive picture projected onto them. And I'm also aware of the fact that the school system makes it more difficult for children to be different to what they're expected to be. But signs like this certainly don't help bring about a change in attitude. They make teenagers feel excluded. They send out this message that when you're past the age of twelve you do not play and have fun anymore. Instead, you're expected to display bad and destructive behaviour, which makes you a potential danger to younger children.
Okay, end of rant. I'm preaching to the converted here.

I might set up a good old English picket line outside that playground with over twelves carrying signs: "We want to play, too!" or "I am nice, trust me!" (although then 'they' might think these teenagers are juvenile paedophiles...) or "Socializing doesn't stop at twelve" or...

The horrible thing is that Myrna - my law abiding daughter - feels that if she goes to that playground with her over twelve friends, she is breaking the law. And that she can't go anymore once she's thirteen. We've talked about it, but she's still hesitant. She's convinced she'll get into trouble when the park wardens see her. So, I'm back to taking my child to the playground. To make sure that she's safe. And happy.
What a strange world we live in.

Pictorial catch-up

2008-04-07T17:55:00.018+01:00

Myrna (and finally, for the seventh picture, she didn't press her lips together)

Owen, in his comfort zone and on WOW

Me (no, honest, I'm not gardening! Just pretending!)

Ken, (my dear, dear husband ;)

Our open plan living room, seen from back to front (Bobby dog in basket)

Same living room, now from front to back (with new book shelves!)

Stairs, door to Harry Potter room (left) and communal computer corner (right)

Da whole house, with faithful transport in the back

The kitchen (and new book shelves again!)

Our beautiful front door with beautiful Icelandic dog Lagsi

That's enough for one day, I would think.

Easter Asha

2008-04-06T22:03:00.008+01:00

Finally figured out how to upload pics onto my laptop and now trying out if I still know how to get them onto a blog.

While others - dear blogfriends - are miles ahead of me and creating marvelous blog hubs with equally marvelous art work I am happy as Larry if I can make this work...

But if I do get this to work I can inundate you with piccies of everything that's dear to me! Ahh, isn't our Lady Asha just the loveliest Easter Pussy?

Let's see if I can import the fabulous piece of work the boys did the other day. It's made of so called Kapla, a Dutch (of course!) invention. All similar little bits of wood, planks, where height : width : length = 1 : 3 : 5. They first built this:

then pushed it over - as boys do - and built a copy of London Bridge! Of which I only have a picture on my mobile telephone and I haven't yet figured out how to get them onto here. But even though the building was amazing, the more amazing thing was that, instead of demolishing it with a big bang - as with the previous construction - they took it down one Kapla by one Kapla, trying to figure out which ones could be removed without collapsing it! At a certain moment there were five of us sitting around, taking turns, discussing which plank should be taken out. Great fun! And one of these moments that would tick a lot of the boxes on the educational list.
Okay then, just for the heck of it, a few: maths, engineering, architecture, history, social interaction and working together, a lot of drama and of course tidying up afterwards. Ah, tidying up is not one of the boxes? Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Right then, get ready for more piccies in the near future. I'm learning and liking this!

Ostara and new foundations

2008-03-24T22:07:00.004Z

Thank you so much to everybody out there who's supported me with their thoughts, prayers and good wishes while I was in hospital. At times I literally felt it and it worked like magic, because it all went very well and I'm on the mend.
Will have to take things easy, can't drive for at least two or three weeks, no hoovering, no digging in the garden, no lifting heavy things, and all that. But I'm sure I'll manage that without too much trouble.

If ever I had a lesson in letting go and trusting the process I had it in the past week. On the day I was admitted my sister in Holland was taken to hospital, too. Not planned.
And then the next day, when I came out of surgery, Ken told me that apparently my mother had had some sort of a heart attack and was in hospital, in the special care unit.
Now, in any other circumstances I would have been on the first plane out. But that was just no option. At all.

All I could do was lie there and practise radical acceptance.
In an attempt to do so I dipped deep into the healing energy that was being sent to me by so many friends, and I dipped deep into my own strength. And I cried and cried for hours. The nursing staff was so good about it. I explained briefly what I was trying to deal with and that I would really like them to draw the curtains around me and just leave me in my own 'private bubble', as Owen calls it. And they did.
I wish I could say I've got it all sussed now and that everything's under control, but I would be lying. Well, who wants to be in control, anyway.
I suppose lying in a hospital bed with needles and tubes in your body makes it kind of easy to accept you really can't go anywhere. That wasn't the hardest part.
No, there were other issues that, strangely enough (?) I'd been trying to get a grip on in the weeks before I went in, that were a lot tougher. Issues like what happens with me when my Mum takes ill or feels bad, the mechanisms I then fall into, the denial of my own needs and cravings. Issues about unconditional and conditional love. The different feelings I had about my sister and my Mum. The guilt trip I go on about these feelings... etcetera etcetera.

I was so happy to come home and to be able to speak on the phone with both my sister and my Mum. It was good to know that one of my other sisters (I have three) is looking after my Mum. She knows all the medical stuff, she professionally deals with doctors every day and she'll make sure my Mum gets everything she needs. It gives me space to let go of that terribly twisted feeling of responsibility, which in actual fact has more to do with guilt and therefore creates anger...
My sister came out of hospital yesterday. Talking to her, heart to heart, soul to soul, even for a few minutes the first time, I immediately felt the flow of unconditional love and I also felt it was okay, okay to need each other, okay to be connected. Because the way we are connected we exchange, we share, but we do not absorb each other. I do not need to feel responsible for her in any other way than to give her who and what I truly am.
And I am - in every sense of the word - her Sister.

I am really tired now. The days seem to last twice as long as normally, I have lost my sense of time and even place every now and then. I have tried to help cook a special meal today, but I couldn't stay on my feet for very long.
I did feel a bit sorry for not having done anything about Ostara this year. But I suppose this year I am celebrating Ostara by living it. The time for new beginnings, rebirth and balance.
This year at Ostara I've had the foundations under my motherhood strengthened.
Under a practically full moon.
Slowly but surely the picture is getting clearer, the bits of the jigsaw are falling into place.

This all probably looks like the ramblings of a recovering mind, making not much sense. And I'll stop writing, because the thoughts that are now entering my head haven't found words yet. And certainly not in English ;). But my body is a lot more relaxed now than when I started writing this post.
I'm going to close my eyes and ponder about Ostara and the time of radical changes it brings along.

Headed for Hospital

2008-03-16T09:53:00.006Z

I will be going into hospital on Tuesday.
The blood tests came back okay, no reason to postpone the operation.
So it's going ahead as planned.
I asked the consultant - a very nice and straightforward Indian lady - to help me find the correct English words to explain to people what kind of operation I was having, without having to go into too much gruesome details and she said: "Just say you're going to have some major pelvic floor repair done and they won't ask any further questions."
So, now you know. :)

I'll be in for at least two, maybe three or four days, depending on how the operation goes and obviously how quickly I recover.
Ken's bought me a portable DVD-player and we're now filling a folder with films I've been wanting to watch for ages, and my favourite music CD's. Considering that and the books that are piling up to go in my suitcase I may have to ask them to keep me in a bit longer.
Just kidding!!

I find that I'm preparing as if I'm going on holiday and leaving Ken and the kids at home. And having similar ambiguous feelings about it.
I'm trying not to make too many lists and instructions, but the control freak in me is having a hard time. Also, I'm not wanting to upset or worry anybody, and after all it's quite a routine operation and all that, but it IS an operation and I am going to have full anaesthesia. So control freak me is having a hard time not to say farewell to the children, just in case... Or is that the drama me?
When I mention even the slightest of this kind of worries to Ken his eyes just go blank in the same way they did when I was giving birth. He just shuts himself off and I know that anything I say will not be remembered or used.

Which is good, probably. Because it leaves me with no alternative than to trust and surrender. From the moment she walked into the consultation room I've had a very positive feeling about this consultant. I could immediately relate to her and within a few minutes we were joking and at the same time discussing in depth the options I had. I explained in a few words why I didn't want a hysterectomy. Unlike my GP she didn't start summing up all the pro's, but she nodded and said: "I see you've done a lot of thinking and researching. Are you satisfied you know enough? Have you any questions left?"
She definitely gave me the feeling that I'm in charge of what's happening with me, with my body.

I knew I'd go on a waiting list and it would be end of April before I could go in. And then I got this phone call a few weeks ago. The hospital, offering me a place in a private hospital in Lancaster, they'd pay for it, and I'd be guaranteed a place in the first half of March!
Tempting?
Not for me. Because it would mean a different consultant and long journeys.
So to their apparent amazement I declined.

Only two weeks later I got a call that I was expected to go in on March 18. Well, yes, okay, that's not the first half of March...
I'm thanking all the people that have taken up the offer to go private, because it has obviously shortened the waiting list!

Anyway, think of me please, while I'm in there. And think of my poor family who'll have to manage without me :)).

Edit: I just read this post again and realised that I've repeated some of the things I said in the previous post. Must be stress showing, after all. At least you can't say I didn't tell you. I'll shut up now, nothing coherent is going to come out anymore.

Silly Cow

2008-03-13T16:20:00.005Z

That's me.
I'm forever nagging my children about listening to what their body tells them, exercise, fresh air, healthy mind in healthy body, and all those pearls of wisdom, but what do I do to lead by example? Zilch. Nothing. Well, very little, anyway.
Ever since we moved here I've hardly been out and about. Even though there's this lovely path by the river where the dogs can run off the lead, I hardly ever take them there. Ken does practically all the dog walking at the moment. My excuse is that I'm working hard and need to get my translation and stories done, but it's a lame excuse.
For a while now I've been saying to Ken how I really need to get fit, because I'm beginning to get circulation problems, I'm short of breath even after a short walk to the shops, and there's all sorts of other signs, that - would I see them in one of my clan - would get me on my soapbox about healthy living.

So, now I'm getting what I deserve.
Coz that's how things work.
I'm waiting for this operation to have some 'major pelvic floor repairs' done. First it was going to take place end of April, but they've brought it forward to March 18, which I was quite pleased about.
Last Tuesday I had to go in for a pre-operative assessment and it turned out that I had glucose in my urine and then when they did the diabetes test, that showed a too high BM. So then I had to go back the next day for a full fasting test.
Groan.
Now I'm waiting for the results of that to come back. If I do have a glucose intolerance or a form of diabetes, the operation will be postponed.
Groan.
Not that I was looking forward to the operation, but I was looking forward to get it over and done with, iyswim.

Now I know for a fact that if I'd done what my body had told me and got fit when I felt I should, I wouldn't have had the high glucose. And I would've just gone in next Tuesday, without a problem.

I'm just so utterly annoyed with myself and can't think of anyone else to blame but me. Me me me. Is this enough of a meme, EF?

As Myrna and Owen are in the middle of learning everything about the digestive system and blood circulation, and were only last week discussing the workings of insuline with their tutor, there is no escaping the facts. When Mr R came this morning they - obviously - wanted to go over it again, and I got everything I've said to them in the past about healthy living and the need of exercising thrown back at me...
Groan.

Now every member of this family is eager to help me get fit as soon as possible. So, where I used to sneak upstairs and do some work while they went out for a walk or whatever, I don't get the chance to do that anymore. There's no more escaping my own good council.
"Exercise and fresh air keep us healthy and wise."
Groan.

I hope somebody is feeling sorry for me, coz I get no sympathy here...

Choosing in the Moment

2008-02-16T22:56:00.002Z

Life is all about making choices.
That's easily said.
But how do you make them?
And as a parent, in how far can you make choices for your children?
I had a very important talk with my no. 1 birth daughter the other day. In the car. Where we usually have our important talks. When there's nobody and nothing to distract us from each other. No getting away. And we don't have to look at each other.

She has always been unhappy with our decision to move to England. She was thirteen when we moved. It was a major uproot for all of us, but at the age of thirteen - and especially in her case - it was terrible.
She didn't like the house we moved to. She didn't want to participate in anything we did. We tried and tried - maybe too hard - to cheer her up, but she was mainly unhappy.
Although I knew, both in my heart and in my mind, that we'd made the right choice, for her too, I still felt if not guilty then responsible for her unhappiness. And I did my best to accommodate her, to acknowledge her, to listen to her and to support her.
After about two years we reached an all time low. She was blaming us for 'having no life', for missing her friends in Holland, for being stuck in the 'back of beyond'. She did some really dire things to express her feelings - and hurt others in the process - and I felt extremely inadequate and powerless.
It came to a point where, when a very dear friend in Holland magnanimously offered AL could come and stay with her for a while, we accepted. AL was over the moon, happy to get away, happy to go to Holland. She could go to the private school that M had just set up. A school for child-led learning. I cried many, many tears about her leaving like that, it felt as if my heart was torn out of my body. But I let her go. Fifteen, she was. When I returned home after taking her to Holland it felt totally appropriate that the biggest storm ever was raging over the North West and Carlisle was flooded.

After about six months she came back to England. It wasn't entirely her own choice - again - but for many, many reasons it was what needed to happen at that particular time.
She didn't want to stay at home fulltime anymore, and she chose to go to college and do First and National Diploma Horse Care and Horse Management. Something she'd always wanted to do. College life was wild and wonderful. Within no time she had loads of friends and a very busy social life. The first year of the course was relatively easy and when she turned sixteen she wanted to move to campus. But then the whole learning experience started to get more complicated, more difficult. And her response to every challenge would be to say she wanted to go back to Holland. And she did go, she spent most of her holidays there.
After her second year she decided she wouldn't do the third year anymore. She wanted to go back to Holland, find a job and a nice place to live and stay there. Her clan-sister had said she could stay with her for a few months, until September, to start herself up from there. This time it was different to let her go. Still, I did set a unilateral limit. If she wouldn't have a steady income and her own place to live come September, she'd have to come back to England, back to us.

And then we heard we'd have to leave the Vicarage. So when AL left for Holland she had no idea of what she'd be coming back to, if she'd come back in September. Weird. Very unstable. She had a great summer in Holland, a lot of partying and socializing and at one moment she held three jobs at the same time. But it didn't last and she didn't find an affordable place to live. So in September she came back to England. Again. Determined to be back in Holland for her 18th birthday and celebrate it over there.
But then she found a job, some really nice friends, and she found herself liking living in our new house in town and she was thrilled when she was given the chance to live in the temporary house when we moved to where we are now (just over the road). After her fabulous birthday party she confessed to me that before she'd found it really hard to make friends in England, because she was afraid of having to say goodbye to them when going back to Holland. Goodbyes are just so hard, especially when you feel you have no choice in the matter...
Her other insight was that she'd come to idolize Holland, her Dutch friends and the Dutch way of life.

A few weeks later she was going through some hard times at work and generally feeling tired and down. So that one morning when I took her into work she started about how she still wasn't sure where she wanted to live and did I realise how hard we'd made life for her by moving to England, how much she missed her friends in Holland... The whole old song was sang. First I was inclined to do my usual "I understand how hard it must have been for you" and all that. But then I somehow got this urge to stop treating her like the eternal victim in this matter. I wasn't doing her any favours there and I just know that in essence she is one very strong person.
So I took a deep breath and confronted the problem. What I said boiled down to this:

There is no way of telling what would have happened if we'd have stayed in Holland.
Maybe, if we'd stayed in Holland you'd now be on drugs, like a few of the friends you used to hang out with then. Or maybe not, maybe you'd be a prize winning show jumper by now.
Maybe, we'd have lost the next court case for exemption, because of a new judge. Or maybe the laws on education would have changed and home ed was legal now.
Maybe, your Dad's burn out would have turned into more serious health problems or we would have gotten a divorce. Or maybe he'd extended his business and made loads of money and maybe I'd written a bestseller.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The point is, you never know what would have happened if we'd made a different choice.
Fact is, we did choose to move away from Holland, to live in England. Because at that particular moment it was the best choice for us.
We can't undo that choice, we can't undo the past.
But with every new day we can make new choices.
You have the choice to remain bitter about the move to England and keep blaming everything that goes wrong on us, or to take responsibility for your own personal feelings and situation and make sure you get the most out of your life, for yourself.

We talked about how to choose, how to feel which choice would go best with your flow in life. And how the most difficult thing about choosing is that if you choose to go down one route, it often means you can't go down another one. We talked about what real friendship means and how much work it takes to keep a friendship going when you're in different countries. And we talked about how pain and sorrow are inescapable, and how important it was to accept and try and live through it.
It was a very special drive down to work. And then we arrived. With the typical flexibility of an eighteen year old she checked her make-up in the mirror, gave me a quick kiss and hopped out the car. "Don't forget to pick me up tonight at seven! Oh, and can L and I have something to eat at ours before we go into town? And do you think Daddy will drive us there?"

She'll be fine.

On Love

2008-02-14T23:46:00.002Z

From: The Dawn Horse Treatment, by Adi Da

"Love does not fail for you when you are rejected or betrayed or apparently not loved.
Love fails for you when you reject, betray, and do not love. Therefore, if you listen to me, and also if you hear me, and also if you see me, do not stand off from relationship. Be vulnerable. Be wounded when necessary, and endure that wound or hurt. Do not punish the other in love. Communicate to one another, even discipline one another, but do no dissociate from one another or fail to grant one another the knowledge of love. Realize that each one wants to love and to be loved by the other in love. Therefore, love. Do this rather than make any effort to get rid of the feeling of being rejected. To feel rejected is to feel the hurt of not being loved. Allow that hurt, but do not let it become the feeling of lovelessness. Be vulnerable and thus not insulted. If you are merely hurt, you will still know the necessity (or the heart's requirement) of love, and you will still know the necessity (or the heart's requirement) to love."

Full House

2008-01-22T00:17:00.000Z

Since the moment we moved into this house it has been full with people.
Of course my Mum, my clan-children and their partners came over to stay, but apart from them there have been guests practically every night.
I can remember thinking, after we first had a look inside this house, ah well, it's not as if we still have loads and loads of people staying over all the time, like in the 'old times'. We did get ourselves a caravan, just in case we had people coming over in summer. And we thought we'd manage with just the three bedrooms, because AL had made it quite clear that she definitely didn't want to move back in with us.
And here we are, not even two months after moving in. Not only have both Owen and Myrna had friends sleeping over constantly, but AL has decided she doesn't want to find a place of her own yet, so she is moving back in with us when the contract on the temporary house runs out.
Which is fine, of course. Well, in a way. I am very much aware of how her present lifestyle has kind of moved away from our family way of living. So it'll take a bit of adapting on both sides. But mostly on hers, I'm afraid.
I can vividly remember coming back to live in the parental home after having moved out when I was sixteen (and went to live in Spain). It wasn't easy and it must have been hell on my parents, because I wasn't trying to make it easy either. I guess it's pay back time, then ;).
The other thing is that our family seems to have expanded in a more or less organic way. It happens in this household, every now and then. Not only has a third cat - a lovely big ginger named Mr. Mushu - joined our ranks, but there's this young boy, 12 years of age, - let's call him Remi - who has crossed our path and conquered a place in our hearts and home. His is a bit of a complicated story, but let's just say that he was very much in need of some mothering energy and a homely environment, and we have an abundance of that. So he came here with his little rucksack a couple of weeks ago and now lives in the conservatory. Every once in a while he goes back home for one or two nights, but then he phones to ask if he can come back to us.
The challenge is that we'd planned to put AL up in the conservatory. She panicked slightly when she found Remi had taken that space. But I reassured her that there would be a place for both of them. How, I don't know yet. As usual, I'm relying on CSC for the right solution at the right time and meanwhile I'm doing some serious thinking.
Weird, isn't it, that the moment we think it's not a problem to live in a smaller house because surely we're past the stage where we need a huge house with many rooms, these things happen. I wonder what lesson is in it. It's obviously got to do with choice. But then, everything in life is about choosing.
The point is that I am truly truly enjoying this Full House here. I love to be able to give Remi a feeling of being appreciated, wanted, loved and I also love the fact that my children's teenager friends feel at home here. Including the not so teenager anymore friends of AL.
A few years ago one of my clan-children nicknamed me MOM, which is an abbreviation for Mother Of Many. I consider it an honorary title and am very, very proud of it. And in spite of all the mess and noise, in spite of regularly cooking for eight to twelve people, in spite of not being able to find the time - let alone the space - to do my work, in spite of feeling very old and tired at the end of one of those hectic days, in spite of all that I still feel so incredibly happy being a MOM.
I suppose it just suits me down to the ground.

Onwards... forwards...

2008-01-02T09:31:00.000Z

We didn't do Christmas or New Year cards this year. Not only the money, but also the time and energy I usually spend on cards went to the most important charity I can think of: my home and my family.
Nevertheless it feels a bit strange not having sent good wishes to friends and family, so Myrna and I are busy thinking up a worthwhile alternative. One we can work on without the pressure of the annual madness that seems to surround Christmas and New Year.
The fact that we've all been ill made for a reasonably quiet and low key Midwinter Time. For myself, this time is all about celebrating the birth of Light and respecting the stillness in Nature. I like to surround myself with candles and to stay at home as much as possible.
There was a time when the children were happy just staying at home, playing games, lighting a fire and candles, and those kind of things. But nowadays they want a bit more action, more socializing.
Living on her own, AL just makes her own plans nowadays. She was out most nights and only joined us for diner on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve.
Owen is happy staying at home, as long as he can watch some films and set off his fireworks at the New Year.
Myrna was extremely bored this year. We did some games with her and we watched a film together - Vin Diesel in The Pacifier, wow! - but it just wasn't enough for her. Next year we'll have to organise something she really enjoys.

My clan-daughter came over from Holland with her new boyfriend. They arrived the day after Christmas and left on Monday morning to spend New Year's Eve in London. It was absolutely lovely to see them and we had a great time. The boyfriend is really, really nice and it was so good to see her happy.
Although there is no blood relationship, it is amazing to see how much she and my birth-daughters look alike. And it's even more amazing how much she and Myrna are alike, despite the 18 year difference in age. Not only in looks, but in every other way, too. They are both perfectionists, outgoing, gregarious, stubborn, self-confident, etcetera. But they're even alike in their way of walking and in little gestures. For instance, both of them when they're reading and have to stop, they put a bookmark in (never fold a page!), close the book and hold it up in front of them to see how far in the book they are. They even have similar handwritings.

On Friday another one of my clan-children arrives from Holland, with his girlfriend. To have my clan-children with me in this holiday time means more than all the nice food and fireworks in the whole world. Even though they're all grown up and lead their own lives, leaving them 'behind' in Holland was one of the hardest things about moving countries. Of course we keep in touch, through MSN, email and telephone. But there is no replacing the physical contact, the hugs, the looking each other in the eyes and being able to communicate without the words. As an observer I always get just as much - or with some of them even more! - information out of watching my children as I do from talking with them.

My clan-daughter has been with her new boyfriend for a while now and she'd told me lots about him. I'd seen pictures of him and even of his work (he's an artist). So I had quite a bit of information. But now that I've seen him and I've seen them together, now that I've actually felt their energy together, I feel my impression is more accurate, more complete.
She comes to England as often as she can, and obviously when I go to Holland I go and see her. Up to now, every goodbye has been really difficult for me. I was always left with this heart tearing feeling for a few days. But this time it was different. I still cried after she'd left, because I'm going to miss her. And I know that she is going to miss us. But to know that now she's got someone she's really happy with and who loves and respects her for who she is, that makes a huge difference.

There was a lot of synchronicity in her search for a new relationship and our search for a new home. The process we went through, the lessons we've learned. The choices we made, the pains we suffered, the gratitude we felt.
I share that very special feeling of interconnectedness with her, with my sister and with my best friends. It makes distances disappear and time irrelevant.
It makes life magical.

Just goes to show...

2007-12-23T19:34:00.000Z

I have to humbly withdraw my words about being strong and healthy, and I will be even more careful what I wish for from now on...
I went to bed after writing the previous post and was up again three hours later, sick as a parrot. A nasty stomach bug has caught up with me and I'm completely empty now, with pain in muscles I'd forgotten I had.
But truth be told, I've pulled out all the plugs today, stayed in bed and everyone has been really nice and caring to me.
Ken's just brought me my laptop, so I'm lying in bed with a purring cat and a laptop with internet, typing with one finger and counting my blessings, yet again. Because I dread to think what it would've been like if I'd been this sick in the Vicarage. It was bad enough with my body emptying itself uncontrolably from every possible opening, but at least I now had my own - warm! - bathroom with toilet and functioning shower two steps away from my bed!
Eventhough the convulsions are a lot less and manageable, I might just stay in bed for one more day... it's very tempting...

Back online, at last

2007-12-22T17:29:00.001Z

We're back online!

A mere 28 days after the day they promised us our broadband would be up and running, the little light finally came on. Incredible. I don't think I'd get away with letting them wait the same amount of time for their money. But we don't intend to let them get away with it just like that. Ken is already busy compiling a list of all the time and costs we've had to make to attach to the official complaint and already they've credited the moving costs.

I've missed the internet and I haven't. I suppose it wasn't all that bad to be without for a while. I did have a dial up connection, so that at least I could pick up my emails and read my favourite blogs. That made a big difference, of course :).

The time and energy consuming act of moving house ensured that I didn't get withdrawal symptoms and life in general left me little opportunity to feel anything resembling boredom.

The terrible flu hit our household big time. Ken was most affected by it, but everybody has been down for a couple of days. Except me. Somehow I managed to keep going. I felt rough and horrible at times and most of all I felt sorry for myself. In an ambiguous kind of way. On one hand it's wonderful to know that I'm strong and healthy enough to keep going when no-one else can, on the other hand I can't help wanting to be the one who's being looked after, cared for, mollycoddled... Just to be able to pull out the plugs, to give in to illness, not to be responsible...
Mind, I should have been more careful what I wished for, because I'll be getting some lying down and doing nothing time when I'll have to go into hospital for some repair work in the pelvic area (doesn't that sound ominous?), probably somewhere around March.

It was slightly nerve-racking when Myrna lost her voice and it still wasn't back the week before she was due to sing solo in the Lanercost Christmas Concert. My Mum was coming over from Holland, especially for that occasion, the programme was all set and printed, and it was quite a major thing, really. I suppose her voice was more or less back at the dress rehearsal, but then the pressure got to her and she went all flat and squeaky. And being the perfectionist she is, she beat herself up about it and became even more anxious. At that moment I started to lose my usual cool. I felt I had to do something, but I just didn't know what. Should I encourage her or just cancel the whole thing? Should I make her practice even more? Should I advice her not to sing at all until the big day? I just didn't know.
Obviously, my unrest unsettled Myrna even further and I knew I had to detach and leave supporting and advising Myrna to her singing teacher, Mrs Y. I've probably sang her praise before on this blog, because I think she is another one of those Great Teachers. She did her magic with Myrna so that her confidence was back in time for the concert, allowing her to shine like a star and allowing me to be a proud Mum, nothing less, nothing more.

Another major event was AL's 18th Birthday Party.
The one she'd intended to have in Holland. But this time she's allowed herself to change her mind and to more or less go with the flow. I'm sure she still misses Holland a lot and she's still not one hundred percent sure that she wants to stay in this country, but having seen her on this fabulous Birthday Party - I was only allowed in for a very short time - I'm also sure that she's finally making space for the idea that staying here isn't all bad. It was absolutely wonderful to see her surrounded by so many nice friends and I could see she genuinely enjoyed it.
In spite of illness and everything we managed to move out of the temporary house just in time so that she could have her party there and people could stay over in 'her' house.

Now we're more or less settled into our new home. And not a day has gone by without me waking up in the morning and feeling so utterly grateful for finding this house. That feeling continues throughout the day and I'm afraid I really bore people with telling them over and again how happy I am, how happy we are to live here. I am still amazed at how far away this house is from everything I'd ever imagined as our new home. It's a constant reminder of how incredibly important it is to have Faith and to trust the Process.

This year has been amazing. Intense. Crazy. Unimaginable. Magical. Horrible and terrible at times. Emotional. Revealing. Full, very full. It has been a year of immense growth and increasing awareness of the greatness of All that Is.
I had my fiftiest birthday this year.
We didn't celebrate it as such, because it was the day Ken's father was cremated.
But in spite of the fact that I'm still - and probably will remain for a while - extremely tired, life is very much a celebration and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

In transition again

2007-11-29T23:23:00.000Z

Just a very brief post to let you know there's lots to tell, but courtesy of BT and Sky we don't have broadband at the moment and dial up costs an arm and a leg, so we've decided only to go onto the internet in dire emergencies. Like this one. To let you know I'll not be posting for a week, or maybe - probably - two weeks. If it takes any longer I - or a member of my family - might make the news because of action undertaken against Sky and or BT.
Hopefully broadband is reconnected before it comes to that.

The new man in my life

2007-11-19T00:39:00.000Z

I suppose telling people on the FOC list was the first step towards coming out with this not very well hidden secret of mine. People around me have been wondering what's kept me going in the past couple of months and I've been attracting comments about this glow in my eyes, the blush on my cheeks and the happiness that I'm apparently radiating.
So here it is.
Yes, there's a new source of inspiration, a new man in my life. I thought it was impossible for anything or anybody to penetrate the mist of tiredness and lacklustreness (is that not a word, dear spell checker??) around me, but this hot blooded macho Mexican managed to go right through it and hit me in the core of my being. He speaks the words of truth that I've been yearning to hear for such a long time, he is passionate and he is so in touch with nature. He inspires me to an entirely natural approach of problems and trauma's and he teaches me a whole new way of being. Our relationship has empowered me and given a new shine to my life.
I adore him.
Best of all, our relationship is one hundred percent virtual. Very convenient for me. I can just about manage to watch him on telly, visit his website and read his inspirational writings. More physical input would spoil it all, assuming I could muster the energy in the first place. It's ideal the way it is.
His name reflects the powerful leader that he is.
Cesar.
Hail Cesar.
I'm at your feet.

Fortunately, the children have taken to him from the very first moment they laid eyes on him. And Ken cannot but agree that Cesar is the missing link in my life. And he cannot but like the guy, too. I think the family members, or to use Cesar's terminology, the pack members benefitting most from the new man in my life are my dogs. Within the space of one single week we (as a family) have managed to take on the role of leaders and they have become the followers they need to be. They are so much more balanced, there is no more rivalry between them, we are not constantly trying to work out which one of them is the alpha dog, because that's no longer the question. We're in charge. We're the pack leaders. And they are very happy and willing followers.

By watching his dvd's and programme (National Geographic Channel or Sky3) practically every day, and by reading his books, he has become an integral part of our natural curriculum. He teaches us about behaviour and psychology in dogs, but also in humans. We learn how important it is to live in the present, to be calm and assertive, and to be respectful and non-judgmental, all at the same time.
To me, Cesar is another one of these very special teachers.
In my opinion he is what Soul in Education is all about.

Mastering maths and science

2007-11-11T23:40:00.000Z

I thought this might be a good moment to update you on our home ed activities. I just typed that down to see what it looks like and what it feels like to give it that name. Because it certainly feels strange to think about it as such. I don't consider anything we do not to be a home ed activity, really. For a while I tried to uphold the opinion that watching television and playing games on the computer weren't real activities, let alone educational ones. My children have taught me how wrong I was about that. For weeks at an end both Myrna and Owen took the trouble to list everything they'd learned from these 'square activities' and I must admit, I was impressed.
I wasn't the only one impressed. Since a few weeks we have a real and proper tutor coming to our house, Mr R. He's a retired maths and science teacher and he comes every other Thursday morning to do these subjects with Myrna and Owen. They'd both expressed a desire to 'do more maths and science' and Myrna even wants to work towards a GCSE. I've blogged before about this growing interest and about me feeling inadequate to offer them sufficient challenges and support.
I asked a friend of mine, who's a teacher at one of the colleges in this area, whether she knew somebody with 'soul for science' and she introduced me to Mr R.
He's everything you'd want a teacher to be, most of all flexible and able to go with the questions of the children, without losing his own focus. He has a true love for anything to do with science, biology being his favourite subject. Which resonates one hundred percent with my two, especially Myrna.
The first time he came they did maths, because he wanted to get an idea where they were, how much they knew, so that he could work out what to offer them.
I sat in, of course. Don't want to miss a chance to get a little wiser myself. And I was so amazed to see how little time it took them to convert their practical knowledge into sums. The other good thing about Mr R is that he has a sense of humour that matches that of Owen. When he asked: "If you divide a pizza up into eight equal parts, what do you call one of those parts?" Owen replied: "Too small", Mr R couldn't stop laughing. And to "What do you get when you want to give eight men and their wives an equal part of the pizza?" Owen knew the answer too: "Sixteen hungry people."
I could see these answers coming from a mile away, but Mr R obviously heard them for the first time...
Last week they did biology. Mr R had brought a microscope that was at least a hundred years old and they had to assemble it. Meanwhile he was asking questions about all the individual parts, and to his and my amazement they knew literally everything. What the parts were called, how lenses were made, why you needed light, and much more complicated stuff. Then they went into detail about cells and DNA and that kind of complicated matters, of which I must admit I know very little. So whatever they know, they certainly haven't learned it from me.
Mr R was obviously impressed and asked how they knew so much. Myrna just shrugged and said: "Well, we go to museums, we watch documentaries and films on television and if we want to know more we just look it up on the internet or in a book."
The last half hour of each session Mr R spends with me, to explain the things where the kids and he went too fast for me :) and to give me some guidance so I can help the kids with their homework (hahaha).
Even though I am one hundred percent convinced that what we do is the best for us, for our children, I secretly felt very proud when Mr R said he hadn't expected so much knowledge with Myrna and Owen (because I'd told him we hadn't done any formal curriculum education) and that he really enjoyed their open and inquisitive minds. He also said that after the first session he realised that he needed to prepare these 'lessons' in a different way, because he'd done more in one session than he would have done in three weeks in school.
It's great to see the enthusiasm in the children, too. They are genuinely looking forward to their sessions with Mr R and have asked if we could do them on a weekly instead of a fortnightly basis. I'm afraid that for now it's just not feasible financially, but maybe once the house move (and the double rent) is behind us it could be an option.
Mr R must be genuine about enjoying it, because he's offered to lower his hourly rate if we want to go to weekly sessions. When they were doing maths he spent quite a bit of time trying to understand how Myrna did her calculations (I think they were multiplying fractions). She has her very special own way of doing these things and apparently Ken and I aren't the only ones finding it difficult to follow. But Mr R persisted and let her explain again and again, until he understood. Now he's telling everyone about the extraordinary way she's taught herself to do these sums. It's a prime example of lateral thinking, according to him.
It's wonderful to see how they inspire each other, how teaching can also be learning and vice versa.
In preparation of next Thursday the kids have been gathering everything they could find about the human skeleton. They even had to sit and watch one of these pathology programmes, bless them... The sacrifices one has to make in order to obtain proper education...

Moving forward

2007-11-10T00:20:00.000Z

Today we've signed the tenancy agreement on the new house. Which from now on I'm going to call our house. And even though the original idea was to move in on the 1st of December, we've decided to start moving in as soon as possible. As in now. Well, tomorrow.
I suppose in the back of my mind I was somehow still expecting something to go wrong. Stupid, I know. Not very positive thinking and all that. But that's just how it was. I found it very difficult to believe my luck. There's always this little voice in me that keeps wondering out loud why on earth I think I am deserving of this all. So I was holding back. Bracing myself.
And then we couldn't use the shower in this temporary house for more than a week because there was a leakage. So we phoned our new landlord to ask if it was okay to use the shower in that house, and he said: "Sure, it's your house now, you're free to do what you want." As he'd said before, when he gave us the key and told us he wouldn't start charging rent until the 1st of December because we couldn't get out of the six months contract for this house.
Ah, the Great Distributor at CSC is really showing me in all kinds of ways that the house is ours, in every sense of the word. And that we'll be alright. Looked after. I just have to repeat that to myself. And writing it down helps, too.

So onwards we go! Today I've polished the laminate floor and I've cleaned all the windows. Ken and Owen have moved the freezer out of storage into the garage and have made a start with putting cupboards and storage shelves in place in the (double!) garage. Myrna's new bed is up in her new room. It's one of these with bookshelves and allsorts attached to it, and she's already put all her books in it. It's becoming more and more our house. Every time I walk in there it feels as if the house breathes "welcome". I want to be in there by the end of next week.

I have found a good use for this temporary house while we still have to pay the rent on it. It's our eighteen's birthday present to Anna Lynn that she can stay and live in it until the end of the tenancy. She is absolutely over the moon with it and can't wait for us to move out. It's one of those presents that makes both giver and receiver happy, because for us it means she gets to stay close to us for a bit longer. We're delighted that it looks like she's staying in England for a while. That'll be good for all of us. She's even said that if she hasn't found a place of her own by March next year, she'll want to move into the caravan that we've now got parked next to our house. Lucky us!

The other good thing that needs mentioning is that Ken has made it through to the next round in applying for a really nice IT job and I'm keeping everything crossed that he gets it. That would be so good! He would be bringing in the money then and I could concentrate on the children, the household and I could still write if I want to (and I do so want to!). But there wouldn't be this constant pressure of deadlines on one side and children asking presence and guidance on the other side.
Also, I think this house is just a bit too small for two adults, two teenagers, two dogs and two cats. Especially if they're all members of this here family, all needing and claiming their own substantial space.

But I have a really good feeling about this job for Ken, and - more importantly - so does he. Plus I have genuine faith in the Great Distributor, who I'm sure will send us all the necessary bits of the jigsaw. All we need to do is gracefully receive and put them together.

Dog tired

2007-10-30T13:50:00.000Z

Ken, Owen and Myrna have just left for badminton and some socialising.
AL is at work.
The dogs and cats have curled up as close to me as possible and are peacefully snoring away.
There's a fresh cup of Rooibos tea on one side of me, a bit of dark chocolate on the other.
I've got a nice silky scarf around my neck and my Uggy boots on my feet.
Apart from the snoring of the animals, all I can hear is the humming and clicking of my laptop.
No music, no talking, no shouting, no laughing, no nothing.
It's hardly ever quiet in this house, but now it is.
Finally, time to hear my own thoughs, time for reflection.
Pure Bliss.

I was absolutely stressed out before and that kind of energy just seems to bounce around the house and hit everybody. At one point Ken and Myrna were screaming at each other, the dogs were barking and the cats were running around like crazy.
It's moments like that when I feel totally inadequate. How did I ever think it would be possible to home educate my children, to be together with my dh 24/7 and to be able to produce some work, all at the same time. I'm totally failing to do any of those three things successfully, let alone happily.

It's not helped by the fact I haven't had a chance to recover from my tiredness, because I haven't had a proper night sleep since we moved in here on the 1st of September. I haven't been able to figure out why, but every night without fail the dogs start barking like mad, always at a different time. And because I don't want them to wake anybody up, especially not neighbours, I ended up sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Because they then don't bark at all, or if they do I can catch and correct them at the first whimper, and because I nearly fell down the stairs one night because I was so tired, I actually didn't even go up to my/our own bed anymore. I did get a few nights good sleep that way, and so did the dogs. But hey, I didn't marry the dogs and I miss my memory foam mattrass and my hubby (is that the right order?).
If my brain would be functioning normally I'd be wrecking it to find a solution, but as it is I'm clueless. Owen has offered to sleep downstairs for a few nights, so I can get some sleep and I think I'll take him up on his offer. Only thing is it is absolutely essential that when sleeping downstairs he can't pay any attention to the dogs. No eye contact, no talking, no allowing them to sleep next to him. We don't want to reward and encourage their barking anymore than we probably already do by sleeping downstairs. And I don't know if he can manage that... But I'm happy to give it a try. Anything for a good, undisturbed night sleep.

Then, it would help if I could get myself to concentrate on my work and get this translation finished. I've been good today, because I've already done 3000 words, even with all the mayhem going on around me and I'm sure I can get at least half of the remaining 35 pages done before the end of the day. But I'm struggling and not enjoying it, and that's causing part of the stress. I don't want to be working, I want to be doing things with the children, offer them challenging new things, go places with them and then at the end of the day slouch on the couch and watch a film with them.

Myrna had one of her teenager outbursts this morning. Now, she's got an extremely powerful voice which makes it really hard to listen to her once she starts going, but I must admit that she had some very valid points about lack of commitment and attention from our side. We managed to turn the volume down after a while, but her frustration definitely matches mine, so I can see where she's coming from. She is right that for the past six months I've constantly been postponing and keeping things at bay. First finding a new house, then the moving, then preparing for another move, and now it's the book that has to be finished before the 1st of November... She feels there's always something that needs to be done before it's her turn. Obviously that's not entirely true and I have done a lot with her, with them. But she is very accurately reflecting my guilty feelings, my feelings of shortcoming, my frustration of having to work whilst I'd rather be doing the home ed and the household.

Gosh, that all sounds as if I'm having a horrible time. Where in actual fact I'm quite happy to be where we are, and I am really looking forward to moving to our more permanent house across the road in a few weeks time. I think what it is, is that I'm genuinely longing to settle down, to get into a more or less structured routine for myself, in which I am able to balance kids, pets, marriage and work. And I just haven't had enough of these quiet moments, such as the one I'm having now.

I'd better make the best of the moment now, then. Well, I feel that I'm already doing that. Typing away all these troublesome thoughts into my blog has helped me clear my head a little. My head was pounding before, but now I'm relaxing and I feel the headache slowly ebbing away. Just a few more days... and then the book is finished... and we can start preparing to move house again...

Never a dull moment.
Whoops, did I just say that?

Who'd have guessed...

2007-10-21T23:04:00.000+01:00

that I would stay away from my blog this long?
Not me, that's for sure. I usually write to keep track of myself. To stay in control, I think.
But for many, many reasons it hasn't worked like that in the past two months.
Obviously time, or lack of it, was one reason.
There was constantly something going on. It was a massive exercise (and that's an understatement) to empty the Vicarage, to get everything sorted and packed up, to decide what was going to the new house, what was to go to storage, what was to go to FreeShare and what was to be thrown out. Actually, I rather not think back on those days, although it would be interesting to find out just how I managed to survive. And how others managed to survive my murderous tendencies... I suppose I was just too bleeping tired to pose a serious threat.

On the last day in the Vicarage my computer seized up on me, just before I had everything transferred to the laptop that I was given as an advance birthday present from my Mum.
And I finally found out why so many people are constantly complaining about BT and Sky. It took over one month (!!) before we had all our electronic communicative systems up and running properly again. What a disgrace! Maybe just as well I wasn't writing at that time, because I would have been polluting cyberspace.

Moving into this house was a ultimately thrilling experience. First of all, it's warm here. All the time. And the first couple of weeks we haven't even had the central heating on. But it's double glazed, there are no gaps in the walls and the doors actually fill the holes in the wall when they're shut. Then, there's a lot of daylight coming into the house, where the Vicarage was overall quite dark.
I thought I would get claustrophobic here and miss all the space the Vicarage held, but funnily enough the size of this house suits me fine. It took a while before we all felt comfortable with seeing so much of each other ;), but by now we've worked it out rather well.
And - oh my, I never thought I'd ever say anything like this - the fact that this house is so easy to keep clean makes a huge, huge difference. No more coal dust wherever you look. No having to wipe the table every time you want to use it. We can even see the original colours of our kitchen appliances again, all day through. It takes all of us no more than three hours on a Monday morning to create a clean and shining house. Obviously, with two cats, two dogs and at least five people walking around a lot, we still have to hoover and dust daily, but hey, that only takes something like half an hour.
And then living in town. Me. Every house I visualised was at least ten miles away from civilisation and had tuns of space and trees around it. Lots of outhouses, too. A small village, that's as far as my mental pictures would go. Well, regular readers of this blog have seen the house I'd been dreaming of for such a long time.
But not a town house. No way.
And yet, here we are. In a modern town house. Only five minutes away from the centre. A busstop around the corner. Shops and facilities within walking distance. But also a three minutes walk away from a beautiful footpath along the river, where I can walk the dogs for hours at an end, and - to make it even more perfect - off the lead! We're in a very quiet cul-de-sac, with seven houses and no through traffic at all.
Never in my wildest dreams could I have visualised a house like this, in a location like this.
But to be honest, it's exactly what we needed and we are all very happy to be here.
The only thing I really miss are the birds. Seagulls, blackbirds and crows. That's all we see here. I miss going out into the yard or the garden at night and listen to the owls. I miss looking out of the window from my workspot and seeing all kinds of different birds on the feeders. I miss the sound of the birds when I walk the dogs, because even along the river there aren't very many.
But even after thinking really hard I can't come up with other drawbacks.
I mean, we save about fifty pounds a week on petrol and loads and loads of time.
We don't even need a quarter of the energy to keep this house warm and comfortable.
It's so much easier for the children to get to their clubs and activities and I don't always have to be thinking about the logistic planning of it all.
It's even quite pleasant to be 'amongst people' again. In the little time we've lived here I've spoken to more people than I have even met up there. And up to now they've all been very friendly. Everybody has their own life, most people are older than we are, there are no kids in the houses in this cul-de-sac, but everybody is friendly.

That's how we found out about the house just opposite us.
When I told our next door neighbour that unfortunately we were only here temporarily she said that house was coming up for rent, too. And she knew the owner was tired of the short term lettings through agencies that he'd had and that had cost him a lot of aggro, so now he was looking to let it long term.
Well, to cut a long and magical story short - I will probably blog about the wonderfulness of it later - within two weeks of living here we knew that we'd be moving again before the end of the year! Another thing that was definitely not in my planning. I didn't even want to think about moving again before Christmas.
Unfortunately we have a six months contract on the house we're in now, but the new landlord has agreed to officially let us have the new house per the 1st of December, so that we have 'only' three months double rent to overcome. But we'll find a way to deal with that, I have no doubt about that.
Because he didn't like the house to be empty too long, the owner has already given us the keys so that we can start moving stuff from the storage into the garage and the attic, if we want.
The house itself looks almost the same as the one we're in now, from the outside, but is completely different from the inside. That's also a subject I'll come back to in later blogs, I think. Suffice to say for now that we think we're going to be very, very happy in there.

And then, in the middle of all this, Ken's father died on September 18. Not unexpectedly, but still. It obviously took over everything for a couple of weeks and even though we were all glad that there was an end to his suffering, his passing away also puts an end to lots of other things. My children now don't have a grandfather anymore, as my own father died over fourteen years ago. And Ken had finally made his peace with his father after a lifetime of struggle and strive. But at least they had these last few years in love and peace together.

As it's already way over my bedtime and I desperately need a beauty sleep I am closing down now. There's lots more to tell and to share. I have no idea when I'll post again, but my intentions are to do it within the next few days.

Moving times

2007-08-28T00:44:00.000+01:00

The biggest challenge at this moment is that the new house doesn’t have half the space that we have now. I think I’ve mentioned that before.

Here we have a garage, a huge boiler room, a huge utility room, a huge kitchen, a large living room, a spacious bedroom / office, a big computer / educational room, a king size pantry and a cloak room with storage space. Upstairs there are 3 huge bedrooms, a single bedroom, three massive walk-in cupboards and a bathroom with a storage room behind it.
The new house has a spacious garage, a large living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a downstairs toilet and a Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs. Upstairs there are three double bedrooms, one boxroom, an airing cupboard and a bathroom with bath, toilet and shower.

In the course of the thirty years that Ken and I are together we’ve gathered an incredible amount of stuff. And every time we moved, we moved to a bigger house. When we moved from Holland to here we threw and gave so much stuff away it was almost embarrassing. Still, we needed a fifty cubic meter removal van to shift what was left over. But all those fifty cubic meters easily fitted into this vicarage. However, in the past four and a half years we’ve somehow managed to fill the place to the rim.

By all standards the new house is classed as big. Also, the garden is fenced off and has plenty space for both dogs and trampoline. It’s good to look at all that and realise that this new house has everything we need.
The only conclusion I can come to is that we have (far) more than we need.

That’s all very easy to type down, but downsizing within the space of a few days isn’t easy at all. Especially as we've already been chucking things out in a big way. Now, I’m going through everything again. Do we really need this? And if yes, where can it go? There is of course the storage. But the reality is that our next - and hopefully more permanent - house is unlikely to be much bigger than the one we’re moving to now so I want to make as little use of the storage as possible.

As usual, I have a plan. And as it happens, it’s quite educational ;).
We’ve drawn a floor plan of the new house on squared paper. Then we’ve measured all the furniture, drawn that on the same scale and cut it all out. Next everybody has been looking at what they wanted in their rooms and how much would fit in. Over the past two days Myrna and Owen have packed up their stuff and we’ve moved as much as would fit into Old Faithful (his third house move and he’s still going strong!). The big things will be done by the official movers, later. I’ve done most of the kitchen and I’ve created storage space in the garage.

So now we have the situation that we more or less have - or know what we want to have - in the new house, but this one is still very full. But knowing that what we really want is already in the new house makes it slightly easier to decide to do with what’s left. There’s still quite a bit to go in storage, but I’ll have another look at it before the movers come. And the rest will go either to friends, to FreeShare, to the carboot sale, on the fire or to the dump.

An important part of this whole process is the cleaning. This house is very difficult to keep clean. It’s old and drafty and then there’s the coal dust from the solid fuel Rayburn throughout the whole house. Obviously, it’s sensible for practical and health reasons to clean things before you pack or move them. But also, by consciously looking at each item again, we get another chance to decide if we want something to remain part of our lives. Or has it served its purpose? Do we still need that particular item to keep a certain memory or has the memory become part of us? The cleaning helps to symbolically prepare for a fresh new start.

Today I did ‘the last round’ in Myrna’s room. I had not been looking forward to it, because her room - like Owen’s - was a tip. The only way I could do it was to switch off my disgust and go into automatic mode. Myrna had done a lot of packing and sorting herself, so I knew that the things she values most were already in the new house. I said to Myrna I’d rather start off by myself and she happily left me to it. After a while I discovered I was quite enjoying it, strangely enough. I managed to gather another two bin bags full of rubbish and I had to change my bucket of soap three times. But now the room looks cleaner than it’s looked for ages and it’s nearly empty.

While I was cleaning away - ”wax on, wax off, Daniel-san” - I discovered I wanted to take charge of the housekeeping duties again. With me writing and translating, it was Ken’s task to see to the daily household duties and it has really done me the world of good not to have to think about it at all and not to interfere. But from the state of Myrna’s room - and I’m mentally preparing for Owen’s room, because I know that’s even worse - it’s obvious that Ken doesn’t take pride in keeping it clean and tidy and I know he hates having to negotiate with the kids about keeping their rooms in an acceptable state.
It’s not my favourite task either, but after seeing what it’s like now and having noticing that Myrna was really pleased I was helping her, I thought we’d all be happier - and healthier probably - if I take on that responsibility again.

Moving into the new house will be a good moment to make new arrangements, to work out new schedules. We will no longer have a separate computer room, so Ken has promised the children they could have their own computers in their rooms. It’s something I’ve managed to avoid up to now and I am still very reluctant. But I’m willing to give it a go, although I have set a few conditions.
First: All computers will have Watchdog and there will be no negotiating about extra time.
Second: Every other Friday we will have ‘room inspection’ and if the rooms aren’t tidy and clean, the computers will be shut down until they are.

I asked Owen how on earth he managed to get a medal in cadet camp for the cleanest and tidiest room.
He said: “Well, I’m a totally different person in the cadets then when I am at home.”
Me: “How do I get you to tidy your room here, then?”
Owen: “Discipline, Mum, discipline.”
So that’s what he’ll get from me from now on. :))

And the difference between these two children became all the more apparent when I talked about it with Myrna. She said: “I like my room a bit messy, but I still want it to be clean. But you need to help me cleaning it, because if you don’t I just get distracted. Cleaning is much nicer when we’re doing it together.”

Another major advantage about the new house is that it is so much easier to keep clean. It has gas central heating (no more coal dust!), double glazing everywhere and it’s well maintained. It’ll be a whole new experience, for instance, to clean the window sills without having to be careful not to wipe the paint off or punch holes into the wood.
Ahh, the more I think about it, the more I am looking forward to moving!

The End of Never

2007-08-23T22:55:00.000+01:00

In case you hadn't noticed, I've changed the name of my weblog.
It was a bit of a silly name for a blog of someone who strongly believes that we are the creators of our own reality.
In Steiner Kindergarten they asked parents not to let children wear slippers that looked like tigers or bears or any other animal really. You are what you wear. Of course I severely frowned at that and of course I experimented. Turned out they were right.
Witches say: Careful what you wish for, you might get it.
Quantum physics say: Matters of a similar frequency attract each other, resonate.
Who was it that said: Attention is energy and energy makes things grow.

Anyway, I just knew that if I want my life to become more balanced and stable I should no longer carry the motto 'Never a Dull Moment."

There, that's the last time I've said it.
And I will not wish for the opposite, either.

Factual Update

2007-08-23T22:50:00.000+01:00

I have spent the last two days making lists. So here’s another one:

* We are moving soon, real soon. As in starting next Saturday.
* We can rent the house until 15 July 2008, but luckily only the first six months of the rent are fixed, so we can start a new round of house hunting somewhere in February.
* Because we are officially homeless we will be getting help - practical ánd financial! - with the move.
* Our new landlord is a church, again. A different one, though. I think this means that God really wants the best for us and this is His way of saying: Hey, I don't want you guys to become homeless!
* We’ve packed about 100 boxes and I think we’re halfway.
* The new house is about half the size of this one, so the homeless officer (he’s really cute, by the way :) has also arranged storage.
* Ken, Myrna and Owen have gone camping (and I did encourage them to go) and are having a great time and good weather.
* I am intensely enjoying being by myself, with only the cats and dogs here to interrupt my train of thoughts. Oh, and the telephone... But I’ve gone on voicemail now...
* AL is coming back to England on the 4th of September. So just as well we’ve got four bedrooms in this new house. She doesn’t intend to stay, though. Wants to be back in Holland before her 18th birthday. More about that later, probably.
* I’m so tired I don’t know if I’m ever going to feel not tired anymore. So right now I’m going to walk the dogs - my beloved husband took all the torches with him, so it’s just as well it’s such a bright night - have a shower and go to sleep.

Confession Time

2007-08-18T11:41:00.000+01:00

We are sorting and dumping and freesharing and packing up.
We are getting ready to move.
So why haven’t I been blogging about our new house, why haven’t I been screaming from the rooftops about it?
No, I haven’t lost my faith. But after four months of riding an emotional storm, going from happy ups to depressive downs, series of disappointments about houses that seemed to be perfect but then just fell through for sometimes incomprehensible reasons, I have become rather cautious.
Yes, we do have a house. We think. The contract hasn’t been signed yet, they’re waiting for the bank references to come through. It’s just a formality, but still... I don’t know if I could bear to endure another major disappointment. So I thought if I don’t allow myself to feel elated and thrilled and it does go pear shaped, that at least I’ll survive... and I’ll be able to deal with the emotional fall out and disappointment from the other family members.
The other reason is the house itself.
It’s fabulous, it really is. It’s exactly right for us, too. It’s on the outskirts of the town where most of our activities, clubs etc are based, so we’ll be saving lots and lots of money and time on transport. It’s in a quiet cul-de-sac, with lovely views onto the Lake District, yet it’s close to amenities and there’s several bus routes nearby. The house itself is even detached! Having the feeling that you're still kind of free and not literally attached to someone else is a true blessing and it will make moving away from this wild and free place in the middle of nowhere easier.
It has the right amount of bedrooms and even a study, big enough for my desk and book cases! It’s the first house we’ve seen where we can move our - huge - four seater settee into, without even having to take doors or windows out. The kitchen is big enough, there’s a bathroom with both a bath AND a separate shower cubicle (!!) and it has a garage. And best of all, the pets were welcome!
So, why am I not jumping up and down with joy and why aren’t there a million photo’s of this new place on my blog?
Because, unfortunately, we can only rent it for eleven months, until 15 July 2008. Also, it's a fixed term contract, so we can't get out of it if we find something else before that date.
And that just sort of puts the dampers on my enthusiasm.

I am still endlessly happy that we will not end up having to go through the whole eviction process and becoming literally homeless, I am eternally grateful that we still have an actual choice about where we are going to live and that it's in a quiet neighbourhood, in a detached and well maintained house.
But the reality is of course that I know exactly how difficult it is to find suitable rented accommodation, where they’ll have both kids and pets.
I am determined to make the most of living there and I will do my utmost to see it as a kind of a holiday, but I haven’t been able to shake that dreaded knowing that we will have to start looking for a new home soon again...

I know it will be different, next time. We have learned so much and I think we are at the beginning of a whole new episode in our lives. Owen seems to be really on his feet and is endlessly happy about a possible career in the TA or the Army. Myrna has been investigating the possibility of going to school. She’s not sure about it yet, she might want to do part time schooling, but it’s obvious that she is going to go through major changes in the near future. AL hasn’t made a definite decision yet, but it looks like she’s staying in Holland if she can find a place to live there. And even if she is going to use her return ticket, I don't think she’ll want to live under the parental roof for very long.
Ken has applied for a job and he is seriously thinking about setting up his own business again if he can't find employment.
So, all in all, things are in full flow.

I suppose I am just very, very tired and it takes a lot of willpower to just hang on in there and not give in to that craving to just roll up and go to sleep in a quiet corner...
And it isn’t as if I can leave things to Ken, bless him.
He is of good intentions but in times like this his ADHD and Asperger Syndrome are all too obvious. The only way for me not to loose it completely with him is to be one hundred percent practical and structured about it. Make lists for him to work to. Try and avoid any situation that may cause arguments and discussions. Keep him as busy as possible, without loading too much responsibility onto him.
It sounds awful and unloving, but I know - after nearly thirty years - that this is the only way I can uphold my love and respect for him. And he knows it, too. We both have learned to accept that this is the way it is, this is the only way our relationship works and will stay intact. We are complementary, in a very extreme sense of the word. We are the ultimate challenge in each other’s life.
And after all this time, many many frustrating moments and much pain, we both know that it's absolutely worth every little shred of effort we've put into it. For ourselves and for our children.
I think it was Shukr who said on EF’s blog:
“Overcoming difficulties is one the best lessons we can teach.”
I agree with that, wholeheartedly.

Structured autonomy

2007-08-10T22:32:00.000+01:00

Owen is back from cadet camp.
Even in the first year after AL was born I learned that whatever principles, ideals, scruples or opinions I might have had, they were all going to be turned around, thrown out the window, forgotten or trampled upon. Challenged, at the very least.
My children - and I’m very much including my clan children in this - taught me that expectations were no more than obstacles, blinkers, causes of pain, hurt pride and desillusion.
I’ve learned to be ready for the unexpected.
Well, there’s definitely no way I was prepared to experience what I felt today.
This huge sense of gratitude for the British Army.
For the fact that they gave my son a chance to discover the best in himself.
It has been a long, long time since I’ve seen Owen as happy and content as I’ve seen him today. He looks radiant. Self confident. Proud of himself. Bronzed and muscled. A Young Man.

It is more than obvious that these twelve days of discipline, structured and organized physical activities, learning and excelling in all kind of skills, being appreciated for his willingness to take part, being given responsibilities for overseeable tasks, being seen as one of the team (not only men! I hasten to add!), being able to talk about things that are important to him and share them with others, has done him the world of good.

So this is what it’s about, I think. I feel. Autonomy. It isn’t about structured or unstructured. It isn’t about learning from books or from life, in school or at home. It’s nothing to do with veganism, homeopathy, Zen, spirituality, religion or atheism.
It’s everything to do with freedom. Freedom of choice. And being given a total and unconditional freedom of choice. Being able to genuinely follow your heart’s choice.

Owen has made a choice. He hasn’t discussed it at length with me, with us. Because he just doesn’t do the verbal thing, the putting feelings into words. Although, when he does he is so crystal clear it is practically impossible to misunderstand him. But after having had the chance to try out both the structured and the unstructured, after having tried out both the self directed learning and the instructed learning, he chooses to join the cadets and he is determined to join the army.

I realise that I expected to feel sad and troubled about that. And in a way I do. I cannot imagine any mother in these times not feeling troubled about her child wanting to join the army. But strangely enough I most of all feel happy. I haven’t been able to wipe the grin of my face since I saw him get off that bus.
He was in here just a minute ago to sit on my lap for a second (any longer and he would have crushed me) and hug me intensely. He is so happy. So how could I not be?

He hasn’t changed. But he has found the ultimate way to be who he is. And he has most definitely found it all by himself.

Return of the Black Cat

2007-07-29T21:14:00.000+01:00

Charlie is back!
I can barely believe it!
At the very moment I was reading Ruth’s comment on my previous post I heard a loud mewing and before I knew it he came walking into the wide open door and when I held my hands out to him, he more or less jumped into my arms!
You were right, Ruth!
He’s skinny as a rake, but looks healthy and dry. All his claws and teeth are still intact, no injuries, no messed up fur. I guess he’s been locked in somewhere.
Aw, I’m so hoping Owen phones from camp soon, so we can tell him the good news.
We have a telephone number for him, but that’s only for emergencies. If we phone now we’re more likely to upset him than anything else. He promised he’d phone home a few times and I think the conversation will go as follows:

”Hi Mum, is Charlie back yet?”

”Yes Owen, he came back on Sunday night!”

”I told you he’d come back, didn’t I?”
“Yes darling, and you were right.”

Right now Charlie is back in his usual place, behind me, on top of the cupboard. He’s just had a little talk with Asha, so she’ll probably know what we never will. He doesn’t look traumatised or shocked or anything else than hungry and tired. Actually, he looks quite content. And I love him more than ever!

And I am still grateful for the insights he helped me acquire. He is, after all, our black cat. He does represent the wild, natural and free part of us. The part we managed to reclaim by coming to this country and by living here, in this house.
And it was that part of me that was afraid to move away from this place, afraid that it couldn’t survive if it had to go back to the ‘civilized world’. By coming back Charlie has shown me that I can take that part of me - that we can take that part of us - with us. Wherever we go.

I was reminded of the saying:
If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back to you, it’s yours.
If it doesn’t, it never was.

I’ve always had my doubts about that last sentence, but in this case I can even see the wisdom in that. It is so True.
My Wild Witch is part of me, and always will be. I can let go of the fear of losing her. By letting go of that fear I have set her free. And now I can take her with me, wherever I go.

Again I’m experiencing how valuable it is to consciously feel everything I feel, to accept all those feelings, however irrational, conflicting or contradicting they may seem. And then to take a step back and not only experience the process but observe it, too. Writing helps me to do that. It helps me to not get lost in my emotions. It helps me make the circle round. It helps me being who I am.

Charlie McGregor

2007-07-29T16:27:00.000+01:00

Charlie came to our house last November, together with Asha. We’d just lost our much beloved black cats Joey and Gimli and the house was simply too empty. When we went looking for a new cat in the rescue centre, Charlie came straight at us, which - turned out later - was quite unusual, because he was very withdrawn and shy. He took to Owen immediately and it was love from both sides. “This one belongs with us,” Owen said and he named him, Charlie McGregor.
It wasn’t until we got him home that we found out how timid and traumatized he really was. It took weeks and weeks before he didn’t pull back or run away when we approached him. It hasn’t been that long that he’d let himself be picked up. First only by Owen, but slowly but surely he was actually convinced that we were trustworthy.
The big change in him came when we started to let them go outside, in March of this year. We’d kept them inside all that time, mainly because Owen couldn’t bear the thought of losing another cat - Gimli fell prey to a badger, managed to drag himself home, but we still had to have him put to sleep and Joey just never came back. Also, Asha and Charlie seemed totally happy inside. But then it started getting warmer and windows and doors would be open more often and I just didn’t want to have to watch out for the cats not going outside all the time. Besides, I think it’s a bit unnatural to keep cats indoors, especially when you live where we do... at the moment...

Within days of being let outside, Charlie was a completely different cat. So much more confident, so much more happy. He’d let himself be stroked by us, he’d come running towards us, even outside. He loved to sit on the yard wall for hours at an end, or to go off for a wander in the woods, he’d play in the garden with Asha, he’d sit with us when we were doing things in the yard. And he was catching mice by the dozens. I don’t think he ever went very far, because whenever we’d call his name he’d be there within a few minutes. Of course, he was very fond of his food and we’d feed him as soon as he came home. Every night we’d make sure the cats were in before dark and then they’d stay in till the next morning.

Last Friday night we sort of all forgot to close the upstairs window, where the cats go in and out of the house. They’d been fed at nine o’clock and after that Charlie must have gone out. When Owen found out that at 11 o’clock the window was still open, he panicked and as it turned out, with reason. Asha was inside, but Charlie wasn’t and he didn’t come when we called for him. We all went out, searching, but couldn’t find Charlie. We left the back door open, so he could go into the utility room in case he came back in the night, but when we got up really early on Saturday morning, he still wasn’t there.

Ken and the kids went out looking again, but I didn’t. In my heart of hearts I knew he wasn’t coming back. Only the day before I was stroking him when he was in his usual place, on top of the cupboard behind my computer, and Myrna and I were saying how unhappy moving house would make Charlie. It would take him such a long time to get used to a new house again and suppose, just suppose we’d find a house in a built-up area, or even in town, we would have to keep him inside and that would be so sad.

When he didn’t come back on the Friday night I drew a Tarot Card, asking why he had disappeared like that. I got Ten of Swords. I had the feeling my heart broke and I cried and cried. In short, Ten of Swords stands for definite farewells in order to make space for new beginnings. And the whole conversation I had with Myrna and Charlie the day before came back to me. And I just knew. He didn’t want to move away from this place.

I am devastated by the loss of him and most of all my heart bleeds for Owen, for losing another cat. For a moment I was afraid it would have such a great impact on him that he wouldn’t go on summer camp with the cadets. But he did. He left this morning and he was looking forward to it. Glad to be away from the sadness, glad to be away from the house hunting, the insecurity, the house full of boxes. I am sure when he comes back he will still have to do some grieving for Charlie, but I also know that in this case the blisfullness of Aspergers is that once the black isn’t black anymore, it most likely is white.

I strongly believe that every animal we share our lives with, mirrors certain parts of ourselves, of our souls. And as far as cats are concerned, I think they more than other animals reflect the changes in our lives. So I’m sure Charlie didn’t just disappear for no reason, at this particular moment. And I know there is a message in this for me, too, and it has to do with the way we’re looking for a new house. There will have to be definite farewells in order to make space for new beginnings.

Thank you, Charlie McGregor.

Cat-ching up

2007-07-25T22:23:00.000+01:00

I am craving for normality.
So instead of the umptiest post about my quest for whatever it is that a new home represents, I am going to do some cat-ching up on some of the more ‘normal’ things in our lives.

I could of course do a full report on the excitement about the latest HP film - Ken and the kids went to see it today! - or about the trance-like state that everybody in this household has gone into since the arrival of the new HP book, but I’m sure that most of you have similar experiences. Or have read enough about it. So I’ll just skip that. For now.

Instead I am really dying to show you our educational project of the past couple of weeks. After all, I would like to make it clear that in spite of everything going on, providing an adequate education for our children is still our top priority. Of course. For this particular project we invited a team of teachers to our house. Allow me to introduce:

from left to right: Rosie, Tilly, Jack, Shadow, Jamie and Misty:

These six sweeties lost their mother when they were four days old. The mother was a stray cat, but luckily someone had seen her go into his shed and was aware of her having kittens. So when he found her body by the road, he went looking for them and took them to cat protection. They took the litter to a foster home, where they were hand reared and bottle fed. These fosterers are friends of ours and Myrna goes there quite regularly to help out. Of course she was there nearly every day when this lot came in and she was given the delightful task of naming them all.

After kindly checking with me if we were alright with it, Mrs D asked Myrna if she would like to look after them at home for a weekend once they were big enough to go through the night without being fed. You can guess what the answer was. It was an excellent incentive for Myrna to tidy up her room, by the way... And she started to keep a diary on everything she learned about kittens, how to feed them of course, but also the pretty realistic stuff about what risks there are with littles ones like that, what diseases or ailments they can get, how to make them pee and poo, etcetera.

The first time they came to stay they were four weeks old and needed to be fed, cleaned and toiletted every three hours. We all helped, but Myrna insisted they stayed in her room. After two nights she agreed that maybe next time they’d better stay in the spare room or in the living room... if only because of the smell... But they were so gorgeous and already they all had their own little characters. I enjoyed sitting there and just observing them for times at an end.

Their second visit was two weeks later, after Myrna’s music exams. This time they stayed for a whole four nights... in the spare room. The main purpose of this visit - apart from enjoyment for all - was to get the kittens used to dogs. So Bobby and Lagsi also got involved into this major educational project. Myrna and I both kept notes about everything we observed and learned and we made a little diary with photo’s for Mr and Mrs D, and possibly for potential new owners. Yes, yes, I know... people don’t own cats, cats allow people to feed and house them...

Let me indulge and show you some more photo's from the diary:

These were taken at the foster home when they were just one week old. 1. Rosie, the runt of the litter. 2. Misty being bottle-fed and 3. The whole litter with their artificial mother, a clever thing with a beating heart and a hot water bottle inside to keep the little ones warm.

Their first visit to our house, at four weeks old. 1. Myrna with Tilly, Misty and Shadow. 2. Little Rosie, hasn't she grown! 3. Jamie loves to go to sleep on the nice and warm power supply of Myrna's keyboard.

1. Lagsi, patiently but eagerly waiting for me to allow him to go and have a sniff. The kittens first hissed and spat at him, but after a short while and in the safety of Myrna's arms they were soon alright. Misty was the first to make nose contact (2). 3. Shadow just loved to cuddle up in Myrna's neck, he loved it even better than playing with his siblings!

Their most recent visit, at six weeks old. 1. They don't need bottle feeding anymore, and they are litter trained. Wow, what a difference! 2. Rosie is so absolutely adorable, but no longer the runt of the litter. She eats for England and is the biggest of the three girls now. 3. Lean on me! Isn't it wonderful to have a supportive big brother? Tilly and Shadow. 4. Jack has the most beautiful eyes.

1. We created a dog-free zone in the living room and it took the kittens a whole five minutes to figure out exactly to where they could go and still be 'safe' from the dogs.

2 and 3. The art these creatures master - and teach - more than anything else: relaxing.

They gave some very special private lessons on that subject, on which the male members of our family scored highest marks (4 and 5). Myrna couldn't resist stroking them... (6)

Still here

2007-07-21T16:42:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning I spoke to the estate agent who deals with the house by the river. We have a definite answer and it’s a no. No real explanation, this is the owner’s decision.
Strange, actually. I realise that with putting this post on my blog the photo’s of the house will now disappear off the first page.
Gone. Into the archives.
Another strange thing was my own response. After the very brief conversation I put the phone down and sat there, more or less waiting for some emotional tidal wave to hit me.
But it didn’t.
To my own surpise I was feeling a quiet sense of relief. Can you belief that? We’re a week away from officially being declared homeless and I feel relieved when I hear we’re not going to get the house I’ve dreamt of all that time.
I carefully examined myself, did some serious soul searching. Was I in denial? Trying to soften the blow? Was this feeling of relief some sort of natural defense against total devastation?
But I could only come to one conclusion: It’s a genuine feeling.

Over the past few weeks, while I was envisaging our family in that house, I’ve had some moments of serious doubt. First of all about the money. Although a definite rental price has never been mentioned, we knew it wasn’t going to be cheap and it would also cost a lot to keep warm.
Now, especially with all this business of overpayment going on, Ken still being jobless, me trying to deal with an attack of writer’s block and other, more physical impediments, our financial situation is far from stable. Also, I was aware of the effort it would take to upkeep a house and a garden like that, and I know I couldn’t possibly deal with that all by myself.
I also know that between Ken and me, I’m the one who usually sees what kind of work needs to be done and he’s a master in putting as much effort as possible into doing as little as possible. So I could just envisage some potentially very frustrating scenes there.
So I suppose the relief is caused by not having to carry such a heavy burden.
But still, I know that if it would have been a yes, I would have gladly taken on that burden. It wouldn’t be the first heavy burden I’ve coped with in my life.

Or should I assume that the time has come to stop taking on heavy burdens and start making choices that allow a more easy going life? If that’s the case, the Universe has rather a heavy handed way of telling me that. Or is the solution right there in front of me, but am I too stubborn, too short sighted to see it? Too caught up in looking the wrong way, perhaps?

Oh Heavens, I really don’t know what to do or what to think next.
The only choice left now is to Have Faith. I know. And most of the time I Have Faith.
But now, at this particular moment, I can only feel my intense desperation...

Life in limbo

2007-07-19T23:52:00.000+01:00

Never thought the church, any church, would have a major influence on me.
Well, with their Notice Seeking Possession the Church of England has definitely made a dramatic impact on my life.

It is increasingly difficult to Hold the Vision and to have Faith.
And as for Fun... I’m struggling...

I haven’t been able to write, I haven’t been able to blog, although I desperately wanted to. But I just couldn’t find the space in myself to create words, to transform my thoughts into words. Or maybe I simply didn’t have the energy. Again, time is undefinable. It seems to rest heavily on my shoulders while simultanously it runs out.
Forty days until the expiry date of the Notice. Forty days!!

In the past forty days AL quit her college course and went back to Holland, where she's doing her work placement and trying to find a job; Myrna sang in three concerts and did her grade 5 exam; Owen joined the Army Cadets and now goes there twice a week and will even go on Summer Camp with them (gasp); we found out that we weren’t only overpaid Child Benefit, but also Carer’s Allowance, Housing Benefit and possible Tax Credits, so consequently I’ve spent days and days at the CAB and on the phone and writing letters trying to get a grip on things only to find out that we are definitely not in the best possible financial position to move house; Ken’s father came out of hospital because there’s nothing more they can do for him and now he’s getting cared for at home, where we try and visit him as often as possible; we’ve had a gang of six really tiny kittens staying over several times, they were three days old when their mother was run over and we’re helping to foster them; we’ve done a lot more sorting out and packing up and the spare room is full with boxes already; I’ve phoned up about at least fifty houses for rent, only to find out that at least 90 percent of them wouldn’t take pets; we’ve been to see the remaining 10 percent to find out that they were either too far away, all extra costs considered too expensive, absolutely too small, would only take one small dog, were already promised to people without pets or children...; and all the while home ed has been going on as usual, although with less creative input from me, I must confess.

Ah, it’s good to sum it all up, knowing that I’ve probably not even mentioned half of what went on in those past forty days. And looking at what I’ve listed I can understand and forgive myself for feeling absolutely exhausted and drained...
At the same time this list shows that yes, a lot can happen in forty days.

We still haven’t had a definite answer about the house by the river. And there’s another house, just over the border in Scotland... One of the estate agents I am now stalking on a regular basis thought that they might take pets and it seems to have enough rooms and even a garden... But here, too, we’re waiting to hear from the landlord.

Another big AAAHHHH.... Just now something is slowly making its way into my conscious brain... Forty days and forty nights... a biblical phrase... time of transition, time to reach major insights... 40 days of discernment... I must look into that...

Still, although I can truly see the learning curve in this whole process, I have definitely reached the point where I am longing for my life - for our life - to come out of limbo. I am genuinely grateful for everything I’ve learned and am still about to learn from this all, but I am mainly tired. Worn out, to be precise. And I want to literally know where we’re going. I want an end to uncertainty, to insecurity. I want a place to live where we can all be happy and where we can restart our lives. I want a new home. Please. Please! Now.

Quiet reappearance

2007-06-29T00:41:00.000+01:00

Carefully, very carefully, I am trying out how it feels to be blogging again.
I can’t even begin to describe how the past month has been. Suffice to say it has been one of the most intense periods of time in my life.

I’ve had a tiny glimpse at just how big and great the universe is.
I’ve experienced the wonderfulness of interconnectedness.
I’ve felt the power of magic and the miracle of unconditional love.
I’ve discovered so much about myself, especially in relationship to my loved ones, my family.
I’ve gone from the highest high to the lowest low.
I’ve been bursting with energy and I’ve been so tired that even crying was too much effort.

But we haven’t got a new house yet.

So when people ask if there’s any news about a house yet, I have to say no.
But that just seems to be such an insufficient answer. It suggests that nothing has happened. Whereas I have the feeling that everything has changed and that the only thing left now is for us to find our new home.

There was this house we went to see the day before Myrna’s birthday party. And it was ours if we wanted it. The only thing we needed to get was a bank reference, and we couldn’t get that until after the bank holiday weekend. But the man said it wasn’t a problem, and he said we should take a few days to make up our minds.
That same day we had a phone call from JC: The church had, in response to my letter, agreed to give us an extra two months.
The other news she had for us was that the other people interested in the house by the river had withdrawn and we were now first on the list.
So there we were: Two extra months, and more or less two houses to choose from.
I literally collapsed after JC’s phone call.
I just couldn’t believe that it was happening, that all I had wished for was there in front of me and it was up to me to choose, to do something with it.
I cannot remember much of what happened the rest of that day, because I was literally beside or outside myself. At one point I realised that I was experiencing exactly what I had wondered about in a previous post: I was in different realities at the same time. It was scary and bizar and magical at the same time.
Ken and Owen were at Kielder that day and AL and Myrna were having a pyjama day in their rooms, so I was all by myself. The only thing I could think of to do was to phone my sister. Luckily she immediately realised what was happening and she talked me through it, until I was grounded again. More or less back in my own body.
It’s not something that I would want to happen again. But at the same time I know it happened because I had genuinely opened myself to miracles, to magic.

I somehow got through that day, thanks to AL, who seemed to realise I was ‘out of it’ and completely took over all the preparations for Myrna’s birthday party. Without her, I don’t know what I’d have done. And Myrna wouldn’t have had the wonderful Day of Celebration that she had. A lovely day, with such a nice bunch of happy faced girls and laughter and good fun.
That whole bank holiday weekend we lived on a high. It felt as if after a month of struggling through a desert we had come to an oasis. And we thoroughly enjoyed it.
The bizar thing is that in the end we followed our hearts and said no to ‘the other house’. Ken and I had both, separately, come to the conclusion that we would rather take the gamble and wait to see if we could get the house by the river. Up to now it hasn’t materialised. We had a meeting with the owner and his estate agent. Genuinely nice people. It’s just that we found out the house was coming up for rent before they’d actually decided what to do with it. Let it with or without outbuildings. Commercial or residential. Also, the house needed more renovating. All reasons why we still don’t know whether we’re going to get it or not.
However, they’ve promised us that we’d have a definite yes or no before the end of the month. And that’s in two days time.

We’ve been looking at other houses, too. I’d never imagined that so many landlords don’t want pets. It’s really depressing. Myrna said today that she want a house, any house, as long as we know we’re going to have a roof over our heads. She wants to start moving. Get on with her life. I have come to the same point, really.
However much I want the house by the river, the process of the past month has taught me that there is so much more than I can possibly envision.
And of one thing I am now more sure than ever before: We are loved. We are cared for. And All is Well.

Time Out

2007-05-23T20:55:00.000+01:00

I've said it before, writing this blog is inspirational. And educational.
The time has come to walk the talk, to do what I wrote about in my previous posts.
Take time for living.
Focus and prioritize.
Today is Myrna's 12th birthday. A day she's been looking forward to for at least three months, a day we had so many plans for. But somehow it went differently. She has more or less accepted that, she knows what's on our plates at the moment. But I'm not happy about it.
I know when she went down with terrible stomach pains last week it wasn't just because of the usual pre-birthday nerves. It was also because she struggles with big heavy things that maybe I could make lighter for her, without taking her Self away.
So, I'm going to give myself a chance to catch up and make up and focus on the Pink Theme Party she's got organised for next Saturday.
I'm determined to help her make it a Day of Celebration.

Tomorrow we are going to look - for the second time - at another house than the house by the river. It's in the same area, it's a semi-detached with four bedrooms, they'll have pets, and it's available from next week, probably. We are not the only ones interested, so it's exciting - and nerve wrecking. Also, we haven't had a definite yes or no about the first house.
If we say yes to this one, it just might mean we miss out on the house by the river.
If we don't say yes to this one, it might mean we miss out on both.
It seems a simple choice, but it really isn't.
I have spent the last 24 hours more or less withdrawn into myself, trying to determine what to do.
And I realised I was afraid to say yes to this house, because it would mean I'd definitely give up on the house by the river.
But I've weighed all the pro's and con's very carefully and I've come to the conclusion that if I do get the chance to say yes tomorrow, that's what I'll do.

I'll not go into all the details now, because I am just too tired and my body desperately needs a rest from typing, from computer. Also, I want to focus on Myrna's birthday and party, on creating a new home for myself and my family, and on staying sane and healthy. That feels like enough work as it is, really.

I'll blog if there's news to report and who knows I'll need the therapeutical help of blogging before long... but for now the focus will be elsewhere.

Time flies like an arrow - Fruit flies like a banana

2007-05-17T01:11:00.000+01:00

I like that quote from Groucho Marx. I first saw it in Newcastle Airport, on the wall of the waiting area. Just the right place for it.

Time has always fascinated me. I can remember that even when I was very young I’d be lying in bed, contemplating the strangeness of time.
I remember trying to figure out how it was possible that something that was measured so precisely still felt differently all the time.
Waiting five minutes for the schoolbus in the pouring rain felt like an eternity, but the same five minutes were just not time enough when I had to get ready to go. Five minutes of practising my scales on the piano were endless, as opposed to five minutes of listening to music before having to go to bed. And even at a young age I wondered if time maybe existed in different realities, simultaneous time zones. When, much much later, I read Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials I immediately thought that he must have been thinking along the same lines.

This past week has been a good example of the tricks time can play on you.
I can’t believe that it’s been more than a week since my previous blog on here. But I do know it took a lot of patience getting through those seven days waiting for news from the estate agent. So how come I was screaming out for more hours in the day to get my work done in time? When I sign a contract to translate a book the deadline always seems reasonably far away, but somehow the closer I get to that deadline, the faster time seems to go...

When I attended the “Soul in Education Conference” in Findhorn (2000) one of the many valuable lessons I learned that week was from Satish Kumar. The essence of his message was:
‘When God made time, he made plenty of it.’
I remind myself quite often of these words and I find that just by saying them out loud I am creating breathing space. Also, it is a healthy counterweight for our modern day creed ‘Time is Money’ that has taken control of our lives, of our world. Your success in the world seems to be measured by the amount of things you can cram into a day. Quantity determines quality.

Children learn from a young age to do as much as possible in as little as possible time. Their lives are lead first by their parents’ diaries and later by the school’s schedules. How often would a young person have to listen to the words: “No, there’s no time for that now.” Or “Come on, hurry up.” No wonder that when they get to the age where they think they’re in control of their own time, a lot of them prefer to do absolutely nothing and resent pressure of any kind.

Looking back, I think one of the first things my children taught me was to forget about time and totally be in the moment. When I first held AL in my arms there was just no before or after. No thinking about what or when to do next. Only utter wonderment, utter love.
Through my children I learned to look at the world and at myself in a new way. Well, no, not new. I went back to looking at things through the unspoiled eyes of a young child.
AL must have been about six months old when she was outside in the garden, in her baby chair, her eyes fixed on a spider weaving its web just above her head. Nothing could distract her from it and I didn’t try, but watched with her. And watched her. Saw how she reached out with her hand, but found it was too high for her to touch. More watching. Then she started to make little shrieking sounds. The spider froze momentarily in its web and then continued. She shrieked again, the spider froze again. And so it went on. I am absolutely positive that she was ‘learning’ that her actions caused a reaction with the spider.

What DO children learn from that continuous time pressure? Well, my youngest daughter told me that. In Holland we quite often went to the Open Air Museum and spend the day there. One nice summerday I’d set up the ‘picknick point’ on one of the benches in the Museum’s playground. Myrna, who must have been seven at the time, was quite happily playing in the sand and AL and Owen were in the farm next to the playground, milking a goat. Because we came there nearly every week the children knew their way around and the staff knew the children, so it was all very safe and relaxed.
Then two busloads of children on a schooltrip were literally unloaded near the playground. There were at least sixty children, age 9-10, and six teachers/adults. The teacher in charge gathered the whole lot by the entrance and shouted: “We will be here for twenty minutes! Don’t take any clothes off and keep your shoes on! Don’t go outside the playground! In twenty minutes precisely everybody has to be back here!”
And then they released these children. Turned them loose. Myrna had already come out of the sandpit and was sitting on my lap, watching and listening in total amazement. The adults all sat together on the bench next to ours, smoking, and casting disdainful glances in our direction. They were chatting amongst themselves, not watching their charges at all. And these children were screaming and swearing and pushing each other off the swings and the climbing rack. The language was absolutely appalling, but it fitted their behaviour.
I felt I had to say something about it to Myrna, so I made a remark about how they weren’t really being nice to each other and how awful it was that they didn’t wait their turn, and more disapproving judgments.
Myrna looked at me as if I was the dumbest person on the planet: “Mum! Did you not hear what that teacher said! They have twenty minutes to play. Twenty minutes! Now, if YOU only have twenty minutes in a playground, you wouldn’t want to waste that with waiting, would you?”

Educating the children outside the school system has given us the freedom to do things in our own time, at our own speed. In Holland, when we had the business and quite a few ‘social obligations’, our life was still very full and busy. Moving to Cumbria, England, gave us the chance to start all over again and to step out of the ratrace. In a sense, I think it was literally life-saving, because Ken was suffering from a severe burn-out and looked as if he could have a heart attack at any moment. It has been absolutely amazing and miraculous to feel and observe the good it has done all of us. Time is a healer, that’s for sure.
With no social or time pressure we were also able to experience autonomous learning to the full, and I have watched in absolute awe how much and how well the children - and Ken and I! - have learned. By just living our lives, listening to our own bodies and souls, and by being in tune with the world around us. We have arrived at a point where our diaries are quite full again, but the difference now is, that the diary is there to serve us and not to rule us. We are the centre of our own world again, we live our own lives. Time is a great teacher.

When you take time for living, learning will follow... naturally.

Have a wonderful time!

Ups and Downs

2007-05-08T14:03:00.000+01:00

I need to sit down and empty my head into my blog. Writing can be so therapeutical, because it helps me untangle my thoughts and feelings. I need to do the same with myself as what I’ve written on the notice board in the kitchen for the house: De-clutter, Make Space.
Our pace of life has suddenly changed and I am finding it a big challenge not to panic and not to rush into things. To stay in control, but at the same time in balance. To actually allow all those thoughts and feelings and accept that the seemingly opposite ones can exist simultaneously. In my family and even in myself.
Myrna is full of faith, but lacking patience. Owen is on the verge of a depression and tends to withdraw even more than usual. AL is insecure, nervous about what this means to her future. Ken, bless him, is determined that the house by the river is ours, but worries about our financial situation.
And I recognise all of that, and more, in myself.

Over the years I have learned to trust my first impulses.
And my first impulse when I heard that we’d have to leave our house was: Faith. I know we are going to be alright. We are loved and cared for and we deserve abundance.
That first impulse was reflected by instantly empowering responses. So much support and help from all sides. That house with our name on it, calling out to us. Good people, friendly people. Magic all around us. Without any certainties whatsoever I still felt strong.
Power, Faith, Love.
I’ve saturated my heart and soul with it and imbedded it in my Being.
And Gratitude.
I am overflowing with the feeling of being truly Blessed.

At the same time I am as human as can be.
As time goes by I am experiencing doubt and despair. My head is buzzing with all kinds of questions: Is this not just too good to be true? Am I really deserving to have such a beautiful house in such a beautiful spot? What if we can’t afford the rent? O my goodness, what if we can’t get that house, where are we going to end up? It has taken us such a long time to settle here, for the children to find friends and activities they like, what if we have to uproot all that again? What if... What if...
Also, I realise that all this is happening after I made a conscious decision to ‘come out of my hiding hole and connect with the outside world again’. One side of me is recognising that everything around me is now engaging to make that step possible and real, the other side is wondering if it wouldn’t have been better for all of us to just stay holed up. But there’s no going back.

It doesn’t help that my body has sort of decided it will not be helpful with any physical work. My rheumatism is at a new low and a couple of weeks ago I’ve made the big decision to see our doctor and ask if I can get some help in managing the pain. It was good to talk to him. He took new blood samples to check the level of rheumatoid factors and inflammation. Also, he suggested I’d maybe do a little less working, maybe even apply for DLA for myself, to be able to concentrate on the other demands in my life. He is and always had been very supportive of our home education and appreciates the efforts we put into it. I realise that having him for a doctor is one of the many things to be grateful for.

I suppose the biggest challenge for me personally now is, not to go into fighting mode. And while I’m typing this down I realise that that’s exactly what the past four years have been about. About discovering just how much you can ‘achieve’ and ‘learn’ by just staying in the flow. The peaceful space that surrounds us here has helped us discover the peaceful space within ourselves. And from that inner peace we were able to find our inner strength. And now, from that inner peace and strength, we’ll be able to find our way in the outer world. Without having to fight, without having to go against what we feel is best for us.

The words my dear sister gave me a couple of days ago are becoming more meaningful with the minute. I have contemplated them, meditated on them and they are now the mantra of my heart and soul.

HOLD THE VISION

TRUST THE PROCESS

DO NOTHING

The first two lines were not too hard to understand and integrate. Although I obviously constantly need to repeat them to myself. But I’d already made the picture of the ‘new’ house the background on my desktop and I was waking up in the mornings thinking I was already there.
Trust the process is, to me, all about allowing everything that’s going through my mind to do just that. Trusting that things are happening to make sure that the very best thing for us will come out eventually. And even trusting myself to make the right choices at the right time.
But doing nothing, that to me seemed quite impossible. Would I have to sit still and just wait and see what happened? I am such a strong believer in taking responsibility for your own life. Also, I am a control freak. How can I do nothing?
But I now realise that ‘Do Nothing’ should be seen in the Buddhist way. I shouldn’t do anything that blocks the vision. I shouldn’t do anything that interferes with the process. I think my task now is to tune myself completely into the vision and the process and do absolutely nothing that ‘feels’ unnatural, forced, out of the flow.
I need to stay in touch with that inner strength and peace, that allowed us to grow towards where we are now. I need to stay in the natural flow of that.
Of course I can do things. I can make sure that I know all there is to know about our right to stay in this house until we’ve got a suitable new place. I can do everything within my natural power to ensure a stable financial situation, which might include going for that DLA.

I can arrange to see the owners of the house by the river and make sure they know how wonderful it would be to have us as tenants.

I can start de-cluttering this house, do more clearing out, make sure that the children are involved in a positive way without having to miss out too much on their usual routines and activities.

I can finish the book I’m translating as soon as possible, so that we’ll have a bit more of the much needed money...
There’s so much I can actually do, and still do nothing.

Visualising the future

2007-05-01T22:14:00.000+01:00

Today Ken took Owen to see 'the house' while Myrna was having French lessons in Penrith. With just the two of them Owen could take it in at his own speed, in his own way. He hasn't said much about it yet, but neither has he said he doesn't want to live there. In the course of the next few days his comments will come out.
While there, Ken took some photo's (apologies for the bit of camera strap showing on some of them). It helps to visualise ourselves in there. We've spoken to JC and she's taken note of everything we've said and offered. Now we're going to need a lot of Patience. And again, Faith.

This is what you see after driving over the single track for half a mile. The outbuildings on the left are in use by a farmer, and wouldn't be included for us.

Doesn't Old Faithful just belong there? This is the house, with the two smaller outbuildings that are probably going to be included. Would be good to have, for bicycles, garden tools, bits of wood and all these things that really shouldn't live in a house...

A view of the house from the - metal and concrete and very shaky - bridge over the Petteril. With the blossoming trees!!

The back of the house. It looks a bit messy, maybe, but notice the gorgeous Gothic style window, that's even more beautiful from the inside. And look at that garden that goes right around the house... plenty space for dogs, trampoline, polytunnel, greenhouses...

The sagging wall on the riverside...

And this is the view of the house when you follow the track further up hill. Not bad, hey?

Have Faith, Have Fun

2007-04-29T19:43:00.000+01:00

I think this is going to be the longest blog I’ve written up to now. But there’s so much to tell.
Well, where do I start?
The church’s decision to chuck us out - because that’s what it boils down to - has started an immense surge of powerful energy. So many fabulous and wonderful things have happened in these past few days and there’s such a tremendous amount of support coming our way from all different directions, I just can’t stop smiling and grinning.
I almost - almost - feel guilty when friends phone up, genuinely concerned after reading my previous blog or having heard the news in other ways. So it’s time to let everybody know that we are fine, absolutely fine!!
First of all, in spite of the initial little and very understandable hiccup that first night, the family did pull together and we pledged a vow that we were going to put everything we had into finding the perfect place for all of us.
The support of my family, and especially my sister and soulmate M, is essential for me. She helps me believe in my own powers and strength, and in her own very special way she helps me stay in touch with the Guides on my Path.
The last thing I did before I went to sleep that night was post an email on the FOC list. By the next morning I had so many positive responses with practical and heartfelt support, it brought tears to my eyes. I really made me feel that I belong here.
It was only later that day that I realised that the idea of going back to Holland had only crossed my mind briefly, but never developed into an option. Now that’s special, because until recently I’ve had my doubts about whether or not to go back, especially since AL announced that she was. But it’s quite clear, to all of us, that we’re meant to be here and we do honestly want to stay here.

So on goes the story.
On Friday I phoned JC, our contact person in the estate agent’s, to thank her for taking the trouble to forewarn us about the notice. She did not have to do that, it was her personal decision. We’ve got to know her over the past couple of years and she’s a really nice person. I explained that we would do everything we could to be out of here asap, but that I couldn’t guarantee that it would be before the 27th of June, as the church wants. If we haven’t got a suitable place by then, we’ll let it go to court to see if we can get some extra time. I can’t see that being a major problem.
JC said that the whole thing had really troubled her and that she’d been trying to think if she knew any good houses for us. She’d thought of this one house where she’d been a while back, halfway Carlisle and Penrith, that in her mind would be ideal for us, only there was somebody in it. But then she came back into the office and she found this letter in her in-box, telling her that this very house would come empty soon and would she go and value it and then try and find new tenants for it!! She was practically breathless and couldn’t believe such a coincidence and I told her I’d stopped believing in coincidence a long, long time ago...
JC gave me the details on the house and said it needed rewiring and some structural work before it would be available. Also, she had no idea what the rent was going to be, but she would let us know as soon as she’d been there. And she would definitely recommend us as tenants to the owner...
Owen and Ken were away in Kielder and AL was still on campus, or I would have jumped in the car to go and see, of course. As it was, we (minus Owen) went to pick AL up from campus yesterday (Saturday) and the idea was to drive past the house - it’s reasonably close to campus - and just have a look at the outside and the area.
But when we got there - off the main road, onto a narrow country lane, onto a single track - we saw a couple of cars and vans on the yard of this absolutely lovely looking house. It was obvious that people were moving out. Ken and I looked at each other and the two of us got out the car. Ken went ahead and boldly asked if we’d come to the right house and yes, we had. My usually so (outwardly) unemotional husband then went on and told these people in a few words about our situation, that we’d heard this house was coming up for rent and that we’d just come to have a look where it was.
An ever so nice elderly lady came forward, introduced herself as the present tenant and invited us to come and have a look inside. I ran back to the car to get the girls while Ken chatted to her.

I cannot really describe the feeling that hit me when I saw the house, but I knew one thing: This has our name written all over it. To begin with the two blossoming trees (!!) in the garden. A huge garden, by the way, big enough to have the trampoline and a polytunnel, with enough space left to put up a few tents. It’s fenced all the way around, so the dogs can run free in it. At not even a hundred yards from the house runs the river Petteril and on the side of the house there’s another stream that comes out into the Petteril. There’s even the remains of an old privy alongside that stream, but I’m not sure if Owen would use that as the basis for a hut ;).
The house itself is spacious, with a large and sunny living room, a small study, a good sized kitchen, a big pantry and even a small cellar, three huge bedrooms and a smaller one upstairs, an upstairs bathroom with bath, washbasin and toilet. Then the lady showed us a bit that was added on the house for her husband when he became disabled. It was a utility room behind the kitchen with a door leading to a beautiful modern bathroom, with a real and very good shower!!
That was my one definite condition for a new house: a proper shower in good working order.
I’d already figured out that we could have one fitted in the bathroom upstairs, but this is so much better!
The house has Calor Gas for central heating, cooking and hot water. We will maybe miss the pleasant warmth of our Rayburn, but certainly not the smell and dust of coal all through the house. And gas is just so much more environmental friendly than oil and coal.

We walked around the house - ah, the view on the Lake District and Blencathra in particular !! - and talked to the lady and her family for ages. It turned out she’d lived there for 38 years and her husband had worked for the estate that it’s on. The house came with the job, and she’d been allowed to stay in it after he died just over a year ago. But it was too big for her, she said, so she was moving to a smaller house close to her children, who live locally.
She showed us the minor points of the house, too. Such as the huge cracks in the wall closest to the river, that had badly sagged and needed major structural work to it. That must be what they want to do before they put it up for rent again. And when Carlisle was flooded in 2005 this house was flooded too (not surprising with the river so close) and you can still see that in places. So all in all, it might technically not be a ‘beautiful’ house, but it suits us down to the ground. Maybe the fact that it’s in not such a good state - but still much better than the house we live in now! - will work to our advantage.
Eventhough in our way of thinking it’s close to both Carlisle and Penrith, it’s still off the beaten track and can only be reached by this rather long, single track that might get rough in winter. I’d imagine a family with schoolgoing children would think twice before moving there. And a couple without children would probably not so easily choose that spot either...
Even after the work to the walls has been done it’ll not be an easy house to sell (I don’t think even we would buy it, unless we had an extra 100.000 to spare on renovating) so the risk of having to go through another repossession is fairly small, I’d say.

All that’s between us and living in that house now is money. As I said, we don’t know the rent price yet. The son of the lady who lived there said he’d heard an amount mentioned that was twice as much as the rent we pay now. We couldn’t possibly afford to pay that, but... we might be able to solve that in another way. This household has two able bodied men, who aren’t afraid to do whatever work presents itself. Owen and Ken do lots of jobs on a voluntary basis for the Birds of Prey Centre, for Mr D and for other people. They like to do physical work, be it building, digging, fencing, chopping wood, or shifting heavy material. Labouring. Owen loves working together with his Dad and it’s the best possible outlet for everything that sometimes just doesn’t fit into his body.
The estate this house belongs to is absolutely huge and I’m sure there’s lots of work that needs doing. So first thing tomorrow morning we’re going to phone JC, tell us we went to see the house, fell in love with it and are available with more than just money to negotiate about living there.
If you haven’t got money, use magic and manpower. It’s an excellent combination and we have plenty of it available in our family.

It’s a bit scary to just put this all in writing and blog it. It’s tempting to wait and see IF we’re going to get it and IF we’re going to be able to pay for it, one way or another. But the times in my life when I’ve felt as good about something as I now feel about this house, things have always turned out really, really well for us. Sometimes not exactly in the way I’d envisaged, but always very positive and enriching.
Besides that, I really do believe in miracles and abundance.
They’re there for us to enjoy, if only we have Faith.
Have Faith, have Fun.

Never a dull moment, indeed

2007-04-27T00:05:00.000+01:00

What have I created with my previous post?
I mean, writing about learning in motion doesn't mean that I want to be on the move again...
And yet, that's what's going to happen, and sooner than I possibly could have expected.
While I was in Newcastle hospital today, visiting Ken's dad who's still hanging on bravely, Ken got a telephone call from the agent of our landlord, the Diocese of Carlisle, giving us two months notice to vacate our house.
They want to sell it and they want it on the market empty.
According to the contract we signed over four years ago they have the right to do this.
So I suppose we have not much choice but to start - as from tomorrow - to look for an other place to live. Because of the short term we decided to tell the children straight away. Well, we don't usually keep things from them, but in this case I would've liked to be able to present it to them, and especially to Owen, at a moment where I could at least give a slight idea of what the future was going to look like. But now I haven't got the faintest...
All three of them - we phoned AL at campus - were in tears. Owen lost all control over the volume of his voice and was stampeding through the house like an enraged bull.
AL seemed to take the news rather well, but panicked and phoned back a few minutes later when it had dawned upon her that she would leave for her six week work experience in Holland in the last week of June and she wouldn't be coming back to this house...
Myrna had a good cry and was very upset about Owen's reaction, but then cuddled up to me and started making a list of all the things we would be looking for in a new house...
Ken seems to be totally paralysed, closed down. After taking the call he hasn't been able to do anything, he just sat and waited for me to come home. He had started repairing the damaged wall in the kitchen and had planned to do some repairs to the gutter in the yard, but has decided he'll not lift a finger towards improvement of the house anymore.
When Owen lost it, Ken lost it too and started yelling back at Owen. Of course I intervened and suggested he'd instead put his arms around his son... and a few minutes later he did... But it's so confusing for Owen...
They're so much alike in so many ways. Ken's never been diagnosed, but I'm sure Owen's Asperger Syndrome didn't come from the milkman. Anyway, my dreams of us as a family, pulling together and supporting each other through difficult times, tend to fall to pieces at moments like that. And I realise with such intensity that it's going to be mainly me who has to be strong and keep it all together. I can't help the feeling that I'm the only adult in the house at moments of crisis and this definitely qualifies as such.
At the same time I know we'll get through this. I am going to face it as yet another challenge, a process of learning. One way or another it'll make us stronger again, I'm sure.
But to be honest, I really, really would be just as happy without lessons like this. I wouldn't mind the odd dull moment.
Anyway, anybody out there knows a house for rent, for a family with three children who all need their own space very much, with two cats and two dogs? Preferably not in a built up area? And actually, both Myrna and Owen would really like to stay close to their newfound friends and their much loved activities, here in Cumbria... and AL loves her little job here...
I am reinstating the mantra that my sister wrote for me in beautiful handwriting and that I had next to my PC in Holland, the year before we left:
I am open to Miracles.
And the other one, too: I deserve Abundance.

Learning from a life in motion

2007-04-19T16:14:00.000+01:00

As promised, some pictures of Myrna jumping on the trampoline. One of her many favourite pastimes. Quite a few of her friends go to trampolining lessons, and we’ve suggested that Myrna joins one of these clubs. But no, she much rather teaches herself by trying things out (after thinking about it carefully) and watching and asking her friends. She’ll never do anything rash or take unnecessary risks. I did hear and read all the warnings that go with a trampoline, and certainly with a big one like ours, but I’ve never felt I should install a safety net or limit her movements and exercises. We did however read through the safety instructions together, discuss and practice the different ways of breaking your fall, and try out what happens when there’s more people on at the same time. We also have a set of rules for when we have other (and especially younger) children visiting, but to be honest most of the visiting children are quite sensible about it, too. More often than not it’s the parents that know about all the horrible things that could possibly happen and they worry, so for their peace of mind we cite the rules before their children go on the trampoline.

A large part of education, in my mind, is observation. Only because I observe my children - with eyes and mind directed by my heart and soul - I have an idea of how to support their educational processes. What to offer them, what to ask them, what to say and what not to say, what to do and what not to do. That makes it as much a process of learning for me as it is for them.
Observing what the trampoline means in Myrna’s life and how it supports her learning process is like watching a good documentary. I could go on for hours and hours describing it all, but I’m afraid I’m the only one fascinated enough to read that. So I’ll just share the observations of the past few days.
Myrna can get really engrossed by her computer activities. Whether it’s dress designing, the Simms, talking to her friends on MSN, or some of the Manga sites she goes onto, once she’s into it, she finds it difficult to stop. But sometimes she has to, because she doesn’t want to spend all her computertime in one go - they have a Watchdog account with nine hours a week on it. She’s discovered that going on the trampoline helps her shift her thoughts.
She’ll start off jumping as hard and as high as she can, really tiring herself out. Then she usually sits on the trampoline for a bit, catching her breath and when I’m there talking to me about what she’s been doing on the computer.
The other day she didn’t want to go on the computer at all, because of the nice weather, and she spent ages trying out this new thing on the trampoline. Being a perfectionist she will not stop until she manages to do what she’s set out to do. This time it was bouncing forwards, which she hadn’t done up to now because she found it really scary. But she’d watched her friends do it, asked them about techniques and all that, and was now ready to give it a go. Because of the nice weather I was sitting in the garden, knitting, and I was treated to a running comment. She started on her knees, then went to a crouching position, then she went forward from standstill and finally from small and later on bigger bounces. She discovered that it was scary because ‘her eyes reached the trampoline before her body, so she could see this big black surface all the time’ and also because ‘it’s much softer and easier to fall on your bum than to have to land on your hands’. But: ‘I have to go through that fear and let my brain tell my body that it’s safe to do’.
It all went fairly painless, and after an hour (!!) she mastered it and was very pleased with herself. The next day, however, she had pains in muscles that she didn’t know had been involved, especially her diaphragm and stomach. So she got the “Body Book” out and we looked at how muscles and tendons were connected to each other, and how the shocks she thought she’d absorbed with her hands and elbows could have had an effect on these other parts of her body.
Another thing she’s been doing is jumping with a long pink ribbon and trying to work out how to make it go in circles and other patterns while she was doing summersaults and other jumps. She pondered on the difference in speed between the ribbon and her body and she figured out how to make the ribbon make the figures she wanted it to make. But mostly, she enjoyed it immensely. And so did I.

Our life is in motion in other ways, too.
Ken’s dad is in hospital and the doctors have told us that it would take no less than a miracle for him to come out alive. They said the same in November, yet he was home again for Christmas. He went back in in February, but was back home after a few days. But this time we all have the feeling that it’s much more severe. He seems so much harder to reach and sometimes he doesn’t recognise his wife J or Ken or his grandchildren. Then they found out he had some sort of infection in his brain, they changed his medication and yesterday he was sitting up when Ken came in and they had a good natter. So who knows what the outcome will be this time. We are just making the most of every moment he’s still around.
AL has spent her Easter Break at her granddad’s house to look after J, make sure she eats and has somebody to talk to and cry with when needed. Ken’s been driving up and down every other day, going in to see his dad, talking to the specialist, making sure AL and J are alright. Owen joins him every now and then, although it’s most definitely not easy for him to be in that hospital, if only because of all the smells and disturbing noises.
Myrna has decided she wants to think of her granddad the way he was when he was at home, before he got ill, and we cherish the memories of his visit to our house last November. Myrna writes him cards, makes beautiful drawings and poems for him and gives Ken lots of kisses to pass on to granddad.

Obviously this all takes priority over everything else. But we try and arrange things around it, continue the usual activities as much as possible.
Here again, I find it important to observe and to try and provide what’s needed per child. All three of them are very fond of their granddad and they love him as much as he loves them. He’s not been a very good dad to Ken, divorcing Ken’s mum when Ken was twelve and not making much effort to stay in touch after that. For many years Ken and he had a very strained and unloving relationship. We even lost track of him completely when he moved to Spain with J and their daughter A. But he came back to England after having had a heart attack. And then an old friend, who knew both Ken’s mum and his dad, told him he had two (at that time) grandchildren in Holland. Having been so close to the end of life then, he realised that he’d nearly died without even knowing his grandchildren. So he came over to see us in Holland and that was the start of the slow rebuilding of a relationship.
Our children, not burdened with the knowledge of all this history, loved him from day one. They stole his heart and melted the last bits of ice away. Since we’ve moved to England things have only improved and it feels as if he’s been trying to make up for not being such a good father by being the best possible grandfather.
It just goes to show you’re never too old to learn and to change your ways.
Life is always in motion.

Schools out, forever

2007-04-14T10:41:00.000+01:00

It's just so nice to read a good, positive newspaper story on home education.
I highly recommend this article in today’s Guardian to bring a smile on your face!
Thank you and well done, Newstead family!

What a mess!

2007-04-13T15:49:00.000+01:00

I’ve managed not to get involved for a long, long time.
I tried to keep to myself, do my own things, turn a blind eye.
But honestly, I couldn’t bear just standing by and watching things go totally wrong, so I finally gave in to this lingering and ever increasing urge and stepped in.
After all, my sanity and peace of mind is at stake here. And that of my children.
So, eventhough there’s a deadline coming up, I put my work on hold and went out there to do what had to be done.
After all, one has to get ones priorities right.

We made a start with tidying up the yard, the porch, the garage, the boiler room and the utility room.
For months and months now, Ken’s been meaning to do it - or so he says. The idea was to create more storage space by throwing away all the unwanted and/or broken stuff and tidying up the rest. But every time it looks as if the moment is right, something else pops up that just can’t wait and has to be done at that particular moment.
The problem is that if any member of this family - except me, of course - has something they have no immediate use or need for, but don’t want to throw away - because, oh no, we don’t throw things away, you never know when it might come in handy - they’ll dump it in either one of the abovementioned places. Isn’t it wonderful that we have this huge place with so much storage room?
Yes, wonderful. But our family - and especially Ken - have this special talent to fill any space in no time. Because Ken’s mainly in charge of the household I make a genuine effort not to let it bother me. But last week even Ken thought it was getting to a point where ridiculous was the only way to describe the state of our storage rooms. I think that was after he’d spent hours searching for a particular attachment for the hosepipe that he was sure should be in the garage... or in the boiler room... or had he seen it in the utility room?

So with the help of Owen and Myrna he made a start. And because of my deadline I was excused from this Mission Impossible. But I couldn’t help noticing that within no time the children were doing their own things again. And every time I went in to see how Ken was doing, this huge pile of undefined stuff would be in another place and Ken would be engrossed in something totally irrelevant in my eyes. I’ve been told that that’s a man thing, but the only other man I’ve ever lived in the same house with was my dad, and he was the most tidy and organised person you could ever meet.
Anyway, yesterday, I couldn’t bear it anymore and I rolled up my sleeves - and later took of my fleece altogether - and starting doing what I’m good at. Ordering people around and putting together a plan of what had to be done first and what could be left until later. And within a very short time the yard was filled with carefully sorted heaps, and that was only half the contents of the garage and porch, and the things that were packed on top of the fridge and the cupboard in the utility room. Then I got the dreaded black bags out and committed a great crime in the eyes of Ken by throwing away everything that was too filthy to even consider cleaning up, too eaten up by the mice, too far beyond recognition even for Ken to know what it was and several other items that came apart as soon as I picked them up.

The Mess Master Amazed

The rest was put in mouse-proof boxes or returned to the place where it should be living. Needless to say we retrieved quite a few missing items... At the end of the day even Ken agreed that 'de-cluttering' is a good thing to do and he could see the advantage of being able to move around in the garage. Also, the porch and the utility room looked so much lighter and brighter now. Luckily it was rubbish collection day today, and the other good thing is that we haven't got a limitation on the amount of rubbish we can put outside (yet).

Here's Old Faithful, contently grinning at the results of a day's hard work

I'm sure at least some members of the FOC Washing Line Fanclub will agree with me that this is a far prettier sight than a yard full of rubbish... eventhough I'm way beyond the point of nappies...

Intentional lurking

2007-04-12T21:11:00.000+01:00

For those of you who wonder about my new welcoming message, here’s a brief explanation.
My knowledge of the English language has recently been extended with the term ‘lurkers’. I think it sounds like a dirty word, and that does seem to concur with the overall association. Personally, I don’t mind at all if people read my blog without leaving a comment. In my very first post I’ve shared my intentions about my reasons to start this blog. Up to now I’ve only had very positive response and I’m quite enjoying the whole thing. It works for me as I hoped it would work.
Now it has been brought to my attention that some of these lurkers are people who spend time - and some of them even taxpayer’s money! - reading home educators’ blogs in an attempt to find ways to approach our children without the parents being present.
If that is true, I think it’s sick. I really find it very hard to believe that any sane or well meaning person would do such a thing. Anybody who would stoop to such methods could not possibly have even the slightest bit of positive intentions and I’m convinced that justice and/or the law will catch up with them, one way or another.
I don’t intend to give this phenomenon any more attention than it deserves, but I also think it’s not a bad idea to be aware of the fact that there are some confused people wondering around on this planet. So we’ve discussed it with the children, we’ve made sure that they know what to look out for and what to do in case anybody asks them anything else than the way back to the civilized world (which happens occasionally around here...). Just as we teach them other useful things to help them get by in the world in a sensible, healthy way.
Oh, and just in case there’s anybody lurking out there who wants to find out more about me or us than this blog tells them, please do not hesitate to let me know! I’m always happy to meet new people and to share thoughts and ideas.
In the meantime I’ll happily continue blogging as before, with the most powerful of protections in place!

Bunnies and Hares

2007-04-09T17:36:00.000+01:00

Maybe one day, one year, I'll do an extensive blog about the symbolisms surrounding Easter. There are so many and they tell such interesting stories about different cultures, different beliefs, different people.
But this post is only about our personal Easter symbolisms. It takes a bit of explaining, so if you'll bear with me...
In Holland there is no such thing as an Easter Bunny. We have an Easter Hare. For different reasons, that I'll not go into now.
About thirty years ago (waah, yes, that long!) I met Ken in a pub in Arnhem, where I used to work weekends and holidays at that time. The pub was called Café 't Haasje, which means as much as 'The Hare' (no hounds involved). It was an English style pub, residence of the Storyville Jazzclub.
In March 1979 Ken and I got married in a free registry-office wedding, no special wedding dress, no big reception, no big crowds. But we did want to throw a big party and the owner of 't Haasje kindly offered us the use of his pub.
It was wonderful and very special to celebrate our wedding in the place where we'd met.
The invitation we sent out for this party had a beautiful drawing of a hare on it, and we were given quite a few hares in different forms and shapes as wedding presents. One of them was a mould of a hare, and I'm sure it was meant to make the traditional Dutch 'speculaas', a type of spiced biscuit. But although it has been a centre piece in our kitchen for all those years, I've never used it.
So now you know what special role the (Easter) Bunny/Hare plays in our lives...

For the past couple of years Owen has been trying to use the mould to make a chocolate Easter Bunny/Hare. He didn't want any help with it, he had his own ideas about how to do it. Somehow they never came out as he wanted them too, but luckily he'd find comfort in eating the results...
Last year he took the mould to a chocolate making workshop and tried to make a one with milk, black and white chocolate at the same time. The person who gave the workshop tried to instruct him, but he said he'd rather do it 'his own way'. We had a very interesting chocolate jigsaw bunny/hare for Easter.
This year Owen decided to do it differently. He phoned his Granny and asked her advice. Then he melted milk chocolate only, made sure the mould was in a stable position, closed the bottom end with alufoil and then carefully poured the melted chocolate in.
He left it overnight in a cool place and made sure it had set the next morning. Then he poured steaming water in the ovendish that he'd used to stabilize the mould, held the mould over it for a few seconds and - lo and behold! - a perfectly shaped milk chocolate Easter Bunny/Hare came out! In one piece!
He's every so proud and asked me to take photo's. So I did. And as I now know how to blog them, I'll share them:).

The master at work. The melted chocolate has been poured into the mould and is being straightened.

The fantastic result and the mould it was made in.

The problem now obviously is: What next? As much as Owen likes chocolate, he can't really bring himself to eating this Easter Bunny/Hare. But somehow, I'm sure his love for chocolate will win. After all, he's got these beautiful photo's as a reminder.

Oh, and the educational value of all this? Well... clearly that would be that learning through trial and error is all very well, but sometimes there's nothing wrong with asking the expert help of someone who's done it before... ;;.)))

But we don't need to tell Owen. He's found that out all by himself.

Down by the riverside

2007-04-07T22:19:00.000+01:00

Today's HE was all about how to make the most of a good moment. Of a good day, really. We did the same yesterday and everybody thoroughly enjoyed it, so in true autonomous learning spirit we decided to do it again.
After the early morning household chores, reading, maths, biology and music we opened front and back doors and went out into the sunny garden. The past couple of days we've been busy raking and burning leafs and trying to get the garden back into some state of presentableness.
Last Thursday Granny brought one of these leaf-blowers and all the sudden there were these huge piles of dry leafs, that burned really well.

Here's my boys (Ken on the right and Owen) creating a magical atmosphere in our garden. Myrna helped a bit too, but was on the trampoline most of the time. Next time she goes on I'll try and get a good picture of her jumping, because I didn't get a one today. When the girls (AL and her friend M and Myrna) came back from their walk with two dirty dogs, we went to the river, as I wrote in my previous Old Faithful post.

The dogs really love it down there, as you can see in this picture:

The only problem with taking both dogs is that Lagsi, our Icelandic Shepherd, barks incessantly. Well, it's not barking really. It's a nerve racking high pitched yapping. He can't help it apparently, it's a trait of the breed. But it drives everybody including Bobby (the black dog - not a Labrador but a mix between a Belgian shepherd and a Dutch Spaniel type dog) absolutely bonkers, so after they'd had a good run and swim I drove Lagsi back home to Ken, so they could watch the fires together, and then I quickly went back to the river. Bobby had stayed with the children and guarded them with his life, of course.

AL and M had brought a mat to sit on, the box with colouring pencils and sheets with mandala's, so they sat in the sun doing that, while Owen climbed trees and dug up treetrunks together with Bobby. Myrna went scouting down the river for nice looking stones and discovered the remains of a little lamb, that probably long ago had got lost and drowned in the river. When Myrna reported her finding in great detail a discussion started about whether it was or wasn't a skeleton, because you could still see the wool on it. They came to the conclusion that it could only be a skeleton when there was no meat on it, so Owen and Myrna went to prod the lamb with a stick to find out... Yuk!

This autonomous learning can sometimes get really disgusting, because the smell of the dead lamb started Myrna off developing this theory about why farts smell the way they do... and you know what, she was dead serious about it too! I wouldn't be at all surprised if that girl is going to be a pathologist or something like that one day. She just loves to dissect little dead beasties (plants too) to study them under the microscope.

When Owen climbed in one of the trees, he found a fishing hook with some wire attached, stuck in one of the branches. Another addition to the treasure chest. Luckily the tree wasn't very high, because when Owen hung on the lowest branch it broke off... the tree was quite dead... but Owen landed on his feet and Bobby was so happy with the dead branch that we took it home with us.

All in all we had a wonderful feel good day. The rest of the family is watching a film together now, giving me a chance to do some work... and blogging...

Old Faithful

2007-04-07T21:39:00.000+01:00

Yeah! I just discovered how I can blog photo's and I'm going to give it a try today.
And the first picture can only be of Old Faithful, who's been with our family for nearly eleven years now, right from birth. He's never ever let us down. Only when there was a slight chance that he was going to be left in Holland. Then he went on strike, refusing to continue his services for us. I pleaded with him, but not until I promised him that of course we would take him to England with us and of course I would ask Ken to treat him gently - Ken tends to have a very heavy left foot - only then did he get himself into gear again and carried on as if nothing had ever been wrong.
The dogs love him to bits. When I take the dogs to Old Faithful they know we're going to have fun. Like today. Today Old Faithful took us all to the river Liddel, about two miles down the road from here, the border between England and Scotland. It was such a beautiful day and the girls had already taken the dogs for a long walk. But Bobby had found a ditch full with frogspawn and jumped into it. He stank so badly that I didn't want him in the house like that. Good Old Faithful had no hesitations about taking the dogs to the river and didn't seem to mind the smell - he smells quite badly himself when he gets started, to be honest - so off we went.

Well? What do you think? He doesn't look his age, does he? He sounds it, though. There's something not really well with his clutch plates, so every time we change gear he wheezes like the old man he really is. But Malcolm, our wonderful local mechanic, has promised to have a look at it. He thinks he can fix it. We're just keeping our fingers crossed that it's not going to be too expensive. But if we do have to decide to not have him repaired we have promised we will not part with him. We've booked him an old git's slot in our own yard, where he can stay and undoubtely be used as sleepover place or birdfood storage or whatever else we can think of. After all he's seen and done with us - his counter is nearly on 300.000 kilometers - we just couldn't bring ourselves to dumping him.

So here's to Old Faithful and all the adventures we've been through with him! May we enjoy him for many more kilometers and a long, long time!