Here I am back in October at my dear friend, Carole's birthday celebration with our friend (and coach) Reggie. These two women are just so inspiring to me - they are the kind of friends who I just feel so honored by. And it always surprises me that these people who I respect so much respect me just as much. How cool is that?Moving as much as I have, I've never really figured out how to balance spending time with friends with not being too needy. So I tend to lean heavily to the "leaving people alone" side and don't connect as deeply as I dream of connecting. I hear stories of families having other families that they just do everything with - sharing dinner together at least once a week, having fabulous unschooling adventures together, helping each other out, working on projects together, but I've never achieved that. First off, I've yet to meet a family with kids who both my kids mesh with (I think part of it is that they are 4 years apart) - usually a family has a kid that one of my kids gets along with well, but the other is not at all interested in.
I really have moved my entire life, so I didn't have this modeled for me as a child, because my mom was always in the making new friends mode herself. Now that we've settled down permanently, I would love to figure this out.
So my wish is for an unschooling family who has kids my kids like to hang around with, who likes to help out and be helped out and likes to do projects together. And, of course, some basic agreements as to shared values would be a must. Anyone? Anyone?
3 comments:
I wish it was still working for us! :-(
I think the "shared values" might be the hard part. It's so easy to assume that other people share your views. I have friends who (I suspect) don't want to play here because we have toy guns. Others don't think we're religious enough. With so much in common, it's a shame to judge each other for the choices we make in our own families.
Sometimes the fun is in the learning...values can be similar (wanting what's best for your children, wanting respect for everyone) and yet they manifest themselves in our lives through our experience filters and play out differently in each family. Sometimes the fun is in the learning how others achieve the same thing...in a TOTALLY different way!
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