Mrs Hannigan's Home for Girls

Evelyn likes doing whatever I do. I love seeing myself through her eyes, as we discover her passions together. She can make the most mundane tasks seem like a grand occupation. There is a ritual to dish washing that apparently I’ve never examined deeply enough until now.

It begins with verifying that there’s a towel to dry them with. That amount of forethought was the first thing that impressed me about her approach to the task. So we gathered our drying towel, and then cleared the counter. She looks forward to the “soapy water” part of the job, but she knows we need to start with the end in mind. I’m impressed that she’s mastered a life skill that I still find challenging – having a precise goal. And I’m supposed to be teaching her? What a backward philosophy.

Once the towel and counter are prepared, our real dialog begins. She wants to wash the dishes NOW. I want to clean the sink first. It just doesn’t seem right to wash dishes in a dirty sink. Someone dripped milk on the side, some ketchup, a smashed tomato, a piece of peach skin, spit out in disgust. I cleaned the sink while she was explaining to me how to proceed. “I have my sponge, you need to put warm water on it and squirt me some soap in the middle right there, give me soap mom I am ready now please ok mom”

Finally the sink was scrubbed down. I still needed to rinse, but I could do that while I’m getting her sponge wet. And I did- she didn’t catch me stalling because she was explaining to me which dish she was going to wash first, and teling me that she wouldn’t wash the “knifesis because they are sharp.” I sometimes wish I could record her all day long just to share the delicious sound of her voice with the less fortunate (you know, people who don’t have 2 yr olds in the house). When she says the word “are” and “sharp” she has a little Boston accent: “They aoaohhh shahhp.” I think I can safely split all 6 of my kids into 2 groups The ones that sound like they’re from New York when they’re two and the ones that sound like they’re from Boston.

Anyway- we continue that way, discussing very aspect of dish washing. from the selection of the next dish to be washed, all the way through determining how much soap should go on the sponge, to techniques to make your soap last longer. Y’know, because if you dip your sponge in the water it washes your soap away.

We washed a sinkful of dishes together, at one point she said “Mommy you are so good at this.” I said “thank you honey, you’re good at this, too. Are you having fun?” She said “yes, I’m so glad you’re having fun mommy” and then we discussed some other things we like to do together, like picking tomatoes in the garden, eating tomatoes in the garden, picking peppers in the garden and eating peppers in the garden, picking and eating grapes, picking flowers, saying hello to the chickens, folding laundry, brushing the dog… Being with her is so pure and natural.

She’s truly a gift in that she amplifies the beauty in everyday life. She’s like an enhancing lens, or some badass photoshop brush that just makes all the magic in the world stand out. AND- she thinks I’m awesome.

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Last night my 2 yr old came over to me with a broom and a small chair. I remember seeing her approach out of the corner of my eye. She set up the chair to face me while I was cleaning the kitchen and handed me the broom. Seeing the broom in my own hand [...]

Apparently Flo Gascon lets her kids eat ice cream for breakfast and Ronnie Maier (another unschooling genius mom) was inspired to host a blog carnival so she wouldn’t feel like such a loser so all us yes-sayers could shout it from the rooftops (or… our mommy blogs, as the case may be)
So before you announce [...]

Sounds terrible, right?
When I was pregnant with Madelyn, I was working 50-60 hours a week at a Chinese restaurant. I was one of two people who were not Chinese. Maria was the other. She was 21 years old, the youngest of 19 children and still lived at home, very much “babied” by her [...]

So the other day, Emilee (16) carries a very limp & teary-eyed Grace (4) into my bedroom where I’m working and says “Mom, Grace is sad.” So I stopped working and held her in my arms and asked her why she was sad. She explained, with Emilee’s help, how it bothers her that Maddy [...]

OK- here’s how food, nutrition & shopping works in our house. Keep in mind that it’s a constantly evolving process of feeding our bodies, and we definitely didn’t start off like this. Every family has their own food issues. I believe that food shouldn’t be an issue. Human infants are born with the ability [...]

Radical unschooling has been getting a lot of press lately. People are genuinely shocked to learn that we don’t boss our kids around about every little thing on the planet. They assume, unfortunately, that they must be wild animals with no sense of responsibility, hygiene or social skills. On an unschooling message board the [...]

So the other day I posted an entire entry about my Grace. I’ve been watching her closely because she’s the first of my children to be completely and technically unschooled forever.
If we were a schooling family, she’d be getting ready for kindergarten, which would begin in a few months. As I watch [...]

Grace is my 4 yr old. She’s the one that was born in the shower. It’s a weird age, being 4. I know there are a lot of in-between ages when you’re a kid, but I’ve always thought that 4 was really a landmark transition. I mentioned before that we’ve never had [...]

In the book “Give me Liberty” by Gerry Spence, which isn’t about parenting at all, it’s about freedom from the profit-driven clutches of corporations and governments, he says;
“Children, as persons, are entitled to the greatest respect. Children are given to us as free-flying souls, but then we clip their wings like we domesticate the wild [...]

In the unschooling community, there’s a great respect for children’s inner wisdom. This week, for me, has been filled with confirmation that I need to follow my kids’ lead more often and to value their life’s experiences and authentic reactions.

Be fearless
I love going to the park and often, when we’re waiting for kids to [...]

OK, my theory is that humans are designed to move, a lot and that’s all we really need to do for fitness. Babies are in constant motion, flailing around until they realize they can turn over, then flailing around until they figure out how to propel themselves and after a while they grow into [...]

First of all, here are the top 5 reasons every woman needs a riding lawnmower for mother’s day
1- they’re white-noisy, which allows you to THINK – because listening to any thought that isn’t in your head is impossible
2- even if someone is yelling, you can’t hear anything and they can’t hear you either
3- so you [...]

This is a flashback post, from Dec 2008
So my morning coffee is interrupted by …”She said I can’t come into her fort.” So I responded by saying “that fort is not more important than your sister and if that fort is going to be in my living room, then all of my children are welcome [...]

I’ve changed this post- edited it a bit from its original form. It’s been a month or maybe more, since I wrote it and I hate having it up here. I tossed around the idea of deleting it. The original title was “Why no one talks about depression” but the post doesn’t [...]

I know people who think kids shouldn’t go to weddings or funerals. The first time I came across this perspective, I was shocked. Those are really important things in life- why shouldn’t children be included? The answer I was given is that “Old people don’t want a bunch of kids running around” in reference to [...]

Apparently nothing. I read a statistic about soldiers committing suicide. Apparently more of them are killing themselves than are being killed in battle.
To me, it was obvious that this indicates that no matter what we’re taught, or what we think we believe, that killing our own (war) is NOT natural, in fact it’s [...]

One of my favorite 13th century Persian poets is Rumi. Unfortunately I can’t understand a damn thing he wrote because I don’t speak Persian. Luckily, he’s been translated several times, this one is translated by Shahram Shiva:

A true Lover doesn’t follow any one religion,
be sure of that.
Since in the religion of Love,
there is no irreverence [...]

Six or seven times this week I’ve heard the term “terrible two’s” and honestly, I thought it was gone; dead, like the notion that it was OK to leave infants to cry alone in a crib and that women were less intelligent than men. I haven’t ever experienced a terrible two year old. Ever. [...]