To Market, To Market

We live on our farm, at the foothills of a range of hillocks. We are off the main road by about a kilometer. We go to the market area in Athimanjeripet once every couple of days or so for all our house-hold and farm needs. This is a three kilometer ride one-way. Athimanjeripet is a village with a population of about 5000. Here is an account of my ride to the town and back, from a couple of days ago:

Subbamma went “Madam! Long time no see! How are you?”. I found her limping more than usual after the recent surgery. I was wondering how her husband was doing. I hadn't seen him in a while.

*

On the road, Nalini, a retired school teacher, was waiting for a bus. She said that arthritis was quite bad. She is a cheerful person, I enjoy meeting her, however briefly.

*

I stopped at Lata’s place to pay for the manure we had picked up from their place, earlier that week. Lata’s neighbour got curious to know what was going on. After a couple of minutes of chit-chat, she went about doing her usual business having had her curiosity satisfied. I paid Lata for the manure, bought some coconuts from her and left soon after.

*

We used to live in a rental house when we initially came to Athimanjeripet. There I got to know Babu, our landlord’s brother. As I was riding towards the town, he was zipping through on his motorbike; he acknowledged me as he went past. This quick acknowledging gesture of the head making a quarter turn and back took me some time to get used to, not to mention the practice needed to get it right. I was wondering how his new business was going. During corona, he started selling fruit on a truck stationed by the roadside in our market.

*

A bit later I spotted our potter on his bicycle. He did the same quick quarter rotation which I was happy to reciprocate. I was remembering that his wife had recently passed away. 

*

I arrived at the bazaar street, the one and only one we have. The cloth merchant’s shop, a tiny 8’ X 20’ space, was stocked with sarees, T-shirts, fabric for men's shirts, pants and women’s blouses. He had a couple of stools at the entrance of his shop to seat his customers. He typically brought the fabric out to the customers at the entrance. He let me step into the shop and look at his collection. Once I finished my shopping, he said that he was offering me a discount of ₹10!!

*

My next stop was the tailor’s shop. Rama, in late 20’s, used to work at a textile export factory in Chennai. When he couldn’t suffer the long hours any more, he quit the exploitative job to start his own shop here in the village. He gets inundated with orders, especially during festival seasons, school reopening times and months in which weddings happen frequently. He is never short of work. This also means he can’t deliver on time. Thus it was my n^th time to his shop asking about the status of my clothes. I remembered that one of his relatives was recently hospitalized after a snake bite. I asked about that relative’s health. He updated me about those hospital visits, the expenses involved, the stress in the extended family etc. It was needless for me to ask if he got around to working on my order. Happy that his relative survived the snake bite, I left his shop. Rama asked me to call him after a week.

*

A little disappointed about not getting my clothes, I started my ride back home. The banana vendor waved at me and said “no”. I knew what he meant -- “I don’t have old bananas to spare today”. I usually stop at his teeny-tiny (5’ X 3’) make-shift, road side shop to pickup the bananas he can’t sell -- overripe, mushed up, with black spots. I bring them home for our chickens. He sets these aside for me to pickup once in every two days or so. He is happy to give these away and I am happy to get these for our chickens. In return, when I want to buy bananas, I make it a point to buy from him.

*

The next two kilometer ride was not eventful. As I approached our village, I saw Mohan on the road. I remembered that his son-in-law had come over last week and there was a big dispute. I asked him about that and he said that they had decided not to send their daughter back with her husband. The guy being a drunkard had beaten his daughter many times in the last few years and the decision is now made to have her live here with the parents. The story gets complicated as this daughter has three kids and there is no source of income.

*

With a heavy heart, I kick-started my motorbike. A couple of minutes later, Das waved to say that he will come over to get his cow. He had brought his cow earlier in the day to graze at our farm. We get milk from Das’ cow. I said okay without stopping to talk further.

.

*

I came back home and started my chores. It is quite normal to meet people on the road, chat, get to know the happenings and share a bit from our side too. This gossip is essential, as Harari says in the “Sapiens”. There are downsides of gossip too, no denying that. But the lack of human connection makes our lives dry and disconnected.

*

To compare and contrast, I would like to talk about our lives in a suburb in northern California. We had lived in the same house for 11 - 12 years! And yet, we didn’t know a single family there for 10 long years! Only during the last year (ironically when we decided to move) we had neighbours who wanted to talk to us. Our neighbourhood was beautifully maintained, landscaped, had all the amenities but yet lacked life. I had two babies in that house. Not one soul came to see me or the babies! We and all our neighbours got out of our houses in our cars and came back in our cars -- it was as if our remote-operated car garages were spouts from where our cars emerged out and the garages sucked us and ours cars back in when we came home. Nobody ever needed to walk out of the house! We could hardly see people out on the roads. In all those twelve years, there was a two week period when they were laying roads for which we needed to park our cars outside the neighbourhood and walk the last bit. This changed our lives! We got to see people walking to work, coming back from the stores, gathering on the street. I started looking forward to that little walk in the mornings and evenings, just to see new human faces.

*

Now, twenty years later, when I go to Chennai (or any other big city) especially to the new areas where high-rise apartment-living is the norm, I remember my northern California suburb days and wonder how people in such apartments, leading nuclear lives, feel about their disconnect from the rest of society around them; or do they even have the time to know that there is a disconnect?

-- Hema

 

 

 

Taking Delight Vs Cute-ifying

According to Webster, "taking delight" means "to enjoy very much". Here I would like to introduce a new term that I have coined -- "cute-ify" to mean "to turn something that exists without any intent into a cute thing and get entertained by it". In the context of parenting, many a time I have noticed "taking delight" slipping into "cute-ification". I would like to compare and contrast the two processes here in this article.

When "taking delight" in what a child is doing:

- the adult is either a non-judgmental observer or a participant in the process

- the child is allowed to just "be" and not made self-conscious

When "cute-ification" occurs:

- the adult is being judgmental

- it is quite likely that the child (if old enough) gets self-conscious

To illustrate these two responses I would like to present some examples:

Five year old Ruby shows me the rangoli that she had made. Her caregiver immediately says “Did you see that? How cute! She loves making rangoli. She is very talented.” Overwhelmed with anxiety, the caregiver took over the space and I was not allowed to respond. I could see in the face of the child, subtle ways in which she was becoming self-conscious.

*

10 month old Satva just learned to stand up on his own. The other day he crawled to the nearby window, held on to the wall, stood up and lifted the curtain up. This let in light and he was delighted by the experience. Fascinated by this experience, he repeated it over and over again. The mom was observing this and taking delight in the process in which her baby was excited about. She just let him be.

*

Four year old Anu invented a repetitive game in which she and her friend would pass a coin and call out each other’s name while doing so. A simple game that could go on forever! There was absolute delight on Anu’s face, until an overseeing adult said, “Look! How cute! How well she is playing!” The delight on Anu’s face was gone. She got self-conscious. She twitched her mouth and started baby-talk.

*

Two year old Ishan liked doing everything on his own and refused to take help. He was potty trained. Once when he said that he needed to go to the toilet, the mom rushed to the toilet with him, opened the toilet door, turned on the light and helped him get setup for the job. Ishan tightened up, pulled up his pants, turned off the light, got out of the toilet and closed the door behind him. He said “BABY!” and redid the whole process, this time on his own, without any help -- opened the toilet door, turned on the light and went on to pee. The mom was overjoyed by what her child had demonstrated. She understood the cues and followed them right on from the next time onwards. She didn’t trivialize the child’s attempt to assert himself, nor was she condescending.

*

I find babies, toddlers and young children serious about what they are doing. They are trying to figure things out, making sense of the world and people around them. There is absolute, sheer, unsurmounted joy in being there with a young child as he is figuring things out. I have repeatedly observed that the experience gets diminished when the child’s behaviour is “cute-ified”. I have also noticed that if there’s unrest within ourselves, if there’s anxiety, we tend to “cute-ify” and move on rather than participate in a wholesome manner.

Now, what does becoming self-conscious do? When we become self-conscious, we are aware of the response that our behaviour will elicit from others. We understand that we can modify/manipulate our behaviour to elicit the response that we are looking for. Thus our authenticity can get compromised. This is a common game that people play. Little children don’t by default play this adult game. But they can learn to play this game after they have been “cute-ified” enough.

-- Hema

Savour

 If you have access to some 10 or 20 or 30 years old group photos (school, college, wedding, party), please take a look at them; compare and contrast them to some recent ones. If you don't have access to such photos, try to think of a group of people that you know -- friends, co-workers and extended family members. Age group doesn’t matter. I request you to pause here to find some pictures before reading further. It is a crucial step in this exercise.

Now, it is very likely that you would agree that over-weight/obesity is on the rise. We don’t need to know the exact numbers to acknowledge that. But, if you are a person interested in numbers, all you need to do is to go to any public space or a social event and check it out for yourself. I did exactly that. I stood at some busy cross-roads in Chennai, clocked myself and observed the people on bicycles and motorbikes. I counted the number of people who were NOT visibly overweight (Group-A). My friend counted the number of people who were visibly overweight(Group-B). 

If the number of people in Group-A was 'n',

the number of people in Group-B was at least four times 'n'(4n).

Some caveats here:

- Obviously, we are likely to have missed some people due to the nature of the traffic at that time. Thus, #(Group-A) + #(Group-B) was not equal to the total number of people on bicycles and motorbikes. So, we can’t do a percentage calculation here. 

- We couldn’t count people in cars and three-wheel autos.

- Data collected from pockets of Chennai doesn’t *accurately* represent all of Chennai, or other other cities or rural areas.

Having said that, this data still shows us the *trends*. I am deeply pained by this trend. Being over-weight or obese significantly puts one at risk for various diseases. I have been observing various contributing factors at play here, for more than 20 years. This post is an earnest attempt to present my observations and understanding that ensued from those.

                    *

I have chosen to omit exceptions for brevity and have focused on the patterns that are quite common.

A baby is born. The new parents are excited and figuring out ways to feed the baby (breastfeed, bottle-feed). As they are going through this challenging phase they get advice from doctors, books, family and friends. Most of them develop this understanding that the baby would cry when he is hungry. They also get to know that once the baby is nursed, he stopped crying. They begin to understand other hunger cues. Now, as the baby grows into a toddler the parental anxiety around food grows too. The caregiver distracts this mobile little person in a million ways just so food can be shoved into his mouth. 

Sure enough, the distractions work, at least in the short-term. Once a set of options expire, the caregivers quickly come up with new ones. The technology used can be different (from pointing at the moon or a nearby animal to using a mobile phone), but the theme is the same -- distraction.

What do distractions do? My thoughts are:

1. They *disconnect* the baby from her *self*.

The beautiful process of feeling hungry and smelling, touching the food and taking that one’s own mouth:

- activates the digestive system

- helps the baby understand the connection between her hunger, hands, mouth and the good feeling that results when the food reaches her tummy. 

- develops a good tactile sense.

- empowers the baby (although the baby wouldn’t know that)

- integrates the baby into the meal routines and rituals.

2. Distractions are basically manipulations to get what we want to happen. Once the baby starts seeing through this (which is likely to happen eventually), they start losing trust on the care giver. 

3. Food is for survival. All living beings are interested in surviving. Children simply can’t starve themselves to death. That goes against Evolution. Left alone to their devices little children, who have a healthy relationship with food, will seek food only when they are hungry. In my limited experience I have seen that, if this healthy relationship is allowed to exist, the chances of developing eating disorders (anxiety around food, over-eating, binge eating, anorexia) -- is quite small. Distractions don't let a healthy relationship develop between the baby and her food.

The baby is now a toddler and he is sent to a day-care, pre-school or kindergarten. There is a routine enforced by the place that he is going to. He is asked to eat when it is time to eat, whether or not he is hungry. The disconnect between his self and what he does starts here (if not earlier). He is also asked by adults and care-givers to “finish” what is on his plate, even if his body is not for it.

Occasionally the toddler falls sick and rejects food. This is body's natural response to sickness. In simple terms, the body tries to heal itself when we get sick; digestion is too cumbersome during sickness. But the adults around her are worried and anxious for her. They insist that she should eat or drink. The toddler eventually yields to parental pressure, thus widening the disconnect.

To understand this disconnect deeply and assist with healing, we need to start looking at our own relationship with food. 

-- Hema

Walking, Talking And Learning

One fine day, a crawling baby decides to try to stand up. He holds on to something nearby (furniture, railing or an adult) and tries to get up. Not an easy task. Soon he is on the floor again since he let go of the support and his legs are not used to carrying his weight in that fashion. In a little while he tries again. Several attempts and a few days later his falls are not awkward. Soon he develops the stamina needed to stand a bit longer. Now he lets go of his hand and tries to take a step. He falls. He gets up and repeats what he has mastered so far and tries to take it a bit farther. He falls again. These failures don’t deter him. There is no fear. Babies put in a lot of their energy into this process of learning  to walk. This process demands changes at various levels -- physical strength, motor control, cognitive abilities.

This immensely hard learning process is something that all healthy babies go through and they emerge out of it as walking toddlers. Yet, we didn’t teach them how to go about it.

Now onto talking. Toddlers learn to talk the language(s) spoken at home. They don’t learn abc’s. They start off with sounds like “ma”, “da”, “pa”. They put sounds together and experiment with various combinations. They try to repeat the words they hear. They don’t ever get tired of repetition. They absolutely love repetition. They constantly play with the sounds and words they know. There is no fear. They put words together to make sentences that are not grammatically correct. Nevertheless they convey what is needed to be conveyed. 

In our family, I spoke in Tamil to our babies and Dev spoke in Hindi. When our toddlers started talking, they used Tamil words while talking to me and Hindi words while talking to Dev. I know many children who have been bi or tri-lingual since their toddler years. Toddlers go from not being understood (by strangers) to speaking grammatically correct sentences in multiple languages in a year or so. Thankfully there are no formal practices to teach a toddler his/her mother tongue.

Learning to walk and talk demonstrate humans’ ability to learn complex skills on our own. Both these skills are learned out of necessity -- since the people around them walk and talk, these little toddlers also naturally want to be like others. They emulate the behavior they see around them. They internalize their learnings. They learn all their wakeful hours. They are self-confident, in a humble way without knowing that they are so. They never doubt their ability to learn to walk or talk. They don't give up. The toddlers learn both these skills at their own pace. They take the first step only when they feel they are ready to.

Now we take these highly skilled, self-confident learners and subject them to meaningless, mundane, out-of-context, irrelevant learnings drafted by seemingly-caring adults. We start with abc’s. This makes very little sense to English speaking kids since they can already speak fluently and they don’t see a need to learn the alphabet. To non-english speaking kids, this is utter nonsense, but they are forced to learn these foreign abc’s. If they didn't get shaken by the abc's , there is always the 123's. I have heard many young children say that they are not good at English or Math or Science. And yet, these children were once the confident toddlers who mastered walking and talking, all by themselves!

Can we trust little children's learning process?

-- Hema

The konnai story

In 2013, when we were new to Athimanjeri, there was no garbage dump here. I didn't really see a need for one as there was not much garbage. But in the following few years, this changed rapidly. We now have two 100 ton garbage pits that fill up in no time. This put me in touch with the stark reality -- just a handful of us making eco-friendly choices is not going to make a dent in the garbage produced.

When Corona was at its peak in 2020, I realized that this presented a unique chance for introducing cloth pads (an eco-friendly alternative to disposable sanitary napkins) in our village and town. I started making cloth pads with a small group adolescent boys and girls. My idea was to provide job opportunity locally and grow a few socially-responsible individuals who can carry this venture forward.

I wanted to keep the price low, to make it affordable for the people here. I priced them at ₹ 100, per pad. Armed with a bunch of our cloth pads, I started a campaign, in our town and nearby villages, about the financial and ecological implications of using disposable napkins. Whenever I had a captive audience I handed out free samples. Over the course of next eight months, I gained the following understanding about the lives of rural women and the various factors that are at play here:

• Cheap disposable pads are really cheap (₹ 5, per pad). Because of this highly subsidized rate, in many cases it makes very little economic sense to not use disposables.
  
• Women spend  ₹ 50 - ₹ 150 per month on disposable napkins
• Many of them don't change their pads since every pad costs money. They use their pads for 8 - 12 hours!
• Young girls, women in their 20's and 30's do not want to wash cloth pads. 
• Older women (40 and above) still use cloth
• Often a poor, semi-urban family shares their bathroom/toilet with other families. Soaking and washing cloth pads is not practical here. 
• Government schools in Tamilnadu offer free disposable pads for girls from 9th grade onwards. Their families are not spending on pads. The staff at these schools siphon a part of these pads to their homes. Thus their relatives also get free pads. 
• Government schools in Andhra Pradesh offer free pads for older girls. The girls toilets are equipped with incinerators. So these schools don't see how this can be an environmental pollutant.
• Women often develop allergies by using disposable pads, but they don't talk about that.
• Most women burn the used pads, only some bury them.
• Up to 10% of the women, between ages 25 and 35, have had their uterus removed for mysterious reasons.
  
• Interestingly, caste and class played a role in how menstruation could be talked about. The upper the caste or class was, the males in the family were not involved in the discussion.

A very small percentage of women were eager to try the cloth pads. Satisfied with our pads, they started spreading the word around slowly. This local market was clearly not enough if this venture had to provide a sustainable livelihood for the makers of these pads. There was a need to go beyond the tiny radius that we were operating in. Thus konnai was born in mid-2021, with the help and support of many of our friends. It is now a rural employment initiative providing a source of income to a small group of youth and women.

konnai's vision is to enable people make better choices for a better tomorrow. This includes providing high quality eco-friendly reusable products at reasonable prices; providing a healthy work culture for the makers where they and their families can thrive.

 

Other than cloth pads, we also make cloth bags, cloth diapers, changing pads, baby wipes and bibs. konnai is now online. We can receive online orders and receive payments through GooglePay. Please spread the word about konnai. Thank you!

 

 

-- Hema

Where Is "Away"?

Till I was fourteen, we didn't have a dustbin/trashcan at home. There were none at any of neighbours' places, none at school and none at any public place. Not because we were all poor and not able to afford them. It was because our lifestyles then didn't need any. We of course did produce "waste", but most of it was bio-degradable -- kitchen waste, house sweepings, paper wrappers, worn-out clothes etc. These were tossed out into the yard without much thought. And they all became a part of the soil life around us. All of the monthly grocery came wrapped in newspaper from the neighbourhood store.  Snacks were all home made. Grains were processed at home. We carried our bags when we went to shop. There was also occasional non-biodegradable waste such as light bulbs, medicine bottles, aluminum foil from the pill strips. This was also tossed out; there was so little of this waste that it didn't matter.

This was the case until 1988, not that long ago. But when I reminisce about these plastic-free days and talk about to it young people, they find it absolutely unbelievable. When plastic entered our everyday lives, garbage started getting generated. I saw people who were living zero-waste lives switch over to use-and-throw lifestyle without even noticing the change that had come about in their lives. Now pretty much everyone, in every corner of the world, throws away the garbage that they produce. But, where is this "away"?

Irrespective of where we live, there must be at least one dump yard close to us. The size of these dump yards (or landfills) are growing in most places that can't afford incinerators. Burning garbage is not anyway a great solution, because of the greenhouse gases that are emitted. When we moved to Athimanjeri in 2013 there was no dump yard here. Now we have a whopping 10000 cubic feet of garbage that is being constantly burnt. This dump yard used to be agricultural land; it was also providing food and shelter to animals; it has now been rendered utterly useless, dead and toxic. Now consider this happening at a much larger scale in populous cities. For example, there is a garbage mountain looming in the outskirts of Delhi in Ghazipur. This will soon be taller than the Taj Mahal, which is also man-made.

Ghazipur dump on the left and the Taj on the right
Courtesy: The Guardian

What about garbage that floats away or gets dumped into the oceans? Well, there is indeed a massive floating garbage called "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch". It covers an approximate surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers – an area three times the size of France!!  Here is a recent video of this.

A 2012 report states that this patch has increased 100-fold since 1970's. And since 2012 it has doubled.  We don't really need experts to give us data regarding garbage. All we need to do is look keenly around us; at all the options that have come up as norms (like plastic water bottles, plastic bags). The garbage we produce will be here for ages to come. The bitter truth is that we have enjoyed a relatively-decent planet and are leaving behind a trashy planet for our children. 

Now, please pause to let this truth sink in. There is a desperate need for us to empathize with the future generations. 

There is no "away". 

-- Hema

A Decade Into Homeschooling

I wrote this piece recently for the Teachers Plus magazine.: 

"Our home is the best place on earth. I LOVE being at home. Why can't I be at home most of the times and go to school rarely?" This came from my child when he was 7 years old. Although I didn't want to ponder over his question then, it haunted me. A year later I decided to take a deep look at his question and address his unhappiness in going to school. That led to a cascade of events leading to where we are now. We are thankful for the support we received from fellow homeschoolers and the insights from authors like John Holt, Alfie Kohn and Gabor Mate.

Fast forwarding ten years. My husband Dev and I live on our farm near Tiruttani/Chittoor with our kids Abhi(17) and Aparna(14). Aparna never went to school. Abhi has been home since he was eight. The decision to homeschool liberated us. We realized that could live literally anywhere we wanted to. We were not limited by the necessity to continue a way of life, just for the sake of conformance. The decision to homeschool dramatically brought down the everyday stress level at home. As a direct consequence the quality of our life got better. This enabled us to pause and question our priorities in life. This in turn enabled Dev to quit his corporate job; soon after that we moved back  to India (from the US).  

For the past seven years we have been living in rural South India. Looking back, the challenges presented by this period have inevitably resulted in learning new skills. It is important to mention here that we didn't embark on this path with this agenda in mind. Here I would like to present a few snap-shots from our homeschooling experiences.

Since we have snakes in our area, it was highly imperative to be able to identify them correctly and swiftly. This need fueled by their interest, the kids got adept at identifying, catching and rescuing (non-venomous) snakes. During this feverish phase they made toys, tools and games that would help them with snake identification and snake catching. Life was all about and only about snakes. We even cared for a Checkered Keelback at home for three weeks to observe it in close quarters. In our neighbourhood they are now known as the local snake catchers. 

Similarly, the lack of restaurants and a strong desire to enjoy baked goods got Aparna interested in baking. She now bakes wholesome bread, cake and pizza. She experiments with local/seasonal fruit and vegetable in her recipes. 

Two years ago Abhi wanted to eat the fruit of our palm trees. But people that climb palm trees are not easy to find anymore, even in villages. Thus his desire drove him to learn to climb palm and coconut trees. This process lasted for about two years - to acquire enough physical strength and skills, to get over his fear of heights, to collect and use the tools needed for the harvest. This summer both Abhi and Aparna were able to climb and harvest palm fruit and tender coconuts. Abhi wanted to document this process and that became a valuable film-making experience that involved script writing, editing and post-production software work. His work is available on his youtube channel "dancing dodonaea studios".

For several months, after moving in to our new house at the farm, we were looking for a carpenter to build a chest of drawers for our farm tools. We could find absolutely no one to work on such an unconventional project. As Dev started designing the storage space, Aparna got interested in building it. She already had basic wood working skills since she had built some furniture. These skills were developed and honed for many years -- starting from working on cardboard projects (miniature models), moving on to simple utility (wood) projects with no joinery and then taking up joinery work. She is currently into relief carving (carving done on a flat panel of wood). All these were born out of interest and/or necessity. 

We have always been a multi-lingual family - my native tongue is Tamil, Dev's is Hindi. We live in a place where Telugu is spoken by half the population. Although they speak all these languages, the kids never focused on the writing aspect of Indian languages. Out of the blue Abhi recently realized the need to be fluent in the Tamil script. As he was watching a Permaculture documentary in English, he had an urge to make it available for the non-English speaking, local Tamil farmers. So he started writing the subtitles for that documentary in Tamil, of course with Google translator on his side. In just a few weeks he became a Tamil literate! 

Dev and I consider the education of our children as a piece in the jig-saw puzzle of our life - no more or less important than the other pieces. After moving to India, we bought a piece of land and got into farming without any prior experience. It has taken us all these 7+ to learn about the local ecology, soil and organic methods to a reasonable extent to be able to grow some food. Similarly every aspect (off-grid, composting toilet, adobe bricks, traditional tiled roof, natural finishes) of our house construction took us long to research, learn and execute. As a consequence of this, we as a family now have many construction related skills - masonry (brick and stone), carpentry, plumbing, laying tiled floor and grouting, mud plastering and finishing. It is important to emphasize here that all these started from humble beginnings. 

One common thread that I have observed in all these learning journeys is the sustained interest that is needed to learn any skill deeply. Sustained interest can come ONLY from within. It can't be force-fed. Sustained interest, I have seen, comes out of a burning desire or an absolute need of the hour or the pleasure we derive by doing something (like music). Sustaining an interest is possible only if we enjoy the process, not if we wait impatiently for the end-product. Working with hands and working on our own helps us understand this. 

During all these years of being with children, I have observed that they go through periods of no activity -- when they are not visibly engaged in anything. These periods of non-activity, I think, are as crucial as their growth spurts. During these periods they question life around them, assimilate something they came across recently, heal themselves, dive deep into themselves etc. I have learned to cherish these periods and not disturb them while they are there.

To us homeschooling has been about:

-- mindful parenting, to the extent possible

-- growing organic food and working together as a family

-- being close to nature, getting in tune with its cycles and taking care of other life forms (plants, trees, animals)

-- allowing everyone to take up things that interests them deeply and nurturing the development of those skills

-- maintaining an environment where mistakes are considered a part of the process

-- building resilience that the kids need to survive during difficult times in this era of climate change

-- having enough time to ponder over questions that come up and to develop an understanding about one's own self

-- trusting our ability to solve problems (technical, medical, emotional) and not resort to professional help right away

-- personal care -- cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, making clothes, hair cutting 

-- management and self-regulation of one's time

In our lives, saying "no" to mainstream has ended up as saying "yes" to various other possibilities, which have made life more fun. There certainly have been difficult and challenging times since we changed the course of our lives. But then, there were similar phases earlier too! In a certain sense, we have chosen the current set of challenges and that wasn't the case before.

-- Hema