08/02/2023
These guys are great inspiration! Very well written 😍
This is homeschooling..
Jaiden is a 14 year old who has never been to school, nor has he been forced to do book work, and he certainly has never done a test. So does that mean he’s ‘behind’ his peers when it comes to comprehension of Maths and English? Probably, but I don’t care.
He’s never had to ‘fit in’ with his peers, nor conform to social standards at school to be accepted. He has never been forced to work in a group with other children whom he shares a classroom with, or deal with bullies or the torment that can accompany schooling for children with additional needs. Because of this lack of forced socialisation, is Jaiden a bit weird compared to his 14 year old peers? You Betcha!
Jaiden has never had to get out of bed to go to school on time, or had the pressure of a deadline for an assignment. He’s instead been free to do as he pleases each and every day, for his entire schooling life. So does this mean some days he sleeps in until 9am, and spends his mornings doing whatever he wants? Uhh huh, on more occasions than I can count!
As a parent I have let go of what I believe parenting should look like and have moved away from an authoritarian approach and instead see myself as a guide. My role has been to better his understanding of the world and help him see the value in making good decisions and pursuing his goals. Has this been a challenging process for me, filled with my own fears of potentially failing my child, dooming him to a life of misery? Abso-freaking-lutely!
So what has become of the child has been free to, within reason, do as he pleases for the past 10 years? Well the young boy who would wake up whenever he wanted and play with cars for hours on end bought his own car before his 14th Birthday using the proceeds from starting his own clothing business. A business he decided to launch so he could turn his love of cars into reality, and have his own race car, and in the future his own racing team where he can help other car loving kids fall in love with racing, just as he has.
This goal motivated him to get out of bed every morning and learn how to create his own designs in Illustrator, build a website and ecommerce store with Wordpress, budget using Microsoft excel, and liaise with both suppliers and customers. He got frustrated, he cried, he pushed through adversity, faced his fear of failure and came out on top and he bought his dream car 2 months before his self-imposed deadline, his 14th Birthday.
The kid who apparently ‘lacked socialisation’ has been free to pursue his own interests and has not been pressured by his peers to conform to what is considered ‘cool’. At 14 he still loves to play with his hotwheels cars, imagining himself drifting in his own race car. He still climbs into my bed every day for our morning ‘cuddle shop’ with his teddy, a ritual that goes back to when he was 2. He’s developed his own sense of self without the pressures of schooling and is building a small group of friends who align with him, and his morals and values. These are friends that he has to put in effort to maintain a friendship with, not just because they co-exist in a school together and it’s geographically convenient. He’s been a part of a team, alongside groups of grown men working on race cars, learning along the way, taking instruction, and even giving banter on occasion.
While it has been very challenging for me as a parent at times, I discovered that once I let go of trying to force him to fit into society’s expectations, and instead facilitated his progress through life using his interests, passions and skills I was left with a well-adjusted young man who had the knowledge and understanding necessary to take on the world, and succeed.
I trust that if his interests guide him in a direction where he needs complex algebra, or vector geometry, or to memorise the periodic table he will use his innate love of learning to acquire these skills when they have utility to him. Most importantly for me, is that he can care for himself and others, and has grown into an incredibly empathetic, understanding and selfless young man.
Jaiden has just finished 2 weeks of work experience at Darwin Auto Mobile Care with Danny, the owner / driver of Xdrift Industries - Drift Team. To see Jaiden launch himself out of bed every day for the past fortnight at 6am and be ready for work 30mins early made me so proud of him. That achievement pales into insignificance compared to the reports I had about how hard he worked each and every day, despite being in the NT wet season and accompanying heat and humidity, which is no walk in the park. This was the longest time Jaiden and I had ever spent apart, and he was incredibly nervous going into it. Despite this, I’d pick him up exhausted but smiling at 5pm, so proud of everything he had learned and achieved during the day and equally keen to impart his newfound knowledge onto me. To some people, the decision to rack up some more credit card debt to fly across the country to allow Jaiden to do work experience seems like a ludicrous decision, but for me giving Jaiden the opportunity to work alongside one of his idols was an absolute no brainer and seeing the pride in his face as he pulled on his uniform for the first time, was absolutely priceless.
There is so much pressure on children to ‘keep up’ with their peers. We seem to forget we’re all individuals with our own strengths and weaknesses, passions and interests. What if instead of working to have our kids keep up, we used these differences to facilitate our children’s education, used them to foster personal growth, and more importantly help them mature into happy, well-adjusted adults?
This is exactly what I have done, and you can too.
This is homeschooling..
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