Connection is What We are All Seeking

“Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change.” – Frida Kahlo

What pain? It is the pain of deprogramming yourself to recognize that the system is broken. It might have always been. The current education system only sees your child’s biology as a means to money. The pain of asking how did we get here? Dropping our kids off at an institution that we really know nothing about, let alone the safety factor. What do they do all day? How is this meaningful to their lives? 

It might be hard for us to imagine moving mountains in order to light the path for our children and their passions, but we can do hard things. 

Our children are needing us to ignite our passion for something better on their behalf. A passion to look at the child before you and decide to make a change that will result in a deeper connection with your child. Maybe even yourself.

We are meant to be creative, to be curious, to live life to the fullest, learning along the way because that is what true learning looks like. Think about how you’ve learned best - engaging in things that interest you and being in the experience. Are we offering that to our children? 

What can we do to change? We can start by seeing the child through the eyes of love only. If your child has been given a label, if your child is complaining about his/her experience at school, what can you do to change your own perception of your child, of the current status quo in order to align yourself with your child’s destiny? 

How often have you heard yourself saying, “that’s just the way it is…” It’s not. It’s time we ask ourselves, “why is it that way?” And be willing to make a change.

Regardless of whether or not our children seem to be “adjusted” to school, can we be courageous enough to ask ourselves why do we send them to school? 

This conversation I share with Leah McDermott, of Bridge Academy is enlightening and inspiring. It might also be triggering. If it does trigger you, ask yourself why. We touch upon what mainstream school is. Leah has two Masters in Education. She and her husband are both former educators. “Former” because they knew when they had their own child, they were not going to send him to school. Through her own experience, she is on a mission to support those who have stepped out of the system and those who want to step out of the broken system, but don’t know how. She takes away the fear. She spells everything out for you and supports you with an unschooling “curriculum” (for lack of a better word here) that can be adjusted to attune to your own child’s interests, engaging his/her own natural capacity for learning and gives them permission to remain curious and build a life around their passion. At this point, don’t we all wish we were given that freedom?

In our conversation, Leah references a book by Kirsten Olson, Wounded by School. This is a good read if you are curious to learn more about the state of schooling in this country. Here is an excerpt from the introduction of the book:

I interviewed very “successful” individuals (a research professor at a high-status university, a national-level marketing executive, a venture capital partner, a gifted and prolific writer, an award-winning architect - individuals who felt learning was at the center of their lives), as I tried to capture their educational biographies, nearly every one of them told me they felt they had a lot to recover from in their school experiences, and that their learning lives had developed primarily outside of, or in opposition to, their experiences in school…Their creativity, their humanity, and their capacity to imagine were, at the very least, unsupported by their educational environments, and in some cases actively hampered by them. Their journey as adults was about, in part, “recovering” what they had lost in school, so that they could express themselves more fully as professionals and in their personal lives. This was a journey that required courage.

Does this resonate with some of you reading this? It’s time to do the work so that our children don’t have to “recover” what they lost in school. We’ve lost enough. It’s time to change the paradigm. You have a bridge to support you. Start with our video, meet the feelings it brings up for you with curiosity. Then, please share it far and wide within your circles. Call in your tribe. Feel free to email us with questions!