Needed

The boys have grown up in the gardens. Before they could walk, we propped them up in a sandbox we’d built at the edge of what was then our primary garden plot, and they’d dig and gnaw sand and generally caper about while Penny and I (but mostly Penny) seeded and weeded and whatnot.

By the time both boys were four, they had their own rows in the garden. We still have the signs they painted to mark their territory. Garden of Fin, reads one, though you have to tilt your head to make it out. The other, crafted after Rye had arrived on the scene, but before the boys understood the grammatical rules of possession, reads Fin and Rye Garden.

In allowing them such free access to our gardens, we had to let go of a lot. Or really, Penny had to let go of a lot. She’s always been the primarily green thumb around the parts. Oh sure, I’ll do what’s asked of me on the vegetable front, but truth be told, I’m a cow and pig man, and not-totally-useless when it comes to the operation of the mechanical contraptions that enable so much of what we do. Tractor. Chainsaw. Sawmill. And so on.

Anyway. Back to letting go. What I mean is that we made a conscious decision early in the boys’ lives to sacrifice a degree of order and convenience so that they might participate in the day-to-day operations of our humble holding. Some of this letting go was accepting the inevitable mistakes and messes that result from their learning – the row of fledgling beets they pulled, thinking they were “weeds,” or the folded over nails in the cow shed siding from their early hammering efforts – and some of it was simply letting go of our expectations regarding how long a particular task might take. Truth is, it takes a hell of a lot of patience to include young children in productive work, and it requires humbling yourself to the reality that it ain’t going to be as productive as you’d like. Except of course it is, because some of what you’re producing is a child with confidence and skills and resourcefulness. But you gotta take a pretty long view to see those things, and I don’t think humans are particularly good at taking long views. At least, not in this day-and-age.

Sometimes, I think there’s a misperception that unschooling parents don’t do much. That they just let their kids run willy-nilly whilst the adults go about their days. In this family, at least, nothing could be further from the truth. In this family, unschooling is not easy, or convenient. It demands significant reservoirs of thought and patience and, as I’ve pointed out, presence. I don’t think parents are all that accustomed to being patient and present for their kids anymore, at least if what I observe when I venture out into the so-called real world is any indication. And really, who the hell has the time or energy for it all? You work 40, 50, 60 hours a week, you come home exhausted, and all you really want to do is crack open a cold one and sidle up to the idiot box while your kids do whatever it is your kids are doing. Well, that’s what I’d want to do under such circumstances, anyway. 

For us, owing to the fairly unique particulars of our lives, the presence hasn’t been as hard as the letting go. Penny and I have always been bull-and-jam doers. Put simply, we like gittin’ shit done, and incorporating small children into the process all but ensures that less shit will git done. There’s just no way around it.

I still get impatient from time-to-time, but not very often. Part of this is because I have genuinely become more patient over the years. It’s a slow and never-finished process, not unlike developing gratitude or generosity. The other part is that the boys have actually evolved into legitimately productive contributors to home and farm. They don’t pull up beets by mistake. They don’t bend nails, anymore. Or no more than I do, anyway.

It has always bothered me to see how some parents chase their children away from productive jobs. I have seen it many times, and while I understand the impulse, I have little empathy for the shortsightedness of it, because the truth is that long before they are capable of truly helping, kids desperately want to contribute.

Like all of us, children just want to be needed.  It’s our job to make sure they actually are.