2010 my first post this year...

Not writing much these days...huh...in fact not since October 2009! We're having a blast with our unschooling journey...
Rox had a friend over to play today and they buried a poor little possum that we found near our tyre swing and mini vege patch yesterday. We don't know what happened to it, how it died...
They dug the grave themselves. Then played with Cleo the dog. Rox is doing piano with 2 of her friends with me as 'teacher' although it's much too fun. Rox's improvisation today - amazing - I enjoyed listening to so much.
WE're pretty busy too. ROx has horse stuff, Pottery home-ed class, creative dance and dance theatre, there's home-ed group...The Eltham group is HUGE, very active (meets every week) and has kids of varied ages from babies to teens. It's fantastic!
We're heading up to the snow mid August with friends and there's a few home-ed camps that we're going to. It's all very exciting. Am soooo glad we don't do school. Rox and April are very close. They play and work on relating to each other positively every day...i don't know how kids would get the time to develop those relationship skills when most of the day is spent at school...
Both girls have free acceses to TV and Computer whenever they want...and guess what? They don't watch ALL day not even most of the day and sometimes not at all...of their own free will. They go to bed when they're tired. Rox knows when shes tired and chooses to go to bed when she is...and it's not at midnight...usually she's tired by 8, 8:30 or 9pm and gets herself off to bed. In fact she says "i'm going to bed I'm tired..." Without us saying Come on now it's time for bed, get into bed right now blah blah!!!

April has joined a 'Fairy Ballet' class that she loves but I can't stand the parents!!! They coach their poor little kids from the sidelines with rewards and punishments, yelling and insisting their children sit down, do this, do that, blah, blah, blah...! The kids are sweet, very little (2-3yrs) and smart too but their parents are obnoxious and bossy cows. They just sit near the front of the class and yell instructions to these kids. Yelling from afar rudely disrupting the flow and mood of the class much more than their child running around on their toes. I do the class with April, she wants me involved still and although I feel a little self conscious as I dance with her, I enjoy it and we have fun together and she's happy and enjoys doing the magical little dancey things Miss Lollipop the teacher suggests. The other kids run over with joy to their parents (cause their parents are sitting far away uninvolved) to show them their special ribbon or flowers and their stupid parents yell at them to go back and sit down!! Insane. Rude. Why can't they smile and shut up instead....GROWL!
Anyway, I'm being judgemental cause this is my venting blog. I love this blog for venting. I try and see the best in people and situations but after a while it's hard to not feel embarrassed for these parents and I find it hard to look at them in the eye. Not sure what my move is with regards to this situation. These parents act like authoritarian twits so might just have a word to the 'principal' of the dance class, express my concern at the disruptive yelling that's going on and see if she can exert the sort of bossiness/control that these people understand. Really I feel so sorry for the kids....

Blah blah...We are sooo lucky that the parents we know and hang out with are respectful and thoughtful.I mean none of us are perfect but at least we're aware most of the time. It's a bit of a shock seeing mainstream parenting in action. Tragic.