School Is In Session

Now that September is here and Labor Day has passed, school is in session. Some kids started a few weeks ago, some schools started this week, and for my Little Man, school never stopped during the summer.

Our journey has never been smooth or uneventful. In fact, when it comes to educating Little Man, the current educational system has been a mixed bag. He has learned how to read, write, do math, and a bunch of other things, but the way classrooms and students are handled, was not kind to or supportive of my son in general.

Especially because of how my son is wired, he is steeped in trauma around his public school experience.

One thing it’s taken me a while to learn and even longer to really get, is that my son was born with a Christ Consciousness. What this means is, he is so in tune with other people, that if he hurts someone, he feels the hurt as if it were done to him. He is so connected with everyone, that if someone is sad or is having a tough day, he feels it and will do something to try to cheer them up, because he feels their pain. He was never a behavior problem at school. Ever.

The way my son’s classrooms have been handled are for the most part typical. If his teacher had trouble keeping the classroom quiet and keeping people still, she would dock the entire class minutes of recess. Because Little Man desperately needed recess, losing even three minutes of a fifteen minute recess, for something that was outside of his control, would kill him. Every time a classmate would be admonished for doing something like talking too much, Little Man was empathically taking the admonition too.

Some of his teachers were better than others. He seemed to do well with teachers who were the most authentic. If there was something about the teacher that was inauthentic, Little Man would smell it on them, and without fail, his year would be a bad one. Picking up on what a person was feeling, and having it be so very different from what they said and how they acted, threw him for a loop. Being in their classroom was literally killing his spirit, bit by bit.

Once I learned how to read a person’s energy (Clairvoyance 101), I read his teachers that he had trouble with, and whatever their issue was would pop out like a red flag in their energy field. One teacher had a deeply seated issue with perfection. Another one had to be right. These were so huge in these people’s energy fields, and once I saw it, certain wonky behaviors on their part made complete sense to me.

When Little Man hit puberty and his abilities to receive energy grew to epic proportions (and they’re still growing), picking up on all the middle school angst, hormones, and mixing in with kids from schools in town (who tend to be more behaviorally challenged and rougher in general), was just too much. Being so young, Little Man hasn’t formed his complete sense of energetic or personal boundaries yet. Trying to survive a system that doesn’t support him, combined with the overwhelming challenge of physically being around so many twelve and thirteen year olds, pushed him over the edge.

So now we are educating at home. With everyone else heading back to schools, this week has been anxiety provoking for both of us. In case you aren’t aware, people store trauma in their bodies. And just because Little Man no longer has to be in a school, doesn’t mean anxiety is gone. I noticed a level of anxiety in myself earlier this week and was perplexed until I figured it out. School.

But now that we’ve named it, it seems to be lessening quite a bit. In fact, Little Man had a dream last night where he was actually able to call out a teacher who was telling the class something that was wrong. And when the teacher threatened him with demerits or detention, or whatever it was she threatened him with, he walked out of the classroom under his own authority and left. He took back his own power in his dream.

What I’m learning is that educating a person can look like so many different things. It can look like sitting down and reading and writing and doing book work and worksheets. It can look like going to a museum, park, zoo, science center, or other facility. It can look like going kayaking, swimming, and watching videos online. It can look like researching a drone, working like a dog to earn money for it, buying it and then creating a project around it, demonstrating critical thinking and new nomenclature involved with the research and comparison process.

Little Man recently completed his first video project for school, where he discussed the features of DJI’s Phantom 3 Professional and Phantom 4 drones. It included his talking about specs and features of both drones, commentary about what he likes and why, demonstrating two of the features and a short bit of aerial footage. Because it’s his first production it’s a little rough around the edges, and he wouldn’t give me permission to show it off to you all (too embarrassed). But he will probably allow me to show off his next video project.

I can, however, show you the title page for the video.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be across country on the coast of Maine, and will be diving into more filming (lighthouses y’all!), doing some reading about the local area’s history, and practicing writing. I will be taking photographs and trying to get my love of writing to rub off on my son (who has challenges when it comes to writing). We’ll see how it all goes.