What, How and Why

What?

We know people want community as well as autonomy, and we know they want to learn and grow. We see how being welcomed, accepted and supported, with attunement and playfulness, lights people up!

We want to reach the people this resonates with, so we can create connections and share companionship with others who are asking similar questions. There are different ways to participate – regularly in our home ed crew; from time to time at our wider gatherings; or as part of the network of people who want to think about and work on creating opportunities to play in consent and connection.

The feedback we get is that we offer a nurturing environment where each individual is truly seen and accepted, and feels able to engage in ways they might not elsewhere.

How?

We don’t have all the answers, but we have some good starting questions and postures and orientations, and we want to grow together. We feel like pretty small seedlings sometimes, and certainly a work in progress; but these are the lights we are growing towards …

We all need community.

The touchstones in our model of community are attunement, acceptance, consent and connection.

We want to hold our individual integrity/wholeness within relationship; this is consent in connection. I am fully me, you are fully you, and, together, we are fully us. One metaphor we like is the tension holding molecules in an iridescent, joyful bubble!

Play, properly understood, is at the heart of all of this. We mean “playing” as a particular kind of activity; and we also mean having a wider disposition of playfulness – of choice and personal meaning; open and inviting engagement; a generative, flexible, “yes-and” responsiveness; curiosity about what is happening; joy and reverence; creativity; fun; a light touch; transcendence.

We are looking for resonance, within ourselves and with our context.

We all deserve space, safety and support to unfurl – in our own time and in our own way. We develop when the time and conditions are right – including the loving collaboration of those we are connected with.

We are self-directed, and we seek wholeness and flow. We want to learn how to trust ourselves, to lead ourselves with compassion, and to mentor each other respectfully. We think this support is best provided like the banks of a river (holding the water and responsive to the course the water takes). We pay attention so that each child is known well, and their autonomy is held – doing the least we can, with the lightest touch, following their lead. We are provisioning the conditions for growth.

We have an attitude of deep acceptance and okayness. We leave aside judgment and instead bring curiosity and presence, being receptive to the lessons we can glean from what is; and we approach ourselves and each other with warmth.

We believe that we all do well when we can.

We understand that we behave as we do for reasons, usually needs. We are curious and will dig down to find out what those needs are, and we are confident in our ability to meet them.

We are intentional about really good communication (including fluency in conflict). We will not hesitate to have the difficult conversations, with care and kindness. We practise hearing ourselves, hearing the other person, and helping them to hear us. We are ambitious and creative about finding solutions that meet all needs, and transforming conflict. We know conflict is not a problem (indeed, it is inevitable and good); the key is to navigate it skilfully and recover from it positively. We are intentional about nurturing and navigating relationships, and inhabiting needs and emotions, so that our personal and interpersonal experiences are healthy and whole – and we are not storing up hurt that we will need to heal from later.

We calibrate the balance between ourselves ongoingly, keeping a sense of it and nudging it little by little as we sense it is off. We create the web that can hold us all within our individual boundaries and in connection with each other. We learn and grow from trying again and again.

We welcome – and honour the wisdom of – all our emotions and our experience of the world. We aim to name and sit with matters as they arise and when they boil over, and we bring compassion – always underpinned with safety. We are developing our emotional fluidity.

We are conscious of the role our nervous systems play in our experience of the world. We are working to expand nervous system capacity, and to lend ours to each other when needed.

Dysregulation is met with understanding and support (not shame or exclusion) – along with ensuring safety and recovery for everyone involved – so that everyone is safe, feels safe, and feels heard.

We are passionate about our views and objectives, and also hold our own perspectives lightly and with humility and openness, conscious that the world is richer and deeper than one person can grasp.

We are conscious about power (where it is held and how it is used), careful about coercion, and all in on relationship.

We are bold about growth, learning,creativity, agency and joy – pursuing bold ideas, growing our competence and doing hard things.

We believe humans thrive in a playful and ambitious context suffused with choice and attuned support. We think learning happens best at our own individual learning edges, integrating our own experiences with our own momentum and style, when we are interested and when the new knowledge or skill is tied to something we already grasp: when familiarity is ready to burst into understanding. We leverage both analysis and intuition.

We pay attention to how the world is changing as technology (including AI) develops, and as people and the earth face substantial challenges. We want to prepare ourselves for the practical implications and also by resourcing ourselves personally and interpersonally.

In addition to knowledge and capabilities, we want to hone meta skills: e.g. knowing ourselves; wisdom, attention, discernment; the ability to formulate questions and to reason and decide (especially under uncertainty); the confidence to listen openly and to advocate and persuade and resolve; facility with data and research; agency (so we can decide what we want or need, and identify and implement the appropriate next steps); patience and equanimity; and trusting our judgment.

We care deeply for ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We think community is the best mitigation in the face of uncertain futures.

We are a community of practice, and we understand that all of the above is best nurtured in real time and real life.

Why?

We have each had our own journey here, but this is one story:

A strong sense of personal autonomy (and its limits) as a child; seeking connection with people; years of advocacy and dispute resolution; a growing grasp of the significance of the fact that, at the root of everything, there are needs (that we can understand and that we can meet); and then a baby, born helpless but with the depths of a universe already glinting in his eyes. A practice: caring for children, aware of their vulnerability and conscious of their integrity; cultivating a light touch. Meeting the needs of a newborn: simple-hard, and as the child grows: more complex-hard. Learning more about nervous system regulation and neurotypes. Seeking to honour childhood, not as preparation or as less than, but as fully being.

And exploring – what, in fact, does it mean to fully be?

Following the intuition that the sweet spot for being and growing is in a playful and ambitious context suffused with choice and attuned support.

Wondering how to create the conditions for a deep sense of safety and attunement, and for self-direction and play and ambitious learning and creation.

Noticing how unmoored some of us have felt as adults, and how much we as parents have needed support to heal, grow and regulate. Noticing, too, how much we can struggle with the challenges of relationship (and, in particular, conflict).

Understanding how much we can learn from the innate wisdom of children, and how powerful it can be to care for ourselves as we care for them.

Knowing that an open and responsive relationship is so much more powerful than power, shame and coercion – and knowing that we are laying the groundwork for our kids’ mental health and their models of the world.

Understanding that one way to grow and to heal is repeated effective interactions – or repeated failure and repair – within a supportive relationship.

Figuring out our contributions to the wider world. Figuring out how to prepare for the future.

Yearning for a crew to adventure with and to rest with.