Deschooling and the damage undone

WOW! Who would have thought that two and a half years of early schooling could do so much harm. I am really noticing how Beren is so brain trained. He has little to no learning initiative. By this I mean he doesn't know how to learn independently. Unless I give him a direction he has no idea what to do. He is lacking enthusiasm for learning because in school it is knocked out of them. Anyone who is spirited, has imagination or the thirst to learn something out of the norm is labelled as disobedient, attention seeking or just plain unruly. This is heart breaking, more so because I still have Nienna in the system.

So now the task of 'deschooling' begins. they say for every year in formal education a child will need a month to relax into home education. So I need to be patient and let Beren pace himself. He enjoys doing the workbooks so I will keep on with that and pretty much allow him to do what he wants for the rest of that time. this probably means alot of time on his DS, watching TV or on the computer and that is a tough thing to agree to for me. However, allowing self regulation has it's positives and I think I will be surprised by how fast he tires of his electronic life. We shall see anyway :) Ofcourse we will continue with our library visits and home ed group and hopefully the latter will give him the opportunity to catch some enthusiasm from the other kids.