Small Hurdles Versus Weather Crisis

 

Early last week I was pondering a meme “We can’t ‘train’ a child to have different responses to disappointments, we grow it through personalized, customized co-regulation” by Dr. Mona Delanhooke. If my current goal is to lightly guide my 13-year-old through small hurdles while I am calm, maybe I should pick something neither of us have school associations with. I had just settled on tablet weaving when weather and power worries took over.
   
I aspire for homeschooling to become so routine and engaging that doing it is a comfort during a crisis.  But right now everything is novel and many aspects are still being trialed and decided.
 
Last year during February 2021, Texas suffered hundred of deaths, billions of dollars of damage, and a huge disruption to school, work, shopping, pretty much everything. Repairs in our home weren't finished until like September and we're still (slowly) unpacking and rearranging from all the rooms we had to empty.
 
So with forecasts for similar weather and only vague reassurances from officials, I stopped trying to homeschool and switched to keeping my family from freezing to death if we had no heat and keeping my family from getting sick if municipal water got contaminated. 

We use very different words and demeanors when we ask people to do routine things or novel things. It's jarring when someone flips that; it ends up being a gaslighting mismatch with the amount of preparation required. Think about closing the blinds versus figuring out how to add insulation to windows from stuff you have on hand.  

Some things I've been reading lately:



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