Free-Range Children

[Laura Weldon]

“Don’t help, Mom,” Claire says as I go to pick up the three-day-old chick. So I watch instead. It is peeping helplessly at the side of the ramp leading up to the chicken coop. The mother hen and her other chicks are already at the top but this chick can’t find the way. The hen answers each cheep of distress with distinctive low clucks. After a few attempts to hop directly up to its mother the chick turns and scurries back, finds the bottom of the ramp and hurries to the comfort of her waiting wings.
“See,” Claire says. “It’s already learning.”
I’m amazed that a chick that tiny could go away from the sound of the hen’s voice in order to ultimately find its mother, but it did. I guess I still need to trust that things tend to work out fine without well-intended intervention.
Once reams of instructional books languished on our shelves. Shiny packaged educational programs with CD’s or tapes sat waiting for my children to learn foreign language, history and math. But they always had better things to do. Sometimes that looked a lot like reading a book on the couch, looking things up on the net or lying by the pond with the dogs. Other times that looked like someone running around gathering oddities from the dusty basement for an experiment. Or like all of us hustling off to a field trip with friends. The textbooks came in handy as references, the fussier educational materials were packed away in boxes to pass along. We know a new homeschooler may need to go through the same ritual of grumbling over them.
My children have ample opportunity to explore their interests out here in the country. Currently Ben restores old farm equipment in anticipation of running his own farm some day. He’s so busy that some of his projects have become long-term decor out near the beehives. Flowering vines decorate the hay rake tines and birds nest atop a tractor. Right now he’s making a custom desk out of a circular saw blade for a friend. The garage glows as he welds, one of the many skills he taught himself.
Claire observes everything with a scientist’s eye. She journals about her hikes in the woods, her daily farm chores and her volunteer work rehabilitating birds of prey. One summer she made a practice of examining a dead muskrat as the decomposition process reduced it to a skeleton. Her descriptions to the family (yes, at the dinner table) clearly demonstrated how wondrous she found the natural world, even though her age group is depicted as finding more meaning at the shopping mall.
When Kirby isn’t playing his guitar or bagpipes or computer games he likes to stroll around with a camera. His photos show that he sees things in a different light. He’s interested in the science and art of sound, and using the money he earned from cleaning stalls at local horse farms he’s made his bedroom into a recording studio. Friends come to have CD’s made of their music. Kirby can edit out the laughter.
Sam, who was once the master of finding snakes and toads everywhere on our property is now intrigued with greater feats than grabbing hapless creatures. He investigates the engineering behind propulsion systems and then conducts his own experiments. This involves shooting tennis balls, potatoes or pumpkins long distances (often in collusion with his brothers). He’s been talking about designing advanced fuel systems for cars. Fortunately he’s not old enough to drive.
While Claire and I watch chickens she points out how the newly hatched chicks are perfectly suited to learn naturally. These tiny fluff balls listen and respond to different sounds from their mother which clearly tell them where to find food and when to run for cover under her wings. They locate each other through the underbrush, ramble into the pasture under the cow’s feet safely and come into the coop at dusk as the older chickens do. They range across our property yet stay close to their mother at this age.
“Compare them to chicks we bought from the hatchery,” Claire says. I see what she means. Several times we have purchased a batch of day old chicks and kept them in a large pen. We brought them out of the house each day to a grassy enclosure so they could forage, but the chicks raised for their first two months with their age-mates were very different than the chicks hatched by their mothers and raised with the flock. The confined chicks were more sickly, more easily panicked, more overtly aggressive or passive. Even after they were released out with the flock it took them some time to catch up. They didn’t problem solve as easily. And it took them longer to react naturally, such as taking flight and roosting in low branches when sensing danger
Interestingly, the agricultural extension offices and poultry manuals insist that the treatment we’ve given the confined chicks is the best care possible. We’re cautioned to maintain them on a diet of protein-enhanced feed, keep them under warming lights and watch over them carefully for their own good. Aside from small family farms there are few chickens living in natural conditions---roaming freely in pastures and woods without fences, choosing their own food and affiliation groups, living with roosters and a few geriatric flock members as well. Even those described as “free range” are often left inside with only a small door open to meet that definition. This door can be a single opening inaccessible to the hundreds of chickens in the flock.
Claire, who has experienced both schooling and homeschooling, can’t help but see a comparison. “Doesn’t that remind you of how people treat children? They always know what’s right for them. I mean, how are you supposed to learn if you are stuck in the same situation all the time? You’re supposed to be out with your family learning as things come up.”
I think children thrive as free-range learners. We encourage them to follow their innate curiosity and explore freely. We guide children to be a meaningful part of family and community, aware of their place as both givers and receivers. We help children to know themselves so that they listen to their bodies and spirits. As they grow we want them to be able to integrate what they have learned and use it to meet their own potential. Although there are worlds of difference between raising children and raising chickens, we can trust children to forage for interests that sustain them.

[Urmila Anna Samson]

Response from my husband Dr. John Samson:

Reply to free range children

Children are programmed to take care of themselves. Babies as we all know or have found out express themselves better before they learn how to speak. Life is a balance between individuality and group identity. Those partial to the former may find social integration challenging whereas in the latter instance self assertion may need addressing
During the course of their lives this further develops into a need for peer recognition and self awareness respectively. This then begs the question do home schoolers have an innate need to be recognized by the existing system the powers that be if you will and do the exponents and participants in the mainstream need to recognize the importance of the free system in providing the world with compassionate right brained people so much the need of the hour.
The world is a place resplendent with dialectic, often integration of opposites leads to hybridization and harmonization. Acid and alkali react to give salt and water.
Solitary families may because of being isolated from the social trunk feel at times isolated and deprived due to their opting for home schooling. As a dental surgeon on the apex of the social wannabe pyramid I encountered probing from friends that ranged from pointed to curious to skeptical. During my graduating days I was something of an icon since I was singularly non competitive and a peoples person. This changed to some extent when I had to earn my own living. Through years of diligence I covered ground and gained recognition and an enviable social standing. I could never really identify with this new role, almost like a bird in the proverbial gilded cage.
On the home front things were great. As a family of five we all got on amazingly well and our only concern was how our children would enter the world at large.
Throughout our married life my wife and I were constantly questioned about the wisdom of our choice of education. These questions never really bothered us. Urmila being predominantly right brained and self assured and I often having been branded as a maverick in the past. Besides we had witnessed on various occasions the ravages of the present school system which is why as we often assured our friends and well wishers our decision was based not so much on courageously choosing the less trodden path but rather drawing on the experiences of some of the unfortunates of the path trodden black.

[Laura Weldon]

Your observations are spot on. It's about balance and the way our choices impact that balance.

As far as individuality and group identity I think it is a continuum. Some of us are restored by solitude, others feel their best in the midst of people but most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Interestingly, when we make our own choices and do not live by a rigid standard that judges us dysfunctional if we differ from the norm, our resulting happiness and self-acceptance can't help but free others in society. They can see a gentle example of what works and if they choose, go on to find what is best for them.

[Urmila Anna Samson]

John: Regarding individuality and group identity, I do agree there are varying degrees to which a person would choose to remain in solitude or be gregarious and outgoing, and each of these archetypes have their own form and function and add to the beauty and diversity of a social network. There is also the aspect of individuality whose boundaries are defined by upbringing, personality, immediate surroundings, ethnic and religious influences which form a multi-braided tenuous and resilient social structure when connected by a sense of oneness with the whole of humanity. And the deep realization that what affects any one of us will in some way whether overt, subtle or imperceptible affect all of us.

(I think he's the one who has to write the book.)

[Laura Weldon]

Indeed, archetypes resonate across culture and time, creating an amazing mosaic of humanity.

And Urmila, nice try but I have a strong sense the book must come from you. You write lyrically. Even more importantly you illustrate principles with stories directly from experience. That's exactly the way to reach people. I'm almost done with my book. The process of writing it feels like a halfway mark for me because the real purpose is the work I hope the book can do. I want to help children who are trapped by school or restrictive forms of homeschooling, and to help parents trust natural learning. If the book can meet those goals it will have made some kind of difference. I know there's a book waiting to emerge from all your writings. It will come in its own time.

[Urmila Anna Samson]

Wow! Your book is almost ready. That must make you feel great! You have authored one or more books previously - how do we buy them? What are the titles?

I'm with you completely in wanting to bring awareness to those who due to lack of being exposed to alternatives are afraid to relax and be natural. Natural child bearing and rearing cannot but help change the world! And I always prefer to lead by example and spreading awareness, and watch the numbers grow and grow...

About 'outsourcing' (sic!) the book to John was just me being naughty and fishing...

[Laura Weldon]

Thanks for asking about reading other books I've written Urmila. You have more faith in me than I have in myself, I'm afraid. I have only edited books before, never written one. That's probably why I'm having such worries right now in this final phase of turning the book over. I strongly believe that the energy we put into something affects the process, so the last thing I should be doing is fussing over negatives but some days I have trouble keeping my spirits up. Just as I recenter myself in calm acceptance I run into another seemingly insurmountable problem. I've always wondered about such roadblocks. Are we supposed to see them as warning signs to turn and go another way, or fight the dragons in our path so that we can go onward? Lately I've been asking my dreams to provide me with some guidance. Now to do a better job of remembering them!

[Urmila Anna Samson]

Beautiful picture of the chick...almost want to reach out and touch the soft feathers...