It can be hard sometimes to empathise with a four and a five year old. It can be hard to slow life down to their pace and make the time to really listen. When bigger things get in the way, like having to get somewhere by a certain time, or the fact that it’s cold outside and a fairy dress just won’t cut it, it’s easy to snap and get cross and before you know it the tears are flowing.

It’s times like this that Atticus Finch comes to mind and I try to remember what it was like to be four or five and something was really important to me. I try to get inside my children’s skin.

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” (Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird).

When I walk around in my children’s skin I can see how important it is that doggy is properly dressed before we go out, that today is actually a blue hat day and the label on those tights is really scratchy. I can see that the drawing just won’t be the same if it’s finished later, that the cracker needs a little bit of cheese and the message to daddy has to be sent now, not when we get there.

I give myself the luxury of time to finish stuff I think is important and I give myself the room to make my own choices and decisions. My children aren’t that different. They are just a bit smaller.

If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird I would add it to your list. And let me know if any books have had this kind of impact on your life.

We’ve been having a bit of a, we’ll call it a discussion, with our mobile phone company over a certain unresolved issue. A few days ago I decided to take the bull by the horns and call them one more time to try and resolve it. Six phone calls later and the last person I was dealing with accidentally cut me off. I gave up for the day and spent the evening feeling really cross. I was mostly cross because the time I had used to make the calls would have been much better spent with my children. I was also cross because nobody at the company seemed to care. At all.

Now I understand that working for customer services in a mobile phone company isn’t most peoples’ idea of a dream job (though I’m being subjective here of course because it isn’t mine and I do understand that it may be a dream for some people), but let’s just stop and explore that for a minute. Lots of jobs people do aren’t their dream job. So what do you do if that’s you? Do you make your and everyone else’s life a misery? Are you as unhelpful as you could be? Just to punish people. To make them feel as badly as you do. What happens? You get yelled at. You create the spark of bad feeling that stays with you and everyone you come into contact with and spreads like a virus to the people they each come into contact with.

Or do you do your best? Try to help. Make an effort. End the day feeling like you’ve made a difference and even fixed someone’s problem. Left them feeling happy, passing that happiness on to people they come into contact with.

Whoever made the mistake on our account, all it would have taken to make us feel better would have been one helpful person. One person who instead of just telling us the same thing again and again actually found a way to fix it. Why doesn’t that happen? Can companies really not see the value in empowering their staff to make their customers happy?

I am still an unhappy customer. You know that person who cut me off? They work for my mobile phone provider. They have my mobile phone number. They could have called me back. They couldn’t be bothered. How much easier would life be if you just knew that whenever you rang a company to fix a problem, mobile provider, bank, shop, (take a deep breath) local authority, someone helpful, informed and empowered would answer the phone and at least try to help? Anyway, must go, I have unfinished business….

Firstly I wonder why the desire to dismiss myths about your own life requires you to create myths about someone elses. I also wonder why the need to dismiss myths about your own life arises at all if you are blissfully contented. I wonder why people need to persuade others about the validity of their chosen lifestyle. I wonder why people care how other people live. Lots of wondering.

I have lived alone. It didn’t particularly suit me. It was too quiet and I couldn’t be bothered to cook well just for myself. I can see that single living could suit other people though, just as living in a cave or in a tent or up a tree could. Frankly it doesn’t matter. As long as you are happy. I’m happy with my gang around me. I don’t feel “scrutinized” no matter how daft the things I’m doing may be (and it gets dafter than sitting around in my underwear).

Maybe we should all just mind our own business and get on with enjoying the way we’ve chosen to live. And let others get on with enjoying the way they’ve chosen to live. Simple.

I’m not the best at trusting myself but it seems to be something most people struggle with. The most difficult things I’ve had to find my way with have involved my children. But now they are growing I’m also faced with trusting myself to make the right decisions about how we live our lives. I find it hard not to first think about what other people would do/think/say. In fact, I’ll pretty much trust anyone else’s opinion before my own when it comes to the big things in life.

When my first daughter was born I read all the books and bought all the things I thought I needed as a parent. I struggled as a new mum. I read books which made me feel utterly inadequate. I should, apparently, have known what my child’s cries meant. Hungry? Tired? Thirsty? Uncomfortable? I had no idea. The cries just sounded like crying to me. I tried and tried to put her to sleep in her own bed. What I really wanted was to have her in my bed but the books told me that was wrong and I didn’t trust myself to disagree. It was hard work and stressful as I tried to live up to the perfection I was reading about.

Our second child was different. I threw the books away and trusted myself. She was carried in a sling for 4 months, slept in our bed, was cuddled whenever she cried and fed whenever I thought she might be hungry. We did baby-led weaning and skipped all the crazy food mashing. It was still hard but I felt I had allowed myself to be myself and that in itself was incredibly liberating.

Other liberating decisions have all involved looking inward and asking ourselves first what we think. What everyone else thinks really must not be allowed to matter as much. The decision to home school was made that way. And now, the decisions we’re making about how we live have to be made that way. Trusting yourself is not easy. What is easy is listening to everyone else. But at the end of the day, the decisions you make about your life have to be your own. Otherwise you haven’t really lived your own life. And who wants to live someone else’s life?

It’s a bit like peeling off layers. You take one layer off and for a while it feels fresh and light and so much better. Then you start looking around and wondering if you could do with a bit less stuff. Another layer goes. It feels good. And if it feels that good, just how good would another layer feel? We’ve peeled about three layers so far. The deeper you go, the less superfluous the stuff gets, the more radical it feels.

As we start peeling the next layer, the reality of what we still actually own is beginning to sink in. Where we thought we’d been ruthless but we simply haven’t. If our plans to downsize are going to become a reality, we’re going to have to redefine ruthless. Now, where do we start this time?

The institution was divided into two separate buildings in different locations at either end of a small town. It employed a large number of local people and consumed the identity of the town. The smaller building, which housed the less disabled residents was a tolerable place to spend time in but the larger building, housing people with very high support needs, was not.

I won’t share details of the conditions people were expected to live in, or the degrading ways in which they were looked after. We worked there for 6 months. The impact of the project was astonishing, on both the physical environment of the place and more importantly the well-being of the residents. After 6 months the agency funding us was packing up and leaving and our funding packed up and left with them. The effect of their sudden departure left our work with little opportunity for closure or for securing funding from elsewhere. Once the Kosovo crisis had calmed, nobody was interested in an institution in a small town in the south of the FYR of Macedonia.

I tried to find funds for the project for the following 5 years. I still wake up sometimes, 12 years later, with images of the residents in my head and the smell of the institution up my nose. It’s the biggest, unresolved part of my life to date. There are other small, unresolved things I carry about. Some are too insignificant to mention and others even flippant by comparison. The half upholstered chair, finished to the point at which the course I took ended and waiting for me to find the time to sign up for the second course. The 5 other chairs waiting for their turn, wondering when I’m going to be skilled enough to take them on. The violin I spent 15 years learning to play which now sits in its case in the corner of my bedroom.

Life changes and priorities change too but some things will always feel unfinished. Mental clutter is possibly the most difficult to clear. And unresolved matters feel particularly difficult, especially when there’s no clear way to resolve them. I guess the small things I can work towards resolving. I’ve promised the girls I will play the violin for them today and I’ve been looking into finishing the chairs with books and online tutorials. I still don’t have any clear ideas about the project in Macedonia however. Too much time may have passed now for anything to happen and I wonder if that’s just something which is going to be floating around in my head forever. Maybe just accepting that is a resolution in itself.

For months now there have been small projects which have been waiting for their moment. Things I’ve know need doing or sorting or finishing. My inability to get going with any of them I now realise was down to the stultifying effect of a major decision hanging over me. Last bits of stuff in our house to get rid of, rooms to paint, bits of DIY to finish, my own work to really settle down and make progress, decisions about where our lives are heading. The fog is finally clearing. I’ve started painting, sorted out the cluttered office, begun gathering the unwanted stuff to take to charity shops or sell. We’ve started talking about where we’re planning to go and when now we can finally think about traveling a bit and living somewhere different for a stretch. And my own work, for a long time lacking in direction, has just started taking shape.

Why is it so much easier now? Well that’s simple really, we have a purpose. We’ve taken a leap and started home educating and it’s liberated us in more ways than we imagined. Life is no longer restricted by school terms, life itself now seems to be a learning adventure and we’re gearing up to make it an exciting adventure. There’s a reason to sort the house out – we want life to be easy now we’re all here together most of the time, and we want it to be easy to leave when we’re away for several months at a time.

So if a big decision is holding you back, take the plunge and make it. One way or another it will free up your brain and let you focus on all the other things that are waiting in the wings for their moment.

By the way, if you’re interested in our education adventures, have a look at our new website.

More fool me then for allowing a little of another channel one day. This channel did have advertising and my kids quickly worked out which adverts were targeting boys and which were for girls. Imagine soft, high pitched voice saying “Pretty pink and floating fairies just want to be your friend….” and then deep, gruff voice saying “power, fighting, robot dinosaurs, who will win the battle?….” and you’ll see it isn’t so hard. My kids thought the adverts were a little annoying and we turned back to our trusted CBeebies and thought no more of it.

But a few days later I took my children into the supermarket to buy a few things we needed. The toothpaste just happened to be in the same aisle as the toys and within moments my eldest was tugging at my clothes and begging me, I mean really begging me to buy her something. My children often look at toys in shops but are really pretty good about putting them back when it’s time to go. Not today. “Pleeeeeeease mummy, I reallly want it, pleeeeease!”. The toy she wanted was called a Zooble. A bird kind of thing with a baby bird which could be stored in its tummy. “Pleeeeease” she continued “I saw this on the telly”.

I can’t be sure that my girl wasn’t so very excited by this toy because it was the first time she’d seen something from the TV. Maybe kids that watch adverts all the time are more immune. But what if not? If my children behaved that way every time they saw a toy they wanted I’m not sure how I’d cope. Would I give in? That kind of pressure must be very hard to ignore. Ignore it I did, however, whilst suggesting she keep it in mind for her Christmas list. She assured me it would be on there. That was a week ago. No mention of it since.

I imagine that by Christmas the Zooble will have been forgotten. I imagine too that this is partly because she doesn’t watch TV with commercials. I’m not so naive to believe that advertising on TV is the only influence on our children’s desire to own this or that toy. But without it we haven’t yet encountered the same level of pleading during our shopping trips. I wonder what shopping is like for families where kids spend the UK’s average of 3 hours a day in front of the screen. Eek!

It’s now Friday, and the word which best sums up how the week has felt is this one – “liberation”. My daughter has commented on her friends going to school but has, so far, not seemed in the slightest bit bothered about going herself. Our week has consisted of park and playground, walking in the woods, meeting up with other home educating families, baking, reading, going to the library, drawing, making stuff with clay, talking (a lot), laughing and making a long domino run. Simon has taken them to Coleridge’s Cottage today and they are going to write some poems. No uniform, no alarm clocks, no sad goodbyes. Liberation. My girl seems lighter, more relaxed. Life seems freer, already.

It took us a long time to realise we could and should just say no to school. It’s so deep-rooted in our way of thinking that to just say no and do something different was really challenging. I wonder what I would have said if asked as a school pupil if I wanted to keep going to school. And I wonder now what else I should be just saying no to. Looking back at the fear I felt as the summer holidays came to a close and our decision was about to become a reality, I wish I had known how easy it was going to be.

I am into lots of things. Both through interest and necessity. I like to explore ideas, test them out, talk to people about them and, if possible, make them real. I don’t think there’s been a better time to get ideas moving.

But it does get complicated. Distraction builds on distraction and before you know it you’re sat with someone going through all the things you’re working on and they’re finding it rather amusing. Not because they’re stupid ideas (hopefully) but because there’s absolutely no way they can all happen at the same time.

So, I spent this morning writing things down, looking at what could be done and what couldn’t. But list writing is boring.  I find it hard to concentrate on writing lists. Inevitably my thoughts turned to checking my email. The list still isn’t finished and, as a result of checking my email, the list is also longer.

Distraction is a fascinating thing. But what I realised when I was comparing all the different distractions is that distraction is not something that happens to us. It’s something we seek out. In fact, we’re probably less likely to be distracted by some outside event than we’ve ever been. Many of us can work alone because we don’t need to be in an office. We can choose to go to places where nothing will interrupt us. We can switch everything off, hide away.

The modern world is not distracting. It only offers limitless possibilities for distracting ourselves. On the whole that’s a good thing, often a very good thing. We can explore and interact with so much and so many people. But every now and again I need to remind myself that distraction is a choice. I need to remember that I can hide away with a paper and pen and think about one thing, just one thing. Like writing a blog post.