Moving on

Dear Darling

It's been a while since I've written to you an in that time our lives have taken a very different turn. In December we move house and identity after all the trouble with your dad, an the courts finally saw fit to stop the abuse when we were given a no contact order. After the uncertainty and fear of the previous ten years, this year has been bliss. Throughout your whole life and for the the years before you were born my life revolved around a man who turned out to be an abuser, a stalker and paranoid delusionist. My life with you has been regularly interrupted by the court ordered abuse. I still live in fear of the mail, and the person who stalks us, and having to turn your life upside down again. You love our new life, and it troubles you to think that he will find us and make us move again.

For the last nine months we have finally gotten to live in peace. We have been free to live and laugh and we have done a lot of that. Our new home is amazing, the neighbours are lovely and you have friends nearby an far away. We decided together to enter into a home educating journey together and it was definitely the right decision. It wasn't the easy route, but it's definitely the right one. From home educating we morphed naturally onto the unschooling path, which fitted in most naturally with our family relationship style and how we used to do things before nursery and then school came along.

So what has the last nine months brought? We live consensually and peacefully, by the moon and the seasons. We rise when we wake and sleep when we are tired. Well, strictly speaking, we sleep when I am tired because you never seem to get tired! You are back to being the happy, joyful energetic bundle of fun you always were but that school stole from you a little. We have made great home ed friends and you are learning what you want, when you want it.

I read loads of Sandra Dodd, John Holt and Ivan Illitch and the like and with a big leap of faith in your innate enthusiasm for life and learning I rejected any for of school-like tuition and set you free. You have amazed me – as usual – and taught yourself how to read, an even though you don't practice as much as I think you should – to draw pretty well too. You find numbers easy an your mental arithmetic is pretty nifty.

You play a ton of Xbox, watch series back to back, make videos, scratch program games and make stop motion animation. You crack the funniest jokes (and then wear them out, completely!). Your martial arts club has very high hopes for you. We spend hours -days - morphing from one activity to the next as your imagination guides you. It makes me realise that the school day, broken into hourly segments,is not the way young people learn naturally. We can start a game that might last for two hours, or five hours, or all day, or even beginning again the next day or the next.

You cannot sit still, and find it hard to listen, you get distracted and drift off into your own work a lot, a bit like me really, to be honest. You tell me about the difficulties you had a school, with having to sit still, with bullies and meanness and with not being allowed to follow your passions. You tell me you don't like to read out loud so I don't make you. I trust you if you say you can something, and you are confident enough to ask if you need help.

Your imagination and the language you use just blows me away (and not just *that* kind of language!!) . You have always been highly eloquent and a great communicator, ever since birth. You interact socially with people of all ages, though some of the older ones might sometimes perceive your high energy as undesirable. Personally, I feel activity – running, jumping, spinning, climbing is necessary for human health so I shrug off the tuts and stick up for your right to move.

You are a down to earth, solid, confident amazing human being. I can't believe my luck that you turned out to be you, that my son would be such a perfect human, kind yet firm, gentle yet energetic, non-judgemental and supportive, intelligent and fun. I really do think you are an incredible person and many other wise people – Ray, the social worker and the shop keeper being three that spring to mind as I type this – have commented the same.

I wonder what profession you will follow as you grow up -its the kind of thing adults ask isn't it? What do you want to be when you grow up? You say “happy”. Wise words. Or, Batman. You love Batman. Based on my observations at the delicate age of six I would say you have a natural affinity for working with animals or maybe video game development. Who knows? My job didn't even exist when I was your age! What I qualified in was pretty new and confined to a minority. Maybe you will follow as varied a life path as I did, or maybe you will be more focussed. I dont' care, as long as you are happy.

Signing off now, till I think of something extra.

Mwah! I'm a proud mama, you are my favourite person in the whole wide world

Your Mum xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx