A letter to my son as he turns 18 after a home-educated childhood

… of freedom, meaning and celebration… and of my being ‘othered’ for my parenting choices

Dear Ethan,

Now that you’re 18 you have reached our cultural milestone for adulthood. However, the reality of it is that maturation is a gradual transition with varying degrees of physical, mental and emotional capabilities. That said, as a marker it works to define you reaching a time where you’re significantly responsible enough to flee the nest in search of adventure with full confidence that you can meet whatever challenges come your way.

You are definitely carrying this energy. Your entire being seems to emanate a longing for adventure every time you walk out the door. I know you are ready to expand your horizons to explore and learn beyond your family and local homeland. Finishing your A ‘levels seem to be the gate to freedom.

As you have been approaching 18 it has become a very reflective time for me seeing you in your readiness and acknowledging that the life we’ve given you has equipped you with enough of what you need. We can’t help feel a sense of pride and satisfaction, and at the same time recognise that although we created a nurturing environment, we didn’t mould you, you came out ready perfected. That sense of adventure has always been part of you.

Your Natural Strength

You’ve watched and listened attentively since birth, possessing a very high level of both self-awareness and awareness of others. You’ve learned to read social situations so that you can get involved playfully and particularly with meaningful dialogue. You fit in with ease and yet stand out as everyone’s buddy. Quite the contrast to the rest of us in our household!

When you’re out engaging with the world you’ve always has a strength and calmness to you that everyone benefits from. I’ve since come to understand this as you being a nervous system ‘thermostat’, meaning that your stable nervous system helps regulate others who are more like thermometers changing with the environment. This has been such a blessing for the five of us, as 4/5 have strong sensory needs. Growing up in a neurodivergent household means that you’ve become super understanding and compassionate.

Your natural strength is a powerful part of your identity and so I find it curious that your name means ‘strength’. I had a list of names like Jasper, Phoenix, Hamish, Willow, Asher, Eden, Tom and Forest, the latter 4 ending up good friends of yours. It intrigues me where the name ‘Ethan’ came from and I guess it was just one of those popular names that floats around after a hit film, (in this case, Mission Impossible). Without conscious realisation many mums thought they’d found something novel.

You were Hamish for a week after my grandpa’s dog, (much to the upset of my family!). Your dad loved it but not Jasper which was my favourite. I tried all the names on you for size and none seemed to fit except Ethan which confused me as it seemed plucked from the air. I never felt like I chose it, it always felt like you did. It means strength and that is certainly very fitting.

And on the subject of fitting, or fitting in, I guess my subconscious must have thought it fit best within my family and current culture which is very interesting because fitting in was something I’d given up a long time before you came along. Still there is a natural human need to feel a sense of safety from acceptance and belonging. Generally blending in.

Homebirth

A couple of weeks before your birth we were given an eviction notice as the landlord wanted to sell. The lack of stability and uncertainty really threw me. I ended up having a difficult birth after an uneventful pregnancy. I spent 3hrs in second stage which led to exhaustion, hallucination, and numbed nerves so that I couldn’t tell when to push with contractions. I had to have an episiotomy to avoid ambulance transfer to hospital. I know if I’d have been in hospital I’d have been forced into interventions against my will, and I’m eternally grateful to Cathy, a very experienced midwife who knew me and stayed with me the whole time.

Your birth was my first parenting step that powerfully began a series of parenting choices that ensured I was ‘othered’ by mainstream society. It was not that I was trying to be reactive or anti-conformist, just that I had a very strong conviction that it was the healthiest way to birth for both mother and baby. I had done extensive research and found awesome mentors and received ongoing support throughout my pregnancy.

I knew in my heart that the system was faulty, and my head confirmed it through exploring literature and learning the physiology of natural birth. A clinical setting is no place for a healthy birth, nothing about it reassured my nervous system. I needed trees, birds, comfort, calm and my own quite space to let nature take its course.

Dreadlocks and Breastmilk

I had dreadlocks for your first 3 years. Very long grey from the top, followed by brown mid-way, then red at the bottom. I breastfed you until my milk ran out in my second pregnancy when you were 2.5 years old. Two other aspects that caused our being othered.

I was studying a herbal medicine degree which I switched to part-time and so you started at nursery for two mornings a week. You liked it only because of a staff member called Beccy who wore skate shoes like we did. You tried to get on with the other children and found it a challenge. You asked me why none of the children talked to you even though you talked to them, and it was because they hadn’t yet learned to talk. You were already a fluent conversationalist. The staff told me your communication skills were beyond those ready to start school.

I always say you learned to sing before you started to speak. We were always together creating art or adventure whilst in constant dialogue. You could sing the alphabet song before the age of one, not because I was going for early literacy, but just because it’s a nice song to sing. I never tried to teach you to read and write, I let it come naturally.

A Love of Books

We fostered a love of reading by reading many times a day to you. Me and your dad would take turns at 5.30pm everyday to read numerous books whilst the other made dinner. It was our tired time so worked out nicely, (plus we didn’t have a TV/electronic babysitter). It’s no surprise that you’re currently studying English Literature A ‘level.

I love the fact that you taught yourself to read at age 6 by picking up Harry Potter, only years later realising you had never ‘heard’ the first chapter as you couldn’t read what it said the first-time round!

Books have been a huge part of your life and allowed you to get absorbed in adventure many times over. It was only when you started school at age 14 that reading books came to a halt.

Home Education

Which brings me to our next choice that brought in yet another layer of othering – home-education. It came about in an unexpected way. I’d read about it in the Green Parent Magazine; a distant dream that felt out of my grasp.

Then because we were housed in a new estate which educationally couldn’t support the number of children in your school year, the local authority suggested we put you all on a school bus at age 4 with teenagers. You would get dropped off some way from a primary school in a village 10 minutes’ drive away that we’d never even been to. Thirty children had no place in the local school of walking distance. I went to residents’ meetings and eventually temporary building were brought in and you were all offered places.

I believe we were the only ones who declined that place, probably also the only ones that explored the option of home-education. It was then that we discovered a rich and vibrant HE community in Bristol which we settled into well before your September internment and we saw no reason to change things when we were happy. I was still studying my degree course and had your brother by then and we liked being together having fun.

Again, my heart told me the school system was flawed and my head confirmed with literature research, direct experience and dialogue with other home-educators. When I joined HELP, (home education learning place), I answered a question via email, (pre-Facebook days), which asked “why did you choose to home educate?” My answer at the time was because you had such a love of flowers, I couldn’t bear that to be squished by a ridged culture that didn’t celebrate difference, individuality or nature.

Indeed, your first words were “flao flao” and “tac tac”, (flower and tractor), long before you could walk.

Our values have been to do no harm and to work with nature, both our own innate nature and that all around us. Everything we did had meaning, living in a way that learns through direct experience and direct consequence, nothing that any abstract teachings of a school feeding system could ever compare with!

Life Is A celebration

Life was like a celebration for you. You woke at 5.15am every morning until age 6 when you started staying up later to read to yourself. You’d be in the bath at 6am after a poo on rising, we’d have a snuggle in bed before breakfast and then leave the house for a walk among the trees and green and birds and cats. At home the door to the garden was always open and we had many book breaks and sing songs. Our French singing class was a highlight, plus swimming with daddy and rides in the tractor at his work. We did endless crafts and spent a lot of time in the woods.

When you learned to walk, I’d let you lead the way from our gate to wherever you wanted to go. It was often slow, stopping to greet many plants or catch fairies, (poplar down). When you worked out the way to the park you picked up speed. I always remember one morning when you took a stool outside the front door to listen to the dawn chorus.

You discovered a love of climbing trees, always having incredible strength and determination to pull yourself up to the most impressive branches way above your height. Catching falling leaves together is one of my most treasured memories.

When your brother came along you quit nursery out of jealousy. However, you ignored the fact that I carried him from morning to night for 6 months in a carrier whilst you and I carried on as ‘normal’. Life became very different when he got out of the carrier and crawled. You weren’t best pleased with my diverted attention. Not until he was 3 did you accept him, when he could speak fluently, he was a late speaker, and where you’re faster that average, he’s a little slower, like me. After that however, you became best buddies and have been ever since, much to all our delight.

Depleted Mother Syndrome

It all sounds very idyllic, and I know it’s unusual these days for a mother to choose to stay-at-home to be the sole carer for her own children. For you it was utterly idyllic. For me, I was in total adoration of you and loved our shared interests, however, I was exhausted and undersupported. I regret not having co-slept with you until the 6 months before your brother was born as you woke me every 2hrs, so whenever I’d just about dropped back off to sleep, you’d wake me again.

That cumulative sleep deprivation, combined with high mental output every evening for my degree studies almost did me in for a time. I even remember getting kind of electric shocks where I’d be dropping off to sleep during the daytime. I had become physically depleted because of the lack of sleep restoration. My capacity was low, and so I kept it all for you. Thankfully, our time together was joyful and nourishing.

It was only when you were 5 and your sister came along with strong sensory demands that we really felt the balance tipped. I ended up with full blown depleted mother syndrome including mental, emotional, and physical issues, secretly convinced I’d be put in the local nut house, (like both my grandmothers), if anyone found out how badly I was managing. My family kept their distance for various reasons including struggling with our parenting choices and worrying over my health.

Your dad was grieving his mum and dads divorce and didn’t sleep for 2 years. His ability to hold us with nutritious home-grown veg and home-cooked meals was an unwavering godsend, but he was emotionally exhausted and unavailable in that department for a time.

There was a phase where I’m sure I neglected you and we struggled to connect as well as we did. As things evened out a little, I relied upon our relationship to meet an incredible amount of needs, probably more than most children do for their parents.

Our conversations had always been deep and meaningful with a quest for understanding and a high level of awe for the natural world in and around us. We problem solved together, came up with many creative solutions, worked as a team to look after the other two day by day and always nurtured our connection. It didn’t seem a strain to you, but I wanted to redress the balance and did so with Family Constellations work during our trip to India.

Community Learning Co-operative

When you were 8 we started a home-ed co-op with 6 other families; a mostly outdoor arrangement, 3 days a week. It met our longing for community and collaboration. We’d been attending two HE drop-ins on Thursdays and Fridays for 5 years, even ending up hosting one of the spaces for a year or so. Again, you approached it like a big celebration, and it was.

Getting together with others to share play and adventure was exciting for both of us. You made friends for life there, those you still see on a weekly basis and are planning more adventures with. You value both your school friends and your home-ed friends; the latter feeling more akin to cousins after having grown with them in close community including many sleepovers, (in the Croods-style pile), holidays, celebrations, and many other interactions. Some of the parents have been almost as important as your friends, available for skill sharing, care and council, knowing, appreciating, and loving you.

We don’t have any regrets for taking the home-ed path. I may have been initially othered for choosing dreadlocks, a homebirth, extended breastfeeding, being a stay-at-home mum, a herbalist, non-vaccinated, TV-free and home-educated, but it led us to where we belonged, in a community that loved and valued us where we could be free to learn to flourish in our own skin. Where life continued to be a celebration and still is, more than likely as a result of it.

Challenge and Growth

But it wasn’t all rosie. It was a journey of getting to know each other from the excitement of convergence, through divergence following conflict, and back to convergence again. I even experienced some more powerful othering for thinking so differently.

As a community we learned much about each other, and about ourselves in the process. We learned how to really hear each other, understand each other, see each other, and recognise our shared humanity.

Our perseverance for the sake of the children not only led to a deep respect for each other’s differences, but to a celebration of them in the knowledge that variety is the spice of life and the magic for moving forward in strength. We came to see all the changing dynamics as a route to feeling fully alive and vibrant.

We learned NVC, (nonviolent compassionate communication) and conflict transformation which means you understand the power of connection, both to self and to others, as well as knowing that tension is an opening for building trust.

Direct experience of family and community issues which we worked through together has strengthened your compassion. You hold space for strong emotions in others with unwavering strength, not through squishing your own needs or ignoring your own feelings, you just have such a strong understanding of natural process and accept where people are at, and that they will get to where they need to be with a good dose of love.

You don’t get lost in emotional heights or confusion as I always did. You’re so stable, yet open and flexible, able to go with the flow and excited by the unknown and unexpected. So much curiosity and genuine interest in people, their experience and behaviour.

School and A Girlfriend

We have often felt like outsiders but were able to find our tribe. Sadly, our 3+ year home-ed project ended at lockdown, however the community lived on in friendship.

It was then that your powerful sense of adventure led you to choose school. You wanted to see if you could fit into ‘normal’ society. On your first day your conclusion was “they’re all weirder than us lot!” Meaning humans are humans and mainstream school ones aren’t much different to us.

Thankfully you went in with your eyes wide open to the dysfunctional system and culture and worked out how to insert yourself as yourself and not only be accepted but celebrated!

You are a real people person, for a while a people-pleaser, however, you now make authentic choices, especially after practicing a method we called, “ditch the shoulds”, where ask yourself what you would do if the ‘should’s’ didn’t exist.

You’re someone who thrives in groups and intimately with one-to-ones. You’ve loyally been with your girlfriend for 2.5 years which is a very strong mature relationship. You have two jobs and have almost finished your A’ levels. You love learning as I always have. A thirst for adventure which you hope to jump into with a gap year before studying psychology at uni.

Recognise Your Privilege

You fully understand that life has not been like a celebration for a lot of people. You’ve witnessed my own, your dads, and sisters struggles, very much related to our neurodivergence and nervous system turbulence, (another source of being othered I won’t go into here).

Your middle name is after my sweet deep loving brother who’s spent way too much time in the prison system, street and drug culture, even losing his children, (your cousins), to Jehovah’s Witness in-laws. We miss them all. We grew up in a culture that shamed our single parent teenage mum and unreliable dad, and that’s been hard to shake off.

In choosing to be a stay-at-home mum we chose to live off one income. In your dad choosing to follow his passion growing fruit and vegetables and beautifying gardens, we were part in a faulty system of unfair distribution of wealth that doesn’t pay a person adequately enough to support a family. Consequently, we have been reliant on government benefits and lived in a housing association home, adding yet more layers of mainstream othering.

I grew up in a council house and whilst we have brought you three up in relative financial poverty, our life has been anything but poor. We have always framed it as being rich-in-love an indeed it has been; riches beyond anything money could buy.

The Year of Celebrations

This year is an exciting one for me and for you. My youngest turns 13, meaning all my children have become teenagers, plus me and your dad celebrate 25 years together with a 20-year wedding anniversary ceilidh.

For your 18th birthday celebration, you ‘let me’ throw you a party for all the family. They may not have been there on an everyday basis, but we’ve always made space for regular celebration at Christmas, the Easter Egg hunt and the annual cemetery visit on my Somerset side, plus beach holidays on dad’s Devonshire side.

The party was a big hit!

In a little village club hall with skittles. You’re the eldest of the generation, as I am the oldest of mine, and so there were 14 younger cousins and second cousins. I brought lots of games, books and colouring, so no one got fed up or overwhelmed. There was outdoor seating, a private park and playing field.

I decorated with personalised bunting that I’d hand cut and sewn over 10 hours, and I placed daffodils in jam jars on spring green craft paper that I used as tablecloths. The flowers signified what we’d always told you when you were little: that your birthday comes with the daffodils.

The Art of Home-ed Hosting

I blended what our family enjoys; games, food and quizzes, with the Art of Home-ed hosting, where there’s something for everyone. Only our daughter receded to the car to read her Warrior Cat’s book as big gatherings are not her thing unless she has a best friend available to lean into for comfort and confidence.

Me and your dad had a great time creating the quizzes together. A journey through your life in the music you’ve loved, and also in theme tunes of things you’d loved watching. The one that seemed to excite everyone the most though was the game where each team had to guess the book from your childhood from one team member drawing it. It was a race to get all 18 and a lot of fun for all the generations.

Dad made his famous beetroot chocolate cake of course, and we had a family photo that was quite a palaver. I stuck photo collages up on the wall of all your past birthdays in a rainbow of colour, and your great uncle brought you your family tree that he’d created especially.

I really loved that the way we marked your coming of age with family and activities relevant to your life was a strong reflection on your identity.

Conscious Choice

You stay at your girlfriends house a lot as she has a bigger room, parents who stay up past 9pm, and a lounge, (we converted ours into our bedroom to give you three a bedroom each).

So, we were deeply heart warmed when you chose to sleep at home the night before your birthday. I could see that it was in full awareness that this may be the last in terms of following our unique birthday rituals that have evolved over the years. Who knows where you’ll be next year!

I am eternally proud of you and so incredibly honoured to be your mum. You read the Celestine Prophecy age 11 when we spent 3 months in India. If you chose me, then I thank you for it because you have enriched my life beyond all expectation.

As adventure beckons you, I give you every blessing for a life well lived and can’t wait to hear all the stories you return with!

With tons of love, respect and admiration,

Your Mum xxx