A video of Wendy McDonnell at the Toastmasters Guelph Area International Speech Contest, Spring 2011. The following is a transcript of the speech, copyright 2011. Thanks goes out to Wendy’s son Malcolm who recorded the event when he was nine years old.

Musician Pete Seeger once said, “Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.”

I hope to persuade you that experiential learning and asking loads of questions makes education fun and long lasting.

My family has ample opportunities to do that while we homeschool. That’s our personal choice. Homeschooling may not be for you. Some schools are already learning from the success of homeschoolers. Perhaps after hearing my story, you will too.

My four children have never been to school and I’m confident that homeschooling is preparing them well for adulthood.

We are learning all the time.

One time it began with a movie.

One night, three years ago, my family watched the “Titanic” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. My daughter Sarah fell in love with the beautiful dresses. Sarah and her brother Malcolm were enthralled by the ornate ship and the tragic details.

Eager to learn more about the great Titanic built in Belfast, Ireland, we borrowed every book and video from our local library. We snuggled into bed on cold winter mornings looking at pictures of the wreck, read how she was built, and discussed why two-thirds of her passengers and crew died the night of April 14, 1912. We learned about how deep the Titanic lays and why it was so difficult to find until the Research Vessel Knorr found her in 1985. You know the CN Tower in Toronto? The Titanic lies about 7 CN Towers, that’s 12,400 feet, under the North Atlantic Ocean. At that depth, there is no light, so life there is unlike anything we have ever seen.

As luck would have it, the Ontario Science Centre hosted a traveling exhibit of the Titanic. We became museum members. Many museums offer hands on exhibits and interactive activities. We saw artifacts and walked through the re-created decks so that we could see, hear, and feel what it was like to sail on the Titanic. We touched an iceberg. We discussed grief, dying, and responding to tragedy.

As this example shows, we study science, history, geography, and social science while reading, writing, and doing math. My children tell all their friends about what they learn. They write letters to their grandparents. They re-enact history through make-believe. We talk about the Titanic now, three years later.

We are learning together all the time.

We learn by asking questions, not by answering them. We learn when we see a problem, take on a project, and have conversations. We explore from the comfort of a couch, over a meal with my family, or while walking in the woods. My children are growing up knowing each other and I know them.

As far as socialization goes, my children see their friends a couple of times a week. We are members of the Guelph Homeschool Group. We organize and participate in field trips and activities. My children make friends with people with whom they share common values and interests, regardless of age and gender differences. They are learning to negotiate their needs with their siblings who don’t share their understanding or skills. They have the freedom to play, discuss what’s important to them, and explore the world from many different perspectives.

The Ontario Ministry of Education allows families to homeschool. We still pay our school taxes like everyone else, so the Ministry offers free curriculum support if we ever want it. My children never need to be tested unless we go to school.

I believe homeschooling is one of the best ways to socialize our children for adulthood. I understand that full-time homeschooling is not for everyone. It’s a personal choice.

However, learning all the time is something we all do. I suggest you engage your senses: your senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Let your curiosity guide your questions and explore. When we do, we ignite our inborn sense of wonder and awe. Learning is play. It’s meaningful. It’s the basis of story-telling and speeches to be shared with our family and friends so we can all learn together.

John Holt, American author and educator, a proponent of homeschooling, and a pioneer in youth rights once said, “Children are born passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of things around them. If we attempt to control, manipulate, or divert this process, the independent scientist in the child disappears.”

Don’t let your inner-explorer disappear.

Unlike other Family Matters radio shows, this show comes with a warning…

This show contains words that may be offensive to some.

For example, as my 10 year old son tells the story of his younger sister on the day when she discovered the power of swear words and the reaction she could get, I think he was enjoying swearing on the radio. However, keep listening and you’ll hear him describe his understanding of cursing and their impact on others.

An article written by Teresa Pitman “When kids swear” originally published in Today’s Parent July 2011, recommends parents, teachers, and other caregivers:

Stay calm. As we heard in both interviews, when we do, the fun of getting a reaction passes and we can explore ways to meet our needs. Staying calm also opens us up for discussion so that we can share the impact swearing may have.

Be curious. Assume your child’s best intent. What needs is your child trying to meet? Is it Play? Attention? Power?

Be honest about the impact swearing words can have on others. They affect how your child will be understood. In certain contexts, swearing comes with consequences that the child will likely not enjoy, like being reprimanded in school.

Offer suggestions and alternatives to meeting needs. Play with your child. Give her attention. Let the fun of getting a reaction pass. It will. Find ways of managing stress or frustration. Be there to listen to your child.

Honour your own feelings and needs. If you’re uncomfortable, then say so. Ask to be treated the way you treat others.

Give children the benefit of your experience so that they can learn too. Share situations where swearing hurts or makes others feel uncomfortable.

For instance, swearing is usually uncomfortable and sometimes can make people feel unsafe if they are said around young children or older people, in school, in public places, at places where people worship and pray to their god, and on television or radio.

Swearing is situational. It means so many things.

As we see in these interviews, with my 10 year old son, with Sarah Mangle, an Early Childhood Educator who has worked in a number of daycare settings, and another with Sage, a grade four student, swearing is used as a way to express feelings of anger, annoyance, and frustration, or when we want to hurt someone else’s feelings because we want others to see just how angry and frustrated we are. Sometimes people swear because they think it’s funny. It feels powerful to get a reaction from others and have an effect in the world.

Hurting others is not okay. It’s important that we intervene when people are getting hurt. When everyone is safe, we can explore the meaning behind the words and actions. When everyone has a chance to be heard about how they are and what’s important to them, we can find ways to meet our needs in non-hurtful ways.

Aired live: Sunday, February 19, 2012 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Listen to Pod Cast (click to listen or save this MP3 to your computer)

Lisa wrote THE BOOK “I’m Doing The Best I Can!” (The won’t always be cute and adorable) about her journey through parenting a teenager while trying to carry on with her own life.

You can hear her radio show Everyday Parenting every Tuesday morning on www.RadioEarNetwork.com. For more information about Lisa, her website is www.LisaRHein.com.

Aired live: Sunday, February 5, 2012 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Listen to Pod Cast (click to listen or save this MP3 to your computer)

What does it take to be the best part-time dad you can be?

Separation and divorce is the time when people are the most angry and fragile AND need to make some pretty important decisions about caring for and re-creating family. How the heck do you do that?

Join us as Wes Harper and Wendy McDonnell discuss communication, openess, being true to yourself, being enthusiastic about life, attitude, bridging separation gaps, focusing on our values, and managing grief and anger for the things we cannot change. When we allow ourselves to grieve, we adapt when faced with the things we cannot change.

Aired live: Sunday, January 29, 2012 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Listen to Pod Cast (click to listen or save this MP3 to your computer)

Preteen Crushes

http://www.todaysparent.com/tweens-teens/ages-and-stages/preteen-crushes?page=0,0

When Kids Swear

http://www.todaysparent.com/school-age/social-skills/when-kids-swear

“365 days until…the journey to our wedding” is a day-by-day record of the year leading up to Alex’s and Ahesha’s wedding: all the foolishness, the planning, what they learned about each other, what they learned about marriage, and their hopes and fears. They’re willing to talk about any of it!

When they noticed that the focus of this website and Family Matters was on creating trusting, open relationships they said that chronicling their lives and then sharing their journals only after they were married certainly has helped them to do that.

Ahesha wrote: “I’ve heard the best relationships have their ups and downs. As children of divorce and separation, Alex and I are willing to go the extra mile to create a loving and lasting marriage and family. At the same time, we try to remain realistic. We know that things happen. Things may not always be as fun and easy between us as they are now.”

Alex wrote just before their wedding, “Although I love my mother, she doesn’t realize that all of her questions about the wedding drama are causing more stress. Note to all mothers, some things are just none of your concern or business. It doesn’t mean that we are angry with you or dislike you. It just means that sons sometimes don’t want to talk about what is going on with their significant others. If they wanted to, they would, so enough with all the questions. The world isn’t a damn hairdresser’s chair.”

Esha wrote, “I wish all people came with an instruction manual. I wrote one for Alex when we first started dating. I have no idea what made me do it. It was for fun in the beginning. After writing a few pages, I decided to take it more seriously. I hope he found it useful.”

Alex and Ahesha chat about the foundations of a long-term relationship, what kept them going through the frustrations of planning for a wedding, and how family and friends can be supportive.

Connect: http://alexaheshacatalano.authorsxpress.com/

Aired live: Sunday, January 22, 2012 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

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From YouTube: Clinical psychologist and a couple and relationship therapy expert, Hedy Schleifer “crosses the bridge” with TEDxTelAviv audience and brings laughter and passion to the adventure of learning the art of listening.

The Power of Connection by Hedy Schleifer

Click here to view the embedded video.

From YouTube: Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the questions: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness?

The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown

Click here to view the embedded video.

Family Matters Radio explores elimination communication, using Amercican Sign Language with babies, cues, crying, and body language.  Listening for all the ways we communicate and what we mean when we do and say what we do is a skill we learn over a lifetime which helps us to understand each other no matter how we express ourselves. All our movements, verbal and nonverbal, have meaning in it.

Other resources:

Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene article by Ingrid Bauer

and Ingrid Bauer’s book Diaper Free!

Diaper Free Baby.org

Breastfeeding: parent support, cuing, and nonverbal communication on Family Matters Radio

Aired live: Sunday, January 15, 2012 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Listen to Pod Cast (click to listen or right click to save MP3 to your computer)

What are needs? How are they different from wants and strategies? How can everyone’s needs matter? Aren’t some people’s needs more urgent or more important? Meeting everyone’s needs seems quite impossible to do all the time. Can we do that?

From the article, Compassionate Connection: Nonviolent Communication with Children by Inbal Kashtan “Nonviolent Communication (NVC), shares two key premises with attachment parenting: Human actions are motivated by attempts to meet needs, and trusting relationships are built through attentiveness to those needs…Instead of focusing on authority and discipline, attachment parenting and NVC provide theoretical and practical grounds for nurturing compassionate, powerful, and creative children who will have resources to contribute to a peaceful society…NVC,…shifts attention away from judgments about our own and others’ actions (as manipulative, wrong, bad, inappropriate – or even good), focusing instead on our own and others’ feelings and needs…Every interaction we have with our children contains messages about who they are, who we are, and what life is like. The parent who takes a toy away from a toddler who just took it from another child while saying: “No grabbing,” teaches her child that grabbing is okay – for those with more power. The parent who unilaterally imposes a curfew implies that his teenager can’t be trusted to make thoughtful decisions about his life. Instead, in both words and actions, a parent could convey three key things: I want to understand the needs that led to your actions, I want to express to you the feelings and needs that led to mine, and I want to find strategies that will meet both of our needs.” (two links: http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/inbal_kashtan5.html and http://mothering.com/parenting/compassionate-connection?page=0,0)

Living by Consent: The Life Learning Mystery Tour by Jan Fortune-Wood from Life Learning Magazine “We have a lot of ideas that make us fearful of people acting out of their own interests for their own self-maximizing ends, but these fears rest on some very poor assumptions. We need to reject the ideas that self-interest and morality are logical and necessary opposites or that one person getting what they want must mean that others will lose out. When we question these notions, the fear evaporates.”

Aired live: Sunday, January 8, 2012 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

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From Shakti Sisters Yoga, July 2010: “My daughter is getting close to her 2nd birthday, and being with her full time, without my usual ‘escapes’ … and having no childcare or family around, I become a very tired mommy. For the most part, I am used to the daily exhaustion from the battles of will, constant cleaning, managing the chaos, sacrificing my needs, etc.. It’s all part of embracing this ‘mother’ phase of a woman’s life, where we nurture life, take on responsibility, surrender, give to the world, produce, create and compromise. But I admit I often long for the sweet freedom of my ‘maiden’ phase of life… the time of life when I was fully independent, thinner, stronger, more energetic, had more friends, and more fun.”

We explore the life cycle of a woman: divine girl child, blessed maiden, sacred mother, wise one, holy old woman, beloved earth. Come join us for a conversation about rituals, models, community, meaning, the power of sexuality, and self-exploration.

What marks each phase in this cycle? What do you think and feel when you imagine yourself in each of these phases?

What happens when a woman gets stuck at a particular phase?

How can a woman and her community help celebrate and make her transformations easier?

Aired live: Sunday, December 18, 2011 0800-0900 Eastern Standard Time on CFRU 93.3 FM, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Listen to Pod Cast (click to listen or right click to save to your computer)