Growth will happen
“In essence, the story of neural healing is also the story of learning.” Smart Moves, by Carla Hannaford.
“Love your neighbour as you love yourself.” Matthew 22:39
We’re planting a woodland! More on this later. But as I prepare the land, and as I have been winter pruning my apple trees the other week, and a few things occurred to me during this illuminating procedure.
A small anecdote on growth.
Potential in today’s insignificant
First, before you begin, you have to choose your leaders – at first they are small, twiggy branches facing in all directions. There may be several strong shoots all on one side, but they need to balance each other. Looking for balance, these are the ones to appoint. Like small David who would later face Goliath and go on to rule the country, he had what was needed, and he was positioned as God wanted.
Growth for tomorrow
The other thing to consider was that growth will happen. What looks good today could easily clash tomorrow. I was not pruning for an end result. I was pruning to support grow, for today, and for tomorrow.
Growth will happen
Anywhere we go, if we leave a place untended, growth will happen. Mould in an unused room, maggots in a mouldy turnip, weeds in the mortar of a path or a patio, wildflower on the edges, gradually scrambling in and filling a space, raspberry shoots in the lawn, sloe blackthorn and cherry trees from runners creeping into the field.
Our thought patterns are the same. Proclivity to positivity, or to negativity will send runners throughout all our thought processes. We have a garden in our mind, and we better be sure how we tend it, for it to enrich us, lest it spoil us.
Insecurity
I have heard it said that insecurity is one of the most dangerous traits. People can do most things in the name of insecurity. It’s just one example of needing to take charge of what we want spreading through our thoughts. Actions done in the name of insecurity have a foolproof excuse – all the reasons that we’re insecure, everything we’ve been through. But take a look at what that looks like given time to mature – it can become nasty. Let insecurity fester for a few decades, and I know for myself that’s a landscape of how many seeds sown of a bitter, resentful, critical, unwelcoming and unkind nature. I know that is not the person I could be, with the relationships I could foster. Being resentful to more and more people closes me down to the nurturing and encouraging work I feel called towards. If I let it go unchecked, eventually there are very few people I could actually get alongside with and link arms with.
Valuable hard work
That’s hard work – maybe not academic, but healing and growing. Working through difficulties, thought processes and habits all count as hard work. They may not be recognised as valuable in schools today. But these issues affect relationships and basic lifestyle and function. I feel that habits such as control issues, attention seeking, eating disorders and distorted image all set seed from insecurity, and can take over exponentially. It takes a lot of diligence to weed through all of it, and this is just one pertinent example.
Relationships
The relationships we grow up with can stay with us wherever we go. Perhaps we grew up around, or under a narcissistic parent or sibling. Or perhaps we were allowed to behave like this. (It wouldn’t be surprising – we seem to be in a pandemic of narcissism.) We carry these experiences and behaviour patterns with us right into adulthood. We begin to notice these patterns all around us, and act accordingly, as we had done in our childhood. Whether a fighting instinct, or a flight instinct, I know I carried these behaviours from my childhood well into adulthood. Probably still do.
We can start to notice these patterns, and rather than feel despair at their endless reoccurrence and knock on effect, we can put in the hard work of conquering and overcoming patterns of disfunction.
Education
When planning our homeschooling model, I feel it is vital to demonstrate the value of this work – to make time for it, and to promote empathic thinking.
‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ The emphasis of this is usually to love your neighbour. But for those who struggle with insecurity, or any of the many difficulties available, I think it’s also valid to consider how much we must love ourselves. ‘As you love yourself’.
Use it or lose it
“In essence, the story of neural healing is also the story of learning.” Smart Moves, by Carla Hannaford.
The brain is truly a use it or lose it organ. Where we’re not learning, or healing, or growing, we would be degenerating. Fortunately, most of the time, our experiences are contributing to the growth of neural connections and pathways in our brain. Growth will happen. We need to be mindful of what we grow.
Wherever we go, whatever happens, it’s either a learning opportunity or a downward spiral. No-one lives on a fence.
Growth in education
But how do we support children to tend their own garden of their minds, without prying, or requiring too much introspectiveness?
Fostering a woodland
My own thoughts on this draw me to the process of planting our woodland. First, after preparing the land, we saturated the land with many many potential tree saplings, ones that carry potential for what we hope for in our woodland. We protect these trees in their early years, and some of them will grow, and some will not. After a few years we take off the outer protection as and when they’re able to withstand the wind and the wild animals. Eventually, after a few more years we begin to thin out the trees – they are now beginning to compete with one another, and with wider branches and a thicker canopy we need to choose and make room for those trees that will be the stalwarts of the woodland.
When children are young we shower them with positive (though not necessarily hyped up) experiences and loving relationships. Over time some of those interests and relationships stick, and where they continue to need support, or perhaps some freedom, we offer it. Eventually, as they grow, we allow them to focus on their passions – passions that are healthy for them, and fruitful. We support them to thin out what isn’t needed anymore.
Isn’t that exhausting
It could seem like very hard work, all this positive experience for our young ones. But we must love them as we love ourselves. Providing positive experiences can also be guided by what builds ourselves as parents up. Positive and loving relationships for our children does also require us as parents to love ourselves, and tend the garden of our own mind. Feeling that we should reach out and stretch on their behalf to an activity or relationship that we struggle with, or perhaps that brings us down, may not actually be advantageous to our children in the long run. So we can love and support our children, as we do ourselves.
When there’s already a problem
Perhaps we’ve already identified a problem that needs work for our children. And it is true, weeding is hard work – it’s not easy and often painful. But rather than leave it bare, after we’ve cleared that space, we can plant it up with trees that we see as good and fruitful. Maybe at first a little extra protection for that space is needed, as it takes time for good roots to fill the land. But growth will happen. ‘Neural healing is also the story of learning.’
Helping children tend their own land
Finally, over time, children can watch how we choose to prioritise and work hard at these things. We can foster within them a love for family, and support them to notice patterns and measure when something needs consideration, or tending, or weeding out. Like pruning, the aim is to support strong growth, not long spindly growth that can’t carry fruit, and a healthy root system in connection to their family and community.
https://thereisnoshouldbe.com/coping-with-behaviour/
https://www.smarthomeschooler.com/blog/2024/12/12/homeschooling-better-for-mental-health
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