When it comes to our home education style, we ultimately are working towards unschooling - whereby their priorities matter and we support them entirely in building whatever skills make sense to them.

However, I had noticed recently a bit of stress creeping in about my son's interest in minecraft. That fun little voice in my head kept putting it in the 'we do that when we have done this important learning...' voice, the 'this isn't a real subject, we should be doing more (insert maths, reading, history..)' voice, the 'he is going down a worm-hole and he's not going to want to learn anything else ever...' voice. 

Essentially a bunch of limiting beliefs that I am going to do my best to demonstrate my inner-workings on now!

1st Limiting Belief: That fun should only happen after work. 

This stems from the idea that if you were found playing video games as a kid, when almost anything else could have needed doing - like tidying, cooking, moving your body, homework, etc - you would get a 'laziness' comment or lecture. You would know that if you weren't prioritising 'important' things first, that you weren't 'good enough' a person. This has damaging affects on us, especially as busy parents - because let's face it - there is always something more 'important' you could be doing, so prioritising fun or learning about something for no other reason than to have fun, or rest - makes us unbearably guilt ridden or distracted....

2nd Limiting belief: That learning about something with no clear learning 'aim' or 'goal' is not valuable. 

When was the last time you picked up a hobby and found yourself wondering whether you could make money from it? Or if you started doing an exercise class but dropped it because you weren't 'consistent enough' for it to 'make a difference'. Or maybe you weren't 'good enough' at it so you decided to stop because you don't have the time to get good at it....

We had it drilled into us that absolutely anything we did at school had an end goal of a high grade, it had to be quality, we had to give it our all, it had to impress someone. If you look at what you have found yourself directing your kids away from recently because it isn't 'going anywhere', or jumping onto something they are enjoying and giving it a 'learning aim' - you might be re-purposing this fun limiting belief. One to think about! 

3rd Limiting Belief: That we have a capacity for learning.

I don't know about you, but I am a school of lifer, I am ALWAYS learning, always curious, always finding new things to do, read, make, talk about. Our children may well worm-hole into a subject from time to time, and may not have much interest in other subjects for a fair few hours every single day, but take a day to simply observe and notice all the random things they do and learn about. Maybe they work on their fine/gross motor skills, maybe they watch or play a sport, build something, talk about something, want to help you with something.... They will not just be doing the thing you have found yourself fixating on, and if they really are, then ask them if they want to do something with you - without shaming them about their current fixation, but indicate that you feel a bit bored or restless and can you head out and do something different today. They might surprise you! You matter too and they may well humour you if they don't think its about them....

There is a lot more to this, so if you feel like joining the conservation, come join my workshop on 18th February at 9:30am UK time in my community. Sign Up Here.