I was called authentic yesterday...

Authenticity, homeschooling, unschooling, so many labels, so many expectations

by Beverley Paine

I got called 'authentic' yesterday and it got me thinking... I don't feel authentic. Most days I feel like a fraud. I know I'm not, but I still get that niggling doubt that I don't walk the talk. Because, right now in my life, I'm not doing much of that 'walking'.

My children are adults. That fact alone removes me from the everyday existence of a home educating life. I don't live with my grandchildren, even though I see them often, I'm not homeschooling them, their parents are. But I still call myself a homeschooler, still write about it, share my experiences.

Most of what I know and share is based on my personal experience, but a lot of that is dated. We began home educating before mobile phones and laptop computers were everyday items. Gosh, just writing that sentence makes me feel old! And I am. in a few weeks the government will gift me an age pension. I've been called the grandmother of home education in Australia a few times, and I usually laugh, but there's an uneasy edge to that laugh.

The scenery in homeschooling land has changed so much over the past 30 years. I am continually questioning, how relevant is my experience?

Perhaps it is because I've never forgotten what it was like to be a new mum, or starting out on our homeschool adventure, gradually building confidence to lean into unschooling.

Perhaps it is because I wanted and needed to stay relevant and connected with my kids that I challenged my values and tried to keep up with those changes in my environment and culture, saddened by the fact that my parents didn't understand me, or value my choices.

I didn't want to be that kind of parent. Or grandparent.

I'm not really sure what kind of parent and grandparent I do want to be: I used to be pretty sure about that but now I'm here, living it, I feel a bit clueless.

Something tells me I need to be authentically me, but I still have trouble giving myself permission to do that. In my mind, most days, I'm still mum, watching out for and needing to help my children meet their needs, achieve their goals and live happy lives. I spend a lot of time trying to second-guess what those needs and goals are and then worrying if I'm doing enough or over-stepping the mark and interfering.

I'm not in me mode, I'm still in mum mode. Is that authentic? Yes, and no. But what that tells me is that I need to grow beyond my roles. Find the me that isn't mum. And I'm doing that.

And the kids see that I'm doing that, and they value and appreciate it.

Plus that word authentic bugs me.

It's feels like a label I need to live up to, grow into, wear.

And that speaks to me of expectations: if I behave authentically other people (and me) might have expectations of me to continue to behave authentically.

What does authentic mean? I obviously am having trouble defining it.

I had the same issue a few years ago trying to define what a grandmother is and how she should behave and be! This need to accommodate the expectations of others is a hang up from how I was parented and schooled as a child. I don't see it as healthy. I'm working on eliminating it, but it takes time to undo the habits and conditioning of a lifetime.

People seem surprised when they meet me. They quickly relax. I'm not the person they thought I would be.

What does that say about my authenticity?

Or does it have more to say about their expectations?

Like most people, the longer you hang around me the more of me you'll get to know. Although in my writing I reveal quite a bit about who I am and how I feel about things and what I value, my life is complex and multidimensional and I there's no way I can capture all of that in my writing. And I don't want to either. In this I don't feel any different from anyone else. Don't take me at face value, don't judge a book by it's cover, etc.

Which brings me back to authentic. I wonder if what we're really talking about has more to do with our personal comfort levels.

I've met some authentic people that challenged the socks of me and at first glance I was convinced they weren't authentic. But that was because I was making some pretty massive assumptions about who they were: my expectations coloured my experience. I took the time to get to know them and realised that they were being true to their inherent natures. And that it was my expectations, what I wanted from them and who I wanted them to be, that was out of kilter with reality.

And what I learned was that every time I set up expectations I find myself disappointed. And that I tended to blame others for this disappointment...

Perhaps my wariness of authenticity, of being authentic, arises from this need to be authentic, to expose the veils we use to prop up our comfort zones. To be truly authentic is to be vulnerable. That's hard: we're trained as children how to polish our armour, keep our inner lives hidden and safe within. And it is the strength and persistent nature of that training that so cause so many of us to continually question our choice to home educate our kids.

We're breaking moulds. We're mothers and fathers and workers and house managers and educators. We're doing it all and it's all too much. We're so busy living all these roles we risk losing sight of who we are. Or perhaps like me, we lost that so long ago, in childhood. And it's hard to get back.

But we fight for it for our children. Helping my children, and now my grandchildren, retain a sense of self, making sure they had the freedom to be authentic, respecting their autonomy, valuing them for who they are, not who others expect them to be.