NotSheep

I am firmly of the opinion that one can never have enough bookshelves. Well, I can never have enough bookcases anyway. And so when one comes up on freecycle, I always beg for it. Yesterday I was successful.

Once Scratchy got here, Barney and I took off to collect the bookcase. I must confess to having an ulterior motive to taking him with me: it’s been quite difficult to draw him out this week. He’s clearly having a great mixture of feelings about being back - he’s missing Henry and his French family, he’s glad to be back with his brothers but also finding them a little overwhelming at times (even Toby, who is not as cooperative and malleable as he was when Barney left), he’s still doing half his thinking in French - and playing Gameboy and reading in French - but is also afraid it won’t stick. We’re hearing the occasional French word, some French sentence construction (”So George has ten years and Freddy has eight years, right?” LOL) And French gestures He’s also not getting enough sleep, because he’s staying up late reading; I don’t want to lay down the law on this point, partly because he’s only just come home, but partly also because he’s at an age where he needs to start taking responsibility for that kind of thing for himself. The emotional confusion, plus the lack of sleep, have led to a few weepy moments.

We had a good conversation in the car. I told him about the conversation I blogged here yesterday; he was of the opinion that an adult shouldn’t be so daft. When I spoke about the woman’s belief that people couldn’t learn things without being taught them, he immediately came up with half a dozen examples which disprove it. We also talked about how he’d found school in France. Like so many children, he felt the best thing about it was the friends he made there. Early in July, before X’s accident, Barney had said on the phone that he preferred term-time to school holidays, because he was missing his school-friends. I asked him why, then, he wanted to be home-educated here. He said that the biggest problem with school was that it took up all his time: “You get up and get ready for school, you go to school, then when you come home you have homework, then it’s time to have dinner and then you go to bed so you can be up for the next day at school - you have no life of your own.”

I’m relieved that he doesn’t want to go to school, because I don’t happen to think it’s the best option for him right now, but if he wanted to go, I wouldn’t stop him. He’s old enough to know the pros and cons, and to understand the consequences - especially now that he’s had some time in school in France. When I said this to someone last week, she remarked on how empowering it must be for him to know that the decision was his - to have so much control over what he does. That hadn’t occurred to me before, but I think she’s right. Twelve-year-olds think they’re very grown-up, and in many ways they are, but they rely on other people for almost everything: food, housing, clothing, money, transportation, etc. Most of them have very little say in where they spend most of their time, what they do with most of their time - in effect, very little control of their own lives. I’m glad Barney is able to make decisions about such things for himself; even if the decision is the same as the one we’d have made on his behalf, it makes a difference, I think, that he’s the one making it.