Janet Newberry shows us the model for transformational education and relationships where children grow in maturity when they get the love that they need.
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Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Education by Design, Not Default: How Brave Love Creates Fearless Learning
Traditional Education May Need a Makeover
Over the past 50-75 years, standardized education has been held in high esteem, but we have to look at truth and untangle some of our false traditions that have become normal in our performance-obsessed culture.
As adults who have grown up in this system of earning rewards and progress reports, we can see how achievement has replaced our need for personal acceptance.
We tend to work longer and harder to earn the right to say, “I’m good enough,” when all we needed was for someone to walk with us, answer our questions, and sit by us when we fell.
Instead, the transactions of “doing-to-get” may have set a false message in our hearts that because success does not look like a diploma, it is not valuable.
Transformational Relationships that Lead to Maturity
Janet reveals a very simple formula for transformational relationships: we all have a need and we all get to meet each other’s needs.
After 20 years in public education, and 12 years as an administrator, Janet has been sorting between the truth and the lies about education. She has observed hundreds of children, and childhood in its design, is created to be experienced in transformational relationships. Where we get because we need. And what do children need the most?
- attention
- affirmation
- acceptance
- significance
- purpose
“When we’re constantly paying for everything we’re getting, the best we can do here is break even.” -Janet Newberry
Economy of Bondage
Even as homeschool mothers, we tend to believe the lies that when things go wrong and our life doesn’t look like Instagram, that we’ve failed. But we can give ourselves and our kids permission to protect us from the fact that those things are not true.
Even when we want to use reward charts, let’s make sure we understand the truth. Janet says,
“Too often we use them to manipulate our children. A reward will get the task done, but it won’t have any impact on the maturity of the child. Relationship will build maturity.”
Childhood is not a season designed for conformity, it is a season designed for transformation. As we grow, we’ll just be high achieving children in older bodies.
[bctt tweet=”We can send our children into the world ready for success, but still immature and not ready for life.” -Janet Newberry” username=”PracticalFamily”]
Read Janet’s guest blog post for Practical Family: From Transaction to Transformation: How We Can Redeem Childhood
