We started the sharing by making the following Mandala, Priya asked each one, if they wanted, to pick up something from outside.
Priya then shared her story and kept us all thoroughly engaged.
Its best to get a whiff of this thought provoking session by viewing the following youtube video.
Priya suggested we really listen to our own inner voices and also our child's voice. Trust in his choices and let him be free to make them. Believe that the child wants to learn and is always learning. She suggested that when things seem to go wrong, look at even that as a lesson.
Though initially, being an educator for ten years herself, she had her own ideas of how to schedule his day, plan his learning. But when Raghav resisted such superimposition, she slowly found an alternate method of learning which was his own and self- driven.
Raghav has a few friends, who love him and whom he loves and they meet every few months. He does not miss school and lives a wholesome, complete life amongst his family, his Ipad, animals and nature which he loves. When Priya started on this journey, she had to let Raghav free -play even whole months only with Lego, because that is what he wanted to do. Today at 11 years of age, he has charted his own learning course, studying what his curiosity drives him to, discussing, at times his learnings,with his parents. This is an evolved method of self-culture, that too begun so early on in life. As a parent Priya must still suffer doubt pangs and worries, but as she says, when she sees how happy Raghav is, all her misgivings are erased.
Like all parents, she and her husband are there to support Raghav, in this unusual journey, which is a sort of strengthening the inner fiber of a person, rather than creating false buttresses to support a being. I don't believe Raghav or Priya are specially gifted to try such methods out. I think they are just ordinary people who deeply empathise WITH THEIR OWN SELVES and hence do not let anyone abuse them. Raghav fell out of the school system because he 'was miserable there' and 'people seemed always angry there'. He listened to his own discomfiture and Priya to his. Its this honesty and introspective living that makes them unique. Though this is given to all of us, very few of us, can be in this 'centered' self awareness for long. The more one thinks about this, the more one wants to unleash oneself from self-created to-be-done kind of goals. The new type of life is also goal driven,but the goals are derived from one's own inner needs and aspirations, untrammelled by society.
I think it was a wonderful session and we met a thoroughly evolved parent, whose love and empathy for her child had no bounds.
Priya aslo shared a writing found in the following link on this subject:-
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