Is Mummy A Good Teacher?

"Is mummy a good teacher?"

It's a question strangers would ask my children a lot when they were younger, and I always found it bizarre.

I suppose it highlighted to me just how far our lives had drifted from what most people recognise as learning. When we said we home educated, people assumed we did school at home. That I was the teacher and my children were my pupils. They image a carbon copy of the classroom, just relocated to our kitchen table.

That's the only way learning makes sense to most people. Children go to school to learn stuff from a teacher. End of story.

I suppose I felt like that in the very early days too. I saw it was my responsibility to teach my children, and as someone who'd been schooled myself, all I knew was the school format. So we talked about learning in terms of subjects and I set task for the boys to complete. I thought I was being child-led by presenting a maths sheet with a Minecraft theme but really I was still asking for compliance, I was just dressing it up in what they liked. I was still leading them toward my outcome, not theirs.

I have no idea if I'm a good teacher because I don't see that as my role anymore.

At school, learning was something that was done to me.

I did as I was told. Learned what needed to be learnt and never really questioned it or questioned whether I was even interested. I just... complied. I don't look back on school and feel a rush of pride for all the things I learnt. I completed the outcome, got the praise and moved on to the next thing.

I was led by the need to finish, to get it right, to be good.

When I used to pick my boys up from school I'd ask them about their day with an inquisitive, "What did you learn today?" The answer was always lacklustre. Or perhaps a simple grunt.

Because when learning is just compliance, there's nothing to say about it, is there? You did the thing. You moved on. Nothing sparked, nothing stuck.

My children now? They're led by curiosity. By "why not?" By "I wonder what would happen if..."

Watching them really go for something, to dive deep into a topic for days or months or even years was fascinating to me. Almost alien, if I'm honest.

They let themselves go. They pick up books because something spiked their interest, not because it's on a list. They follow threads that look random and haphazard to anyone watching, but make perfect sense to them.

It's so much more expansive than anything I experienced. And if I'm being truthful I feel sad, when I think about what my younger self missed out on.

If I'm the teacher, what does that make my children?

It places them in a "less than" position. It creates a power dynamic where I'm the knower of everything and they're the empty vessels waiting to be filled.

That's just stifling and dull for everyone.

If I know everything, where's the space for me to learn? And if they can only learn by looking to me for answers, they never learn to trust their own curiosity. It shuts everything down

But walking alongside them? That's different.

Being able to say "I don't know the answer to that, shall we go find out?" is everything. We can learn together. We're both discovering, both connecting dots, both following the curiosity to see where it leads.

I'm not their teacher. I'm their mum. Their facilitator and guide. Their biggest fan. The person who stocks the fridge and fixes the printer. Their assistant when they need help or get stuck. The provider of resources and the finder of experts if and when we need them.

But they are their own teachers. They discover stuff. They dive deep into the things that fascinate them and then come share it with me.

And honestly? They've taught me so much. I'm a much more interesting person because of my kids.

Learning isn't memorising stuff or writing notes or listening to things you have no interest in.

Learning is following the curiosity until you find that bit of information that satisfies you, that makes sense of what you couldn't make sense of before.

It's connecting the dots. And yes, it often looks random and haphazard from the outside.

Some of our best learning happens around the dinner table. Those debates and conversations where we rarely agree on anything and question everything.

"Who said that and how do you know that?" "Is that even true?" "Tell me more." "That doesn't make sense to me, explain it again." "But what if..."

I love how my kids fight their corner in those conversations. How they push back, ask better questions, refuse to just accept what I say because I'm the adult. Nothing is off the table, if they have a question we discuss it.

They know what I'm learning and I know their stuff. It's a two-way thing. And our home is richer for it.

In the past few years I've trained to be a life coach, and it's benefited my family more than I ever expected.

Not because I brought some professional framework into our home. Blimey, that would never have worked for my family! But because coaching is fundamentally about asking questions, not having all the answers. It's about trusting that the other person has their own wisdom, rather than needing you to fill them with yours.

My children reminded me what I'd lost in all those years of doing as I was told and never questioning. They reminded me that learning is supposed to feel alive, not dutiful.

I consider myself a hungry learner now and I'm more hungry to learn than I've ever been.

Because now I know what learning really is and I'm finally allowing myself to do it the way my children have shown me is possible.

Now I'm led by curiosity, not by someone else's idea of what I should know.

The questions we ask our children matter. But the questions we allow ourselves to ask? Those might matter even more.