A couple of weeks ago, I read C.G. Drews’ young adult novel, A Thousand Perfect Notes after hearing about it in one of my daughter Imogen’s book review videos.
In the story, Maestro, a former famous pianist, forces her son Beck to use his talent for music in the way she thinks best. She pushes him to practice and practice the piano and to enter classical music competitions. And despite working as hard as he can, he never pleases his mother. Maestro never praises. All she ever talks about is Beck’s mistakes. If he makes a mistake, he knows he’ll be punished. He has to play perfectly to fulfil his mother’s dream. She won’t be happy until her son is living the life that was taken away from her.
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We might not be Maestro, but do we still impose our dreams on our kids? Do we push them to use their talents? Maybe we don’t listen to what our kids want to do. The things that will bring them joy. Perhaps we try and make our kids into the people we think they should be not realising that they are special just the way they are.
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A Thousand Perfect Notes made me think about how much kids want to be loved. They yearn for the approval of their parents. And even when parents are cruel, kids are reluctant to let go of hope. We have the power to make our kids happy: unconditional love. Will we use it?
As you can see, after reading this novel, I found myself pondering all kinds of unschooling things.
Imogen and I talked about how we often meet unschooling in unexpected places such as novels. And perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when this happens. Authors might not know about unschooling, but they do know about life. And unschooling is life. It’s not something weird. It makes sense. Perhaps it’s something we all should do.
When I’d finished A Thousand Perfect Notes, I said to Imogen, “How about we discuss this book in my next podcast? Perhaps Sophie will join us. There are a lot of other things we can chat about as well. We could try out the conference setting on my new Yeti mic.”
So that’s what we did.
In episode 146: Finding Unschooling in Unexpected Places and Other Things, Imogen, Sophie and I talk about:
- Imogen’s novel The Crystal Tree and its sequel The Shattering Song
- YA or Young Adult novels
- Imogen’s book review videos
- How parents hold the key to a child’s happiness
- How some parents push their kids to fulfil their own dreams
- The YA novel A Thousand Perfect Notes
- Imogen’s opinion of my first unschooling book Curious Unschoolers
- How we’re getting on with the formatting and publishing of my unschooling book
- A progress report for my second unschooling book A Radical Unschool Love
- How Sophie is teaching Imogen photography
- The joy of sharing passions
- Creativity and learning
- How we all have bad days
- How our family isn’t perfect
- Sophie’s new job
- Sophie’s transition from unschooling to structured learning
- Sophie’s beta personal training clients
- How it can be difficult for parents to accept help and advice from their children
- How kids can outlearn their parents
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Show Notes
A Novel
A Thousand Perfect Notes by CG Drews
Imogen Elvis
Youtube
Imogen’s novel
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Ooh looking forward to listening. Maybe tonight with the dishes…double dishes because I forgot to do them last night!
The book reminds me of the movie Shine. Or Black Swan. I am not sure I could read it. It sounds sad. Is it?
Unschooling certainly is life. How sad we have to do it separately.
But how great that we discovered it and you are sharing it with the world. Go Sue!
xo Jazzy Jack
Jack,
Double dishes? Maybe it’s good you had plenty of dishes to wash. It’s a long podcast! I hope you enjoyed our conversation.
I haven’t heard of Shine or Black Swan. I shall have to do some googling!
The book was sad. I cried just a little towards the end. However, the story has a happy ending. I think you would enjoy it.
Oh yes, it’s wonderful we discovered unschooling. And each other!