Blog Life

I am often asked to write more articles and post more photos of our homschooling, of the Morning Garden, of my children, with examples of their work. I don't do that. I offer little "eye candy" of that sort here. The reason I share few pictures of my children and their work are many. I'll share them with you:

1. They don't like it. My children do not like to be photographed and do not like to have their pictures shared on the internet. They are adamant about this and old enough to have an opinion. My teen unfriended me on Facebook for tagging him in a family photo. Some of the Morning Garden parents did not want their children photographed for any kind of public viewing, so I never considered doing it.
2. I want to be present in the moment. For me, it is impossible to be fully present in the moment and taking pictures at the same time. It also takes my children out of what is happening. With young children, the awareness of the camera takes them out of the deep absorption in their play. The camera alters the moment.
3. Memories that live within us are more real than the ones we embrace in a snapshot. Sometimes, at really important events, I leave my camera behind because I want the event and memories of it to live within us, not in a framed snapshot of a moment. I want my children to frame their childhood memories from within themselves, not by my eye.
4. Memories get rewritten every time we remember them. The long forgotten memory that creeps up after decades is more accurate than something we recall often over the years. I want my children to have their memories of childhood intact. From Jonah Lehrer over at The Frontal Cortex:“It reveals memory as a ceaseless process, not a repository of inert information. The recall is altered in the absence of the original stimulus, becoming less about what we actually remember and more about what we’d like to remember. It’s the difference between a ‘Save’ and the ‘Save As’ function. Our memories are a ‘Save As’: They are files that get rewritten every time we remember them, which is why the more we remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes."
5. It takes a good deal of time to take the pictures, upload them to the computer, review them, choose ones to publish and then upload photos. This is a good deal of time and energy away from things I'd rather be doing. For me, this is just pure and practical economy of time.

These are my reasons. I do not mean to cast judgement on anyone who does it differently but to explain my reasons for why I do what I do. I hope you'll stay with me.