My new favorite restaurant; Gillen thriving despite our blundering

A few mornings ago, Gillen asked Jesse and I if he could make us breakfast. I was still only sleeping a few hours a night (finally getting better now) so responded with a hugely appreciative, high pitched, "yes!" What a great surprise. And he didn't just throw together some toast. Half an hour after his offer, he called for us to enter "In the Garden", his new restaurant, where:

we were welcomed by our host:

We were given a menu (actually this is a picture of the next day's menu - yes, In the Garden has stayed open for the last three breakfasts!):That first morning, we both chose the pancakes (gluten-free) and grapefruit. Both were delicious. The next day's eggs with toast:Our cook was also the waiter, the bus boy,
and even the dishwasher!

So now that I've shown you proof of how awesome my kid is, I'll confess to how Nicolas and I lost sight of our unschooling trusting path and shot him down last night. And then you can give me the beating I deserve.

Periodically (around every five to six months), Nicolas or I, or both of us, get frustrated by Gillen's ability to throw himself, sloth-like, guilt-free and with a certain bored teenager look on his young face, onto the floor, the coach and his bed, for large periods of time. He did this yesterday, a lot. I suggested all kinds of possible activities. I offered rides to cool places. I asked him to just talk to me (always the worst invitation) and he just got more grunty and slug-like, until his friend Aaron got out of school. At this point, every day this week, he has been filled with energy to go ride bikes, make traps, build a fort and whatever else they do when they are off and running in our neighborhood.

When he came home for dinner, Nicolas and I told him that he had to finish some of the projects he has started or to start new ones if he would rather move on, but that he can't just keep throwing his body on furniture all day in a desperately bored manner.

Looking back, and after a great conversation with wise unschooling mother Mindy, I realize how negative and wrong we were in our approach. Gillen does well when he can choose what to do, when to do it, how long to do it and whether or not we are involved in it. We set ourselves up in some kind of competition with his 10 year old friend and were insuring that we weren't going to win.

Gillen didn't take our requests too seriously. We haven't damaged him and can revisit the conversation again tonight. But I would love to never get in this bungling old-school parenting, expectation place again. In several months, when I wake up thinking about Shakespeare and about how my kids may never be inspired by him if I don't strew him in the right way, I hope I'll breathe a bit, strew brilliantly :) but also shut my mouth with duct tape long enough to take in what this person has in store for me already. He is starting his own blog today where we can all read about him, in his own voice. I'll post it in my links when his first entry is finished.