Alchemising Education - Whole-Self Children - Part 1

"Mum, stop pushing me. I'm not ready."

Dr. Maxine Therese's son said this at the school gate when he was small. She was not dragging him. She was doing what most of us do - quietly, persistently, anxiously moving him toward the door. He named it before she could. And she had to sit with what it meant that he felt it even when she wouldn't admit it.
In Episodes 62 and 63 of Alchemising Education - the little sister pod to Faark the Shoulds - QuantiMama Jodi and QuantiMama Kerri sit down with Dr. Maxine Therese, founder of Childosophy and author of A Push for a Child Philosophy, on what children are actually communicating when they resist, shut down, or fall apart at the gate.

Not behaviour management. The much more useful version: the one that starts from the premise that children come in whole - nothing missing, nothing broken - and that every difficult thing they do is a foundational need speaking. Not defiance. Information.

Because if a child doesn't come in missing a kidney, they don't come in missing a nervous system either. They come in whole, with 7 foundational needs all active from birth, all visible in their behaviour when something isn't being met. Dr. Maxine has spent 25 years building the map that explains it. Once you have it, the meltdown reads differently.

There is also the piece that most people are not quite ready to hear. When we parent, we regress. We meet our children from our own unmet five-year-old self - not the adult we've become. Carl Jung said it plainly: if there's anything you see in your child that you wish to change, first change it in yourself. Not a guilt trip. The most practical instruction in the episode.

Jodi, Kerri and Dr. Maxine get into:
• reading your child's resistance as a message, not a failing
• why the school system was not designed for your child - and why that is history, not opinion
• the 7 foundational needs all children carry from birth, and how they speak through behaviour when unmet
• tracing what's on the surface back to the need underneath
• what it means to parent from your own unmet childhood, and what to do about it
• why nothing that's happened so far is irreparable

For the parent who keeps pushing at the gate and feels something in their body they can't argue away. For the one sitting with Monday morning stomach aches that no strategy touches. For anyone whose child is fine for everyone else and falls apart the moment they get home.

Two parts. Worth the time.

Find Dr Maxine Therese's resources and course at childosophy.com