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We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and we’re talking about how people are different.

“People are different” has become a common refrain on the Exploring Unschooling Podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network and for good reason! Once we sink into the reality that people are truly so different—their priorities, their brains, their interests, the way they express themselves, their likes and dislikes, their bodies, their personalities, and so on—it becomes so much easier to assume positive intent and to meet people where they are. We can more easily see through their eyes and understand that there’s no one right way.

We’ve been really excited to dive more deeply into this idea. It was a very fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both.

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello!

ANNA: So, today I’m very excited. We’re going to be talking about the idea that people are different. And while it sounds simple, it is so layered and not understanding it can definitely be a stumbling block in our relationships. And once you really embrace it, I feel like it becomes so fun just noticing all the ways and finding ways to apply this lens.

So, we’re going to have a lot of fun talking about that today. I think it takes some of the mystery and frustration out of other people’s behavior when we recognize, oh, this is a people are different thing. We tend to think everyone sees and experiences the world in the same way, and so when they don’t, it can actually cause some friction. So, I’m very excited to dive into this very broad topic with both of you. Erika, do you want to get us started?

ERIKA: I would love to. This might be one of my most favorite topics to talk about these days, and I’m just really excited to see what we are able to touch on today, while also knowing that there will be so much more that we won’t even get to, because it is such a big, rich topic to explore once we start thinking about it.
And so, I really think that we started putting that “people are different” lens into words in the past few years because of some deep dives that we have all done individually and together, probably partly inspired by the deep conversations we have on the Network around personalities and learning about the different people there.

And I think we can, on a surface level, say, “People are different,” and everyone would agree like, “Well, yeah, of course.” But the deeper stuff, like, “No, people are really different,” can take a while to wrap our heads around.

And so, for example, the way our brains work is different and our personalities and temperaments are different. Of course, everyone has different past experiences and maybe past trauma that impacts what they do today, and so that contributes to our differences. Our go-to defense mechanisms and our reactions to things and all the beliefs we have about the world can just be so, so different.

That’s not even to mention fun things like our interests and what lights us up, and our bodies and what makes our bodies feel good, our curiosity and what our curiosity leads us to. So, if you just start to think about putting all these different aspects of ourselves together into one complex human, it’s no wonder that so many times we could feel like it’s so hard to communicate or it’s hard to understand why other people are making such different decisions from what we would do, but it’s just because we’re all so different.

PAM: We’re all so different. And for me, I just love to keep coming back to this idea, like you were saying, there’s just so many layers to it. Introvert, extrovert, just to grab something that’s pretty common for people to consider. “Oh yeah. They don’t like going out as much.” Or, “They like to be around people all the time.” When you just use that lens on its own, when you bring it to any moment, it can help you understand people a little bit more. It can help you understand that they don’t want to hang out in big crowds for long times, but also, when they’re at home with a small number of people, it’s so energizing. To see that lens in each moment helps you understand their reactions.

People are different. Even with an introversion, there are so many differences and layers. What helps them? What kinds of situations are worth it? All those pieces. So, when you just start digging into that a little bit, you find so many nuances.

When we first came to unschooling and I first started thinking about this stuff, when my kids made different choices than me, it would not make sense. Like, “But, A, B, C, like of course D!” Until I actually started to look at them as a human being, as a whole human being, understanding that they are truly different from me and understanding that me reaching D as a conclusion and them reaching E as a conclusion are both absolutely fundamentally true. D would work better for me and E would work better for them. So, now how can we work together and find an F that has enough of D and enough of E that we’re all pretty happy with this plan? And off we go down the F path.

And then, like you were talking, layer after layer after layer. There is just so much that makes up a human being that can be different from us, and it just helped me not be frustrated, not feeling like, oh, I need to explain this again, because they must not be getting it, because it makes utter and complete sense to me.

ANNA: Right. I think that’s what I love about it. And we get at it at different ways, but I feel like this is a really quick thing that comes to mind that pulls me to a place of curiosity, because if I find myself feeling frustrated or like, why are they making that choice? Or if I start taking something personally about the way somebody’s doing something, I can quickly go, wait a minute! Is this a “people are different” thing? And I can just pause a second and give a little bit of space to bring curiosity to it.

Because I think we really do so quickly go to thinking that everybody sees the world the same way that we do, and that, “Of course that would be the solution!” And so, yes, over the years we’ve kind of dabbled around these things. “Oh, well, but I’m an introvert and I have this friend that’s an extrovert and she does things differently than I do,” but it’s so much deeper than that. And I love that you touched on it, Erika, too, that we all bring our past traumas, our past history, our past learning. So, it doesn’t even have to be trauma, but a lot of us have some trauma that we’re bringing into the moment. But it’s just our experiences. What was our family like? Where did we grow up culturally? What did we learn?

And it’s so interesting when you start having these conversations with people, because it could be things that you wouldn’t even think would be at odds. I was talking to a Network member friend about this, and she really loves walkable cities. And she just said it to me, “But if everybody could live in a walkable city, they would see how amazing it is!” And I’m like, no. I’m like, “If everybody could live in the woods, they would see how amazing it is!” And so, we just laughed about it, because we both are so passionate about the things we’ve learned about ourselves.

And I think it ties in with our unschooling journey so well because that’s the environment we want to create, where our kids can learn these things about themselves, have this self-awareness that it took a lot of us a long time to figure out. Because I pushed through a lot of things about myself, because it didn’t maybe fit the mold. And so, then it takes time to realize what’s true for us. And so, I love that environment where we can learn what we like and don’t like, what works for us and doesn’t work for us. How we process something, what we need to be able to process something. Do we need quiet? Do we need noise? Do we need headphones? Pam wears headphones and thinks about things. That’s amazing to me. I cannot have multiple inputs like that as I’m trying to form a thought. I love music and headphones, but not for when I’m thinking or working.

So, you can go, “Oh, my kids are listening to music, but I see them doing something.” And for me, before this understanding, I might’ve gone, “They’re not doing anything productive. There’s no way they could be because they’ve got headphones on.” And then I meet Pam and she’s like, “I need to have music going, or other things happening.” And it’s like, oh my gosh, how cool. And so, in that little example that I gave, what I want to watch there is my judgment about it. I want to watch my judgment about someone else, because if I bring curiosity, then I can learn more. “Tell me about that. Do you love listening to the music when you’re doing it? What are you listening to? What feels the best?” And then we connect.

ERIKA: I love it so much. And I think we could come up with a million little tiny examples like that. I’m just thinking with the noise and having some sounds going on. Maya says that same thing. She’s like, “It’s too quiet in here. I just need some sounds going on.” And for me, it’s the opposite. But it’s the same thing in so many different areas. And so, one way to approach that with curiosity is to do that paradigm shift of “there’s no one right way.” Because we can get stuck there, like, “I figured out the right way.”

Here’s another, more hormonal example. At night, it’s cold. That’s my experience. In the morning, it is hot. That’s also my experience. Now, Josh, he has a completely opposite experience at night. He is dying of heat, but I could try to convince him that doesn’t make sense. It’s cold at night and it gets hot in the morning. And he’d be like, no, that makes no sense. And so, realizing that’s my experience, what I’ve learned from my own life is there is not the one right way.

It helps our relationships so much, because it helps us to assume positive intent about another person. It helps us to put our picture of them into greater clarity if we can be open and curious about what they’re telling us about their own experience, rather than going straight to shutting it down by saying, “But I have already figured it out and I already know what’s right.”

And so, anything from tiny things like, we’re going outside and they’re saying they’re not hot and I’m saying I am. I mean this temperature difference, it’s seems like a small thing, but it can cause fights in families. Because yeah, we think that our experience should be everyone’s experience, but you could see that could ripple out to what people should eat, the way that they should have their room organized, how they should be spending their time, what time they should wake up, what time they should eat, just every little thing. It’s like, what if we could just be curious about, how does it feel to you? What is your experience in this area?

PAM: Yes. I love that, because, for me, the hot/cold is a great example, because that almost feels like a fact. Somebody comes back to us, “I’m cold, people! How can you not be cold? There’s something wrong with you.” And I think that one of the shifts that helped me was, like you were saying, assuming positive intent. They’re not trying to judge me just because their answer’s different. It doesn’t make me wrong. I don’t have to defend myself. I don’t have to get defensive about it. I can be curious about it. It’s like, wow. This room feels so different to each of us. And that is something that we laugh a lot about here, because I run very hot and use no blankets, no nothing at night. And Rocco was all tucked in.

But the one I wanted to bring up, too, because examples are just so fun, this was one that was a really useful shift for me when I recognized it, and that was the internal processor and external processor. And that started even before I had kids. Coming to recognize, oh my gosh, how different is that? Somebody wants to talk through it and they’re not telling me what their answer is. They’re just telling me a whole bunch of ideas. It’s like, oh, I don’t need to go prep for that. Because for me, as an internal processor, for the vast majority of things, I’ll think about things, put on my headphones, have a good walk, have a good think. “Yeah, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense.” So, by the time I mention it to somebody else, it’s like, let’s do this.

Whereas for other people, more external processors, they want to hear it. They want to maybe get some reaction. They want to talk about it with somebody else. Talk about the five different possibilities to eventually kind of land on the one. So, when they come out with something, I have to remember, it behooves me to save myself from future disappointment or frustration because I went off and did X, Y, Z to get everything ready for the thing. And they’re like, oh yeah, that was yesterday.

ANNA: What was that? Yeah. Right. I work with a lot of couples. And oddly enough, many internal processors marry or partner up with external processors. And this is a very new idea to a lot of people. They’re always so fascinated when I start to talk about it with them. But the key to this working is not taking it personally.

So, what can happen is the internal processor goes off to think about the idea that was presented and then the other person, whether this is a child or a partner that goes off, is thinking, “They don’t care about me. They don’t understand. They don’t think this is important. They’re not thinking about this.” Because to them, thinking about an idea and processing it and prioritizing, means talking about it. It means talking about all the iterations, all the different things.

For that internal processor when they’re being bombarded by that, they can feel like, you’re not giving me any time. Why are all these ideas coming out? You’re all over the board. And then they’re taking that personally. But as soon as we understand this about each other, and again, this is for kids and partners, it’s like, oh, okay. I need to give them a little bit of space. I presented them with this idea of, what we want to do this weekend? Or, what’s coming up? Or, do we want to try this as a family? Let’s give them some ideas. Because then they’ll come back. Then they’ll come back and want to have a conversation, but they need that time.

And when I talk to companies about this, it’s the same. For employers, you’re going to get the best out of your employees when you give them the time to process in the way that they need to process. If we push somebody to do it a different way, we’re not going to get their best, because that’s the whole point is that our brains work differently. And I think when we can celebrate that and not take it personally, it just really, really changes things. So, that piece of not taking it personally is so important.

ERIKA: Don’t take someone’s personality personally. Is that what people say? I love that so much. But that was reminding me about where some of this can come from. If you imagine someone creating a curriculum and they’re an external processor, they’re going to say, and then the students should externally process about this is the way that they’ll learn. You can see how that would totally happen, where it’s like., the way that you learn is by speaking your ideas out loud to someone and having them reflect back what they’ve heard. And it’s like, yeah, some people, for some people that works great. And then for others that will be so uncomfortable.

And so, I think the message that we can learn through mainstream culture can feel like, okay, we realize that there are differences in people sometimes, but we should try to fix that. Or we should figure out the best way and get people to fit into this mold of whoever is basically in power or in charge and what makes sense to them.

And so, we’ve had explorations about all these different personality things, like the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs test, the strengths finder, all these different things that give us more information about how our own brains work. And I feel like once we see, oh, people have come up with these different groupings and you can read them and be like, oh yeah, I’m not like that at all. But there are some people who are. Then it just expanded the possibilities in my mind of what is okay, what is possible, how people are, and it makes it feel like it’s easier to accept other people how they are and, like we were saying earlier, assuming positive intent about what they do.

PAM: Accept other people as they are. And also accept ourselves as we are. Because it’s like, oh, I keep trying to fix this, because everybody talks about how bubbly extroverts are just lovely, amazing. And I have bubbly extrovert friends. And also, it’s draining. And you absolutely want to do the thing, but you need the recovery time too. And you may feel bad about that sometimes. And so, seeing how different people can be helps me be like, oh, it’s okay for me to just be me. I don’t need to fix myself to be these different ways, because it’s just okay that we all are different.

And then one tool I wanted to bring up that I found really helpful, particularly with my kids is, there was always this phrase to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. And I would try to do that. And I found as I was doing that, as my kids left school, they were home more and I was trying to figure out all this, looking for the learning and the curiosity and what their interests were. And I would find myself putting myself in their shoes and I’m like, A, B, C, I would choose D. And I realized over time that it wasn’t so helpful for me to be in their shoes if I was trying to empathize with them and if I was trying to understand their choices. It wasn’t helping me understand their choices.

So, the little tool that worked for me was to see things through their eyes. And when I used that language for myself, it helped me remember to go into their brain and to remember what their interests were, to remember their personality pieces, to remember how their brain likes to immerse itself in things and how it processes, all these people that are different pieces. It reminded me to bring their pieces in, instead of my pieces. Because me stepping into their shoes was just me putting all my personality and brain into that situation, and of course I’m going to make different choices. But when I could look through their eyes and see what it looked like to them, I came to understand their choices so much better.

So, it didn’t seem like something out of the blue. It’s like, oh, of course that would look interesting. Of course, they would make this choice. It just really helped me better understand them. Then I could connect better. I could empathize with them. I could validate. I could support their choices with the understanding that me being a different person would make a different choice, but their choice makes complete sense for them. That was a really helpful to tool for me to kind of make that distinction.

ANNA: And I think part of that, and it’s kind of what you’re describing, but maybe a little bit different, is just it helps us communicate. So, we talk about narration a lot, but I think when we understand these differences, if I feel like I’m having trouble communicating with someone and maybe I can’t even pinpoint the difference, because I’m still locked into how I’m seeing the situation, I can step back and narrate a little bit to go, okay, so I’m not sure if this is how you’re seeing it, but here’s how it’s feeling to me and here’s what I’m thinking I need to do. It’s less threatening than me trying to direct us to do the thing. It’s opening up for them to say, “Oh wow, no, I don’t see it that way at all. I really think we need to do this,” and then we can have an interesting conversation. But I feel like we can’t even get to that place of communicating if we’re stuck in our story of, there’s one right way.

And I love that you mentioned that, Erika, because that’s the key, right? To know there is never one right way. And even with things that seem like, but what about this? Because, like you said, some of these things seem like facts, it’s cold. How is that not a fact? Well, bodies are different, you know? And so, it isn’t a fact. And so, I love that piece of just remembering there’s not one right way. We all are so different. So, I’m going to slow my communication down a little bit. I’m going to say a little bit more about what’s happening in my mind, especially with the people I want to be in close relationship with, because they’re going to learn more about me, I’m going to learn more about them, and we’re going to have a lot less headbutting as we’re trying to move towards something, because we’re slowing that down a little bit.

ERIKA: Yeah. I love that. And I think that slowing down is really key, because our go-tos are so automatic and so fast. It’s very easy to assume we’re all there, we’re all on the same page. We all got to the same conclusion. You know what I mean? And so, I was thinking that it can make you feel uneasy when you start to realize how different someone else who is close to you is from you. When we first have children, it might feel like they’re going to just be little me, they’re going to be like us. And as we start to learn how different they are, I think it can be a challenge at times.

But then, I can rewrite that story for myself, too. It’s not difficult. It’s fun and this is really what makes life interesting. It’s not about finding people who are exactly, precisely like me in every way in order to have met my match, or in order to get along. It’s more about having fun figuring people out and learning about each other and our differences. And just imagining that every person in the world is this complex, unique human being, it’s kind of exciting. But yeah, I can sometimes fall in that trap of like, I just want someone who understands everything about how I am. But it’s too complicated. There’s too much. But that’s okay. That’s just part of the richness of life, that everyone will bring all of their own things to every moment.

PAM: Like you said earlier, it’s that shift to getting curious. It’s giving ourselves that space for that shift, because yes, I think that can be so much about where we are in the moment, too, when things feel overwhelming. Oh my gosh, they just do this. Why this one? But we can take that moment to remember, people are different. And I think it helps, too, having worked through it. We’ve talked about this a lot before, like you said, how much fun it ends up being. How we end up in places that we, on our own, could never have imagined. And it’s super cool and fun, and my life is richer and my world is wider.

And yes, it took some energy and yes, maybe I don’t always have the capacity for it, but when I can do it, it is amazing and it’s worth the time to make that shift, to look through their eyes, to get curious about, why doesn’t that sound interesting? And knowing the personalities, that people are different. Because maybe you don’t ask your child, why is that interesting to you? Because it would feel judgmental just in the way that things are phrased like that. But last month in the Network, our topic was intentional language and that just reaches everywhere. Because people are different, words mean different things to them. There are so many layers to this.

ANNA: So many layers. And I’m going to bring the judgment piece back again, because I think it can be when we’re feeling judgmental about someone, we’re most likely here. We’re talking about our kids or our partner, but really anyone, it’s a really great time to pause and say, where’s that coming from? Because I would argue that probably a big chunk of the time, it’s coming from a belief that they’re not doing it the way we would do it. And then when we recognize, oh, there isn’t the one right way, people are just different. I mean, gosh, letting go of that judgment is so valuable to relationships because it really is so surprising to the person on the other end. Because their way of processing and working has been working for them all these years. And now you’re coming in saying it’s wrong and passing judgment. It’s surprising. And so it can be disconnecting.

And so, I think it’s just so important when those little red flags of, like, am I being frustrated by this conversation? Or am I not understanding something? Or am I passing judgment about something?That’s when I want to stop and change that lens. Bring this people are different lens, bring that curiosity, because it really just makes such a difference.

And when we think about our kids, if we’re judging how they’re spending their time or how they’re moving through their day, this came up with another person not too long ago where, I think they were judging the way the kids spent the day, because they were thinking, “What would I do if I had this free environment? This free environment where I didn’t have to go to school?” And they were putting their child self in this environment that they had created thinking these are all the things that I would do and it would be amazing. And the kids were not doing any of them. “They’re over there doing this thing that I don’t like at all.” But it’s like, oh, but this is what they’re doing with the freedom. This is what they are being drawn to in this moment.

And so again, when we see ourselves like bringing that judgment lens, it’s like, can we let that go and just go, huh, I’m curious about this? I want to understand and recognize that might be what I would do, but it’s not what they’re doing and there’s really good reason for that because we’re all so very different.

ERIKA: Yeah, it’s like when we’re thinking, “Well, you should,” just any “should,” like they should do this. He should do that. That’s a really good little red flag, because it pops into my head all the time. I think it’s a really natural thing to think, because I have good ideas about what I would do and so then it just feels like, and they should as well, but that would be a good red flag to catch.

And then I wanted to mention a little a-ha moment I had with Josh. So, my husband and I have different personalities. We have a lot in common, but there are a lot of big differences. And so, one of the things is, he was talking about his frustration with some people at work, and he’s just like, people just want to be happy. I don’t understand why they’re making these choices or whatever. And so, his big belief about the world is that all people, their main thing is that they want to be happy.

And I was like, okay, but that’s your belief about the world. Not everybody’s number one thing is to be happy people. Their number one thing may be to make an impact on the world. Some people, their number one thing is to be safe. There are so many possible different number one things, but from his perspective, it’s like, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone not that number one thing to be happy, have fun, and just be happy. And so, it sounds really good to him. That was an a-ha moment, I think, for both of us being like, okay, so that’s why some of these behaviors of other people just make no sense and can be so frustrating.

And it also goes a long way to explain why he would make the choices he makes in his life. And so, I think that if you’re a curious sort of person and interested in diving deeper into these personality things, like asking those questions of yourself, like what are those core, important things to me? And then just ask other people like, what are the things for you? Because I just think you’d be really surprised by how different even people who you get along really well with, even people who you have these close relationships with, just how different people are.

PAM: Yeah. And being a partner. Because it’s been forever and it’s very typical. Anyway, it is like the way you pack the dishwasher, it’s like there’s one way, there is one right way. It’s like, but this is the most efficient, and so, I think it’s super fun. That’s when we’ve been going back and forth. It’s there’s not just one way. And so, if you like it this way and that’s super important to you, I’ll keep my hands off it.

But the interesting piece, I think, for me, too, is just to open that up for ourselves, to recognize, does this feel like I’m doing this the one right way? It ties in with what you’re saying here. This is the one way for me. Why is that? What are those pieces that feel really good when I put this dish here and this dish here? And why do I put knives this way or this way, or whatever it is. What is it that’s feeling good about the thing that I’m doing that feels good for me?

Which then opens up that lens to, oh, like that really aligns with my personality, with who I am as a person, with the way I like to do things. And that helps me recognize through that people are different lens that other people, some people don’t have efficiency at the top of their list.

There are just so many different lenses. It doesn’t have to be the fastest way. It doesn’t have to be the shiniest way. And that gets us to recognizing the messages, too, that we’ve absorbed, the whole cultural productivity efficiency. That is a shining gold star that one must shoot for throughout anything that you’re doing during the day. And it’s just so fascinating. I think it can be helpful for us to observe that in ourselves. That helps us peel it back or knock away a little bit again so that we can recognize it’s not just one right way.

ANNA: And I think that speaks to what Erika said, where school is kind of trying to force us to that one place. And so, I think it’s really interesting to actually do some introspection about, okay, is that priority that I’ve set here really about how my brain works and how I work, or is it what I think I’m supposed to do? Because that’s a whole other layer of it. But, right, I love the dishwasher example, and it reminded me of a friend that, I mean, this is even hard for me to say these words. Okay. So, she would take the utensils from the dishwasher and just dump them in the drawer. Just dumped ’em all in the drawer. And so, you would just open the drawer and you’d fish around to get out a fork or whatever. This is very stressful for me and I don’t feel like I’m overly organized, but I’m like, I want the forks in the fork area, want the knives in the knife area. But it was so not a priority for her. She just was like, but why would you waste your time doing that when you could be doing fun things?

I’m guessing she probably has that Josh and David thing. Like why when you could be doing fun things? And I’m like, oh. But I don’t see it as a waste of like, it just doesn’t seem like it takes that much time. But again, this piece of people are different, we just prioritize things differently. There are just different things. And our priorities can change. There may be a time when there’s a lot going on in my life where I really do need some calm, clean surfaces, or I need a little bit less stimulation, and then other times where I’m fine. And so, that’s where, if we can keep that curiosity, we can keep that open communication going. We’re not taking it personally, we’re not getting frustrated. We’re just recognizing that we’re all so different.

ERIKA: Yeah. And just how fast is it to just dump the dump that silverware in there! That’s really the fastest way! It hadn’t even occurred to me, but that is incredibly much faster than what I do. So funny. But they’ve never had problems with it. But if you do have the partner who wants to be super organized, like I fall into the trap sometimes of being like, he’s doing that because he doesn’t like me, because he doesn’t care about my feelings, is why he does it that way. You know what I mean? So, that’s the taking it extremely personally. I could be like, oh my gosh, she’s dumping all that silverware in there, because she doesn’t care at all about how I feel about the drawer. But it’s like, no, it doesn’t even occur to her.

ANNA: Right! I think that is such a fun example to end on, and that it’s fun to think about all the different ways that we’re different and all the different ways that we prioritize things. And that it isn’t saying something about someone else, it’s only saying something about us. And so, when we can stay there, gosh, it just really revolutionizes all the relationships.

PAM: All the relationships. It really does. Because then you can embrace and celebrate somebody else’s way of doing things and choices that they make without like feeling like you are wrong or that it says something about you. It’s like, this is so you and that’s amazing and I’m so excited that you’re discovering this and exploring, expressing whatever it is, whether it’s through actions, choices, dress, everything. And then I go back to, we’re all human beings. And we’re each one of us different and just keep peeling back those layers because every time someone’s like, huh, why? Oh, people are different. Let’s tap that for a little bit and see. Where does that lead me? Because oh, it leads beautiful places, doesn’t it?

ANNA: It really does. So, I’m excited for people to take this lens and see what happens. So, leave us some comments, reach out, and I just appreciate the two of you so much. I love talking about these ideas with you and thinking about all the different ways that it is valuable in our lives. And if you all listening love these conversations, we really would love to have you at the Living Joyfully Network. We have a lot of fun conversations and so many a-ha moments and it just fills me up so much.

So, you can find a link for that in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us today!

PAM: Have a great day. See you all later. Bye!

ERIKA: Bye!

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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about curiosity-led learning. We thought this would be a fun topic to dive into during this back-to-school season! Focusing on curiosity—our own and our kids’—can be so grounding.

In this episode, we explore the definition of learning, how school-based learning looks different than learning through unschooling, and how we’ve seen curiosity at play in our families.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both.

ANNA AND PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: Pam, would you like to get us started with our topic for today, which is curiosity-led learning?

PAM: Yes, I would love to! Because I feel like this is one of the first big paradigm shifts that people encounter and that I encountered when I began exploring unschooling in earnest. But even if you’ve been unschooling for years, I would not be surprised of just listening in on this conversation reveals yet another layer that you can peel back around the value of curiosity-led learning.

Like, “Oh, it applies here, too.” I’m still getting those little layers. As you encounter it out in the wild in our lives, there’s always, always more layers.

But culturally, the message is that learning must be led by curricula, that there’s a step-by-step, linear process that needs to be followed for “real” learning to happen, and that learning is hard, that it’s challenging. Here’s the next step. Learn this. Here’s the next step.

And what unschooling does is encourage us to ask ourselves, is that the only way to learn? Because some people pick things up that way. We all went through school that way, and we learned what we did. And then it’s always fun to look back and think, how much did I remember? How do I define learning? Is that really learning? If really I can just do it on a worksheet, but I have no idea how to bring that into my days and into my life? It is just a beautiful, beautiful paradigm shift when you start looking, oh, are there other ways to learn? Is this other learning that I’m doing just because I love this thing, does it discount the learning I’m doing about it? If it’s not hard, is it learning? There are just so many ways to look at it.

And then when we give ourselves enough space to start questioning it and start looking at, okay, well, I know this was really fun, but I have been learning lots and it’s been useful learning for me, does that count? And just start looking at it through that lens and recognizing things like, oh my gosh, it doesn’t feel hard. Even though you may notice other people saying, “Oh my gosh. How did you learn all that? That depth of knowledge,” et cetera. And they’re talking about it being difficult, whereas it feels much easier to us because we were interested in it in the first place because our curiosity was guiding us and we’re like, oh, yes, I want more. I want more. I want more.

When we start to notice all those little different aspects of it and start to bring that all together, we start to play with, what does curiosity-led learning look like? And wow, it’s pretty darn amazing. It really is valuable. It’s like all the things. And we can start to replace what is curriculum-led, what somebody else thinks we should be learning with what we’re interested in learning. And it just opens up this whole box. It’s just removes the box on what learning can look like for us. Can’t it?

ANNA: Yeah. For me, I think what’s so interesting is I feel like this is actually the natural process, how we all, as adults learn. Like, “Okay, there’s something that I want to do and so what do I need to know in order to do that thing?” And so, then it’s the relevant pieces that maybe I want to take up this hobby and I need to learn this, or maybe I want to take this particular job and gosh, I better learn these things. But it’s so relevant. So, for me it’s about bringing that “relevant” piece to it.

And you kind of mentioned this, where the retaining comes in, because when it’s something that we’re using every day or is relevant to something that we’re interested in, we actually do retain it, because we’re practicing, we’re using, we’re tweaking all the time. And so, I think that piece is so interesting that school has kind of separated that and made it very irrelevant.

So, we’re learning and putting things on a piece of paper. We don’t really understand why. And so, what I learned in school was really how to do that, how to take and memorize information and give it to them in the form that they wanted. It’s interesting to me now as an adult, sometimes I’ll think about something that was covered in school and I’m like, that’s why they wanted that to be covered, but it meant nothing to me in the 30 years in between. But now I’m like, now that it’s relevant, I can go back and refresh. I don’t remember it from then, but I can go back and refresh. But I thought, oh, how interesting. Because somebody somewhere thought this was important in their life. And so, they wanted kids to know it. But I don’t feel like humans learn that way.

ERIKA: Right. It’s so interesting, isn’t it? I just feel like what has happened is that the way that schools do things has become the definition of what learning is, but if you really think about it, it doesn’t work. Our brains do not work that way. But if we think learning is, someone tells you what you need to know, it’s in this order, it’s these important things, these facts at this age, whatever, then the curiosity part, it never even gets looked at or considered. It’s not even a consideration at all.

But we know from ourselves, from watching our kids, just from looking at people, like you’ve seen the glazed-over eyes of kids in class. Certainly. I mean, certainly over the years I have seen that as a teacher and I’ve seen it as a student and information is not getting in there. So, as far as just choosing to teach someone something that they’re not interested in, that’s not causing learning to happen. And so, I really think we need to just change the definition. Don’t call it learning if all you’re doing is having someone lecture to someone else about something that they don’t want to know. That’s not learning.

And so, I feel like a lot of the “learning” that I did in school was that temporary, memorize it, cram it in my brain, get it out onto the paper for the test, and then it’s gone. And so, now I can look back and just be like, what was the use of that time for me, other than, like you said, learning to memorize, learning to take tests, that kind of thing?

Thankfully, when I was in school, I was so interested in doing well in school, that that itself kind of became my interest. And so, learning the things in class to do on the test, that process was more my interest, because I wanted to get the good grades. My kids do not have this personality. And so, with them, it just has to be curiosity-led. I can’t see another way. They don’t want to learn things that they’re not interested in. And so, then the fun part is then how fun, natural, easy, all the things, they will dive so deeply into things that they’re interested in. And so, now I see it as the only way for learning to happen is through curiosity.

PAM: Yeah. It’s really how you define learning, right? Is learning the regurgitation piece for the grades, is it the retention piece we’ll get to? And for those peeling back more layers, do we even need to look at learning? That’s a topic for another conversation. But there were two or three pieces that I really wanted to pull out, Erika, from what you said there. One was, let’s call it something else. And you know what popped to mind was, let’s call that teaching.

Just because teaching is done doesn’t mean learning is happening. Teaching is somebody else telling people, you’re going to know this and this is the process to get this answer, and this is a noun, etc. And so, the teaching happens whether or not the learning happens, like you’re saying, Erika, I love the distinction of, what came to be my interest was getting good grades, which is then again, another conversation. But that is what helped you move through the school process, exist in that environment, take stuff in from the teaching, and then spew it out on the test for the grades. Totally, totally fine.

And what is super interesting, and what I found, like you mentioned too, Anna, is that the retention just isn’t there when you’re not using it or interested in it. Because for me, one of the big shifts with this shift to curiosity-led learning was looking at learning from my child’s perspective. That helped me start to recognize when it was actually learning I was talking about and not teaching. And to make that distinction between the two. Sometimes my kids are interested in learning something and want some information, but the interest is there first and then they’re going to soak it in. They’re going to ask questions. They’re going to ask, but, but why, but how? And then you get into that conversation, they pick up what they’re interested in. That helps them make that next connection and that next connection and then they move on. And it doesn’t have to be a week’s worth of worksheets and repetition, because they were ready to soak that in.

And then the other piece that I really enjoy when I think about learning, because so much of the school as we were talking about, is that linear curricula. You learn this and then learn this and then learn this. Like, this is the best way to put this knowledge together. But my preference over the years has really become thinking of learning more as a web of connections of like, oh, there’s this piece and this piece and this piece. Because truly, when you break subjects down, there is really so much crossover in the real world. There is math all over the place. There’s math in poetry, in words, there’s math in geography. There’s just so much crossover. Once you start breaking them into the silos of subjects, you lose that richness, whereas when you’re following your curiosity and just seeing where it leads you, you may end up over in one subject for a couple of days and then back into another subject, but you are making connections between it all.

There’s just a much bigger, deeper richness to the learning that happens when you’re following the things that you’re curious about, the things that you’re interested in. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to do the hard things. I think that’s one of the little stumbling blocks that can come up when people are first learning about, well, if we are just going to follow our interests, we’re never going to do anything hard, because if something looks hard, I’m not going to be interested.

Well, look at your kids. And actually notice, so often, when they’re frustrated, that’s because they’re wanting to do something that’s hard for them right now, but they want to do it, so they’re going to keep going. Even if you wish, like, okay, let’s go do something else for a while because you’re uncomfortable with the frustration. But no, there’s beauty in that frustration as well. And of course, we want to support, give space, hold all those pieces for them. But it’s not wrong to be frustrated. It doesn’t mean they’re not a good learner, because they’re frustrated. It means none of those things. It means, oh they’re really determined in this moment. And how can I help them, if they’re looking for some help, to start putting something together? What’s that little connection they’re missing in their web, right?

ANNA: Yeah. Something you said, Erika, it was about the learning. I think it’s really helpful if people find themselves saying things like, I don’t think they’re learning anything, they’re playing games all the time, or they’re building forts all the time, they’re not learning. I think this is really important to really ask yourself, what do I think learning means? Am I only looking at it through this lens of, “Well, they’re not sitting down doing fractions or times tables,” because really, learning as humans is so much broader than that.

And so, I loved how you pointed out that we’ve taken this system that’s really a subset and hasn’t always been around to define this concept that is just really innate to humans. We are just learning machines. How do we survive the day? How do we get through this? That is what we do.

And so, I think when you hear yourself saying things like that go, oh wait a minute. What am I defining as learning and why? And this is important. There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just a little examination. I think it’s important.

One of the things I also wanted to say was about the doing hard things, because we said it’s easier when it’s led by our curiosity. But it can be hard, right? It can be frustrating. It can take time. And that’s okay too, because what you’ll see is there’s this drive to figure out and sometimes walk away from it and then sometimes come back. But it’s just so much more natural and I love that.

And then another thing Pam reminded me of, so Pam is amazing at technology and systems and all of these things. I am not as much. I’m not terrible, but if you put me in that world, I’m not as good at it. And so, I really don’t retain all the, of all the different pieces, even about things I use pretty regularly, because it just isn’t a passion area for me. And so, I think it’s just knowing about ourselves and thinking, yeah, that’s kind of how it works. If I need to know, I can Google it. I can figure it out. I can ask Pam. She may be like, “She’s asking me again!” But it’s okay, you know?

So, I think just thinking about how we do things and then recognizing that our kids are human, too, doing things, it can really help when we get stuck in this place.

ERIKA: Right, exactly. I just feel like once we start thinking about ourselves and how we actually really learn, it becomes this different way that we can look at our kids. And I think sometimes when we first go into parenting, first go into the idea of how children learn, it’s just old tapes of what we’ve been told over the years of, school is the place you learn. You have to know these things. This is what it should look like. And so, I loved my unschooling journey for that process of questioning that and being like, wait a second. If I can learn things, anything I want, now, they can also learn anything they want at any time. And there’s just a lot of freedom in that.

And then I was also thinking, a lot of people have had the experience, too, in school of like, maybe they do hit on a topic that you might be interested in, and then they say, that’s enough of that, let’s move on to something else. And so, that’s a really huge benefit of unschooling is just like, oh my gosh. I found something I want to do. Can I do more of this? And the answer’s always yes. And they can just dive as deeply as they want. And so, then we meet really interesting children who have so much knowledge in this one super deep area that’s just incredible. And so, they may not have all of their whatever other skills that the school would be looking for at that age, but they have spent their time learning about something that’s so important and interesting to them. And from there, whatever they want to do in life, it becomes obvious what they might be curious about next.

And so, I find that so much with my kids who are now young teenagers. They used to be so focused on certain things and then now it’s different. It’s like they’re in a new phase. They’re finding new aspects of life that now they’re curious about and interested in. Like, how am I going to manage to do this in my life? I want to do this and I know that I need to learn more things to get there. You know? And so, it’s just a very different way. I felt very directed down a path, but it feels like for them, they’re making a path and seeing where they want to go, and then telling me, “I really want to work on my handwriting because that would really help me with this.” And I’m just like, yeah, that makes sense. It’s a completely different approach.

PAM: I want to jump in, because that’s what was bubbling in my head. Erika, you nailed it. There is one thing when you’re making the shift away from curriculum and into curiosity and interests is, it’s fascinating to note how much of the curriculum, certainly in the younger years is skill-based, like reading and math and handwriting, like those skills, whereas that’s not really what you’re going to see very often in unschooling lives, because they’re following their interests.

But what they’re doing instead of learning the skill, like, two plus two is four, and then now let’s take that into the world. Here’s how to read beginner books, now let’s take that into the world. Our kids are, like you said, they’re doing stuff and they’re like, oh, hey, like I’m playing this game and I’ve got these boss statistics I need to manage. I’m going to figure out how those numbers are working and what formulas back there. Or I really want to read this forum and yes, my parents, somebody’s helping me read it for a while and then I’m starting to pick it up, or I’m wanting to try and read because somebody doesn’t have time to or isn’t able to read for me for 12 hours. All those pieces.

So, our kids are doing the things in the world and picking up the skills along the way. They’re not like, I want to learn the skill and now I can finally go and play that game. Or now I can finally go and read this book. Or the handwriting. Yes. Go Anna.

ANNA: Well, it’s exactly this though. I’m just going to take the next step. Because what’s so incredible about that is, if we are really true and really honest with ourselves, we don’t know what skills are going to be needed for the next generation and for five years from now and for 10 years from now.

Because I think about the books that were the standard when I was in school, they probably wouldn’t even believe it if kids today read some of the stuff that they thought we needed to know then. And so, what’s so great when it’s coming the other direction, they’re able to take it way further than this curriculum can lead them, because that’s actually pinning them in. But if they’re following interests and creating new things and making new discoveries, and then getting the skills along the way. Yes, those skills can be foundational, but because they’re foundational, they’re always going to learn them. They’re just going to learn them through something that’s interesting and maybe taking them way beyond what we could have done with the curriculum. So, I love that so much.

PAM: For me, that was another one of the huge shifts, right? It was truly just understanding that, oh, it’s not that I’m throwing out the curriculum, and they will never learn how to spell and they’ll never learn how to read and their math skills will be atrocious. Each of those things is so much bigger when you’re actually in the world. Back to what you were talking about at the very beginning, Anna, about just being in the world and living in the world, and we’re just picking up those skills. And yes, if they are actually foundational to living a human life wherever it is that we’re living, you are going to come across the need for them as you’re living.

ANNA: Absolutely. Right. That’s why they’re foundational. We don’t have to force it. And we don’t have to pull it out, because I feel like the way that schools can separate learning from life and reality almost makes it feel mysterious and difficult. Like, what does this mean? Why am I having to do it?

And like you said, the drills, the drills, the drills.

And what I found so interesting with my girls is, in our state at the time, we had to take a standardized test every couple years, I think. Maybe every year. It’s been a little while. But what was so interesting to me is they would be able to do all of these English things and looking at sentences and picking the right word. And I’m like, oh my gosh. I remember filling out those sheets with making the verb match the tense of the thing. And they never did that. They learned it from talking, being spoken to reading books, having books, read to them, playing games. They learned the language that was around them because they were in the world.

And I think that what’s empowering about that is I think they had a belief. I see it in them as adults, that they can figure things out, they can learn things. Whereas I think school kind of makes it mysterious, like, no, you have to be in this room and someone that’s an expert’s going to tell you, and then you’re going to have to really work hard and practice it to learn it. And I just don’t think that’s true. And so, what I love about unschooling is just that questioning. We can start questioning, is that true it? Does that make sense? Do I see that in my life as an adult? Does it really play out when I’m watching my kids organically learn? And that’s when I think things get really interesting.

ERIKA: I think the school model can just lead to people thinking that they can’t learn. Where really, it’s like, I can’t memorize stuff that I’m not interested in, which I think is just natural. Or like, I can’t memorize stuff that makes no sense to me and I can’t use it anywhere in my life. I think that’s reasonable, but to conclude that, then that means I can’t learn, it’s just so sad that that is the result of so much of school-style teaching.

I see it a little bit just culturally with my kids, where they’ll have some of these beliefs of like, I’m supposed to know this, or, well, in school they do this and I can’t do this, or I don’t know if I would be able to. And so, I mean, it’s interesting that those things still come up, even though they can make their own decisions and learn all kinds of things. And so, it’s just interesting to have those conversations with them about like, well, what are the things that you want to do? And thankfully, outside of school, there are an infinite number of ways to learn the things that they want to learn.

And so, we’re working through some new computer programs with Oliver and he took a look at one the other day and he was just like, I don’t think I can learn this. And I was like, it looks super overwhelming at first, but I’m sure that we can figure it out. Either someone who is an expert who could work with you on it or we could look up videos. There are just so many ways to learn.

I think, in some moments we run into those, “I’m not practiced at learning” kind of ideas that they have about it, but then it’s fun to point out to them, but that’s all you do. That really is what you’ve done your whole life. It just doesn’t feel like what it looks like in the stories or what you hear about with your friends who are in school.

ANNA: Right. And that what’s so important about that piece that you just puzzled there is, what I recognized was that my role was my energy about that. Because I think what can happen is, if you hear your child say, I don’t know how to do that, and this person knows how to do this and I don’t know how to do it, suddenly all of our tapes come and the mother-in-law’s tape and the thing going, oh, we failed them. We’ve done this. But really, it was just what you were saying. I was like, wait a minute. I’ve lived with you all these years. I’ve seen you learn things that I can’t even learn. Oh my gosh. We just need some different tools. If this is something you’re interested in now, then here’s the thing.

But they really look to me for my energy. So, if I brought heaviness about, oh my gosh, you don’t know how to do that and we better do this and that, or we need to jump back into that, I think it really would’ve changed that. And instead, it was just, like you said, just empowering them. Like, you are learning incredible things every day. You can learn whatever you want. Let’s figure out what you need and we’ll do it together. So, just watching that energy and making sure that I’m not letting the tapes from other people come into that relationship with my child.

PAM: Yeah. I think that’s definitely us doing our work and practicing, because, like you said, that just brings back all those messages. Oh, but if they were in school, they would’ve learned this in this grade and this in this grade, and taking that leap to the future as in how we learn as adults.

And I think for me, the shift to just thinking of us all as human beings and wherever we are as a human being in this moment and what we’re interested in learning, and even if it feels overwhelming in the moment, like, oh my gosh, something I continue to do is use your time machine idea, Anna, which is when I’m something like, holy crap, I have no idea. I can just imagine in six months when I’m sitting here and just humming along, that’s going to be so cool. And that just kind of helps me take that next step. It’s like, oh yeah, give myself a bunch of time and I’ll just figure it out along the way. I’ll play with it. And that’s the way human beings learn, as you were mentioning earlier.

So, to be able to take our messages and our fears around school and kids and to be able to just say, this is human beings and learning stuff. That helped me so much anyway to just move through those moments, because those cultural messages are everywhere. It’s not just that we learned them growing up and then now we have them. We also hear them all the time now. In this back-to-school season, we hear them even more. And it can have us questioning ourselves.

So, I think it’s so useful for us to do that bit of processing for ourselves, because as you said, Anna, the energy that we show up with can make all the difference. If we show up with, oh my gosh, something’s wrong, that needs fixing, or, oh my goodness, that looks like a lot of stuff to take in just one bite at a time, as they say, baby steps, whatever kind of language helps for them and helps for you as you move through it to remember like, this is just learning.

And I think it’s threaded through our entire conversation, but I don’t know that we’ve said it loud. We can learn something at every age. So, just because something in school is covered in grade four. I always go back to pioneer times, because that was when Joseph left school. That was one of the topics going on. It doesn’t matter at what age. It doesn’t even matter if, but whatever age something comes up about pioneer times, that that period of history, and they’re curious about it, they can learn it at any time. There is no need for it to be done at a certain age. You can see why that’s useful inside a school curriculum, because you don’t want like three years in a row for the teacher to love pioneer times, and they have to do it for three years in a row. They have to break it up that way, right? So, okay, this is the chunk. There’s often not much more logic than that. We’ve got this many years of history to cover, let’s do this much each year. Same with geography, same with so much of it, right? But we can learn anything at any age.

ANNA: Now I’m super curious what Canadian pioneer times are like. I’m going to have to look it up and learn at 55.

PAM: We loved visiting the Pioneer Village. I found it at the time because I was very new at unschooling and thought, well we can do this instead. This is how we can learn it, outside, because he was finding it interesting at the time. But it ended up being one of our favorite places to go as a family for the first two years. We got a park pass, so we could go any time. There’s no cars, so you could walk around. We would bring walkie talkies (before mobile phones) and play tag. Because we could all just be within this area and it wasn’t huge. We would give clues, I’m beside a big steeple, or I see horses, clues like that. And we would go and find each other and my gosh.

We had so much fun in Pioneer Times for two years, like I said, at least. And we go back there just for the memories. We went a couple years ago. Anyway, so that’s funny. Exactly. Any age, any age.

ERIKA: And any topic! I love that so much. Well, this has been so much fun, as expected. We hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe had an a-ha moment or picked up some ideas to consider on your own unschooling journey. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I think you would love the Living Joyfully Network. It is such an amazing group of people connecting and having thoughtful conversations about all the things we encounter in our own unschooling lives. You can learn more about the Network at livingjoyfully.ca/network. We hope to meet you there! And thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time! Bye!

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We are back with another episode in our Unschooling Stumbling Blocks series and we’re talking about including kids in decisions.

There are many reasons why parents may rush through big decisions without giving children a chance to weigh in, but we’ve found that including kids in decisions provides us with useful questions and information, helps avoid dysregulation and melt downs, and results in so much learning for everyone in the family. Being a part of making important decisions now gives children experience that will help them when they have their own big decisions to make in the future.

We also explored how important validation can be as we’re talking about making changes in a family.

It was a really fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia. Hello to you both!

On today’s episode of Exploring Unschooling, we are diving into another unschooling stumbling block, which is including kids in decisions. I’m really excited to talk about this one, but first I wanted to give a quick plug to the Living Joyfully Network, which has really been life-changing for me in so many ways.

On the Network, we have amazing discussions about so many topics, since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. I love the community so much, because everyone there is really learning and growing and being intentional with their families. If you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, you can visit livingjoyfully.ca/network or you can click the link in the show notes. We would love to meet you there.

And Pam, would you like to get us started talking about including kids in decisions?

PAM: I definitely would. This has really been a fascinating part of the unschooling journey for me and it grew out of just recognizing how capable my kids were. I mean, even before they left school, I respected their feelings and their needs. But it wasn’t until they were home and I was seeing them in action day in and day out that I came to see how truly capable they were of making choices.

So, I saw how even if I wouldn’t make the same choice, the choice that they made made great sense for them. I got more and more comfortable with them making choices for themselves, and it was just brilliant to see it in action. Once you give them the space to do that instead of jumping in with, “Oh, well why don’t you do this? Oh, why don’t you do that?” it was really amazing to see.

And then let’s peel back another layer. It hit me that the decisions that parents typically make, that impact the whole family, we’re impacting them, even though I was making a decision. And so, that thought bubbled away alongside the thought of how capable my kids were of making decisions. And I was soon drawn to involving them in more choices, not just the ones that affected only them directly.

So, the first big one that I remember was about two years into our unschooling journey, and I went back and just quickly checked the dates and it started about two years in. And that’s when the idea of moving came up for us. So, I remember thinking that this is such a big decision, not just whether to move, but where to move. And it felt uncomfortable at first to fully involve the kids in the whole process. I worried that I would feel the need to override them at some point because they just couldn’t understand the nuance of this, or that, or the other thing that was involved. But I chose to step up and realize that this was my work to do. Let’s see how it goes. Put on that investigator’s hat and get curious about it.

Even though the process of finding a new home took about a year, fully involving them was amazing. They brought great questions with them, questions I didn’t think of asking, but were actually very relevant. They brought thoughtful feedback after touring properties and houses, and even if I didn’t have the same reaction as them, theirs made sense. Because now I was capable of seeing things through their eyes, so I could see how, yeah, that might feel a little off, or that might really excite them. So, their reactions and their feedback was awesome.

Their enthusiasm inspired me to keep going when I was getting tired of this long, long search. And when they didn’t feel like participating at times, they trusted the rest of us to keep their needs top of mind at that point. Because we had been all working together. There wasn’t that power dynamic of parents and kids at that point. They trusted that they were being heard, that they were being considered.

So, all in all, it was a very meaningful experience for me. You know how we talk about understanding something intellectually, but then getting it more deeply once we have our own experience of it unfolding in our lives? Well, after that experience, I understood in my bones that kids are capable of being included, as much as they are interested in, again, not at whatever level we expect them to be participating in it, but being able to participate as much as they wanted in those big family decisions. It reached every facet of our lives. It was just so meaningful for everyone and it just helped in so many ways that we will get into in this whole conversation, but like yes, an example of it in action.

ANNA: Right! And I think what’s so interesting is that it’s really stories in our head that it’s not going to be okay. Because we start thinking, like you said, they’re not going to understand the nuances, or they’re not going to get this, or they’re going to be more self-serving in what they’re wanting.

And then when we start peeling that back, it’s so interesting, because anytime we’re making a decision, we’re all kind of self-serving and thinking of what we want. We all have our thing top of mind. And so, what I loved about it, because we actually did a similar one with moving, and people did not understand, because in our case, we ended up not moving in large part because the girls weren’t ready to move. And people did not understand that. Like, what? Why are they getting to have the say in this big decision? And I was like, well, it is their life, too.

What I found was that they weren’t coming up from a place of being difficult or whatever. We were just able to talk about what it felt like to them. And then David and I were able to say, well, here are the things we’re concerned about. Here’s the things we’d have to change if we decided to not move versus move. Here’s these pieces.

And so, I feel like we talk about narration a lot and transparency, and I think that’s a big piece of that, because we can’t hold back the information and then think that anybody’s going to make a sound decision. And so, it’s so much about that interplay of sharing information. And this really goes back, for me, to each of us having the self-awareness to understand our needs, be able to communicate our needs, and then we’re working together to solve them. That’s really the dynamic that we tried to create, the environment that we tried to create in our family.

And so, it was interesting to see it play out. And so often, with little decisions and big, I learned so much more about them. They did bring incredible insights. They learned more about me, which was interesting, too. And I think they learned more just in general about how to approach a big decision and what are the different factors, and I felt like that has served them as they’ve been making big decisions in their own lives.

ERIKA: At first, they don’t even know what big decisions there are to be made. And so, it really is just cool to get to have those experiences as they’re growing up. And I was just thinking, the mainstream expectation is just that adults get to make decisions, because they’re the ones who have the money. They’re the ones who have all the knowledge about all the parts and the kids better just not complain about whatever decision is made and go along with it.

And so, I see that play out all around me in our culture. But I also remember being a kid, and at that time I was intelligent, fully human, had my own ideas, and totally could have been a part of decision making.

And so, I think some of the reasons for not including them in decisions can be feeling like it just makes things harder. The more people you have adding into the conversation to make this big decision, it takes more time and now there are potentially more variables that are coming up. So, as an example, we have a couple of vehicles that are getting pretty old at this point, and I know at some point in the pretty near future we’re going to need to get a new family car. And it would be really easy for me to just say, I get to pick the car and I’ll just do it and then that’s that.

But I know that we spend time in the car and it’s their car. That’s their experience of traveling, too. And so, like both of you have brought up, they’ll bring up things that would never occur to me. And so, it actually helps me make a better decision when I find out the things that are important to them and the things that they think, but what about this? Like, I’m worried if we have a new car, we’re not going to have whatever the thing is that they like about the current car and if I don’t include them in the decision, I’ll never find that out. And then, it could be a problem later down the road.

And so, I think it’s wishful thinking that we would be able to make decisions on our own without including them, and that it’s all just going to be fine and they’re going to be fine and everyone will just be happy with it, because it’s important to them. These things are important, where they live, what we’re driving, what we’re eating, what our vacations look like. All of these things that feel like a whole family decision. And there’s just so much learning, like you’re talking about, for all of us.

ANNA: I think one of the things that comes to mind when you say that, and we talk about this in other contexts, too, is this idea that it’s easier. It’s easier for us to make the decision. But to me, it’s just putting the work to the back end, because then the decision is made, and now you maybe have dysregulated kids or upset kids or upset spouse if you’ve just made the decision unilaterally. And it’s like, that’s harder work to me.

The work that you were talking about, Pam, in that long process of picking the house, it maybe took a little bit longer than if you’d just done it on your own, but that was such interesting work. Nobody was dysregulated in that work. You weren’t having to care for all the feelings. I mean, having conversations to care for the feelings, but so different than a dysregulated piece that could happen at the end when somebody’s uprooted from their environment and into another situation.

I’ve just heard so many people that it was just like, yep, I’m moving. And I remember it from my childhood. I still remember my friend being torn away from me. We talk about it all the time. Anyway, it’s just so interesting to think of this as easier, but is it easier?

PAM: I love that you always bring that up, Anna. When we have conversations around these things, the time invested beforehand or after and which feels better. And, for me, my mind so often goes to, like you were saying, Erika, it’s like more irons in the fire, more aspects to consider. The context grows, the more people are allowed to contribute to the context. Yet, for me, what I lean on is that, oh my gosh, the choice that we end up making is just, through my eyes, so much better. Even for me, right? Because I have missed things, like you were talking about, and it may not even be because I don’t care about it, it’s because I didn’t even tag it as something to consider. And when they tag something, I go, oh yeah, that’s a good point. So often, yes, it makes sense through their eyes.

And also, when I can understand it and I learn more about them and they learn more about me, but so often, the stuff that they bring up is also valuable for me and applicable to me. And that, in the end, when we make that choice together, looking back, I just see so many times that’s a better choice than the one I would’ve made unilaterally. So, that’s where my mind goes. But, absolutely, having to recover from having made a choice on my own, that is a whole other can of worms, too.

ERIKA: And all the parts joining into the context is so interesting, because whether or not you hear those parts, they’re there already. They already have their opinions about things, whether or not you’re asking them. And so, I think it’s just bringing all of the needs to light to help make the decision easier.

And I was also thinking about another decision that’s coming up for us is we all, I think, want to get a treadmill. All four of us do. And yet there’s still this process of trying to figure it out. It’s going to change the way our room is laid out. Do we all really understand that and how do we feel about that?

And so, I think Josh sometimes can be like, well, we want it. Come on, let’s just get it. Are we going to order it? And I’m just like, well, we haven’t seen what the room looks like yet. And I just know from previous experience, my kids are sensitive to change. And so, that’s just all part of our decision-making process now. Really thinking about, okay, let’s make sure we all really are settled in this and understand what it means and talk about all the possibilities, because once we start brainstorming, there are tons of possibilities.

ANNA: Okay. So, I’m going to take it in a slightly different direction. And, Erika, you may have to help me with this, but what I want to take it into, because I can hear the people out there saying, but sometimes, they have these attachments to things like, we can’t change the couch, or we can’t get the new rug, or the different things. And there’s this attachment that we don’t understand.

And somebody on the Network recently shared a TikTok from @youngmi, and so, Erika, I may need you to summarize what it was about, but that piece of just how we can brush through what they are saying when they have this attachment to the couch, we’re not giving attention to what it is they love about that.

In the moment, we just kind of get frustrated, so we go to that place of frustration like, “But the couch is 20 years old and it needs to go, and this is ridiculous.” We don’t leave space for those emotions. And I just think our kids really teach us these life lessons. And that’s kind of what that TikTok was about.

But do you remember what I’m talking about? The boba tea.

ERIKA: The mom was talking about her son having a really big emotional experience about her throwing away his last sip of boba tea. She said she could get him the exact same one again, same flavor. It’s going to be the same. And he was like, but it’s not the same one. That one is gone. And he’s crying and crying on the floor, and she’s just like, I don’t get it.

Then all of a sudden, she did get it. She was like, oh, he is just realizing this fact of life for the first time, that that cup, once it’s gone, is gone and there will never be another one of those cups. And so, it’s this really heavy existential realization. And he had it for the first time.

And so, once she realized that that was what had happened, that he was having this big a-ha moment about life, she was like, oh, I get it. That was the last one of that cup and it’s gone. And that is so, so sad. And he was like, yes. Finally, you understand what I mean. And he was able to move through it.

So, that’s the kind of validation that works, to actually move through. He felt like, yes, I was able to get you to understand what is going on for me emotionally. And she really did get it. And so, her message to other parents was just like, as kids are learning about what happens in life, these are really big and heavy concepts that they’re just realizing. And so, if they’re getting really upset about something that seems so little, it might be that it really means something much bigger and they’re realizing something big about life.

And so, with the couch and moving the room and not wanting to get rid of things, some of that feels so heavy and deep to them. And so, if we just keep saying, “That doesn’t make sense, it’s old, it’s whatever. Throwing it away is no big deal.” They’re not going to feel validated by that.

ANNA: Right. Because it’s impermanence, right? We’re learning it and we’ve had decades to wrap our head around how we lose things, things go away, and we have to change things and those different pieces. But for kids, it’s very new. This is the couch that they’ve known their whole life. This is the couch that they snuggle the dog on. This is the couch that means these things.

And so, I think what I learned was just to slow it down. And I talk about that a lot, because I can be like, get it done. I’m like, we got a new couch, let’s get it done. Let’s change the room, let’s paint it, let’s go. And it’s like, slow it down. Give everybody space to just wrap their head around it, because these concepts that I feel like we all still mess with and think about and think about in the larger terms of life, these are new concepts for them. And maybe it’s the first time they’re having to let go of something that’s important to them.

So, I don’t know. I just love that reminder. We’ve all been there with kids with this kind of attachment, but it doesn’t mean they’re not capable of making the decision, it’s just slowing it down and giving space for all those pieces.

PAM: It’s very funny. I’m just laughing, because just a couple of days ago, Rocco said something to me, very nice. He was trying to manage something and I was like, “You know? I’m not as attached to that as I was years ago.” It can be a different kind of conversation now.

And yes, I remember watching that TikTok and I got goosebumps again as you were describing it, Erika, because it’s like, but how would we know when something’s so big to them? But it’s in their reaction. If their reaction seems out of context or bigger than you would expect or anticipate, those are our clues. Those are our clues. Not that they don’t understand what’s going on, but maybe that they more deeply understand. And just remembering that this might be their first experience of X, Y, or Z.

So, seemingly out of proportion reactions are great clues for us to, like you said, Anna, slow down, take a moment. And it’s like, oh, what could this be meaning to them? Because she was just asking herself, why is this reaction going and going and going? Why can’t we just move through this? But that’s the whole point. She stuck with it. And she finally came to that realization like, oh, because we might think, why are they stuck? Why are they saying the same thing over and over? No, don’t take that couch. No, I want my old bubble tea, or whatever. It’s like, okay, I don’t have it yet. I don’t have it yet. It’s worth the effort and the time and the space to get to the place where we have it for so many reasons. Because now we’ve learned a little bit more about them. Now we can validate them, truly validate them, and they feel seen and heard and understood.

So, then they now can often more easily move through it. They don’t have to keep defending, don’t have to keep trying to explain, to explain, please see me, please see me, please hear what I’m saying. This means something to me. When we’re not dismissive, but we’re like, okay, I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep trying, I’m going to keep trying to get to that spot, and then trust builds there.

More connection builds there, more openness to care when it happens the next time, in something completely irrelevant, but it’s more experience that you are building as human beings together. So, it’s just so powerful when we can take that time to invest in the relationship, if you want to put it that way.

ANNA: And I think it gets to where we talk about underlying needs, too. So, we can have this conflict with a decision up at the surface, new couch, old couch, but then underneath that, it’s like, oh, when we slow down, when we take that time, we find out, how are we going to read on that couch? That couch looks different. Then it’s like, oh, well it’s about reading. Let’s create a reading nook that solves that. We can get stuck up here, and then we miss the reasons behind it on both sides. And I want to be able to articulate what my needs are to get the new couch or to whatever it is, so that then they were like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

But if we just stay up here at the authoritarian decision or the across-the-board decision, we lose some of that. And I think that’s what’s so interesting. And so, the question I always asked myself was, what is my attachment to not having them involved? What am I scared of of having them involved? What are the expectations that I have? Because those are the questions I want to ask myself when I feel that resistance to bringing them into a decision about something. And that work really served me, because again, I think it helped us stay in this place in our relationship where we both felt heard and seen as we were making these decisions that impacted all of us.

ERIKA: Right. It’s making me think, too, about that internal and external processing part. Sometimes, if you are an internal processor and you do a lot of figuring things out inside without the narration, without telling other people what’s going on in there, it can feel frustrating to be like, “But I’ve already figured out such a good solution to this problem, you guys. I wanted you to just say, yes, that’s perfect. Let’s move on.”

I think there’s that, and then there’s also just the sense of urgency that is so easy to have once you feel like there’s something that you want to move towards, it can be hard to pull back, but I don’t need to rush it. It’s okay to include these other people. It’s okay for it to take a little extra time. Because in most cases, decisions do not have to be made and executed on the day that it’s coming up.

And then I also think that including the kids in these family decisions, even though it’s more work on the front end, like you were saying, then they have investment in the end result. And so, I’ve found that to be so valuable. When we all feel like this was our decision, so many things can go more smoothly in the future. Where if it’s like, you did that and I didn’t want you to, we’ll be dealing with the repercussions of that forever. Like, you got rid of my thing when I wasn’t ready, or you didn’t listen to me about that. And so, really like including them in the conversations, even when it can feel frustrating, because I already figured everything out in my opinion, it helps.

PAM: I think that that is a great thing to remember. I’m so glad you brought that up, Erika, because it’s so true. We can, from a very loving space, there’s something that feels out of whack and we want to try and figure out a solution and us internal processors have thought it through and thought it through and thought it through and we finally came with this awesome idea and we don’t realize that if we haven’t talked about it, if we haven’t mentioned that we’re thinking about it, this is a completely new, out-of-the-blue idea to them. And I do not like out-of-the-blue ideas that are about to happen right now. I need a little bit of processing time. I need some time to just figure out, what are the implications for me of this thing happening?

So, it’s just so funny to think about it that way and just to recognize that if we’re not sharing what we’re thinking about, we don’t even know how much processing they’ll need around things or want around things or information they’ll want or what they may think of. And if we get that initial, “Oh, yay!” and do it really fast, but then two days later, it’s like, oh, but what about this and what about this? And you’re like, well, it’s gone now.

So, like you’re saying, most things, the vast majority of bigger decisions like this, family-related decisions, are not emergencies. They are not urgent. So, giving that space and time to everyone involved, not just inside our head, is just super, super valuable, I think. And it’s such a great point that it makes it so much easier later on, because everybody’s participating in the decision. We’ve had the time to think it through and like it’s like, okay, this is just the answer. It’s almost the afterthought.

ANNA: Right. And I want to touch on the piece that you just said about emergencies, because what we found is, this was our process of making decisions together and taking everybody’s into account and thinking about all the needs, so those times where there were emergent decisions, and they happened, like serious things happened, where it’s like, “We’ve got to make this decision right now. Get in the car, go. We’ve got something happening that’s intense,” it was just not a big deal, because they just knew and they just trusted. I gave them the information that I had. “This is what I feel like we’ve got to do.” And it was like, “Okay.” Because that’s that other piece that people go, “But if you give them that, then they’re going to always be like this.” And it was just not my experience.

The experience was that it built trust. When you were talking about that earlier, Pam, it builds trust in each other and that’s what then allows on either side to operate, whether you see they’re feeling something super emergent and I need to drop everything and go see what’s happening. And so, I think that’s another piece that I felt like was a side benefit that I wasn’t really sure how it would play out until it did.

ERIKA: I think they can really tell the difference. We may try to bring a super sense of urgency, like, but I need a new couch right now, because this couch is driving me crazy! But they know we’re not dealing with an emergency here. So, yeah, I like to remember to slow down when possible.

ANNA: But I also like that reminder about the processor, not just for us, because if we’re internally processing, but to think of the audience like, okay, do I have external processors that are going to want to bounce all the ideas off of me? And so, I need to kind of be ready for that to give space? Do I have somebody that’s going to go away for three days and I need to know that they actually are thinking about it and not think, oh, they don’t care because they went away for three days to think about it? And so, really knowing each other that way, and again, bringing some narration into it can really help us not get caught off guard by that.

PAM: And to not be thrown off if, the first few times through, family decisions are a little bit bumpy, because we’re learning about each other. We’re learning that somebody needs those three days of processing or however long. We are recognizing and learning that somebody will need to talk about it a lot, a lot more than if we’ve already figured out what we think the solution is and then they just need to say, but what about this? But what about this? Oh, what about this? And just to give ourselves that space for and the energy to be able to participate in that conversation, because you know it’s important for them. But we’re not going to learn that level, that depth of each other until we try it out.

ANNA: Until you do it. Yes.

ERIKA: Exactly! Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed our conversation and picked up a nugget or two for your own unschooling journey. And if you enjoy these kinds of conversations, I really think you’d love the Living Joyfully Network. You can learn more at livingjoyfully.ca/network.

Have a great week everyone, and we’ll see you next time. Bye!

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode exploring deschooling discoveries. One of the many things I love about the unschooling journey is how unexpected it can be. As we dive deeper and deeper into deschooling, we begin to question so many things! Things we thought were pretty much facts—about children, about learning, about relationships, about how the world works.

Many podcast guests have shared how surprised they were that the unschooling journey entailed a lot of personal growth and transformation. That so much of it is OUR work to do, not the kids—their living and learning soon flows beautifully as we release our need to try to control it.

So, in this episode, I’ve gathered some clips in which guests share their, often surprising, deschooling discoveries and insights. It’s so interesting to hear them side by side! I suspect new connections and insights may bubble up for you too as you listen in.

Audio clips taken from these episodes …

EU088: Deschooling – A Year Later with Jennie Gomes

EU206: Deschooling with Kinsey Norris

EU216: Deschooling with Nikki Zavitz

EU284: Deschooling with Lane Clark

EU261: Deschooling with Joss Goulden

EU281: Going Deep with Unschooling with Talia Bartoe

EU272: Our Unschooling Journey with the Beck Family, Part 2

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Jesper Conrad joins me this week to talk about his experience as an unschooling dad. Jesper shares his perspective of their family’s decision to unschool, which began when their now 15-year-old son tried kindergarten. We talk about Jesper’s move from an office job to working from home and some of the paradigm shifts that he’s experienced over the years as a result of questioning the mainstream path. He also reflects on the benefits of being a traveling family and what he enjoys the most about their unschooling life now.

After speaking with his wife, Cecilie, last week on the podcast, it was so interesting to hear about the family’s journey through Jesper’s lens!

Questions for Jesper

Can you share a bit about you and what you’re interested in right now?

What inspired you to embrace unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like from your perspective?

What has been your biggest paradigm shift or a-ha moment so far? How did it come about?

What do you love about combining unschooling with your more nomadic lifestyle?

What is your favorite thing about your unschooling days right now?

As an unschooling dad, what piece of advice would you like to share with dads who are considering or just starting out on this journey?

Things mentioned in the episode

Worldschooling Nomads Facebook page, Instagram, and YouTube

Cecilie’s episode, 294: Worldschooling Nomads

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Cecilie Conrad joins me from Istanbul this week to talk about her unschooling, worldschooling life with her family. Cecilie shares about her path to unschooling, which started when her second child began attending school. We talk about how her family’s love of travel has enriched their lives and how the unschooling lifestyle fits so well with their choice to explore. Cecilie also reflects on the amazing relationships that she has been able to cultivate with her four children as a result of diving deep into their loves and interests together.

Questions for Cecilie

Can you share with us a bit about you and your kids? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did your family discover unschooling and what did your move to unschooling look like?

You have a wonderful essay on your website titled, ‘I used to be a feminist.’ Can you share a bit about that journey?

What do you love about combining unschooling with your more nomadic lifestyle?

What has surprised you most about how unschooling has unfolded for your family so far?

Things mentioned in the episode

Cecilie’s blog, Worldschooling Nomads and her website, CecilieConrad.com

Worldschooling Nomads Facebook page, Instagram, and YouTube

‘I used to be a feminist‘ article by Cecilie Conrad

‘Are You Playing the Role of Mother?‘ article by Pam Laricchia

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Akilah S. Richards joins me again to talk about her most recent book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work. We talk about her definitions of unschooling and deschooling and dive deep into the far-reaching impacts of choosing an unschooling lifestyle. We also dive into some of the profound realizations she’s had about schoolishness, adultism, and the way our culture treats children, as well as how questioning all of that has allowed her to create deeper relationships with her own children.

Akilah also shares how the pandemic has given many families the opportunity to pause and see their children in a new way, and the changes that ripple out from there are transformative.

Our conversation was powerful and inspiring!

Questions for Akilah

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family and what everybody’s interested in right now?

You wrote, “Unschooling is a way of life that is based on freedom, respect, and autonomy. Listening and witnessing help parents to facilitate learning by offering resources for their child to pursue their interests and to follow their curiosity, without the restrictions of time limitations or judgment by way of testing.” You mentioned the key elements there in your description, following their curiosity, pursuing their interests, no time limitations. Let’s start there. How have you seen that playing out in your family?

You wrote about viewing your relationships with your children through the lens of post-colonial parenting and how that helped you move beyond that adult-centric perspective on those relationships and what it means to be a parent. That is just a bigger lens on adultism. I was hoping you could share a little bit more about how that’s looked for you.

Let’s dive into the importance of developing “mad question-asking” skills! For years, my mantra has been “open and curious.” Not assuming our way is the “best” way and instead asking questions really opens us up to learning so much about our kids, doesn’t it?

What is your favorite thing about your unschooling days right now?

Things mentioned in the episode

Akilah’s website, Raising Free People

Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work

Akilah’s podcast, Fare of the Free Child

Our earlier conversation, Ten Questions with Akilah S. Richards (episode 57)

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Transcript

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our monthly theme in the Living Joyfully Network, Embracing Cocoons and Bubbles. It is part of the human experience to have periods of introspection, of pulling inward, processing, and integrating. Our children may lose interest in their usual activities while not yet knowing what’s next for them, or they may choose to stay home more, spending time in a comforting nest.

We look at some common seasons in which our children may choose to cocoon and ways to approach those times with curiosity, connection, and joy. We also dive into the idea of our unschooling bubble and ways to build that protective, confident mindset that helps us move out into the world as our authentic selves.

Things we discuss

• A cocoon is a season in which a child is choosing to pull inward.
• Some common cocooning seasons and ways to approach them.
• A bubble is like a protective aura we bring with us out into the world.
• Over time, our bubble strengthens and shines, attracting other like-minded families.

Things mentioned in the episode

Learn more about and join the Living Joyfully Network community!

My Living Joyfully with Unschooling Box Set is half price right now to celebrate NOT back-to-school season. Click here to buy it at your favorite online retailer. Three ebooks to help you learn more about unschooling and what your family will be doing INSTEAD of school.

Podcast episode 288: Sitting with Fear and Discomfort

Transcript

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Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, I have a solo episode for you!

As the back-to-school energy hits its peak this month, I thought it might be helpful to re-commit to our choice to NOT go back to school.

It’s completely understandable to feel a bit off-kilter as the “back to school” messages ramp up around us—be kind to yourself. We can use it as a nudge to remember why we chose this path in the first place. So, with all the schooly messages around us, let’s focus on what we’re doing instead of school.

I hope you find it helpful, especially if this is your first time experiencing it!

I also want to mention that to celebrate this NOT back to school season, I’ve put my Living Joyfully with Unschooling Box Set on sale for half price for the next couple of weeks! The box set includes my first three books, Free to Learn, Free to Live, and Life through the Lens of Unschooling.

Discussion areas

• Unschooling doesn’t look like school at all.
• What to do instead of school.
• Do classes hinder deschooling?
• Keep learning about unschooling.

Things mentioned in the episode

My Living Joyfully with Unschooling Box Set is half price to celebrate NOT back to school! Click here to find it at your favorite online retailer.

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Jae Williams recently decided to leave his teaching job and stay home to dive into unschooling with his two young children. Leading up to this choice, he spent the last year immersed in podcasts and books, exploring natural learning and questioning many mainstream paradigms about children, schooling, and success. We talk about his experience as a sixth-grade teacher and the frustrations he felt within the school system. He describes his excitement and the big aha moments that have come from exploring unschooling, and how it has impacted his parenting and relationships with his children.

Jae also shares his thoughts about the accessibility of unschooling and his vision for a better school system, as well as the challenge he’s feeling right now around finding a balance between pursuing his interests and being present with his children.

Jae’s excitement and passion about learning and life made for such a fun and engaging conversation! It will be fascinating to see where his journey leads as he approaches unschooling with an open and curious mindset.

Questions for Jae

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

You recently decided to quit teaching and move to unschooling. I’d love to hear that story! What inspired you to make this change?

What has been your biggest a-ha moment so far?

What unschooling-related question is most on your mind right now? How are you playing with it?

When we connected, you mentioned you’d love to talk about whether unschooling is a viable option for single parent families and/or poor working-class families. What are your thoughts?

You also mentioned society’s shifting views on schooling and careers as a path to happiness and whether that may be reaching a tipping point. I’d love to hear your perspective! Are you seeing these conversations bubbling up more often?

As you settle into unschooling, what has surprised you most so far?

Things mentioned in the episode

Jae’s YouTube channel, BlackDad

Most Likely to Succeed documentary

Free to Learn by Peter Gray

The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Unschooling on a Budget podcast episode

Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Izaak Sibley joins me this week to share his experience as an unschooling dad. He shares about his own school education, how he saw his love of learning disappear over time, and how unschooling with Q has reignited it. We talk about trusting human curiosity and how he has seen Q’s learning naturally lead in such interesting directions. Izaak and his partner Holly have been creative with their living and working situations in order to meet the needs of everyone in the family, and he shares some insights into how they’ve made things work.

Izaak’s excitement about learning and unschooling shines through in our conversation!

Questions for Izaak

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did your family discover unschooling and what did your move to unschooling look like?

What has been your biggest paradigm shift or a-ha moment so far? How did it come about?

I’d love to hear about how you and Holly have set up your lives around your choices to embrace unschooling, spend lots of time together, and do things you all find interesting and fun.

What is your favourite thing about your unschooling days right now?

As an unschooling dad, what piece of advice would you like to share with dads who are considering or just starting out on this journey?

Things mentioned in the episode

Izaak’s D&D YouTube channel

Holly’s Instagram

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Sitting with Fear and Discomfort. This is something that comes up on our unschooling journey pretty regularly because, not only are we challenging lots of cultural norms around learning and parenting, we’re also giving our children space to make meaningful choices in their days, from what they want to do to how they want to explore the world. Sometimes their exploration has us bumping against our comfort zones!

Anna and I walk through the process of noticing our fear or discomfort, validating the emotions we’re feeling, asking questions about our internal experience as well as what’s happening in front of us, and coming to a greater understanding of the situation. And then, from this place of deeper clarity, we can have more meaningful conversations with those involved and make choices moving forward that both make sense and feel good. Fear and discomfort will bubble up again and again, that’s just part of life. But having tools to tease apart the various aspects at play—like cultural messages we’ve absorbed, baggage we carry from past experiences, and thoughts we’re projecting into the future—helps us process the overwhelm, improves our communication, and strengthens our relationships with our kids.

Discussion areas

• Why sit with discomfort and fear?
• Why it’s important to first be kind to ourselves.
• The transition from external “fixing” to internal processing.
• Turning our curiosity inward: asking ourselves questions.
• Turning our curiosity outward: what does it look like now?

Things mentioned in the episode

Check out and join the Living Joyfully Network here

The Work of Byron Katie

Podcast episode 287: Why Joy?

Transcript

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Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, I have a solo episode for you! The idea to share why I focus on joy and the unschooling journey bubbled up a couple of weeks ago and it’s been fun to put this together. And for listeners who may be newer to the podcast, I share a bit about me before diving into exploring the idea of joy and how it became a very helpful compass for me as I navigate, not just unschooling, but life.

I hope you find it interesting!

Discussion areas

• Joy is a beacon for learning.
• Joy is a beacon for building strong relationships.
• Joy is a beacon for finding community.
• Sometimes joy takes a little practice.

Things mentioned in the episode

NPR article, Sometimes Joy Takes a Little Practice

Check out the Living Joyfully Network here

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Deschooling is a bit of a buzzword in homeschooling and alternative education spaces at the moment. So, let’s dive in!

Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about the definition of the word, what that transition to unschooling can look like for parents and adults, the importance of letting go of expectations, some of the paradigm shifts that happen during deschooling, and how deschooling is something that we revisit over time as we reach new seasons in our children’s lives.

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ANNA: Hello, everyone! I’m Anna Brown with Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Hello!

PAM AND ERIKA: Hello!

ANNA: Hello! So, today we are going to be talking about deschooling. It seems that lately it’s kind of popping up again and it’s a word that’s maybe reaching a bit of a wider audience as people start to pull away from traditional schools for a variety of reasons. But people have questions about it. So, we thought it would be helpful to talk about it again. And I know we’ve talked about it before, but just keep digging in about what it looks like, what it can help us with, how it’s an ongoing process. So, I think we all have a lot to say about this. But Erika, would you like to get us started?

ERIKA: I would, yes. So, I think deschooling really has become kind of a buzzword in homeschooling and alternative education spaces, as people are really looking at the ways that school isn’t working for their children. This word comes up. Most of the time, the word “deschooling” is referring to a process of examining schoolish assumptions and beliefs and questioning those. So, getting out of a school mindset, as well as decompressing and healing from any time that has been spent in school.

And I’ll give you a couple of examples of schoolish assumptions and beliefs that you might start to question during deschooling, so that you know what kind of things we’re talking about. So, like believing that learning can only happen in a classroom, or that reading has to be happening by a certain age, that children need to be around a bunch of other children their same age, that mistakes are to be avoided, that grades are the most important thing, that everyone should be following the same educational path, that you can’t be successful without college, that children have to be made to do things that they don’t want to do, and that there are certain topics that they need to learn at a certain age, or even that children need to be taught in order for them to learn. And so, you can see just by listening to those, that these are major mindset shifts that are happening.

Deschooling is a mental and physical transition away from school for us as parents and for our kids, and all of the thought processes and choices that are wrapped up in that transition. And I know that today, we want to dive into a few important points about deschooling. First, that it looks different for children and parents, and we can explore what that can look like.

And we also really want to emphasize, like Anna was saying, that this is not a one-and-done, checklist kind of thing, where you could check it off. Anytime a belief comes up or a new phase in our child’s life comes up, more deschooling can happen.

I heard a question recently that was something like, is it okay if I feel like we need to go back to deschooling? Is it okay that our life is still looking like this? And I think the mom was really referring to the amount of time it seemed to be taking for her child to decompress and heal from his time in school. It seemed like he wasn’t interested in the usual things, which is just so common. And so, I think it’s valuable to envision deschooling not as a phase with an end point, and to really sink into allowing that transition to take the time it does and be ready to question your beliefs and give plenty of time and space for healing along the way as things come up for your family. And I know you both probably have a lot to say about this topic, so I’m excited to see where our conversation goes.

PAM: I will say, a million things bubbled up while you’re talking there, Erika. It’s like, oh my gosh, yes.

Maybe I’ll start from the kids’ point of view, since I’m the only one who had kids in school going through this deschooling process for them. If I had to put a timeline on it, at least a year of deschooling. My kids were only in school for a handful of years. My eldest was in grade four or five, I don’t even remember, but one of those. But yes, the messages that they came home with were strong.

My daughter who enjoyed school, I was actually a little bit surprised when she said, “Yeah, sure, I would prefer to stay home. That’s great.” But she had gotten the message that she wasn’t a very good reader. And so, when she wasn’t being forced to read, it’s like, “I don’t read.” And don’t put books within 10 feet of this poor girl for those first months, because it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to do that? Okay, I’m going to step back from that.”

I wrote a whole article, we’ll link to that, about her journey with reading. To watch her step back from that and then to come to it herself was super fascinating and interesting, to the moment when she’s like, “I’m a bookworm!” She declared that. You could just see the connection she’s making to like, “A year or so ago, I hated books. I hated reading. I would swear I couldn’t read,” all those pieces, but to give her the space to come to that, a lot of deschooling in there.

Same with my son, his challenge was writing. And I remember when he picked up a pencil. It was at least a year after he left school, he was like, “I haven’t written by hand in ages.” And it was a choice to finally pick it up, but so much trauma and crap all wrapped up in that from his school experience. Those were a little bit more obvious to me, but there is the whole host of other stuff about the environment and stuff that we might not know about. So, to give them that space to just decompress.

And we’ve got lots of stories in the archive of the podcast, even young adults talking about, “I laid on the couch for a year. I just needed to really decompress entirely,” and for us to judge, like, “Oh, your experience wasn’t that bad. Why haven’t you recovered this quickly?” It takes as long as it takes.

And that was a fascinating thing for me that ties to what you were saying, Erika, that there is no timeline. “Why is this coming back up? Why do I feel like we still have some more deschooling to do?”

For me, and I talked about it in my first book Free to Learn, which is my five biggest deschooling a-ha moments or paradigm shifts that were most valuable for me, but the light bulb moment of my initial deschooling phase was when I didn’t really care if I was done deschooling at all. It’s like, oh, this is just part of life. Stuff comes up, I’ve got another layer to peel back. Oh gee, this has been my work all along. And it’s like, oh, I haven’t really had to peel back a lot of stuff lately. I think we’re unschooling. We’re just jumping right in there. All is good. But it no longer was that checklist, another school mindset to work through. It’s like, oh, we need to do this and this and I can say I’m an unschooler when my deschooling’s done. All those messages. That’s what you’re going to be shedding for the next little while.

For my kids, because they were a little bit younger, nine and seven, and my youngest had only been in for a few months, it was really diving into play, because they had so much time at school that they had missed engaging with the things that they really liked to do at home. And I call this in my journey book “the belly of the whale transition,” because we really cocooned at home for probably at least six months to a year, just regrounding ourselves, just decompressing from all the, “We’ve got to be out there, we’ve got to do things on everybody else’s timetable.” Just exploring what our timetable looked like. I thought we’d be out doing all these things, because we can now. But no, really just to decompress and just sink into the things that we love to do while I was also peeling back all these layers.

I didn’t even realize how many questions, things that I had just absorbed of, this is the way things are. I know we have all, I’m sure, suggested many times when you come to unschooling or you decide, you know what? I want to try out this thing, to really give it that window, give it that six months to a year. Nothing’s going to happen that after a year, year and a half, five years, your kids can’t go back to school. Not to think of it as, this is a lifelong decision that we’re making to take the kids out of school. This is just something we’re trying out, but give it that window. Give yourself and your kids that window to decompress, to do some serious deschooling and just explore what does life look like instead?

ANNA: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s so huge. So, my kids never went to school, and so I would say what my experience with deschooling is much more about me, but I think it really fits for everyone, whether you’re taking your kids out or not. So much of it is about our own journey, because I was in school for a very long time and really I didn’t have a bad experience and I absorbed these different things from it. But like that checklist you went through, Erika, it’s just like, there are so many things that we don’t even realize that we’ve absorbed and taken in as the one way, the only way.

And so, while I was able to see my kids really just exploring learning, I found, for me, there was layer after layer after layer that would bubble up for me. And a lot of times it would be maybe a transition age or some kind of milestone that passed that looks a little bit different when you’re not in school and you’re not in certain environments that I would be like, okay, what’s bubbling up for me here? And have to do that work to pause and lean back into my kids. Look at what they’re doing, look at our life as it is versus how it’s comparing.

And so, I think that’s such a big piece of it, is just really understanding that it’s going to keep bubbling up, because we have been trained that this is the one way that it works and the one way that it can happen. But wow, when you can open that up even just a little bit, you see your kids healing, you see your own healing, you see generational trauma healing. It’s just so powerful to give that space, like you said, Pam, just don’t put anything on it. Just give it some space.

ERIKA: Yeah. I think it really sinks in how individual this deschooling journey would be for each child and each parent. If we’re thinking there’s a right way to do it, that’s going to be frustrating, you know? And so, for kids, you can look at that same list of beliefs and see, if a child’s been in school for a while, they’re going to be picking up on a lot of those beliefs themselves, but from their angle, from the student angle.

And so, it could be things like you were talking about of, I’m not good at this, or even as terrible as, I’m stupid or I’m not good at things. And those are really heavy messages that they may have internalized. And so, when there is that space now that they’re not being controlled, not being told to do all these things, it’s just space to start asking, who am I now? And that’s big stuff. That’s really big stuff. And so, it makes sense that it can take time. It makes sense that it might look like doing nothing. And I think that panics some parents at first, because they’re used to the school schedule and all of this activity happening and so much, where it’s so busy, never time for anything. And deschooling could look really like the opposite of that. It could look like we’re doing nothing. We’re just sitting here. They just want to watch TV.

But if you can think of it almost from a trauma lens of like, this is a healing that needs to be happening, then maybe it’s easier to give more space to that and just know that not every child is going to have that response to this transition, but some will. Everyone is different.

ANNA: And we’ve seen things in the network where people’s children, I mean four years down the road, will start remembering things or things can happen. So, it is so unique, that journey. And I think I want to just speak also briefly to, if you haven’t pulled them out yet, but you’re in this situation where something’s rubbing, which may have brought you here, to listen to this.

This is really just a call to trust yourself, because there’s some messages. Because I think all of us for different reasons, even though my kids never went to school, I thought they were going to, I got hit with these messages of, something’s not right here, something’s not going to work here. This doesn’t feel good to progress along this path that I thought was going to be okay.

And for you, Pam, I’m sure there were messages along the way. And so, I think, too, part of this is just really starting to trust in that voice inside of us. I think that’s part of the layers of deschooling too, is just getting to, you know your kids. You know them way better than any teacher, any school, any institution. You know what feels good to your family, and so that’s starting to build your why when you’re going to make a big decision to pull them out or not put them in, because sometimes it’s that, right? It’s this preschooler that I don’t think I can put them in, or they don’t want to go, or they go for a bit and then it feels terrible and they’re crying and we’re being told, oh, just leave them. They’ll be fine later on. It’s like, no, if your heart’s telling you something different, part of this is just setting aside those outside voices to really tune into what you know.

PAM: That really sounds exactly like my journey and it took a while before I discovered even the word homeschooling. I would tell my kids, sorry, you have to go to school. Let’s try and make this as fun as possible, or whatever. But for me, the root of it was, to speak to what you were talking about, Anna, was, when something didn’t feel right to me, I would just continue to question the premises. Why? Why do we have to do it? So, if the context, the constraint, is that school has to be part of our lives, how can we work with that.

So, I was working with schools, I was giving presentations to teachers, I was talking with principals, just doing all the things there. Trusting ourselves when something is not feeling right and just being, for me, open and curious. It even goes back then to why isn’t this working? Why isn’t this a fit? What’s up here? How can we play around, as we were talking about on the last episode with Kendel, how can we play with the environment?

And it was in that constant research, that constant trying to find how this might work for us, that I came across an article that mentioned homeschooling and I’m like, what the heck is that? And is that legal? Because that sounds awesome. And oh my gosh, it was not long before I found out it was legal.

It was not long before we said, let’s try this. Because that’s the piece. Just follow what you’re feeling, trust what you’re feeling, and start asking questions, because it’s okay to ask questions. We’re not going to be arrested for our thoughts. We can question those fundamental things that just feel so true, like that we only learn when somebody teaches us something. How are we going to learn something if somebody doesn’t teach us something? But my gosh, we could spend an hour talking just about that question.

But ask yourself questions. Just be open to the fact that there may be other answers than the one that we’re so used to, the one that we’ve just absorbed growing up, or the one that we were explicitly told, you have to go to school because you need to learn these things. It can really shake our foundations to start asking these kinds of questions. But, oh my gosh, it is so valuable.

It’s baby steps and it’s playing with things. Is that a possibility? We played with, oh look, yeah, we can bring them home. We can see how it goes. Rocco and I talked about that in an episode a long time ago. But that is the really interesting thing, when something doesn’t feel right, just keep at it. Keep trying to figure something out. When something’s not working for anyone in our family, for any of our kids, just keep diving into that and learn more and just grow your own web of understanding about what’s going on. It is a very interesting journey and I love the call to adventure. What is it that’s just not sitting well for us, and what can we do about that?

ERIKA: Right. Yeah. I like how you describe yours as being playful and taking these little steps. Because for me it felt more like just whooshing along, this knowledge explosion and all the big mindset shifts that happened for me in maybe the beginning year when I first started reading about unschooling. And so, it didn’t feel slow in my mind or like I was taking baby steps, but that’s why it’s the unschooling journey. It might be a different thing that gets us to start thinking about it. And so, in my case, it was that feeling of, I don’t think I can put this child in preschool. That’s step one. What happens next?

And so, I think that deschooling phase, if we can think of it like that, if we can give ourselves space to be learning without worrying about all the little details, like how’s it going to turn out and what do I need to be doing? And getting ourselves worked up in that question that I hate, which is, is it all going to work out? And just trying to stay in the moment with our process and letting our kids have their own process, so much goodness can come from that deschooling phase. So much learning, so much more connection, so much more trust. But it’s going to take putting your worrying, thinking brain, all of that stuff, to the side a bit to give all of the family members space.

ANNA: And I think acknowledging, too, that it is a big step. It’s a big step to step out of the norm, because when you said that, and I don’t like it either, is it all going to work out? kind of thing, we don’t know that about school either. And if you’re getting messages that something’s not working for your child in school, it’s probably leaning on the side of there’s going to be problems down the road.

But I think why people stay is, well, but that’s what I’m supposed to do. There’s maybe some safety in thinking it’s not all coming to us. And so, that’s part of the deschooling, too, to realize they’re on their own unique journey like you. It really is about keeping focused on the moment and what’s in front of you and what does this child need in this moment? And what do you need to heal and to reconnect?

And for us, the priority is always the relationship. So, we’ll always come back to that when we’re talking about it. But I think just give yourself that space and not walk too far down that road, because like you said, Pam, it could be five years and then you go back into a more formal environment of school or something else. And there’s no right or wrong way, no one path.

But I think the more you tune into your inner voice, that’s going to lead you and your child, again, to keep that connection strong, to get the most out of whatever the experience is. So, just listen to those niggling pieces.

But I do just want to acknowledge, I get it. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we have a Network that supports people, because it is a little scary to step outside of the norm, more so for some people than others, depending on your whole family situation, and the support you have in your life. So, it’s interesting to think about and just baby steps and taking the leap. Sometimes, it’s taking the leap. Either way, it’s okay.

PAM: Oh yeah. It depends on what lens or framework you’re thinking about. Because it does feel like a huge leap. Okay. So many things! Let’s go back to that question. I remember one of my big a-ha moments or paradigm shifts while I was deschooling was from that question, is it all going to work out? to, oh, if I focus on this moment in front of me and we work through this moment in front of me and then we have another moment and we work through that moment, it’s like, oh, but we are just compounding a bunch of moments in which we worked through things. So, we will just continue to do that however long into the future I want to worry about it. So, that really helped me get back to the moment, rather than tripping into the future. If I want everything to work out in the end, well darn it, I better make this moment work out.

Another piece that bubbled up is, I remember so much the journey of deciding to take the kids out of school. And how, oh my gosh, finally when I took them out, it felt like, okay, phew. We finally decided. We made this big leap and it felt like that was the end. We’re done now. But literally, that’s the start of the deschooling. It is like, oh my gosh, there is actually so much more. This is actually the call to adventure, okay, we’re homeschooling now. Again, keeping it light enough that it’s not like, oh my god, I have committed to my kids being home with me for their entire educational career or however you want to frame it at that time, but when you can take that pressure off and the weight of expectations that we can put on ourselves. Even though we feel like, oh, we’re done. We finally decided we did the thing. Yay. We can live now. It’s actually the beginning of the journey. I think that was another realization along the way. So fun.

And then the other thing I just wanted to mention that I learned when I was home with them and deep in this deschooling was how valuable it was to look to my kids, because they really were my guides on this journey. Yes, I talked about some of the messages that they had absorbed and that they were deschooling through, but with this space now to be themselves, to choose what they’re doing, so much of that I saw in action with them, eventually I was like, oh, but I could do that, too.

So, I was giving them all that space and then I was like, Pam, you need to do this, this, this. Get all that stuff. How am I going to fit it in? Nope, you’ve got to get this stuff done. To realize that I could look to them and see the way they were approaching their days and it’s like, oh, what a beautifully human way to go at their days. When they were doing something that they enjoyed doing, I could see that mistakes were no big deal. They were just, oh, that didn’t work. I’m going to try something else. That would’ve been the end of me. I was, okay, I can’t do that. If I’m not going to be good at that, let me go slink over here and do something else.

Because obviously, as you mentioned, I had many more years of school where I had absorbed that message in that long list you were talking about, Erika, that mistakes are bad. And so, there were just so many things that I could learn through watching my kids that really helped me in my deschooling journey. Just to notice and to realize, to open up that these things were actually questions. They weren’t definitive. They weren’t, kids can do that and adults have to do this. To realize that, oh, it’s just about being human and we all have these choices on our plate, and how cool is that?

ERIKA: Yeah. It feels like some of these beliefs are almost a little barrier between you and the person or the connection or between you and the reality of the present moment. And questioning some of them feels kind of like removing that barrier. And I feel like that can happen when the kids are still in school. If you’re feeling like your connection with your kid is not that strong connection, I feel like these beliefs might be putting these barriers in between. So, when you can notice those things and think, what am I believing right now?

It’s almost like the role of mom and the role of student/child and all of these different rules that we have internalized because of our time living in the culture. It’s like, once you realize, oh, I’m believing that learning only happens in a classroom, and so, that’s why I’m treating my child like this, like it’s the most important thing. I really like how much it increases connection and strengthens the relationship when you start questioning these beliefs.

ANNA: Okay. And something you just said there made me think about the roles. I feel like we’re handed a lot of fear or this belief that we can’t do it and that we can’t handle it, especially if our kids maybe have special needs or have some special things going on with them. No, the experts. The experts. This is just something that’s drilled into us in school and our culture.

And so, again, I think the call for me is, I am with this child 24/7. I know. And I can get resources and I can bring other things in, but I just always watch for if someone’s trying to separate you in that way. Trying to say that you don’t know your child or, oh no, they can push through that, because they need this thing. And so, just watch for that messaging. Because I think it’s so strong.

And so, a big piece of this deschooling, I think, is owning our agency, taking back that agency, like, wait a minute, I do know who I am. I know who my child is. And I’m going to advocate for them. And again, whatever that environment is, whether they stay in an environment that’s in school or not, it can really change things.

But like you saw, Pam, you can go into that environment and try to advocate, advocate, advocate, but it just has its own set of rules. And if you don’t fit right into that, it can be really hard for kids.

PAM: Yeah, it’s its own set of constraints and that’s why I spent years. How can we inside these constraints, try to make this manageable? So yeah, very interesting.

And I’m still back to the kids as guides. And another reason why, when you choose to try this out, commit to it, I think that larger window is so valuable. We say at least six months, but a year, like give really a year, like as you’ve heard us all saying about a year. About a year, just as what our experience was, not as in that’s our recommendation, but through experience that seems to be at least the minimum span.

But what it does, like you were saying, is it gives us the opportunity as we’re observing our kids and connecting with them and hanging out with them to see how learning unfolds. Because so often, we’re deschooling, as in, our kids are not going to be in a classroom. I know how they learn in a classroom. They’ve got a curriculum and a teacher who tells them. Okay. How else are they going to learn?

But we need that space to see the natural learning unfold, to give them the time to dive into their interests and the things they’re interested in, and to see the connections, to see the next interest and what they brought from that, to see like all the different things growing and how their lives are unfolding. And through that, you just see the learning that’s happening. So, you need the space for that. It helps you trust the process. It helps you understand the process.

In the last episode, Kendel talked about it, too. You can read the books and you can understand it intellectually, but what a world of difference when you actually see it unfolding with your own children. That is just a deeper understanding, because you’ve got more connections now. I had these three things that made sense from the book or from the group, wherever. But then to be able to add context to that from your own life, it really solidifies it. It becomes a truth. That is part of the deschooling process as well. Like, okay, this all makes so much sense to me and I’m going to embrace this and jump in. And now let’s actually see how it unfolds for our family.

Because that’s the other really fascinating thing is in a classroom, everybody needs to adapt to the classroom process. They have their procedures, they have their methods, and we need to adapt to that. Whereas when we’re unschooling and we have that space, we don’t have 30 kids. We’ve got our handful of kids. And all of a sudden, we see how different each child is.

And that is another beautiful part of the deschooling journey is to see what learning looks like. How do they like to learn something when they have an interest? How do they dive into it? How do they deal with frustration? That’s a fascinating thing. I think you mentioned, Erika, they won’t do hard things if we don’t make them do things. Oh my gosh.

When your kid has the space to do the things that they are actually interested in, you will see them hit hard things. You will sometimes see them move on to something else completely. You will sometimes see them push right through as hard, through tears and frustration and anger and all the pieces and still go at it. It is just beautiful to see how different it is for each child. And again, then you start to apply that to yourself, too. It can look completely different for me, my partner. It just opens your eyes to humanness, I think.

ERIKA: It feels more like seeing and getting to know your child as who they are, rather than seeing them through this school lens or student lens or the deficit focus and all the things that going to school makes us focus on. And just thinking about like the fun of all that.

I was thinking, deschooling also can be super fun. I know sometimes you talk about, when they first leave school, to just think about it as summer vacation, extended, to just keep going with that kind of mindset, because it’s like, if school didn’t exist, what would you do?

What are the things that are fun to do together? What are the things that would make you feel more connected? What are the things that your child has been just waiting to be able to do and hasn’t had the time to do? So, all of that can actually be really fun. There’s the healing and there’s all this thinking work that happens. But there’s also just the fun and love of getting reconnected and actually just doing the things that you all love to do.

ANNA: That just reminds me of maybe what you were talking about with the woman who asked the question. Sometimes we’re kind of like, is this okay? We’re having too much fun. Is this okay? And it’s like, yes, it’s okay. So, I do think that’s a piece of it.

PAM: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I said we were cocooning and for many people, that image would be somber and, oh, they’re not going out and doing things. Oh my gosh, they need to recover quickly. Yet, holy bananas. That was a lot of fun. We had so much fun. We learned so much about each other. We just had fun doing things together.

And yes, thanks for the reminder. Why it was that extended summer vacation camp was because they left in March break. So, it was a school holiday. They were home and I’m like, okay, if we’re going to do this, they don’t even need to go back. Why do they have to go back and finish this school year?

And Rocco was like, yeah, that’s true. So, we went and asked them and they didn’t. And then that’s what helped me. It’s like, okay, think of it as an extended summer vacation. We don’t need school stuff or anything, right through to the fall. I’ll worry about back to school season when that time comes around.

But that was a long enough stretch that yes, we were in it. We were enjoying ourselves. Even if it didn’t look anything at all like what I thought it would the day that I went around and ask them if they would rather stay home. “I just learned that you actually don’t have to go to school. Would you like to?” “Oh yeah.” That was a really helpful way for me to frame it.

Another way, and I think I’ve got a blog post about that, was thinking of it as a season of Saturdays. Because Saturdays are often the days when we’re not trying to get our kids up and we’re not like, oh, they’re sleeping in. They should be up doing things. Like, okay, now they’re not going to school, but they should be up doing things. So, if you had months and months of Saturdays in front of you, what would you do? And that helped me get to, as you were talking about, Erika, what are the fun things that we like to do?

We ended up going to the parks a lot in our cocooning, but it felt like a cocoon because we weren’t in the midst of a whole bunch of people. We just took our cocoon with us and we went out to the park and would just spend hours by the creek, looking at the trees, walking around. We could play at the playground in there during school hours. There was nobody there, but we could stay as long as we wanted. And we left when we wanted to leave, instead of looking at the clock and saying, okay, now we have to go.

So, whatever metaphor works to help you just release the expectations that you’re putting on yourself, and then, through that, putting on your kids. Because when I was worried and looking for things, I wasn’t as able to observe them and see what they were doing. Because I had that lens, that barrier between us, that I was looking for what I thought it should look like. I was looking for them to say, oh, I want to learn some spelling words. I remember that was when I was like, oh, what about spelling? Oh my gosh. But that all worked out. But that’s when the pieces come up for us.

But unless we’re watching them in action and we’re seeing them writing when they want to write … So, for my son, my eldest, it was not handwriting, but oh my gosh, he learned to type really fast, really quickly when he wanted to communicate online. But if I was always looking for the handwriting, because that was an issue before, so I need to take special care with that thing, I would not have noticed and realized, oh, communication’s the important thing, not whether or not he’s handwriting it. Look, he’s able to chat with people. He’s getting his ideas across. He’s picking up things from others who are writing to him, etc. I could open up my view, because I was looking and able to look at them more clearly and just see what they were doing.

ANNA: I think it’s that piece of letting go of the expectation, so that’s a piece we can watch. Like, do we have an expectation or even a vision of what it’s going to be like? Letting go of that as well, because then you can see it unfold.

But there was another piece about understanding that with reading, handwriting, some of these specific things that maybe the child is having a problem with, these are often very environmentally specific. They need you to be able to read directions in school. They need you to be able to communicate in a certain way. Because maybe now everybody has computers, but back in the day, you didn’t have computers in elementary school to communicate. And so, recognizing so much of the deficit focus, like you mentioned, which is so important, is really about the environment. So, when we change that environment, those are no longer deficits and the gifts can really rise to the top.

PAM: Totally. Gifts are the perfect way to think about it. Instead of going in with that, oh, what is it that they are having a hard time with? And I need to focus on helping them, versus looking for the strengths and the gifts and back to people are different, kids are different, the different ways that they still do things, still are totally capable of doing things. They don’t need those specific skills. Those were very much environmentally-related.

ERIKA: I think one of the tricky things about deschooling is if you’re constantly looking, like you were talking about, Pam, looking for them to ask for the activity that looks like school again. Like, I’m just waiting for things to just naturally start looking more like school again. And so, if we can look for different things instead, that would be more fun.

ANNA: Definitely. I love that. Thank you so much, both of you, for diving into this. It was fun to just take a look back and to just see how it still applies to so many things. And we just appreciate everyone that’s listening today and hope that you found it helpful on your unschooling journey or just your journey in general.

And I do want to say that if you enjoy these types of conversations, we love talking about it in the network, the Living Joyfully Network. When you’re taking that leap and it feels a little scary, it is nice to have a community around you of people who have done it, who are maybe a little bit ahead of you on their journey, who are right there with you. That can just feel so good to be around people that understand the words that you’re saying, understand what you’ve been through with your kids. So, we just really encourage you to check it out. We have a lot of fun there and I really enjoy it. So, you can learn more about that at LivingJoyfully.ca/network. We hope to see you there and just appreciate everybody. Thank you!

PAM AND ERIKA: Bye!

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Roya Dedeaux joins me on the podcast this week to talk about her new book Connect with Courage. Roya is a grown unschooler, a marriage and family therapist, and an unschooling mom of three, so she has lots of experience to draw from as she considers how children learn and thrive.

In her book, Roya describes the many benefits of supporting our children’s interests and the strong connections between parent and child that those positive interactions cultivate. She also details nineteen different barriers that can arise and walks readers through ways to find solutions. In our conversation, we talk about two of these barriers and how so much of it is our inner, emotional work to do to move past our fears and to a place of connection with our kids. Our conversation was energizing and I’m really excited for more parents to read Connect with Courage. These are powerful, life-changing ideas!

Questions for Roya

As a quick refresher, can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

I’m thrilled to have recently published your book, Connect with Courage: Practical Ways to Release Fear and Find Joy in the Places Your Children Take You. I really love the book, and I think it may well be life-changing for many parents. Let’s start off with this: why is the connection between parent and child so important?

When it comes to connecting with our kids through supporting their interests and passions, lots of things can get in our way! And that’s where our work as parents comes in, which is why the many exercises you’ve included to walk parents through these challenges are so helpful. In the book you work through nineteen common barriers, and I thought we could touch on a couple of them here. First, let’s dive into “I don’t understand why they enjoy it.” How can a parent work through that challenge?

Another barrier I hear parents complaining about pretty regularly, especially with younger kids, is that the thing their child likes to do is messy. There are a couple of aspects to that, aren’t there?

What do you love most about your unschooling lives right now?

Things mentioned in the episode

Roya’s book, Connect with Courage

Roya’s earlier podcast episode, Growing Up Unschooling with Roya Dedeaux

Roya’s website and Instagram

Downloadable journal, Look for Good

Roya’s jewelry and crafts website

Transcript

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Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Erin Rosemond, an unschooling mom of four, joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey. Erin shares her earliest reflections on her own schooling experience and how they prepared her for embracing the idea of home educating her children. We dive deep into the ideas of interdependence, collaboration, and kindness, and how unschooling has created family relationships that really incorporate those values.

Erin also shares her thoughts on the accessibility and affordability of unschooling to the wider community and her belief that all families should have community support to make educational choices that work for them. And we talk about how she and her husband have navigated their work schedules while still unschooling. Erin has years of unschooling experience and has so many great insights to share!

Questions for Erin

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

As I embraced unschooling, I found that so much of my work was internal, focused on connecting, supporting, and engaging with my kids rather than teaching them. But, certainly at first, it can be hard to understand what that actually looks like in action. What has that looked like for you? How do you approach your unschooling days?

Over the years, you’ve woven together unschooling and paid work. Can you share what that looked like and how you navigated it?

I’ve really enjoyed reading around your blog, Ever Learning. So much goodness! One post that really spoke to me was, ‘Shining Our Light: Kindness as Mindset.’ It’s not about grand gestures, but small moments of everyday kindness that can make a big difference, right?

When we connected, you mentioned that you’re often thinking through ways for unschooling to be accessible and affordable to more people. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

What has surprised you most about how unschooling has unfolded for your family?

Things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Erin’s website Ever Learning and her blog post, Shining our Light: Kindness as Mindset

Erin mentioned the blog, Taking a Kinder Path

Erin’s Instagram is @ever.learning

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Filed Under: Unschooling Tagged With: deschooling

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Lane Clark joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey and to dive into what she’s learned through deschooling. Lane’s journey began when her family was living abroad and felt their best option was homeschooling. When their carefully chosen curriculum didn’t feel like a good fit, she discovered unschooling and has been questioning all of the boxes we’re put in by mainstream society ever since.

We talked about how deschooling felt like opening Pandora’s box, how Lane has found that her unschooling community helps her navigate her tendency to overthink things, and how her new ways of thinking inspire her to plant seeds of change in her community. It’s such a rich conversation!

Questions for Lane

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

When I think about deschooling in the context of learning, I see two distinct phases. First, we widen our definition of learning beyond “academics” to recognize all the learning that’s happening as our kids pursue their interests. And then, we find that our need to look for the learning and to ponder where it might lead starts to fade away. We see that we can just focus on the living, on the moment in front of us. It’s a fascinating journey, isn’t it?

Another conventional idea that we often need to untangle is the idea that if children get to choose what they do, they’ll never do hard things, or even just things that they don’t find particularly enjoyable. On the surface, that seems to make sense, but as we deschool and dig deeper, the story is very different. Can you share your experience with untangling this idea?

What has been one of the more challenging aspects of deschooling for you? Can you share a bit about how you worked through it?

What is your favourite thing about the flow of your unschooling days right now?

Things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Pam mentioned the podcast How to Save a Planet

Lane’s Instagram is @liz.lemonade

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Play! We dive into how integral play is for learning both about the world and about ourselves. We can carry a lot of preconceived notions about play, its value, its place in our lives, even the definition of what it actually is. Broadening our definitions and seeing the many ways play contributes to our growth and the growth of our children is profound.

It was so much fun to explore and reflect upon this important aspect to our unschooling lives!

Discussion areas

• How play and learning weave together.
• Ways to support—and engage with—our children’s play.
• Play is a wonderful way to develop self-awareness and process emotions.
• How do you define play—is it bigger than toys and games?
• The dichotomy of work and play.

Things mentioned in the episode

Check out and join the Living Joyfully Network here

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

Transcript

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Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, I want to dive into another question that I get pretty regularly, and that’s whether I have podcast episodes with unschooling parents that used to be teachers.

It’s fun to ponder the why behind the question. Does it seem like a strange leap to make? To me, choosing teaching indicates an interest in children and in learning, so to dive into that even more deeply with their own children through unschooling does seem like a rather natural next step to take.

But whatever the reason behind this pretty common question, the answer is a resounding yes! On the podcast to this point, there have been 22 guests who were, or are, teachers or university professors, who study education at the post-secondary level, or even teach education courses.

In this episode, I’ve gathered a few snippets from teachers turned unschoolers sharing about their experience and how that journey came about for them. It’s so interesting!

Audio clips taken from these episodes …

EU106: Unschooling Connections with Kelly Callahan

EU054: From Teaching to Unschooling with Grace Koelma

EU243: Parenting Shifts with Sarah Peshek

EU213: Unschooling and Math with Marcella O’Brien

EU193: Unschooling Younger Kids with Martha Delmore

EU254: Finding Unschooling with Daniela Bramwell

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Talia Bartoe joins me again on the podcast to update us about her family’s unschooling journey. We didn’t know it going in, but it quickly became obvious that the theme of our conversation was “going deep”! Talia generously shares so much about her inner work and the shifts she’s made as part of deschooling and living an unschooling lifestyle with her family.

We talk about the layers of messages around parenting, food, learning, and self-care that we internalized growing up, and how Talia has intentionally changed her thinking and chosen to do things differently. She also shares her experience with having four young children and the ways she meets their various needs, as well as her own.

It’s such a rich and inspiring conversation and I’m excited to share it with you!

Questions for Talia

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

Last time we talked, almost two years ago now, we focused on the deschooling aspect of the journey. And while deschooling isn’t ever “done,” do you feel like you’re actively unschooling now?

So much of deschooling is our personal work to do: excavating our curiosity and creativity, exploring the roots of our fears, growing our ability to sit with discomfort etc. Do you feel like you’ve grown and changed as a person since you chose to begin unschooling? In what ways?

I know that food is a big interest that weaves through your family’s days, and sometimes relaxing around food can be a big paradigm shift for people. I’d love to hear a story or two about your experience!

With four active children between the ages of two and ten, I imagine many of your days are action-packed! I recall those days as being an interesting, and often tiring, dance of choosing to say yes to their fun and exploration while also trying to stay cognizant of my own energy and self-care needs. Sound familiar? What does that look like for you right now?

What has surprised you most about how unschooling has unfolded for your family so far?

Things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Talia’s first podcast episode, EU185: Deschooling with Talia Bartoe

Eating the Food Facebook group

Talia’s Joyfully Wild Life Facebook page and Instagram

Talia’s blog website, Joyfully Wild Life

Transcript

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Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, I am joined by 20-year-old Samantha Donndelinger, who has always been unschooled. Samantha shares some of her childhood stories and reflections on growing up unschooling. We talk about how her family’s lifestyle gave each child the space to make choices and figure out their own path, and how making choices and exploring her interests has given her confidence in moving out into the world.

Samantha also reflects on her journey of self-discovery, including diving into her art and choosing to enroll in a college program that combines all of her passions. And she offers some sage advice to unschooling parents who are just starting out: trust yourself, listen to your kids, expand your idea of what learning looks like, and find a community to support you.

It was so fun and inspiring to hear about Samantha’s experiences and insights!

Questions for Samantha

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

What were some of your interests growing up and how did you pursue them?

I understand travel has been an interest of yours. How did that develop, and can you share some stories about your experience traveling?

The question of college is an interesting one, and it’s really about choice, isn’t it? When we connected, you mentioned gap years and alternatives to college. I’d love to hear more about your experience!

At this point, what do you appreciate most about growing up unschooling?

As a grown unschooler, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on this journey?

Things mentioned in the episode

The Living Joyfully Network

Samantha’s Instagram @yellow_camerastrap

Samantha’s artwork page @alittlebitofwhimsycards

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Validation. Diving deep into validation flows beautifully from last month’s theme of Stories because practicing validation with the people in our lives is about hearing, understanding, and accepting their stories as their truth in the moment. Our connections with our children grow stronger when they feel seen and heard and loved for who they are. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts.

And while validation helps our children move through their strong emotions and difficult moments, ALL kinds of moments are great opportunities to show our children that we understand and care about them. Validation is a key ingredient in the connected, respectful, and trusting relationships we see in unschooling families!

Discussion areas

• How sympathy, empathy, and validation weave together in our relationships.
• What validation looks like and the language we might use.
• When big emotions are involved, non-verbal validation can be so helpful.
• Ultimately, the goal of validation is connection.
• All moments with our kids are opportunities for validation!

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out and join the Living Joyfully Network here

RSA Animate’s video, Brene Brown on Empathy

Ring Theory, by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, I’ve put together a compilation episode to dive into a question that I get pretty regularly: What does unschooling look like in larger families?

As we learn more about unschooling, we’re encouraged to spend time with our kids, to say yes more, to connect with them more, to explore ways to meet everyone’s needs. Add in multiple children, and soon we start to wonder how we’re going to build all these strong, connected, and trusting relationships. It can seem daunting!

I have three children, but I’ve had guests on the podcast with four, five, six, seven kids, so I’ve brought together some of their wonderful stories, tips, and insights to help parents with larger families envision what unschooling might look like for them.

Audio clips taken from these episodes …

EU040: Paradigm Shifts with Cindy Gaddis

EU083: Unschooling Around the World with Tami Stroud

EU113: Deschooling with Megan Valnes

EU185: Deschooling with Talia Bartoe

EU245: Unschooling Stories with Cate & Jenna Phillips

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Sue Patterson joins me again this week for the second part of our conversation, diving into three more listener questions. Check out part one here!

Question Summaries

I feel like I should be finding more friends for my kids to play with, but I’m introverted and it’s hard for me to reach out.

My 12yo daughter is attending middle school and I think it’s so damaging for her, but she wants to continue going. How can I convince her to try unschooling?

I have three kids ages 9, 5, and 2. I feel completely overwhelmed trying to meet all of their different needs as well as my own, while taking care of the house without any help.

Things mentioned in the episode

Sue is the founder of Unschooling Mom2Mom, check out her website, her new podcast, and her course for new unschoolers

Two of Sue’s children have been on the podcast, Katie Patterson and Alyssa Patterson

EU032: Choosing School with Alex Polikowsky

EU197: Choosing School Part 2 with Alex Polikowsky

EU201: Unschooling and Self Care with Erika Ellis

Housekeeping is Not Motherhood article by Rebecca Brown Wright

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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We’re back with another On the Journey episode! We had a delightful conversation with Living Joyfully Network member Kendel Ricker. Kendel is an unschooling mom of two kids, 11 and 9, and she shared some of her journey with us.

Kendel’s own education included homeschooling, private school, and public school, as well as university and teachers’ college. Her experiences allowed her to really come to home education for her own children with confidence. From there, her path to unschooling was really led by her children and it has been magical!

We talked about releasing expectations and control, finding creative outlets as parents, supporting our children’s interests, and looking for the “glimmers” in our everyday lives.

It was a really beautiful discussion and we hope you find it helpful on your journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello, everyone! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis, and our lovely guest, Kendel Ricker. Hello, everyone.

ERIKA, ANNA, KENDEL: Hello!

PAM: Kendel is an unschooling mom with two kids and a member of the Living Joyfully Network, and I am really excited to share some of your experience and insights with our listeners.

To get us started, I have a two-part question. First, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everyone’s interested in right now? Because that’s always fun to hear. And then we would love to hear a bit about your story of how you came to unschooling.

KENDEL: Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me be part of this conversation. It’s so good to chat with you all. And I just wanted to say how thankful I am for this podcast over the years. It’s been really instrumental in helping me find this path. And these are some of my favorite episodes, where you bring on a parent who shares their journey, because it’s just such a point of connection with people all around the world, when you’re taking this path less traveled, to feel that community behind you. So, I hope that something I share today helps someone along that path like I have from listening to so many episodes like this.

A little bit about my family and myself, like you said, I have two kids, I call them affectionately “my little critters.” My daughter just turned 11 at the end of January, which is hard to believe. And then my son will be nine at the end of February. So, it’s that transition in the winter time where they switch over to the new age.

My daughter is really into birding right now. She can always be found with her adventure pack with binoculars and a compass and bird guides, and she just loves getting out into nature and doing things like swimming and kayaking and fossil hunting. And definitely, we look for opportunities to go try to find migratory birds to support that interest of hers. So, last year we went and saw about 1600 to 1800 tundra swans at a migratory zone. We’re always looking for opportunities like that. Or when there’s bird-type activities going on, like at conservation areas, we can go and be part of that.

And then she and I have actually really been enjoying a YouTube show. It’s called Brit Hikes Ontario. And so, he’s a British man and his wife, and they have set a 300 bird challenge for the year. So, we love watching that together, because it’s quite local to our area, the places they go. So, it’s really helping us learn to identify less common birds and then to see what months they’re passing through our area. So, we’ve been enjoying that together.

And, yeah, she also is a little bookworm. My dad for Christmas made her a window seat bench and a new bookshelf. So, many hours this winter she’s been with a cup of tea sitting at the window with her book. So, that’s been so fun to watch. And she also recently started taking art lessons and has always loved painting and drawing, and she also started violin lessons recently. And that’s been so lovely to watch unfold. So, that’s been cool.

And my son, who’s soon to be nine, his biggest passion is collecting vintage toys. So, he has quite a massive collection of vintage Fisher-Price, the mid-seventies era style. And he also loves the vintage Wrinkles Puppy puppets. I don’t know if you remember those from maybe the eighties. He has quite a few of those as well as a few moose and elephant style of those puppets. And he loves learning the history of those companies and learning all the different parts of the collection. And the fun is in trying to complete the sets, right?

And he also recently really got into western Playmobil and does these quite extensive small world setups. And recently, he’s been taking videos of them and I’ve helped him edit them with some western music in the background and some interesting effects. He loves that. And so, he’s my thrifting and antiquing buddy, too, because that’s a passion of mine, but he loves to come along and search out all the good deals on his vintage toys.

And then he also loves visiting local pioneer villages and heritage sites. And I guess that goes in with this interest in the western Playmobil sets. He sees a lot of these and he loves to go to local museums and see those artifacts and things.

And we all enjoy nature together. I think he loves it from a critter perspective. So, chipmunks, raccoons, squirrels. He likes to bring peanuts along and hide them in various places for the critters.

And then he’s also really into video games, and so is my daughter. And we mostly play them on the computer. And I think he’s a Minecraft whiz and, of course, one of his favorite things on there is we have a texture pack that’s Old Western. So, he loves to bring that to life on there and so creative. And then he also has started sketching old western buildings and he’s getting quite a cool sketch style, his own unique style, so yeah.

And then my husband, I did check in with him and say, how many years have we been married? We’ve been married for 14 years coming up in August, and he’s a structural engineer and he specializes mostly in bridges and we love doing nature stuff as a family together, kayaking and biking and hiking and again, visiting these local sites and just finding interesting things to do in our area. And we love going to provincial parks together. And in his free time, he does weightlifting and then video games as well.

And something him and my son really connect on is playing video games. So, for instance, they have one right now, I think it’s called Railway Tycoon, which would typically be a bit tricky for my son’s skill level. It’s quite complicated, but my son loves interacting with Ben while Ben’s playing. So, that’s so cool to watch unfold with them together.

And then there’s a game one of the moms in the Network suggested. It’s called Ultimate Chicken Horse. And we play it together as a family. And it is very fun and it has created a lot of laughter and it’s animals trying to get through obstacles that you set up to try and get each other and you have to make it difficult. So, that’s been really cool.

And, as for myself, I like photography. I did photography as a career for a number of years as well, so weddings and families and babies and stuff. But now I just do it as a hobby. And I love gardening and mostly I like planting a cutting flower garden, because then I like to bring them in and arrange them and take photos of them. So, that’s combining both of those passions. And I love to decorate for the seasons. I also like to thrift and antique those things and upcycle them to be part of the seasonal decor.

I think what takes a lot of my time and is also a passion of mine is just being an unschooling parent and creating activities and seasonal, fun things for the kids to do and looking for opportunities. And I love to plan events for our local home educating community. So, that’s takes up a lot of my time. Tomorrow, we have a Valentine’s party planned. We do like an annual Halloween party or Not Back to School party and forest meetups and field trips. So, I like to take that role for our community and create opportunities and friendships for my kids through it and put a lot of effort into that.

Right now, we’re also doing a reading club where it’s all very independent, but then we’ll get together at the end of March for a big reading celebration at our local library party. So, I enjoy doing that kind of thing as well.

ANNA: It just sounds so fun and I’m really excited about the seventies. That’s my era of Fisher-Price, so I have some old things that he might like, oh my gosh. I love that.

KENDEL: When we’re on online communities for that, it’s him and an older generation. And they just love seeing him enjoying it and sharing it, because they love seeing it being enjoyed by the next generation.

PAM: Yeah. I think that that is one of the things I love about these conversations. I understand why you love these episodes talking with other unschooling parents about their journeys and experiences, because it’s just so fun and fascinating to hear the different interests, because certainly in your first year, or even just thinking of homeschooling, but even unschooling especially, it’s like, what are my kids going to do? If they’re not going to school, what’s going to keep them busy? So, it’s just a lovely little window into anything that might catch their interest and just to see them.

And the other thing that really shines through for me as you talk about their different interests is, oh my gosh, how much time they have, because they’re not going to school, that they can have this varied set of interests that can weave together day to day. So, yes, that was lots of fun to hear about. So, moving on to your journey to unschooling.

KENDEL: Yes. Sometimes when I’m telling people in person, I actually start with the fact that I have had a lot of personal experience in both homeschooling, private, and public education. And so, I was homeschooled myself until grade two. And then I went to a private school from grade two to six, and then I homeschooled again for seven and eight, and then I went to a public high school until grade 12 and then did my undergrad at university and then eventually finished with teacher’s college.

So, that really does feel like part of my story, because it gave me an early experience with home education myself. And so, certain things that can be some of those first, immediate worries or concerns for parents when choosing home education, I knew that it was such a good fit for me. And I didn’t have that concern about socialization, because I had seen so many opportunities throughout my childhood, the two times that I did home educate, that there was so much to be part of and lots of quality friendships to be part of. And it was kind of a quality over quantity type thing. And that suited me really well. So, that set my mind at ease.

And then sometimes over the years, I’ve had a few people say, oh, well you’re a trained teacher and so, that’s what qualifies you to feel like you can home educate your children. And I actually feel like there was experience in public high school myself, and then there was getting that peek behind the curtain through my teaching placement through teachers’ college that showed me that there wasn’t anything particularly unattainable or magical about what’s done there. And, in fact, it probably built my confidence more in the fact that, with one-on-one, what all of those kids could have benefited from was one-on-one time with a supportive, loving parent or adult. So, it just gave me more encouragement that it was more attainable and doable because of that.

I’m sure you’ve heard from quite a few teachers-turned-unschoolers that it creates more unlearning that you have to do, because what I was mostly trained in was class management or how to get content across to a large group of children who don’t want to listen to you and how to get them the best grades possible type of thing. So, I feel like right away I have let parents know that I think that has caused me more unlearning and more of that peak behind the curtain that it’s manageable.

And then also having had private school and public school, I saw that even the private sector couldn’t provide what you can provide for your own children, which is unconditional love and support as a basis. And then so much more time, like you were mentioning, for them to just explore and see their curiosity unfold. That was my personal experience that made me feel like I could say when my kids were babies, I think I’m going to try home educating.

I think when I first started, I had a very different mindset. I did more classical homeschooling growing up. It was very much, here’s your curriculum books. And I was like, I can get done by noon and then have the rest of the day free. And so, I very much thought that would be what I do with my children. And then I had thought, oh, we have so much time in the afternoons then for all of these extracurricular activities to enrich their learning. My daughter, being the oldest, really fit well into that classical homeschooling model. I feel like she actually felt like we were playing school when baby brother was napping. And so, that really solidified, okay, this is the path for us.

And then once my son came of age to start doing more formal learning, I realized very quickly that he was much more hands-on, curiosity-led, experience-based. And he’s always been a questioner. And not in a defiant way, but just all the why’s, right? Like, why, why, why, why? And so, when you respect your children and you actually hear and take in what they’re saying and you’re not thinking, it’s just disrespect and, “because I said so,” you’re like, well, that is a good question. Why do we have to?

So, I think he was very instrumental in leading me down a more unschooling path or seeking out that lifestyle. And watching my kids and witnessing how they were learning and what was engaging to them and when they retained information when it was more enjoyable or learned from their own interest, that’s what kept helping me build the trust in this ever-evolving path towards more informal, just learning from life together all the time, kind of way.

And I think early on, a word that really stood out to me was Julie Bogart’s word “enchanted,” because that sat well with me when my kids were in those younger years of just looking for ways to make our everyday cozy and inviting and about connection and relationship and magical. Really seeing how quickly it was going and being like, I want this to be happy and magical, not filled with frustration. So, that was really helpful. And then, because I got sent down that path with my son questioning things, whereas my daughter was like, “We can keep playing school as long as you want, Mom,” I would then dive more into books and podcasts related to life without school type of topics, which really set me more on this path.

I think I knew about the term unschooling much earlier, like almost right away. And it was, oh, that’s not me. I’m going to do homeschooling, because it’s so much more, not less. So, I had a very skewed idea, as many people do, of what it is. But then as I got more and more into finding out information and hearing from other parents’ experiences, I was like, oh, okay. That’s what we are doing. I thought it was this big, bad “un” term, with a negative connotation, and realized, okay, that’s actually more so aligned with what we’re doing.

And so, I think that what guides our days is, connection as the number one, the relationship, learning to drop expectations of outcomes. And you talk about that a lot, but that’s been really big for me coming from that very schoolish teacher mentality of, okay, well we’re gonna home educate, but the expectations are still really high. That’s my responsibility as a parent. But learning that they reveal so much more amazing stuff when I’m not trying to get the outcome to be a very specific thing and just then really looking for what lights up my kids’ curiosity and then coming in and supporting that.

And I think another big thing I slowly move towards is, there’s no beginning. We’re not 9:00 AM till noon learning time. It’s so much more about 365. Sometimes, my daughter and I are having the best, deep conversations 10 o’clock at night. There’s just no beginning and end to when learning time is. It’s more of just a lifestyle.

And I think another key thing that I’ve implemented more over this course of coming more away from the structured, classical homeschooling is just more autonomy of choice, so when things are coming from my children and from their interests, it’s so much more beneficial, as it is for us adults. When you’re not being forced to think something cool or, “isn’t this neat?” It’s their choice. And they can learn to make those choices while they have this supportive, loving environment, too, instead of figuring that out once they’re out from our home and starting to finally get to make choices on their own.

PAM: I love that so much. Thank you very much for sharing the various insights that helped you along the way. A lot of them are very similar to mine, because my kids were in school for a while. I didn’t even know that homeschooling was legal then. And we live in the same area.

But I think that’s so fascinating to see that, like you said, as a teacher, you probably had more things to release because you had a picture of what learning “should” in quotes look like.

And I loved your insight, and I think this is something that I share quite a bit, when somebody’s curious about what we do, it’s the difference between a class of 30 kids and a family of a handful of kids maybe. They’ll ask, how do you know they’re learning? You don’t do tests! All those questions, they’re just super curious about. But to recognize that, oh yeah. I see why you need a test in a classroom. But when you get so much time one-on-one with them, as you were saying, oh my gosh, their learning shines. And when you’re connected and engaging with them, you see it in action. That’s the proof. They’re using new words. They’re sharing new things that they’re excited about. “Oh, I discovered this. Oh, look at this bird. All those little pieces are just part of your days.

I think we learn to value those and to see those as the markers. If we’re needing to look for the markers of learning, those are them. Not a mark on a test or a worksheet completed, but they are at least equivalent, but yes, as you shared from your experience, just hanging out with your kids, it’s like, oh, this is just amazingly beautiful.

ERIKA: I love the idea of the one-on-one connection and hearing about your children’s interests. It just makes me think, okay, there’s no school in the world that is going to have birding for 11-year-olds and Playmobil history and Fisher-Price history and these things.

But when they’re picking their own interests, you can see how much learning happens. And when you’re not focused on, “These are the only things that matter,” the whole world opens up with things to learn about. And I just love the joy that comes from that kind of learning.

And you started to talk about it a little bit, that work of letting go of thinking that we can control the outcomes or thinking that we can direct what our kids should be doing and that’s our inner work to do as parents to let go of some of those beliefs. It’s a mindset shift.

And so, I was wondering if we could dive in a little bit more to all the gifts that come from doing that inner work of letting go of control.

KENDEL: Yeah, that’s definitely, I think, just my base personality outside of even being a parent or a home educating parent. I know you guys are big into some of the Myers-Briggs and things and it’s the need to know what the future holds and security are really big for my personality.

So, it’s definitely been my work, as you said, Erika, to learn to let that go. And as my kids are becoming more of this middle aged childhood age, I’m seeing things that maybe I read early on in certain books that helped me, but now I’m seeing them in practice.

A big book for me when the kids were young, that really helped me shift my perspective from feeling like the responsibility as a parent was to control and to guide a certain outcome was Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener and the Carpenter. If anyone hasn’t read it, briefly, it’s, we’re not carpenters as parents and our children are a block of wood that we can have perfectly fashioned into a certain outcome, but instead we can look at ourselves as gardeners who are creating the environment for our children to flourish and they are going to be a spectacular flower or plant that’s already who they are. And we can just give it its needs, the basic needs and enrichment for it to grow. And so, that was super helpful, especially if you’re an unschooling parent, the biggest part of my responsibility sometimes I feel is the environment that we’re creating.

So, I was very easily and quickly able to visualize that as the garden that I can enrich with fertilizer and shelter from the storms and all these things. And so, that really helped me. And it was more theoretical at that point in terms of, okay, that’s the direction I want to go in. But then, as my children are growing older and I’m seeing them prove all that to me, it’s really helpful and it’s coming more into reality now.

Another book that really helped me set aside that feeling of, it was almost like you’re a good parent if you do have that control and you are trying to get your children to certain things, I let that go more so, I was reading, I think this podcast introduced Roya Dedeaux to me and her book Connect With Courage. That was so big to me, because I had kind of let go of that idea of, it’s my job to mold them into something, the carpenter mentality.

But then that book was specifically about hobbies and interests, which I think is an area where I still felt that bit of control because I’m the parent who knows what the options are. So, I have to continually be suggesting them all. And when I could lean into and realize that there were so many more, like I would suggest things and they would be like, maybe, and not be met with that instant yes. Through reading her book, I let go of some control over all that and I really realized then that there were so many more one hundred percent yes right away that were just the everyday things.

From an outsider’s perspective, I felt a lot of external pressure just in conversation with extended family or friends when what they know is to ask, oh, are they in karate, swimming, dance? What are they in? You have all this extra time as a home educator. I almost think I felt pressure that those things validated what I was doing. I think I realized that those are just the things people know about and what we’re doing is so much less known in terms of these little things that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast that are so magical and create hours and hours of learning and fun and interest for the children.

I really started to realize that it was more, like you were saying, about me needing to have that response of, these are what my kids are involved in. If I could let go of that feeling of needing them to be in any of those things to validate what we were doing, I had more time to listen for those little clues, like my daughter would be saying, when can we bake biscuits again? Oh, well, we’re too busy doing all these other things, so we’ll get to that. And my son, when are we going to the forest next? Oh, well after this and this. And so, if you fill your weeks with too much busy work that the kids might be somewhat enjoying but aren’t helping them figure out who they are and really fulfilling them.

I learned to really validate and celebrate all these little things as if I was on some sort of mission to show people these are even more valid than one of the 20 things you can choose from for kids, because look at the excitement and joy my kids are experiencing doing these smaller things that might not seem as spectacular.

And then just watching them throughout that process is what’s important, because you can think a lot of things. You can read a book and think maybe, and then you’ve just got to wait and see it play out. So, it was me stepping aside and letting that happen.

I have an example of that, as I was working through this for myself and getting more confident with not having this list of things I could tell people when they were asking, but really focus in on what I was saying earlier and saying, oh, he’s really into collecting this set right now, and all these mini things. And when people see how much you value it, then I just had to be happy with that and they can take it or leave it.

But when I stopped offering all these options and gave more time, my daughter came to me and said, I really want to play violin. And I was like, oh. That’s out of the blue. Okay. And so, my dad played violin, so she was familiar with the instrument and had tried it with him a few times.

And I love this example, because what Connect with Courage really helped me with was that there’s no set outcomes and then they can quit. If you let it be theirs and they take the ownership of it, they don’t feel all that pressure from us. Because it’s one thing, okay. She chose it. That’s great. But I could also then come in and make that a very different experience.

So, one thing that came up was only a month and a half or so into her learning violin, she had just started playing with the bow and just got off of the finger plucking and her teacher said that there was recital coming up. And so, she knew that either way she could say yes or no to be part of it. She hadn’t even ever played a song before and I was really surprised when she did say yes. But I think it’s because if I look at my experiences, maybe with music lessons, I could definitely feel a, “You will be part of this. You will stick with it, because we’ve paid for it.” There was pressure. And because she knows it’s totally hers and there’s no pressure either way, she was excited to be part of it.

Her teacher in her art class as well as in her violin class remarks that they can see a huge difference because they know she wants to be there and that she’s choosing it. I don’t require her to practice or nag her to do so. And so, it’s just one of the first big things where I’ve seen all of the work I’ve been doing for myself playing out within them and seeing the theory come to life and it’s like, okay, it does work. I’m seeing that she’s self-driven in it and thoroughly enjoying it.

And so, now the work will be if at whatever time she wants to quit, I need to be like, that’s great. Because I’m also learning that a no is just as value valuable as a yes or a continuing because you learn about yourself and practice with that is so crucial, I think, as part of becoming an adult, knowing when something’s a good fit. And knowing that it’s not invalid because at some point you quit even if you had such great potential. So, that’ll be my next little bit of carrying through the theory is being comfortable with whatever choices they’re making for themselves.

ERIKA: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I loved all of that so much. I feel like there’s so many little parts to pull out. I love that you recognized your personality pieces with the tending toward control. I think that’s so important to realize, like, I’m going to need an outlet for myself in this area. And maybe I could start to control the environment instead of the people. I feel like that’s so huge.

And then just with the people around you wondering, putting that pressure on you of like, what are the activities the kids are doing? They don’t know to ask about birding and Fisher-Price. It doesn’t make any sense. They only know these typical things that the kids might be involved in.

And so, I love the idea of giving the kids space for things to bubble up for them. And then, the violin example is just so beautiful. It’s a surprise. It’s even something that some parents would push their children to do and she’s choosing to do it herself with that space so that you know it’s just something that she’s interested in. So, I thought all of that was so beautiful.

ANNA: Yeah, the thing I wanted to pull out, and we’ve talked about this before, but it’s that piece when we step back and stop with our agenda, which is so common, because we’re trying to do the best job, we’re trying to be the best parent, but then that’s actually when we learn about them. That’s when those things bubble up from them and we actually start to see, oh, there are enthusiastic yeses. They’re there. They just might not have been for the list of things I had in mind.

And so, I love that reminder that it’s not like we’re going to step away and it’s just going to stay here. Other things will bubble up, but it’ll be coming from them. So, I think that’s just really beautiful. And I think that piece that Erika pulled out, too, about the other people, I actually think and I bet it has been your experience, too, that when you’re sharing those things that they enjoy, actually people are interested in talking about that. They just didn’t know. They just thought, oh, you only can do karate or this or that, or whatever, the standard violin. But seeing the birding and the other things can just bring that excitement to the conversation that’s so much more real. And I think that connection is so much more real, too. So, I don’t know. I just felt like that was really beautiful.

KENDEL: I just see that it opens up in them, oh, here’s all the things about me. We don’t have to stay on the surface level, too. I feel like maybe childhood gets viewed more like a procedure, like you go to school, and then what are your extracurriculars?

Another thing that really helped build my confidence over the years was literally soccer. In Ontario, Pam, it’s just what kids do in the summer. And so, they’ll say, my kid hates it, but it’s what there is to do and it’s good for them to be active, whatever the response was. And we already paid for it, so we’re staying in it.

And when I could see that and then reflect on my own childhood experiences of that pressure to stay in things, or the questions of, what would I have been doing alternatively if I had more choice? Those all just really helped me get over the concern of what it looks like to others, because it looks great to have the soccer trophy photo at the end of the summer, but when you talk to that parent, they’re like, “We had to drag them there every weekend or every Saturday.” And so, I’m like, you know what? And then that’s kind of a modern thing too, is all of all of social media, right? Getting past what it looks like from one photo and really not letting that determine what you’re going to do with your own family.

And, like I was saying, it uncovers the authentic level of adults, too, when they realize, oh yes, those are all valid things. I’ll share little things that I’m up to.

PAM: I, too, have a third of a season of soccer experience! But the piece in that area that stood out for me, you mentioned, Kendel, when you’re in those conversations with someone and you are sharing your excitement. You are excited as you share or like, this is so cool, they’re so into this thing! That almost gives them permission to release their judgment, because they’ve either got typical questions, what grade are you in? We encountered people whose favorite question once they knew we were homeschooling was, “Do you like your teacher?” And the laughter, the, “Ha ha. I set them up.”

But, oh my gosh, when we just share that bigger picture that doesn’t look like school, but we are enthusiastic and excited about our kids’ engagement with whatever the thing is, so often, that lights them up and almost gives them permission to start thinking about and sharing. And we can ask, what do you love to do for fun? We can just share those bits and then turn it over to them. And so often, that would just leave them for a second to think like, oh, for fun. I have work and I have this. And sometimes even our extracurricular activities as adults feel more like work, because we’ve scheduled them in. I’ve got to go do X, Y, Z. Just that reminder that, oh yeah, I enjoy doing that actually just brings back a little more to it.

And there was one other thing that I, I wanted to bring out again. When you were talking about having the list of, of things, oh, we can do this and this, and then you your days are full with busyness with these activities and they mention something that they’re interested in and then it takes a while for that to maybe bubble up. It took some time.

And you were talking about just freeing up the time to let that bubble up and become more of a priority, versus whatever list we have in our head that we think they would enjoy, et cetera. But how giving them the space to think about it and choose things that they’re interested in, but then to be able to engage in them soon, they learn so much more about themselves that way. Because this is something that’s catching their attention. And then when they can engage with it, they learn. Do I like the thing? Do I want to engage for a bit and quit? And the level of detail. How do I like to engage with this thing? Oh, we’ll try it this way. I’ll play violin with my grandfather for a while and that’s really cool. I’d like to dive into this a little bit more.

What we’re allowing with that space is for them to discover themselves, back to your gardener metaphor. We’re nurturing and helping them become the plants that they want to be. But unless they’re following the things that they’re interested in and exploring them the way they would like to explore it, and then taking what happens and deciding the next thing that they want to do with it or however, it’s hard for them to figure out who they want to be.

We have all these ideas and we can bombard them and let’s try this out, let’s try this out, let’s try this out. But when you give the space for it to bubble up within themselves, I just feel it’s so much richer and it’s just so much more fun to hang around with them when they’re doing stuff that they’re super into doing.

KENDEL: And I can see with the violin, even, if she finds a style she likes and her instructor’s amazing, but you don’t need to feel concreted into, well, you’ve said you wanted to. Even in terms of, if that no longer becomes a good fit, and she’s like, I know the basics now, I want to take it on my own.

Because part of part of my coming to all this was asking actual adults, too, what did you do as a kid? Did you want to? Do you resent it? What I found out was, of course, anything that they felt forced to do, even if their parents had good intention, it doesn’t stick with them through adulthood.

And it was the things that they really pushed for on their own once they finally felt of sense of autonomy that still has impacted their life or they still incorporated in their life in some way. And so, yeah, not getting stuck in anything, too. Oh, if that instructor’s not a good fit, let’s find a mentor or someone for you to play with. Or, oh, you enjoy playing as a group. Let’s find some other kids. Whatever it may be, letting them really know that they have choice in what it turns into as well, because then it’s going to be so much more rich and beautiful than we could plan for.

ANNA: Yeah, so much. And the piece that you said about that it may end and we don’t know what she’s getting out of it and what she’s going to take into the next thing, and so, just not having an energy around that, I think is really important.

ERIKA: I just loved it. I was just like, yes!

ANNA: Yes. We love it. Oh my goodness.

KENDEL: We’re focused on the violin, but what it’s bringing up, the first point that Pam was talking about, it brought up to me that I’m really being intentional about how when I am sharing about what both of them are doing, you were talking about the excitement you can get, and I’m making sure that I’m not verbally, or body language-wise, insinuating that because she’s taking a formal extracurricular activity with an instructor at the home, that that’s no more valid.

And so, I’m purposely being careful to make all of the experiences equally as important. And that’s more new for me, because I’m a big people pleaser, so it was giving people what they wanted to hear, or if it’s conventionally “Violin?! Wow, that’s amazing. Tell me all about it,” equally bragging up whatever small world my son created that week, or whatever he was doing, so it’s not seeing anything as on this hierarchy as well, because it’s about, like you were saying, Pam, the passion behind it, the interest, and you’ve all been saying what they’re getting out of it. That’s what’s important no matter what the activity is.

PAM: I think that is something that I found so interesting, because, even for interests that look conventional to people and that they can think, oh yes, that’s a thing. Like music lessons. So often, unschooled kids are coming at it with such a different perspective and energy, because they have agency in it. They’re not being told, “Yes, this is good for you. We really think you’ll enjoy it. You should have fun, you should practice,” with some future outcome in mind. Versus an unschooled kid who’s like, “Oh. That looks really interesting. I want to try it out.”

And like you were saying, even in her art class or her violin, the teachers, and that is a comment that I think we’ve all heard over the years when our kids engage in something in a more conventional setting, the teachers or instructors are just like, wow. It’s such a different energy. It’s such a different energy they’re showing up with. They are actually curious about learning the thing versus putting in the time because their parents brought them here and they need to stay. It’s just night and day.

When I think back on sharing that, that was such a beautiful point, Kendel, not to be more effusive about things that look more conventional, the people-pleasing aspect. It was good for me to remind myself that for the most part, number one, if I’m just meeting them and I’m never going to meet them again, whatever. But if it’s somebody who’s a little bit more part of our lives, then over time, they will see that there are various things that our kids are interested in and that we are just as excited about all the different things rather than the one that looks a little bit more conventional. And then they’re like, “Oh, she’s going to be a violinist in an orchestra,” kind of comments. It’s like, oh, maybe. We’ll see. I didn’t even think about that!

ANNA: All of the predictions.

PAM: But yeah, that “over time” piece I found just to be so helpful so that I could just ground in how we are now and what we’re doing now. And then next time it’ll be something different, et cetera.

And then I can just imagine that they’re building their picture of what our lives look like, because I can’t explain what our lives look like in one little conversation. So, it’s fun just to think of it as planting the seeds as we go.

ANNA: Yeah. I love that. One of the things I wanted to talk about, because I know that it’s something that you love, Kendel, is just cherishing the glimmers. And I love that, too. But I thought maybe you could tell us a little bit about what that looks like for you in your life and how it impacts your energy and connections, because I’m all about that. How do we keep that energy of connection? Because I think our kids really feed off of that, as well.

KENDEL: Yeah, the term glimmers, I think I came across it over the pandemic, probably on TikTok or Instagram. The basic idea is that it’s the opposite of triggers. And I think it gave an immediate word to something I was already doing as more of a gratitude practice of just finding those little tiny treasures among the mundane. Life can sometimes feel mundane. The chores, whatever, whatever. If we can find those little pockets of glimmers, it really helps build gratitude and contentment and peace.

And one way I love doing it, personally, I know, Anna, you are a photographer as well, and you have a really awesome camera. I don’t know what lenses you have, but birds and the moon and it’s just amazing. But I love to, say we’re walking down a path that’s seemingly all the same long grass on both sides of the path, I’ll be on a treasure hunt for that little purple thistle and that cool old fence post or whatever, and I’ll actually photograph it as a kind of gratitude practice.

And so, that’s a nice visual of like, it’s just a field of grass, but what little treasures, what little glimmers are lying in there? And so, I apply that just to everyday life, to build in gratitude and to be more in the moment. I can definitely always be far into the future in my head and it helps me ground back into the moment and really be thankful.

And another thing that recently I came across on, I think it was Wonder-Led Life’s Instagram feed. It was a quote that is, “It’s often more about what we aren’t doing than what we are doing.” And that was very similar to me. Again, it, like glimmers, gave a word to something that was meaningful to me in a way I go about life. So, that quote, it gave words to what I had been feeling lately, which was often reflecting on how our lives are quite different than the status quo of our culture. I would often be like, what would we be doing right now if we lived a more conventional life?

And realizing that by applying that, it’s often more about what we aren’t doing than what we are doing at different times throughout my days and weeks, it really focused me in on the moment and like, yes, we are doing this and this and this right now, but alternatively, we could be doing this. I found that really helpful. And I don’t know, it’s not groundbreaking, but for any parents out there, if they just implement that quote or that way of thinking for the various moments throughout their week, it really does build gratitude for all of the amazing things that this lifestyle can be.

So, whether it’s our slow morning routine together, instead of, well, what are we doing? Instead of focusing on that, you can think about, well, we’re not rushing, we’re not stressed, we’re not begging not to go somewhere or dragging the kids out of bed. So, it’s more about what we aren’t doing in that moment than technically what we are doing. And I think that you can really turn that on the flip side as well, and a lot of times we can compare our children to school children, our nieces and nephews or extended family and friends, and you have to realize that it’s often more about what they aren’t doing than what they are doing as well in the public school system or whatever.

What is lacking, even though, oh, wow, they’re reading really well or they’re getting that grade or whatever, that’s what they are doing, but that’s not meaning that there’s not this whole huge body of things that they don’t know and they’re missing out on or aren’t experiencing.

And so, in our home educating group in our local area, there’s quite a few people that come to home educating from school for various reasons. And so, when they start to feel that, am I enough? Am I doing good enough for my child? I’m comparing them to the kids that stayed in school that they’re still friends with, but I remind them there’s this whole mountain of things that they aren’t getting or that you’re able to provide them, social and emotional safety and mental health and all of these things that are so much more important than the academics. And it’ll all fall in line once all those things are taken care of.

So, that statement and the glimmers are looking for those little pockets of joy that bring you into the moment and the gratitude that comes from that. Thinking of all of the things that people just don’t even maybe know about that you get to experience day to day, which is so special.

ANNA: I love that piece, because I think for me, it’s the same. It’s, what are those things that bring me into the moment? And you’re right, photography is something I love and it is that. I feel like I notice things, because I’m thinking. And I just started recently painting more, and so I’m like, it’s the same thing. I look and I’m like, oh, I see the textures of that. And with the kids, it’s just noticing the little thing that lights them up or just the small, even mundane pieces of the day. I don’t know. When you bring that gratitude with it and noticing those little pieces, I just found it brought so much joy and connection, because I feel like everybody feels more seen in that way when we can notice those little things about the people in our life.

ERIKA: I think it’s that reminder to get out of the thinking brain more. It’s just so easy. We have so many things potentially to be thinking about and worrying about and all the things when we have children and when we’re thinking about learning and all of these things, and so, I just love glimmers as that reminder. The intention to be looking for glimmers through the day is just that reminder to get back out of my thinking brain into the moment, looking for things that just bring you some feeling of connection and joy. It feels really good.

PAM: I was just going to say it helped me feel grounded, like when you were talking about it, that really, it re-grounds me in the fact that everything is a choice. It reminds us that when we’re doing the things we’re doing, even if it feels routine, even if it feels mundane, to remember that this is a choice.

Just seeing the little things, noticing those, it’s like, oh yes, look, I can just celebrate again that we are choosing to do this versus the other things.

Because you can get like, “This is our day, this is what we do. We do this every morning,” and you can forget to celebrate that piece that, these are all the things that we’re not doing, because this is why. It grounds you back into your why, why we want to be here, why we’re making these choices. So, yeah, it’s such a fun practice, I think.

KENDEL: Yeah, I was just going to say, giving that word to it. I love what Erika said, it brings you out of your thinking mind, because I can get real stuck in there, and into the moment. But I also think it just translated throughout my life as a framework.

Because it’ll be, for instance, friendships and connections. I think thinking in that way has given me more guilt about being very intentional with what we do choose to do and with our limited amount of time for social time. You’re looking almost for people as they’re a glimmer in my life. Where am I going to cash in my limited amount of time in this world?

And you’re wanting it to be something that’s going to leave you energized and not depleted. So, it definitely just has been a framework of, I think, because my personality is the people pleaser, it helped me be like, it’s an active thing. Instead of feeling guilt and shame for being picky and choosy about, and intentional about your life, that is actively choosing something for our well-being, for our happiness, as opposed to feeling like it’s something you should be ashamed of doing because you just notice that you want to be filling your life with as much joy and happiness as possible in your limited amount of time. And so, you’re not settling for things. I think it’s really been a whole framework shift for me, if that makes sense.

PAM: Oh, thank you so much for joining us, Kendel. It was such a pleasure to speak with you. I’m really excited to share this with our listeners. And thank you, listeners, for joining us as well.

We hope you enjoyed our conversation and maybe even picked up a nugget or two of connection or insight that you can use on your own unschooling journey.

And if you would like to have more conversations like this more often, we invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network. It is such a supportive community. It’s full of conversations like this, all about the things big and small that we encounter in our unschooling lives. And you won’t have to preface every comment or question with, “I enjoy spending time with my kids.” So, learn more and join us at living joyfully.ca/network. We wish everyone a lovely week and look forward to welcoming you into the Network! Bye, everyone!

ANNA, ERIKA, AND KENDEL: Bye!

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Sue Patterson joins me this week to dive into listener questions! And I’m sure it’ll surprise nobody that our conversation went long, so I’ve split it into two episodes—three questions each.

A quick reminder, these Q&A conversations aren’t about giving anyone a “right” answer. We can’t know that because we don’t intimately know the real people involved. And there probably isn’t just one “right”? answer anyway—we can get where we’d like to go through many different paths. Rather, our conversations are about contemplating the situation from the different perspectives of those involved, through the lens of our unschooling experience. It’s kinda like tilling the soil around the question with an eye to helping not only the questioner, but anyone listening find a connection to their lives, or help them better understand how unschooling works.?

So, whether the situation applies to you directly or not, I encourage you to listen with an open and curious mind. Let it all bubble away for a while—the questions asked, our thoughts, your thoughts—and see what connections and insights might spark for you.

Question Summaries

Since we live in a location that requires reporting, how can I keep track of academic requirements without it affecting our unschooling?

I’m uncomfortable with my children having unlimited screen time. What should I do if I’m not comfortable with the idea of being a “radical” unschooler?

I have a lot of fear about online safety and tend to want to control my kids to protect them. How can I create a more positive, supportive environment for them to explore while I work on my fears?

Things mentioned in the episode

Sue is the founder of Unschooling Mom2Mom, check out her website, her new podcast, and her course for new unschoolers

Two of Sue’s children have been on the podcast, Katie Patterson and Alyssa Patterson

The Facebook group, What my unschooler is learning when …

Evernote, note-capturing software

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

Pam’s article, Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Video Games

When Your Kids Push Your Buttons by Bonnie Harris

EU275: Stories with Anna Brown, last week’s podcast episode

Economics of TV Watching in Children by Pam Sorooshian

EU240: Kids Are Capable with Anna Brown podcast episode

Sex Positive Families

Transcript

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Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Stories. Diving into this theme has been fascinating because there are so many ways in which we tell stories as humans, with really far-reaching impacts. We talk about the stories we tell ourselves and our families in our daily lives, the stories we share about our family with others, and the stories we create in our minds about what other people are thinking and feeling.

It is so empowering to realize that we can choose the stories we tell. Being intentional about the way we think and talk about our lives is a form of self care, and it can help our children grow up without the weight of past stories, like those that have been handed to us.

Discussion areas

• I love this quote from The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall: “Story is for a human as water is for a fish—all-encompassing and not quite palpable.” Humans are storytelling animals, it’s how we make sense of our world, and realizing that everything is a story can be a life-changing paradigm shift.
• Looking at the stories we tell ourselves, they become our self-talk, our inner voice.
• Looking at the stories we tell others, it can get complicated because as we get further along on our unschooling journey, familiar words have a new richness to them.
• Looking at the stories we assign to other people, often we tend to assume the worst.
• Looking at the stories we tell ourselves about our family, take care with expectations and roles.
• We get to choose the stories we tell, so let’s choose those that make sense and feel better to us.

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network here

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide by Pam Laricchia

Transcript

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Video

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, I’ve put together a solo episode. This episode is geared to parents who are newer to unschooling, navigating the paradigm shifts that come with questioning so much of the conventional wisdom around learning and parenting that we absorbed growing up.

Spoiler alert: there are no unschooling “rules.”

But I think more experienced unschooling parents may also appreciate the reminder. As I dug into writing this episode, peeling back more layers for myself, I was surprised to discover how the idea of “rules versus principles” can be applied to so many of the shifts we make on the unschooling journey!

I also talk about some things we can do to explore and expand our comfort zones. Because as we let go of our need for rules and control, it can sometimes feel very uncomfortable.

Things mentioned in the episode

Podcast episode, Growing Up Unschooling with Michael Laricchia

To explore further, check out the compilation episodes Stretching Our Comfort Zones and From Control to Conneciton

Transcript

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Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

{ Photo Credit: Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay }

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The Beck family of five—Angie, Darren, Josh, Rylie, and Ellie—are back to continue our conversation about their unschooling journey. We had so much fun chatting and sharing stories that our conversation flowed for about two hours, so I split it across two episodes. Check out part one here!

This week, we talk about each of the children’s unique paths through childhood to their current interests and activities. As Ellie mentions, their interests and personalities are so different, and it’s fun to see how the family was able to meet their needs and support each child’s path by working together as a team. We also discuss some of the challenges they all faced over the years and some of the surprises they encountered along the way. Their reflections are so fascinating and inspiring!

Questions for the Beck family

Each of the kids has chosen a very different path after they got their free love tarot reading online. I’d love to hear more about how that has unfolded, from everyone’s perspective!

Can you share a story or two about challenges you guys have worked through over the years? It’s such a different process when everyone’s working together, isn’t it?

Looking back now, what has surprised you most about having embraced unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

Part one of the conversation with the Beck family

Not Back to School Camp

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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The Beck family of five—Angie, Darren, Josh, Rylie, and Ellie—joins me this week for a wonderful conversation about their unschooling journey. As you can imagine, the six of us had so much fun chatting and sharing stories that our conversation flowed for about two hours, so I’ve split it across two episodes.

In part 1 this week, we dive into how Angie discovered unschooling, their experience with an amazing local homeschooling group, and the fun they had connecting with mentors in their community to dive deep into the kids’ interests. And Josh, Rylie, and Ellie share what they value most about their unschooling lives, including the freedom to really focus on their passions and the self-awareness that comes from being able to make important choices from a young age.

It is so fun to hear from the whole family, each with their own unique experiences and perspectives!

Check out part 2 of their story here.

Questions for the Beck family

A short around-the-room intro! Who’s who? What are you up to right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like? 

Diving into unschooling from the kids’ perspectives, what stands out for you as one of the most valuable aspects of growing up unschooling? 

Things mentioned in the episode

LEARN homeschool community in Kansas City

The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith

Roya Dedeaux’s new book, Connect with Courage: practical ways to release fear and find joy in the places your children take you

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Supporting Our Partners. We chose the word “partners” to represent any important adults in our family’s lives who have active relationships with our children—spouses, co-parents, significant others, grandparents, and so on. Our partners are an important part of our unschooling lives and taking the time to focus on and nurture those relationships benefits the whole family.

It was fun to see that so many of the tools and ideas we talk about are the same ones we have used to strengthen our relationships with our children. We can connect with our partner through their interests, intentionally seeing who they are as a person outside of their family “role.” We talk about developing trust in them and nurturing their trust in us, which in turn helps them build strong relationships with the kids and feel like a valuable part of the family. The ripples that emerge from supporting our partners bring even more joy to our family’s days!

Discussion areas

• The first step in supporting our partner is strengthening our connection with them. We want them to feel truly seen and heard by us. Let’s talk about some tools for doing that.
• Ways we approach challenging moments or conversations that keep our connection at the forefront.
• As our connection with our partner strengthens, we can take the next step: extending trust.
• Ways we can support our partner as they develop their own relationships with the kids.
• Ways we can support our partner as they learn more about unschooling.

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

The 5 Love Languages

The Not Back to School episode of the podcast

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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This week, we’re diving into a question that comes up pretty regularly, not just from people new to unschooling but also from extended family and friends when they see our parenting choices in action: Won’t unschooling spoil a child?

We look at four examples of parenting behaviours or actions, the typical conventional and unschooling motivations behind them, and what the child is likely learning along the way:

1. giving our children material things
2. doing what our children want
3. not punishing “negative” behaviours
4. responding quickly to our children’s distress

Audio clips taken from these episodes, in order …

EU021: Q&A Round Table

EU094: A Muddy Life with Ellen Rowland

EU089: Ten Questions with Jan Hunt

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Karen Matthews joins me this week! Karen and her grown son, Tyler, own a furniture and wood craft business together. We talk about how their unschooling journey began and how following Tyler’s interests has not only been a rewarding path for him, but also for her. Karen shares some of the big a-ha moments she had and paradigm shifts she made through the years. We also talk about questioning our cultural views around productivity and expectations. Karen’s focus on following her son’s joy and cultivating his passions has led them to the connected relationship and wonderful life they enjoy now. It’s so inspiring!

Questions for Karen

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

One of the pieces of advice you received early on was to deeply value your child’s interests—no matter what. Can you share how that played out for you?

One of my most valuable unschooling paradigm shifts was around the importance of down time. Conventional society is apt to call this laziness, but it really isn’t, is it?

Tyler unschooled through the high school years. I’d love to hear more about what that looked like for you guys!

Looking back, what, for you, has been the most valuable outcome from choosing unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

Karen and Tyler’s business, Sawdust and Sage

Sawdust and Sage Facebook page

Karen was inspired by homeschooling speaker Cindy Gaddis, who was on the podcast in episode 40, Paradigm Shifts with Cindy Gaddis

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Siblings Laura and Allen Ellis join me this week to talk about growing up unschooling. They share how their childhood interests and experiences connect to the work that they currently do and some of the realizations they made along the way. We talk about the role their mother played in supporting their interests and providing opportunities that fit their goals without controlling or adding weighty expectations. Laura and Allen also describe the benefits they see in retrospect of living an unschooling life as they were growing up. It’s wonderful to hear their perspective and to see how their two different journeys have unfolded so far!

Questions for Laura and Allen

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?

What did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

What were some of your interests and passions growing up and how did you pursue them?

Let’s shift to your young adult years. What choices did you make and how did they unfold for you?

At this point, you’ve each ended up starting your own multi-passionate companies. What does that look like and how do you see your unschooling background continuing to weave into your lives?

What do you each appreciate most about growing up unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

Their website, Why Unschool?

Laura’s business Bridges Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine website

Allen’s business website

Transcript

Read the transcript

Video

Watch the YouTube video

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika explore the sibling dynamic and some of the questions that come up when unschooling families navigate sibling relationships. We talk about letting go of expectations, watching out for casting our children in roles, understanding our own triggers, and how “fair” doesn’t mean “equal.”

We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us.

Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more!

Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

ERIKA: Hello, everyone! I’m Erika Ellis from Living Joyfully, and we are so glad you have joined us for this episode of the Exploring Unschooling podcast. I’m joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Anna Brown. Welcome to you both!

ANNA AND PAM: Hello!

ERIKA: Hi! So, on today’s episode, we are diving into a really popular topic, and that is siblings. So many of the questions we receive on the podcast are about sibling relationships, and it’s also a huge topic of discussion on the Living Joyfully Network.

On the Network, members can share specific challenges they’re facing and it just opens up these amazing discussions since our community has such a wide variety of experiences. I know I always take something away from our conversations that helps me see things in my own life with my family in a new way. And everyone on the Network is really being intentional and open and curious, and that just creates such a great atmosphere for learning and growing as a parent and as a human.

And so, if you’d like to learn more about the Network and check it out for yourself, visit livingjoyfully.ca/network, because we would love to meet you.

And now onto our discussion for today, Siblings. Do you want to get us started, Pam?

PAM: Absolutely. I would love to get us started. And, knowing me, I think it can be so helpful to start with exploring our expectations, because there are so many conventional messages around siblings that we need to explore so that we can let them go.

We can’t skip this stage by saying to ourselves, “I release my expectations. I know I shouldn’t have them,” because trying to bury them that way won’t last long. They will bubble up in our energy. They will bubble up in our word choice. Even if we don’t consciously recognize that we’re bringing them in, they will bubble up, because they are part of our essence right now.

So, we need to do the work to discover the expectations that we personally hold and dig into them to understand where they come from, explore the implicit messages for our kids that we are subtly communicating, and just see if they actually make sense for us.

So, for example, I think an expectation that a lot of us hold, certainly when we first have kids, is that our kids will be the best of friends. Of course, our family will get along! Of course, the kids will be nice to one another and play together and help each other out! When they grow up, they will be the best of friends. Even if we didn’t get along with our siblings, we envision it’ll be different this time. It’ll be better for our kids. I think that’s a great one to pull apart a bit and just ask ourselves some questions. Why do we think that? Do we think that the shared genetics means that they’ll naturally get along? Or is it the close proximity? They live in the same house. They know each other so well. Of course they’ll develop deep and meaningful connections that will last them a lifetime.

Does telling them, “Be nice to one another! You’re siblings!” work? So, I think it starts to seem a little bit unrealistic when we peel back the layers around the connection between being siblings and being friends, because those are actually very different things, and so much so because people are different.

That genetic connection really isn’t going to take you far, I don’t think. People are incredibly and beautifully so different, aren’t they?

ANNA: Oh my gosh. This one’s a big one for me, just for my personal journey. I have two girls, now adults, but they are pretty close in age, like less than two years. And I would say, early on, they really were the best of friends and always playing together and it had this idealistic feel, with its own bumps along the way. And then when they got to the preteen, early teen years, I saw this need for them to define themselves separately.

They’re very different, like you said. I mean, could not be more different in every way. And at that stage it just really highlighted that. They wanted people that were more in line with different aspects of themselves. There were even times where it wasn’t like fighting necessarily, but there was a little bit of that, but it was more just this distance, and so I really had to do work, and it kind of hit me by surprise, to just really let that go. They may never be friends. They may not hang out together when they’re older like that. May not ever happen. And it was only then through that releasing that I was able to actually see them and facilitate what they needed at that time.

And they have a fine relationship now. They’re not the best of friends, but we enjoy being together as a family, all of those pieces. But I know that had I really harped on that and stayed there, I think it would’ve gotten really ugly. And so, I think just watching for when these things bubble up, like you said, there’s all these external messages and they can hit us at odd and different times and understanding that we’re all different and move through things differently is just so, so important.

ERIKA: Yeah. I feel like I benefited from your learning about this, because on the Network, I was able to hear a lot about the different phases that kids go through. And so, I definitely have noticed myself clinging to those times when they are playing so well together and making each other laugh so hard. And those moments just feel so great. And so, I had some fear, as they’re getting older, like, what if they stopped doing that? How’s that going to feel for me? I was afraid of that ending.

But I feel like it’s been less scary than I was anticipating, just because I’m so actively observing who they are every step of the way. And so, the decisions that they’re making now and the choices that they make and the way they’re relating to each other now just kind of make sense to me. I see who they are and I’m not putting my wishes or expectations or this fantasy life that I could imagine ahead of who they really are in reality, in this moment, as they’re growing.

And so, I think that’ll really help as they continue to grow and as their relationship continues to change over the next years. And so, that was one part.

But I think that’s not the only expectation even that we have potentially about siblings is that they’ll be friends. It’s like, the big brother who will be the protector or there’s all these different potential things that we’ve learned about as we are growing up and what we experienced maybe with our own siblings, like, what are the dynamics? What is the older sibling supposed to be like? And what’s the little baby sibling supposed to be like?

And so, just recognizing that so many of those things are just stories and cultural ideas that don’t really have anything to do with these actual different people who are right here showing us who they are.

ANNA: And that leads to one that I want to talk about that’s related and a little bit different and that is the roles that we tend to cast people in. And our brain can just do that for a lot of different reasons that we don’t even have to go into. But it is something to watch for, because it’s like that. The big brother’s going to be this. That’s one aspect of roles, but another one is these assumptions that we make about a person. “You’re the shy one. You’re the sporty one. You’re this one.” That really pits siblings against each other, because neither is feeling heard or none are feeling heard. None are feeling seen for who they truly are. And so, that piece you were talking about, Erika, where you see them, you know them, you celebrate who they are uniquely, that is actually what creates a family that feels good, because we’re all feeling heard and seen individually, without these expectations of, we are one way, we are another way.

I read the book Siblings Without Rivalry when my girls were very young, like infant and two, because I was going to get ahead of it, right? My partner, his relationship with his brother is terrible. And so, actually, I found the book interesting, because I could see his life playing out in that book. How the roles were cast, how it was created that they would hate each other. And ultimately, they’ve found their peace to some extent as they’ve gotten older. But it’s like, oh! It was not mal-intent at all, but it’s just not giving intentionality to, how am I showing up? Am I really tuning into who this unique person is in front of me?

PAM: I love that. So, it’s something that we’ve talked about, looking at your child as an individual. What do they like? Who are they? How do they move through the world? And how deep that is. That is so important in this topic, too, in sibling relationships, to be able to see them as an individual versus a role. Because yes, that role, then it’s like, does one parent prefer the sporty one? So, now we are going to have this closer relationship. Oh, we’re introverts. We’ll stay in and sit in a room, whatever, so it just messes with all the relationships. It messes with the sibling relationships. It can mess with parent-child relationships, which then affects the sibling relationships, because then it becomes competitive.

When we start bringing roles in, we are not looking at the individual. It’s like, okay, we understand them. We’ve now got this definition for them that we can use in substitute, because it’s faster to think about sporty person than it is, this is my child that loves hockey or loves football and loves this part of it and wants to play it all the time. The individual nuances of sport are just so valuable in having a relationship with that person, in connecting with that person, and in supporting that person in the pieces that they enjoy.

And if we cast them so much in that role, we don’t think about them in the bigger picture. They may want to grow beyond it. It really makes it so hard for us to connect with the people in our family. And one thing that I love, and I guess we can link to it in the show notes, is the whole idea of a family of individuals. That idea hit me because I did a lot of processing around this, and the idea of our family as a family of individuals versus language that talks about, we are a family that does this or we are a family that does that. Not only casting the people into their own individual roles, we’re casting the family into a role that, we always get along with each other. We always do this or we are a sporty family and that poor one child that really is not interested just gets dragged along to all these events.

But that’s the great thing. Think about it through your family’s lens, the individuals that are in your family.

And for me, the a-ha moment that came out of that was recognizing that at first I was thinking about the idea of fairness. At holiday time or birthdays, they all get this number of gifts. Or if we go out, they all get this kind of thing. I spend the same amount when we travel here or we do this thing. So, when I started digging into that, it’s like, oh, they are such different people. If one of my kids wanted a baseball glove or something that supported their sport love, and then I was like, oh, I want to be fair. I don’t want them fighting over the thing. I give everybody a baseball glove, as an example, you can quickly see. The other child sticks that in the closet and it never comes out again.

So, for me, taking that idea of fair and alongside the idea that people are different, I started to realize that the question for me was more the idea of feeling equally loved. What would that look like for each child? Because when you start thinking of it through that lens, it would look very different for each child. So, in some seasons, one child will need more of your attention to actively process through a challenge that they’re going through maybe, and another child who’s loving that sport needs more of the family budget right now, because they’re traveling for games and stuff like that. And maybe another just needs more of your presence right now, because they’re embracing a cocooning season and just knowing that you’re there for them just helps them feel good.

And you can see how, in that situation, they would all feel equally loved. But how you are with them looks very, very different. And it’s that equally loved piece that helps keep that competition out of the sibling relationships. It helps them recognize that, oh, we all have value, we’re all loved, and we’re very different people, and it looks very different for each of us. So, there is just such depth to talking about sibling relationships, isn’t there?

ANNA: And we get there by seeing them as unique people and not the roles. That’s the work of how to get to that place of, what does that even feel like?

ERIKA: Right, because fair doesn’t really even make sense once you start to think that people are different. It’s not even a thing anymore.

And I feel like what’s interesting about the fairness part is it’s coming from the place of the parent showing love. That is the point of it. Like, I want to be doing a very good job as a parent, so I want to make sure that everything is fair.

And so, I grew up that way. And I made a really intentional choice to not ever bring any fairness language into my interactions with my own kids as they were growing up. And I really do think it made a big difference in their relationship. And I’m sure it’s personality-based, too. But I grew up with a lot of messages about making sure everything was equal and fair, and I see it with my mom when she interacts with my kids, like, “I can play with you for 10 minutes and then I’m going to go play with your sister for 10 minutes,” and she’ll do that without even really realizing what she’s doing, because it’s overwhelming to have both kids coming at her and she wants to make sure that they’re both getting their time. It’s coming from a place of caring about them and wanting to do a good job.

And yet then I see how, if that’s the way it is, over and over, it starts to be like, but it’s my turn. And that’s not fair. She got more minutes. And so, we just haven’t had that type of discussion with our kids. They don’t really do that. “But it’s not fair,” is not really something that we hear.

And so, I don’t think my natural state from birth would be to be competitive. I feel like I’ve always been super aware and concerned about other people’s feelings and would have wanted more of that type of relationship with my siblings, where I would’ve wanted them to get what they needed and celebrating people, all of our family, as different individuals and wanting to support each other in getting what we all needed.

But instead, it did turn more into, but now she got that, what do I get? Really making sure that we’re competing. And so, I don’t know. It does feel like something that’s learned, that fair means equal thing.

PAM: Yeah, I think they don’t think children are capable of supporting each other, of taking other people’s, their siblings’, needs into account. I think they do learn to compare and that is what unlikely through our language and through our loving wish, that we treat them all equal so that they all feel equally loved. But it’s not a comparison thing. It’s not a tit for tat thing.

It really is supporting them as the individual. Like your example, Erika, is just brilliant. Ten minutes each child, because, what if one child just wanted to show her something that would take three minutes and the other one wants to get into a deep discussion that would take 15? You’ve got practically 20 minutes each way, but you’ve left one kid who showed them for two minutes and then is bored trying to keep them occupied for the next seven minutes of the 10 minutes, and then the other one feels like, oh, I didn’t get enough time, but I wanted to show you a little bit more. So, they’re both left feeling like the connection wasn’t what they were looking for just because it was equally divided. It’s fascinating.

ANNA: It really is. And I do want to say, this is going to be a little bit of a counterpoint, but because I’m thinking of my own two girls very close in age, and I’m thinking of a friend with three girls very close in age, sometimes it did mean we needed two Switches or we needed three things, and it wasn’t so much about fair is equal.

It’s more like, but wait a minute! I want to play the new thing, too! And so, I had to let go of this idea or maybe this is another expectation, that siblings are going to share. Because no, not always. Sometimes we need two things and we need three things, because we’re all wanting to engage with whatever that thing is. So, this isn’t about these perfect children that are sitting there, but there is a mindset piece to it. So, I just wanted to throw that in there.

ERIKA: Right and if they have more of an experience of like, our needs are going to get met and what I care about is important, then they’re much more likely to be expressing what they want as what they actually want. And so, if Oliver says, “Why did Maya get that? I want that,” I believe him. It’s not about competing with her. It’s like, “I also want that.” And then that totally makes sense.

PAM: Yeah. Completely. Because it’s them being themselves and wanting to engage in the things that they’re interested in.

So, yeah, if somebody got one thing, that’s the difference. If you think about a family where fair is being determined as equal, they see somebody getting something else that’s popular, it’s like, I need to have that, too, so that you’re being fair. So, it’s a power thing. And they need it. And they want it and it sits in the shelf, but I got it through that expression of, yes. I have equal power in in this family. I will get those things.

But if somebody gets something and everybody’s loving it and they want more time with it, yes. You get another one and then maybe another one, and maybe one for the parent.

ANNA: Yeah and it wasn’t the Nintendo Switch back in the day. What is that thing, Pam, that we have? A DS. Yeah. So, all four of us had the DS, David, me, and the girls, because we all wanted to engage with it. And there were moments where I was like, this is ridiculous that we have four of these. And other times where I’m like, it brought us so much joy and was so fun and it just made a lot of sense.
So, yeah, definitely that. Yeah. But can I go onto a different topic?

One of the things I wanted to talk about, because it comes up a lot with siblings, we see it on the Network and other places is when there’s conflicts. So, we have the fights or the different things happening or escalations happening. And I just wanted to really talk about, for me, I can have a justice button. And so, I really had to watch for my own triggers. What was being triggered in me? Am I worried about the younger one? Am I feeling like this one’s taking advantage? Whatever it was.

I noticed all of that was not about what was in front of me. It was a lot about my own experience as a sibling, my own experience at school with those type of dynamics. And so, I really wanted to watch for those triggers, so that I could set that aside. Because what I wanted to bring to a potential conflict or an actual conflict was this neutral observer role, a facilitator, but not someone that’s passing judgment.

So, if I hear screaming in the other room, it’s coming in like, whoa, everybody’s upset. Let’s just take a pause. What’s going on? Tell me what’s happening. I wanted to bring that kind of calm energy of, I’m not passing a judgment about it.

And that helped so much. Then I could hear them. And I want to talk about validation later. I’ll let you guys talk in just a second, but bring that energy of, I want to understand and we’re going to work this out. And you mentioned that a little bit too, Erika.

When we have that trust that I’m going to be heard, nobody’s going to be judging me, we’re going to figure this out, those conflicts can be deescalated much faster than in other environments where there’s judging and you have to defend and explain and you feel like you’re not being heard.

ERIKA: Yeah. The triggers are hard though. This is one of the really hard things, I think, about being a parent, because we’re not always or maybe ever conscious of all these different things that are trapped within us, these old wounds or old things that have happened. And so, to be unaware of that and then go into this new situation and realize, oh my gosh, I really am holding a lot of something uncomfortable about what’s happening here.

I’ve seen it play out with different parents really thinking that the older child should know better. The older child gets viewed as, well, they’re older, so they shouldn’t ever be doing this to the younger child or something. And expecting more from that older child than what makes sense for their age. And so, it helps to just be aware of the children where they are. They’re all doing the best they can, the same as we are, and just realizing that if we’re feeling something that’s so strong and heavy towards an interaction, it’s got to be something more within ourselves to peel back.

PAM: Yeah, I love that. Just noticing something’s bubbling up and it’s like, oh, maybe this feels bigger than the situation warrants.

When you have a second child, the first child just looks so much older. Even if they’re only four or they’re only five, you know? But all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, you are just so much bigger, so much more seemingly capable than this young one here. So, it’s back to expectations. We can put so many expectations on them, and maybe we’ve worked through it once or twice. “We’ve talked about this before! You don’t do that.” Meeting them where they are, and knowing and learning who they are and helping them process and move through the situation, it is just incredible. It’s night and day.

It’s so valuable to walk in without judgments or preconceived notions into a moment. Also, I think to walk in with no preconceived solution to it. If I walk in knowing, “Okay, this happened again, you should be doing this, and you should be doing that. And please remember what I said next time this happens. Do that again, please.” That’s just not how human beings tick. It’s not how they learn, memorizing someone else’s solution. It’s back to people are different. Memorizing how someone else moves most comfortably through a conflict just is not it. Sure, it’s great information to have, maybe, like, oh yeah, that’s how they like to move through it, but what works for me? I need to play with all sorts of different ways to move through it.

And I think it also becomes, again, back to the individual, for some kids being there and having the conversation together works. It helps move them through tit. I know for my kids for a while, as we were learning these tools, it was really helpful just to scatter when things got overwhelming and then I could talk to each of them individually. Because when we were together and we had moved to unschooling, there was that defensiveness, there was still a bit of that power dynamic where, “No, they don’t get to do that,” or, “I get to do that,” and it was hard to validate one child in front of somebody else. (We’ll get to validation next.) And so, to be able to talk to them individually and process individually and come up with plans, “Next time maybe, what would feel good? What might we try?”

And just to play with things and play with different ways to move through it. And that took time. That took months, years, and it doesn’t matter how long. I don’t want given amount of time. Like if I do this for this long, then this will be solved and we’ll move on to something else. Again, it’s the individual people in front of you. Some pieces of it they might pick up really quickly. Other pieces may take a lot of time for them to find their way through it, and then to be able to remember that when we’re in a heightened moment is even another step.

When we’re triggered, we know how hard it is to try and come back to this moment and be present with the other people in it, even as adults. All human beings are going to be challenged by that. To have the expectation that our kids will figure it out and then be able to do it for the rest of their lives, that’s just a pretty heavy one for them to hold.

ANNA: And so, I feel like this leads into validation from a lot of different directions, because I think when we understand our kids as unique creatures, their own people, that helps us with the validation piece. Because validation really is tuning into the individual in front of you. And it’s helpful to remember, we don’t have to agree or even understand their experience to hear and validate and show up for it.

And I’ve told this story many times before, but we had a friend over and the girls were young and screaming breaks out. I’m visiting with this old friend in one room and screaming breaks out in the other room and I go down there and she’s observing me, this friend who does not have kids.

And my oldest is like, “I hate her! I never want a sister!” The whole nine yards is coming out. Just all the big language. All the everything. And I just was calm with her. Like, “You just wish you’d never had a sister at all. You are just so angry right now and you just want her gone. You just don’t want a sister.” And just really validating those big, hard emotions. And she’s like, “Well. It’s not that. I just wish she would listen.” And she was able to move through, because I wasn’t scared by her big language. I didn’t go, “But you love her and she means well and she didn’t want to do this,” and the kind of explaining that we tend to do, because we can be protective for the young one who we love and that feels scary.

But five minutes, two minutes later, they’re back playing happily together. And my friend’s like, “What in the world just happened? How did we go from, I thought the house was going to burn down to, they’re just playing and laughing again?” And I was like, “She just needed to feel heard in that moment.” She was super frustrated. They’re young, they’re figuring things out, like super frustrated. And I could hear that, because I don’t have to take in and defend her sister. And like you said, sometimes it’s separating, so that I can validate little sister who’s like, “She is being mean, she’s doing this,” whatever it is.

But I think one of the pieces I want to get about validation when we’re talking about it with siblings is, even the hard stuff. Even the ugly stuff. Even the things like that, we need to validate and be with them, because that’s how we move through those hard emotions is by that validation.

PAM: The language that feels to us like it’s over the top, it may just be the language that they have. They’re just trying to express their emotions. But we have that nuance. So, when we can come to them and see and hear and validate, what we’re validating is the emotion, we’re validating them where they are. It’s not really about the language, right?

So, that’s how she could start to see, oh, well it’s this thing. But she needed to be heard that this thing was big for her. And they have a limited amount of language, depending on age, to be able to express that. So, they just pick the biggest words just to show. Validation is all about the other person. It is not about, “I am now saying that I agree with you. What a pain that other child is. Why did we even have them?” That’s not what we’re saying when we say, you never wanted to have a sibling, a brother or sister, whatever. It’s not what we’re saying when we’re validating.

We’re not agreeing because we validate. We are meeting them, showing them that we see them, that we see whatever it is, whatever energy that they’re having, emotion that they’re having in that moment. It just makes all the difference to feeling seen and heard. And through those conversations, that’s where they’re practicing the skills. It’s like, oh yeah, that wasn’t actually that. It was, “I wasn’t being heard.” And through a few times of that, then they can get first to the, “I’m not feeling heard,” but they need lots of time to practice that and to start identifying that, to find the nuances so they can start to recognize them, and then they can get to that place themselves. And then we meet them where they’re saying, “They’re not listening to me,” and then we work through that piece. It’s hard and it’s so beautiful, too.

ERIKA: Yeah. I feel like we’re getting to a point that I was hoping to make, which is just how often these sibling relationships are the fertile learning ground for how to interact with another human. And so, yeah, it’s challenging and they are coming without these skills, and yet here are all of these great opportunities. So, I feel like just knowing that and having that idea in my mind helps me in the moments of conflict. If I can think, this is what it’s all about. Navigating these conflicts and doing this well with them and validating them and really hearing them out and helping them learn to express themselves, helping them learn to narrate for themselves, all of those kinds of skills, it’s going to help them for the rest of their lives. Navigating conflict is not going to be something that goes away throughout life. And so, one of the values in having a sibling is these opportunities to learn some of these relating skills.

And validating is so much easier, like you were saying, when we are looking at them as individuals and not in their roles and that can tend to be a place where I get stuck, if I’m thinking, but you don’t do that. Or, but you aren’t like that, or, but you should know better. And so, I love how all these things are connected in this topic.

PAM: Yeah, I love that point, Erika. The validation looks so different for each child, more than likely, and with our partner, but we’re talking about siblings today, but yes, it is so individual, because it really helps to know the individual to be able to play with the language. Again, it’s not, here are the steps to validating. Please do that next time your child is upset. We all wish there were rules or a procedure that we could follow that works for everybody. But we are all different. We are all individuals. And it can change over time and it changes over seasons and skills and as we change as human beings.

But it’s just so fascinating to recognize the value of it. For me, it goes back to our dance metaphor in relationships. I may say a little something that just doesn’t seem to quite land, but then I say something else and I keep trying. And that may be how I’m getting more information.

I also wanted to add, and I know we’ve talked about this before with validation and we’ll link to some of our older episodes, too, but also maybe in the moment, validation isn’t about words. For a couple of my kids when things were heightened, validation was about just being with them. Just being with the energy, meeting them with that energy. You alluded to that, Anna, too, just being that grounded presence where they know, “Hey, they can stay in the room even when I’m super upset. And I’m still okay and I will get through.” There are so many messages communicated when I can just be there with them and we’ll more than likely have short, long, lots of conversations later for the processing piece. But also just processing through the energy might be something that needs to be done in silence. Any additional energy that I bring just can’t be absorbed yet. Conversation can’t be had.

So, we might think that validation must be about conversation. I just wanted to say that it’s never just one thing. What does your child need in that moment? That is the most important thing, not some sort of process somebody told you about.

ANNA: Right. It really is. So, for me, it’s watching my own self, grounding myself, and then showing up however is needed, because we’re going to get those clues. We’re going to get clues from our child. If they’re wanting a conversation about it, if they’re just wanting us to be there, if they’re wanting us to help them pull out of a situation.

Because sometimes there’s this headbutting going on and they’re just needing our help to move things along and change things up or be with them. But I feel like I get there best to see those pieces when I’m grounded, when I’ve watched for my triggers, when I’m not coming into it with that activated energy.

ERIKA: Right. “I can handle this,” is a really good feeling. And I know as the upset person, it really feels so good to have someone who can be there for it, and that it feels like, this is okay. Even this is okay.

Parenting siblings benefits from so many of the tools that we talk about. So, validation, of course, narration, definitely, remembering the HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, bringing in the context for our kids, these kinds of narration things.

And I feel like it has also helped when I reflect on past conflicts and show them how we have gotten through them. You know what I mean? This is something that has helped Oliver a lot, because he’ll be really stuck in the moment and feel so angry. And then if we can remember, “You’ve felt like this before. Do you remember that those feelings pass and that we can find a way to make things feel better?”

That memory usually helps settle his nervous system, because you can feel stuck in that moment of conflict and it can feel like you can’t escape. But, I was a kid once. I had siblings. I remember what it was like to feel so angry and so frustrated by them, and we move through it, and just using all of those skills helps so much.

ANNA: Yeah. I love that reminder, because it really is. I mean, that’s why we talk about the same things over and over again, because they apply to so many different situations. So, I’m going to give a quick shout out to the Living Joyfully Podcast, because we really talk about those tools in that specific way and just in relationships in general.

And, like you said, Erika, this is the first intense relationship for them with their sibling and with us and I think it’s made so much more valuable by our presence and by sharing these tools and by talking about things and by being that presence with them and helping them understand that. What I’ve seen with my kids, and we’ve talked about this before, is just that they take those tools that we were using to relate to each other and then use them with their friends and ultimately their partners and beyond and at work and all of these places. And I just thought, oh, these have really served them, these skills that I had to work on and figure out, too.

ERIKA: Right. And thinking of it as opportunities to use these skills also feels a lot better than hoping that these conflicts never happen and thinking that a perfect relationship is going to be the goal. If I can think more like, any conflict is going to be a chance for us to learn something new and practice these skills, that just feels so much nicer.

PAM: It really does. And holding out the idea that my destination is, “there will not be conflicts,” I think that’s another expectation we might be holding. Good to peel back and see what you think about that one. But yeah, the goal isn’t to never have conflict. It is exploring and finding the tools that work for you right now to help you navigate those moments, because yeah, that’s life.

ERIKA: Well, we have had a lot of fun diving into this topic, obviously, so thank you, Pam and Anna, and thank you to our listeners. We hope that you’ve found this conversation helpful on your unschooling journey.

Have a great week and we will see you next time! Bye!

ANNA AND PAM: Bye!

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Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network, our theme is ‘Finding Our Guides.’ As I wrote about in The Unschooling Journey, our children can serve as our most valuable guides, helping us move through our fears towards joy and connection. Anna and I talk about how handing our children the weight of our worries and fears impacts them and erodes trust, how connecting with our children helps us navigate our fears, and how being part of a community of like-minded parents inspires us and enriches our unschooling lives. It was such a fun conversation and a great reminder of the value of being truly present in the moment with our families.

Discussion areas

• What makes children such good guides?
• Connecting with our children helps us move through our unschooling-related worries and fears.
• Connecting with our children as guides also helps us build trust: our trust in our kids, their trust in us, and our trust in unschooling as a lifestyle.
• The opposite of trust is worry.
• The value of finding community.

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide

John Holt’s book, Escape from Childhood

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Pam shares her essay, Unschooling Passions.

Unschooling is about learning through living. As unschooling parents, we want to open up the world for our children to explore. But what if your child is passionately interested in just one thing? Doesn’t that close off his access to the world and limit his learning? I have two children who have discovered passionate interests. Instead of spending my time trying to convince them to try new things, I decided to explore their interests with them. I was amazed at how much of the world came to life when they were free, and encouraged, to immerse themselves in their deep, passionate interests.

Things mentioned in the episode

video game connections map

Harry Potter connections map

Transcript

Here’s the essay

Image credit

{ Photo by Khara Woods on Unsplash }

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Julia Triman joins me to share her family’s unschooling journey. As a mom of two young children, Julia reflects on how her understanding of parenting and learning has changed through observation and being present with them. We talk about the incredible depth of her children’s play and how powerful it is that they can choose what they spend their time doing. Julia also shares about her ongoing process of deschooling and what led her to start posting photos of her children’s snack plates on Instagram! It was such a fun conversation!

Questions for Julia

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

With younger kids, I’d love to hear more about how you’re seeing learning unfolding. Coming to unschooling, it can be a big paradigm shift to see and value all the learning that’s happening when we’ve grown up seeing it through the lens of curriculum and needing to be taught.

What have you found to be one of the more challenging aspects of deschooling? Can you share a bit about your journey through it?

You finished your PhD a year or so ago. I’d love to hear about that journey and how it wove together with your unschooling lives.

You post on Instagram as @snackplatemama. Can you share the story behind that?

What’s something fun you guys have done recently that you don’t think you’d have done before finding unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

The Living Joyfully Network

Kids, Carrots, and Candy by Jane R. Hirschmann and Lela Zaphiropoulos

Julia is on Instagram as @SnackPlateMama

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Susan Walker, who lives in the Patagonia region of Argentina, joins me this week to talk about her family’s unschooling journey and the major paradigm shifts she made along the way. We talk about her discoveries about being highly sensitive and introverted, how diving into unschooling resulted in so much personal growth, and how her understanding of radical unschooling and radical self-love connected to help create the joyful family life and strong relationships she has now. Susan has thought deeply about these paradigm shifts and her perspective is inspiring!

Questions for Susan

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

When we connected about our call, you shared that there were four big paradigm shifts that were instrumental for you on your unschooling journey. I’d love to dive into them! Let’s start with learning. What big paradigm shift around learning happened as you explored unschooling?

Another big paradigm shift you experienced was around the idea that it’s OK to be who you are. Can you share what that shift looked like for you?

A third paradigm shift you mentioned centered on the idea that everything changes. People change, circumstances change. How did that shift unfold and how has it helped?

The last big paradigm shift you mentioned was to seeing radical love as the foundation of your unschooling lives. I’d love to hear how that shift came about and the difference it has made.

What is your favourite thing about the flow of your unschooling days right now?

Things mentioned in the episode

Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration

The Highly Sensitive Child by Elaine Aron

Quiet by Susan Cain

The Unschooling Journey by Pam Laricchia

The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

The Living Joyfully Network

The Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit

Sue Patterson’s website

Akilah S. Richard’s website

Susan’s daughter, Jimena I. Novaro’s writing website

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network our theme is Nurturing Our Children’s Learning. We are getting back to the basics of unschooling by observing how children learn through following their interests. Exploring learning through the lenses of curiosity and creativity, we talk about what to do when doubts creep in about whether we’re doing enough, when our children want to quit an activity they started, and when it seems like our child is “doing nothing.”

I love diving into this rich topic, which is so relevant no matter where you are on your unschooling journey!

Discussion areas

• With unschooling, we replace curriculum with curiosity. Exploring the world by following their interests and passions creates a personally tailored web of learning connections and knowledge.
• As we navigate the shift from curriculum-based to interest-led learning, it can be challenging to shift to this new and very different way of supporting our kids’ learning. Sometimes we find ourselves asking, “Am I doing enough?”
• Another challenge that can bubble up as our children follow their curiosity is around the idea of quitting activities.
• Curiosity and creativity weave together so naturally in support of our children’s learning. An important paradigm shift is moving away from the idea of right and wrong.
• Another aspect of creativity is having the space and time to just be. It may look like they’re “doing nothing,” but it’s how seemingly disparate bits of information and understanding have a chance to connect in new and creative ways.

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity?

WIRED Magazine’s interview with Steve Jobs

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Joss Goulden, who lives in Western Australia and is mom to two kids, joins me to talk about her family’s unschooling journey. We talk about how she was inspired by her son’s brief time in kindergarten to make the choice to try unschooling, what her deschooling process looked like, and how she sees learning happening naturally as her children pursue what interests them. Joss shares how unschooling has created strong family relationships and how trust plays such a big role in their lives: both learning to trust herself and to trust her children to make their own choices and follow the path that is right for them.

Questions for Joss

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

When people first hear about unschooling, they often find it hard to imagine how learning happens without teaching and a curriculum. But it really does! How have you seen learning naturally unfold with your children?

Another thing that trips people up is the idea of children choosing what they do. They worry kids won’t do hard things if they don’t “have to.” That’s just not what unschooling parents see in action. Intrinsic motivation is so powerful, isn’t it?

What has been one of the more challenging aspects of deschooling for you? Can you share a bit about your journey through it?

What has surprised you most so far about your unschooling journey?

Things mentioned in the episode

The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

Aware Parenting with Aletha Solter

Educating Your Child at Home by Alan Thomas

Joss is on Facebook and Instagram

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Betsey Tufano, an unschooling mother of two living in Barcelona, Spain, joins me this week! Betsey shares many details about her unschooling journey and about the importance of the internal work that she did along the way. We also discuss how her relationship with her partner has changed and deepened through their choice to unschool, the role of technology in their unschooling lives, some of the challenges they’ve faced, and lots more!

Questions for Betsey

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

What has been one of the more challenging aspects of your unschooling journey so far? Can you share a bit about how you moved through it?

When we were prepping for this call you mentioned that you love how technology weaves through your family’s learning. Technology is a topic that many people find a challenge to navigate. I’d love to hear about your experience!

As we move deeper into unschooling, we find our relationships with our children becoming steeped in connection and trust, but it can sometimes be challenging to extend that to our partners. Can you share how unschooling has deepened your relationship with your spouse? What has that journey looked like? 

What’s something fun you guys have done recently that you don’t think you’d have done before finding unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

Pam’s book, Free to Learn

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

This week marks the five year anniversary of the Exploring Unschooling podcast!

To celebrate, I decided to dig into the podcast’s rich treasure trove of unschooling stories and highlight a handful of the many beautiful nuggets of wisdom that guests have shared over these five years.

It’s been such a treat to revisit episodes as I gathered and organized this lovely collection, and I ended up with four distinct sections:

1. Parenting
2. Seeing Learning in Action
3. Making Our World Bigger, and
4. The Question of College

I imagine it surprises no one at this point that the flow of these sections aligns pretty closely with our unschooling journey. Because that’s my jam.

I’ve really enjoyed spending these five years engaging in conversations with so many wonderful unschooling parents and grown unschoolers. I’m so grateful to them for sharing their stories, their experiences, and their sparkling nuggets of wisdom about unschooling!

Audio clips taken from these episodes, in order …

EU029: What Learning Looks Like with Meredith Novak

EU136: Our Unschooling Journey with Jessica Hughes

EU027: Ten Questions with Teresa Graham Brett

EU111: Ten Questions with Jan Fortune

EU257: Unschooling Instincts with Ali Walker

EU002: Ten Questions with Pam Sorooshian

EU036: Deschooling with Lauren Seaver

EU089: Ten Questions with Jan Hunt

EU071: Changes in Parents with Sandra Dodd

EU258: Seeing the Magic with Anna Brown

EU154: Unschooling Dads and Documentaries with Jeremy Stuart

EU241: Exploring Race, Racism, and Diversity in Unschooling with Erika Davis-Pitre

EU130: Dismantling Shame with Ronnie Maier

EU090: Growing Up Unschooling with Phoebe Wahl

EU141: Growing Up Unschooling with Alec Traaseth

EU166: Unschooling and the Teen Years with Sue Patterson, Part 2

EU163: Growing Up Unschooling with Adrian Peace-Williams

Episode transcript …

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron …

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Anna Brown joins me again this week! This month in the Living Joyfully Network our theme is Seeing the Magic. As we move into the re-invigorating energy of new year, we are turning our attention to connecting with our children and finding the joy in our everyday lives with them. Anna and I talk about ways to connect with our kids, what finding joy looks like in practice, and how joy relates to our self-care practices.

Our conversations in the Network have been beautiful this month, as members share the magic they’re noticing in their lives and support each other through the more challenging moments.

Discussion areas

• Focusing on our connections with our kids helps us see the magic in our days.
• Instead of inviting our kids to join us, we can go to them.
• Let’s talk about joy.
• Connection, joy, and self-care weave together so beautifully as part of the magic of our days.
• Join us starting in the new year as we walk through the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit online workshop alongside participants.

Links to things mentioned in the episode

Check out the Living Joyfully Network

Learn more about the Childhood Redefined Unschooling Summit online workshop

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

This week, I’m joined by Ali Walker, an unschooling mom and primatologist living in New Zealand. I have gotten to know Ali on the Living Joyfully Network, where she has shared some incredible insights about parenting and unschooling through her lens as a primate researcher focusing on the mother/infant bond. Ali details some of the realizations she has made during her own journey as a mother, including the need to be present and available for Very Important Sitting, the importance of interdependence and connection, and how self care fits into her unschooling life. Her perspective is fascinating!

Questions for Ali

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

You worked as a primatologist before having kids. I’d love to hear some of the ways that experience has influenced your experiences with your children.

A few months ago in the Network you shared a really valuable idea, which you described as ‘Very Important Sitting.’ Can you share what that is?

With two young kids, some days can feel long and exhausting. I’d love to hear your thoughts around self-care and what that looks like for you right now.

What is your favourite thing about the flow of your unschooling days?

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

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What’s so magical about age 18?

Pam, Anna, Erika, and our guest Erin dig into the transition from childhood to adulthood and what it means for our unschooled kids. It’s common for parents to bump up against some cultural beliefs about this phase of life and inadvertently put expectations on young adults. Strangers, friends, and family also all seem to be interested in the choices that our kids are making at this age! When we become aware of all of this messaging and remember that people are all different and unique, we can create a supportive environment for our young adult children to follow their own path.

Erin is an unschooling mom with four children over 18 and member of the Living Joyfully Network. She was previously on the podcast in episode 285, which you can check out if you’d like to hear more about her story. And check out her website, everlearning.ca.

We’re so glad that she was able to join us for this discussion and we hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!

Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.

THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE

EU285: Unschooling Stories with Erin

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PAM: Hello! I’m Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I’m joined by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis and our wonderful guest, Erin. Hello, everyone!

So, Erin has been on the podcast before, back in episode 285, so please check that episode out to hear more details about her unschooling journey. But today, she’s joining us to explore the question, “What’s so magical about age 18?” which I am very excited to dive into.

Anna, would you like to get us started?

ANNA: I do want to get us started. Oh my goodness. I’m so glad we’re doing an episode about this age and season of life. I feel like it’s not talked about nearly enough. And there are so many parts at play. Culturally, we have this idea, I think, that once they’re 18, our work is done, but this really isn’t even about unschooling at all and it just couldn’t be further from the truth.

There’s this older labor bureau study from around 2007, 2008, that talked about age 27 being the average age where the majority of kids were living independently, so that’s age 27. And that’s just the majority, so this idea that everyone is on their own at 18 just isn’t true.

And I think letting go of that idea really helps us focus on the individuals in our family and what transitioning into adulthood is going to look like for them, because it’s so unique.

I think actually it’s easier for us in unschooling families to understand this, because our focus is on connection. It’s on relationships. And those relationships and connections last a lifetime. So, for us, the age is maybe a little less relevant, because we’re not product-focused.

But that said, when our kids start moving into adulthood, there’s a lot of messaging. It’s coming at them, it’s coming at us, messages about next steps and, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” And it can be this really stressful time.

And I think it can be fraught with triggers for us. I found that time in my own life to be stressful and I had a very conventional upbringing, but it was really important for me to separate my experience from my kids’ experience and I wanted to really protect the space and help quiet the noise as they navigated this time.

And so, I know we have so much to talk about, but those are the things that came to mind first, this cultural expectation and really understanding what’s bubbling up for us, because this is an age we all remember, whereas some of the earlier ages, we may not.

PAM: I remember the interesting piece, too, is, even though we have a different perspective on things because we’ve been unschooling and living unschooling, but there’s also the piece that, for me anyway, I was deep in the moment with them doing the things and everything and the “18” messages started coming more powerfully as my kids got older. So, when they were younger, it was like, I’ll worry about that years from now. And in general it was, I don’t have expectations anymore. But as 16, 17 started coming up and people are now asking different kinds of questions, “What college are they going to? What are they going to be doing?” all these pieces, those expectations started hitting me then.

So, it was another wave where I had to work through it again. What is it? Why are these messages throwing me off kilter? It would just have me wobble a bit and I’d be revisiting all sorts of pieces that brought that lifestyle and perspective into this new season of our lives there.

ERIKA: This is going to be a really interesting conversation for me. So, my kids are 12 and 14 right now, and I’m just thinking that you don’t really know what your vision of “18” really means until you’re confronted with it. And so, I like the idea of thinking about it now and just being more aware that what people are going to be expecting is going to change, and even of what messages my kids have internalized about what it means to turn 18 and what it means to be an adult.

Because I know that they do have some of those stories for themselves of like, when I grow up then this will happen or whatever, but not getting so hooked on that number, that age, because obviously things will change over the years. It’s not going to be that they wake up when they’re 18 and now everything they thought about being an adult is coming true.

ERIN: Yeah. I can relate so much to both of you, Anna and Pam, as far as, you’re humming along and you’ve done some of the work, and then there is this shift. It’s just a really interesting entrance into people’s perceptions of what adulthood should look like.

And so, I think last time we spoke on your podcast, Pam, I was talking about this period of time for several years where I really had this sweet spot, I would say, with our life and doing life without school. And I felt really confident. And as we got closer to “18,” it’s whenever people perceive the high school years as being over, suddenly, it’s a lot of questions is what it is. Because I found through a lot of the homeschool/unschool journey, people didn’t really know what we were doing, so they would ask some questions. It was almost so far from what they were used to that, unless it was good friends of mine or family that I could maybe talk a little bit more specifically with, there was a generality to the questions.

And then I think you come to this space that everybody’s pretty familiar with, right? Whether it’s the world of work or it’s college or university or whatever people are doing, moving out, driver’s licenses, all those kind of older things. Suddenly the conversations were different because they had some familiarity with that stage of life.

One of the things that’s kind of neat about that, too, though, I find is that now that my youngest is 18, I’ve really officially moved out of that zone. There is a little bit more parallel at times in conversation I can have with people, because, as much as we might think that everybody has it all together and their kids’ path to doing whatever, I’m just finding in all kinds of places there is trepidation about what their kids are doing, if their kids are happy, if their kids are safe. And so, there’s some commonality, too, that we can have, which is nice.

ANNA: Yeah, that’s that piece, right? Because I think sometimes when we’re unschooling, we get caught in this belief that this is specific to unschooling, this concern that they’re not going to do this thing or it looks different. And I think you’re right. I think it’s very common. I think it’s really this commonality of everyone moving through it, because it is just such a time of change. And as parents, we’re letting go of pieces and things are happening. And so, I think it just can be really helpful as unschoolers to step out of this idea that it’s specific to that.

And then when we can let go of that, that’s when we can focus on the individuals. Because, Erin, you have several kids, Pam as well. I have two. And it’s been absolutely unique for each of our children. It has been so different and unique and that’s the cool part about it, too.

ERIN: And I think it gives other people a little bit of space. We’re having conversations and maybe asking each other how our kids are. And you can feel they are feeling that same nervousness that we all feel. And so, I think when we can just really give a lot of space and breadth and encouragement to whatever’s happening for their kids. I think maybe that’s what we can offer in those conversations. We’re not coming with judgment or preconceived ideas and I find that people maybe are feeling a little bit better for having those more open-ended conversations.

PAM: Yeah. And I think that that age comes in there, too. When we can bring the energy of, there isn’t a timetable. We don’t need to have this solved. Or our kids don’t need to have this solved. And I think, for me, the fun thing about those conversations was that piece, was that curiosity, that space you were talking about, Erin, where it can be like, oh yeah, they’re interested in this thing and they’re trying out this thing and they’re doing this thing that they’re enjoying. And it brings a conversation, for me anyway, back from the, “I have an 18-year-old or an almost 18-year-old,” to, look at this amazing person in front of me. When you can bring it back to the individual who’s there and talk about them.

Like you were saying, Anna, the way it unfolds is so unique to each person. And, for me, what helped me when I was starting to wobble was really just steeping again in “unschooling is a lifestyle.” And there doesn’t need to be this timetable, like back when it was about learning to read by a certain age and the idea that there was a timetable. I’ve been through those kinds of messages before, so I could tap back into that. It’s like, oh yeah, you know what? There doesn’t need to be a timetable for this either. I can lean into what they like to do. This is who I want to be as a parent. I still want to maintain a strong and trusting connection with them no matter their age.

Actually, it was reminding myself about all those pieces of the kind of parent I wanted to be that I honed through unschooling, and just realizing, or remembering yet again, that this is a lifestyle. This is what I’ve chosen for my family and for how I want to relate to them really. That, no matter our ages, and right now, my kids are all in their twenties and thirties, it’s still how I want to relate to them. It’s how I want to relate to human beings.

But there was definitely that time where I needed to process and remind myself of that, and then I could bring that easier energy to all those conversations. And yeah, sometimes you could just see them relax. When they’re chatting with me, it’s like all of a sudden they recognize that this isn’t a conversation with someone to whom they need to give the answers about what their child is doing, because those are the questions they’re typically getting, too. So, you could just see them relax a little bit. It’s like, oh yeah, this is the stuff they’re up to. And even just to help them relax a little bit on that, it made the conversations really interesting.

ERIKA: I love that. I can totally picture that and how you’re talking about those earlier conversations, too. Anytime there’s that societal expectation on parents and on kids, everyone around is feeling that pressure. And so, it’s so nice to be able to be the one to help maybe relieve some of that pressure, at least in the conversations with us, because they’re probably just feeling a bit defensive about what their own kid is doing and worrying about being judged for what they are and are not doing yet. And so, yeah, I just love that. I love that we can question it and just be like, there is no one right way and people are different.

ANNA: Right. And that’s my PSA portion of this one is just stop it. We can be the generation that stops those questions at that age. Because when Afton, my oldest, was that age, she was traveling by herself and she was probably 18, 19 and I mean literally strangers on airplanes asking her, what college are you going to? Or, what are you doing now? Like, find other words. Connect with people about, what trip are you going on? What’s happening with you right now? What are you interested in?

And for those teens that are in that stage, what I would tell her is, turn it back around and say, what did you love about college? Are you working in the field that you went to college for? And turn it back to them. Because so often they were like, oh, I hated this. Or, oh no, I’ve done this. Or, oh, I didn’t do this. And it was a much more interesting conversation. And I don’t think there’s any kind of malice with the questions. I think it’s just that we don’t know how to ask questions of kids. What grade are you in? What’s your favorite subject? So, this is just another area to stretch and leave space for us all to be different and for there to be different paths.

ERIN: Yeah. I got thinking about that, Anna, when I was thinking about this topic. People are at a loss for other things to say and other things to ask, because most kids are in school for a good chunk of their day and their week. And so, it’s what people know.

And so, yeah, I agree with you. It’s not said with malice, but I know my kids have found it just really repetitive. Even if it’s something that they want to talk about, even if it’s a passion or an interest or something they’re feeling really comfortable about, it’s just like over and over. What other age is like this?

Can you imagine? Everywhere you go people are asking you like, what are you doing? What are your plans? And then what are you going to do with that? Because it’s not just, what are you doing? We had a line of questioning happening over the holidays and it didn’t stop there. Then it was sort of like, well, do you think that there’s money in that field? Do you think there’s security? It’s a lot of questions!

ANNA: That we would never ask anyone else. We’d never go to the neighbor and ask about their personal finances and have they really planned ahead for what’s going to happen next? We just wouldn’t do that. So, it’s such an interesting thing.

ERIKA: There’s got to be something about the promise or the hopefulness of that age. They’re just starting to be an adult. And at this phase, we know so much about all of the trials and tribulations, all the decisions and all the things we’ve had to do, but looking at that fresh new adult who has all the decision-making in front of them, I think it probably makes people a little bit excited, a little bit concerned. A lot of things are brought up in us just because we remember. We know all that we’ve done from that age until now and I think a lot of people really like to pass along their words of wisdom or share the things that they’ve learned in order to help the next generation. So, I see why people get excited, but it’s so tiring as an 18-year-old to be like, oh my gosh, I have to explain myself to everyone now.

PAM: Yeah. That is such a good point. And I think back to our work as well, a big paradigm shift for me as we dove deeper into unschooling was holding back my two cents. Because it would get in the way of my kids’ exploration. It’s like, “Oh, should I be going in that direction?” It quiets their instincts, their motivation, their inner voice, however you want to phrase it. But if I could not jump in, “Oh yeah, this is really cool if you do it this way,” and learn how they may well do it differently, but I came to realize how much sense it made for them to do it that way.

And yet to recognize and realize that it’s the same. It doesn’t change because now they’re a young adult. Yes, I’ve learned these things. But you know what? It doesn’t mean those particular things would make their path any easier.

There’s that beautiful dance, that beautiful line of supporting them and helping them, and even pointing out things that we feel might be helpful, but again, without that expectation. And often, I found that I needed to give so much more space than I first anticipated to let things unfold, for them to pick up nuances, for them to understand themselves.

Because also, as we were saying earlier, there are so many ways their life is changing as well when they hit these ages, more opportunities are opening up. So, to give them that space to explore them and figure it out for themselves, while also being there to help. It’s not hands off. We’re always talking about that dance and that we’re not always going to get it perfect, but we’re going to get clues. If we jump in and they’re like, what? Or, no thanks, don’t wanna hear that. Or they immediately do something completely different. Not taking those things personally again.

It’s revisiting all these lessons that we’ve learned and recognizing that they apply to our kids as young adults, and then do it again as adult adults, wherever you decide you’re going to draw those lines. So, that is really fascinating to me. And something you always say, Anna, which is that there’s plenty of time. That is always such a great reminder, because if we remind ourselves about the individual in front of us, we can start to recognize how their timeline is unique to them. And it doesn’t need to be a rush. I don’t need to prove to other people. The priority is the child in front of me and their journey and their journey is a lifetime, to just keep reminding myself. We don’t need a deadline. We don’t need a deadline for anything.

So, there’s just so many different circumstances for each person’s life. It’s just so fun to hang out with them and see how it unfolds, even if it’s different, even if it’s like, that would not be a choice I would make or anything like that. It reminds me just to celebrate the person that they are and each time I just learn something more about them and I go, oh, damn. That’s pretty cool.

ANNA: And that it’s not a race and that this is a lifelong journey. And if we’re lucky, it’s pretty long. And so, I was just talking to a friend this morning and saying that disappointment is taking stock too soon. And I think that’s when we put these artificial deadlines that we’re measuring something. And really, it’s just the unfolding. It’s still unfolding for me at 55 years old. If we can embrace that piece.

And I will say, mine are now just turned 24 and 26, that societal pressure does ease. It’s pretty intense. It’s pretty specific to that timeframe of, like you were saying, Erin, 16 to 20, where it’s these milestones that people have in their own mind and then they just kind of are like, oh, they’re living their life doing their thing. It’s not so micromanaged.

But something else I wanted to say that’s almost the reverse of this is something that you said earlier, Erika, about how they’re taking in societal pieces and they’re taking in things about it. And so, something that I had to embrace, give some space for, was that they were going to maybe try things from motivations that I didn’t think were great, that were motivations from external pieces, societal pieces.

But it’s like you were saying, Pam, that’s not my journey either. I can’t stop them from doing that, and I can’t guide them around that. They knew they weren’t getting pressure from me in particular and that they had my support and I could be there to facilitate, but I could see them at times making choices. And now looking back, we can have conversations about it and they’ve said like, yeah, I kind of wish I could go back and do some of that again. But we can’t change that for them. So again, I guess it’s the reminder of so much of this is our work to just recognize we can’t control the path.

ERIN: I’ve also been thinking about the idea of how much more space and time I shouldn’t say I’ve had to leave, but in order to have the relationships that I want to have, I’ve had to leave. And it’s not even that they necessarily need all that time, but just having enough margin to be available for some of those conversations. And I know we talk about this with teens for sure, but I think it continues.

I think we were up till about 2:30 the other night, just kind of spontaneously, similar to what you were talking about. My son was just processing different things with his job and his path and management versus going a different route and just really thinking it through financially and all those kinds of things, too.
And some of it was that balance, I guess, if you will, between what externally people are saying he should do, or not him specifically, but people, and then what he enjoys and the quality of life he wants to have. And that’s not a quick conversation apparently. It just went on and on. But he really needed to process that.

And you could see bits of that, being aware of what’s expected. And maybe it’s a little bit tricky when you’ve come up through a childhood where you have a lot of freedom and things aren’t very standard and it’s wonderful in one sense, but you are also very true to yourself when you grow up that way. And so, then there’s a little bit more of a rub between the external expectations. It’s more to sift through.

PAM: Yeah. I love that example, Erin, and that reminded me that something that I’ve picked up is a realization that, oh, this is what relationships are. Because it’s like, okay, they’re 18, even if they’re moving out and they’re doing other things, it’s like, I’m still not “done.” It’s still the processing. Because yes, they’re used to actually processing things as a human being, to not just to do what’s expected of them, but to think about it and consider it, making real choices as to whether it’s something they want to do and then maybe they do try it out and then later on they might change their mind. But that’s a conversation. That’s processing.

Even as adults, how cool is it to be able to process, to continue to really move through your life with intention? Even if it’s like, I don’t have time, I’m just going to do this thing because it seems best to me, or that’s what everybody’s telling me to do, I’m going to try it out. They are just learning so much about themselves and that we have that relationship with them, that when they want to process and when they want to bounce ideas around or any of those pieces, that they trust and know that we will do that with them. So yeah, it was like, oh, adults out of the house. I’m done now with my parenting. And no, no. It’s like, oh these are the relationships that I wanted to have. And it is a lifelong thing. Oh, how interesting.

ERIKA: And just the part about the lessons that we’ve learned and those things that we question now as adults, they might not be in a place to question that yet. And so, it makes sense that they’re going to have their own journey just as we did. Maybe they have a little bit of an advantage for listening to that inner voice, but there will still be a process of critically looking at society’s messages and expectations, listening to their inner voice, figuring out what works for them.

And so, I think it makes sense that young adults, sometimes even unschooling young adults, are like, “I think I’m going to try this thing that everyone else is doing,” and we could be, from our position, like, “But why? You don’t have to. You just don’t have to do that.” But I think it’s wasted energy for us to try to convince them about stuff that it’s taken us this long to come to. They just are going to be on their own journey with it.

ANNA: Yeah. And I think it’s that being available. And Erin, just like your experience and yours, too, Pam, it is a time of intensity. And really, Erika, you’re already seeing it with your early teens, this need to process these big ideas and then go away and be doing things and then all of a sudden, yes, we’re here for the three-hour conversation.

And I think you’re right, Pam. It’s just relationships. When we think about the people we’re closest to that we want to process things with and we want to bounce things off of, how cool is it that we are that person for our adult children, these adults. And I don’t know. I love it and it can be intense at times. And I think partly that intensity for me comes from the triggers. I remember how intense it felt to be on our own now. Like, this is what’s happening. And then we’ve got to make all these decisions that seem really weighty and big.

And so, I do love what I see in them, Erin, like you said, a stronger connection to self. And also just that they are coming to me to talk about it. I didn’t go to my parents to talk about the stress I was under with some of this stuff. I just kind of felt like I had to do it. I just had to figure it out and do it. And so, I love that there’s more space for that collaboration, that community feel of relationships.

ERIN: And I wonder if some of that not going to your parents, because I think a lot of people have that experience, is that maybe we normalized that degree of stress. And it was like, well this is the stage of life I’m in. This is just how it needs to be. So, I don’t know. And there might be some of that, but it’s fun that they can play with that a little bit and think maybe there are some choices within this or some different options.

ANNA: Yeah. It’s cool.

PAM: It’s really cool to see the different kinds of choices that they make over time. And just like when they were younger, you see the learning and the things that they’re figuring out, not just through the processing, but just through the choices they’re making. Oh, we’re going to try this out. Well, something motivated you to try that thing out. And how interesting is that? And yeah, so there’s just so many pieces.

And I love that, for the most part, we remember, or re-remember that breadth of what it means to be a person, that we have revisited over time as we’ve wobbled with unschooling and gone back to looking at our kids and, oh yeah, look, they’re a complete human being. They have interests. They’re learning things all the time. I say learning things all the time, and then I worry, oh, people will look at their kid and think, oh, they’re not digging into this interest or anything like that. Because there are cocooning stages where it doesn’t look like they’re doing much, but oh my gosh, they’re learning so much about themselves just by existing in this season and seeing how things unfold and just getting curious, especially when their choices maybe don’t seem like they will work out the way they hoped they would work out. But how many times over the years, over their lifetime so far has it surprised me? So, like we were saying, I’m not going to jump in and say no, but I can sure be curious as to how it unfolds.

ERIN: I have something that popped up just about choices that they make and so, on the one hand, I think you’d mentioned earlier on Anna, about triggers. This can be a period of time or a stage of life where there are a lot of triggers for us, and I know a lot of it is we want the best for our kids, but some of it is that external opinion of what they’re doing. But to a certain degree, I think we have to just observe how much is our own ego as well. Because you know people have been watching, right? People have been watching the homeschool journey. What is this strange thing that this family’s doing? How will the kids turn out?

And so, yeah, there is a certain amount of pressure on us that’s real and I think to be able to observe that, be aware of it. I’m curious. I’ve never asked my kids. I don’t know how much they feel that or if they even do. But yeah, it’s an odd thing that there’s this low-level observation happening.

ANNA: And it’s real. And I think, that’s why, for me, when I talk about this, because obviously we’ve been talking about it for many, many years now, I really do focus on, it’s about me being the person I want to be.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen down the road or whatever. But I truly believe if I’m being the person I want to be, showing up in kindness and compassion and supporting, that that’s the best I can do. So, it’s like, for me, to really pull it away from the outcomes, because that’s their own personal journey.
They’re going to take that journey and have all kinds of things about their childhood and other pieces. I will say, at this stage, I am grateful to have the relationships that I have with them and that we enjoy being with each other so much. But yeah, it’s so tricky.

But the other piece did come back to me, which you touched on it a little bit, Pam, but it’s like, remember the tools, because I think sometimes when we move into this stage, suddenly you’ll see parents maybe double down on the conventional piece. Like, we’ve done all this stuff, now we’re going to college, or now it’s going to look like X, Y, Z.

And even if they go to college, what I love about the mindset we bring with unschooling is the curiosity. And it’s a tool. A college course is a tool. A welding course is a tool. Exploring Europe is a tool. All of it is valid and real and important. And so, I think it does take extra work, like you’re saying, Erin, for us to do that at that time, because the eyes are on us, all the eyes.

But for me it was just like, shut that out and focus on the individual in front of me. What’s making their heart sing? What is helping them move through this stage? Just thinking of our kids, how many do we have with all of us here? Eleven kids between us! So unique and different. Every single one of them is so different and this journey is so different and all just as cool and interesting as the next.

ERIKA: When you said people are looking to see how the kids turn out, that triggers me so much, because I’m just like, what does turning out mean for a human? I’m still changing so much and growing and learning at this age, and so, I think keeping that front and center for me that there’s not a finish line and if there is one, there’s certainly not one at age 23. And so, just remembering that journey, there’s no turning out. And it doesn’t matter if you’re unschooling or if you’re in school or whatever, no matter how you grow, there’s still not a finish line as much as some people think that there is one.

ANNA: Oh my gosh. I would not want someone to think my journey ended at 23, even though it looked pretty conventional up till that point. Yuck. Oh my gosh, so much has happened since then and so much growth and that’s happening with each and every one of our children and all of the people out there.

PAM: That’s true. I just turn it back to myself each time. It’s like, oh yeah. I have changed so much in that time. I need to give everybody the grace to have their own journey.

ERIN: Yeah. Just one more thing on that, which is what I started to notice is it wasn’t even just the 18, it’s like people started to prepare for the 18 sometimes at 13, 14. And so, a lot of the people that we would have been together in the past, these memories of the kids on the hiking trails and the all the different things and just having a lot of fun together. And I really started to notice for quite a few people that joy just got swept right away in the teen years. They’d had all these wonderful years, some were traditionally homeschooling, some were unschooling, it didn’t really matter. They were all kind of finding their own joyful way of doing things. And then there was this period of time where suddenly the teens didn’t have time to get together.

Whether it was, I don’t know, just getting into a lot of structured courses or work or whatever and not that those are bad things and they can be what kids want to do and they can be really helpful. But I think it depends on the mindset. If it’s coming from that mindset of fear, “We need to prepare for 18,” it just felt a little bit sad to me to see some of that energy change.

ERIKA: That reminds me of the energy that changed when my kids were turning three and four. It’s these milestone places along the way. I remember my own mind going there. And it didn’t stay there for long, because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But I had thoughts of like, well, Oliver’s turning three, so things are going to have to get more serious around here. He’s really going to have to start learning.

And so, I think that high school thing is the same. It’s like, okay, they’re entering the high school years. Things have to get more serious. They have to start making decisions. And so, it’s just noticing when those more cultural things are popping up in my mind.

PAM: Because societally, when the goal is, more conventionally, college or university, high school is when you’ve got to start prepping for that, right? You’ve got to get the grades throughout your high school career to get into the school that you want. So, you can pretty easily see how that unfolds, why that starts bubbling up then. And when it bubbles up for us, I think it really is just noticing expectations and the fear that’s behind those expectations, as you were mentioning, Erin, that maybe when they were younger, we didn’t realize that we held, because there was no reason to think about it. It’s just so fascinating to me. We can think, oh yeah, college, they can choose whether or not they go. Yep. Done with that. Yet when the age starts, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, well, maybe just in case, maybe we should, all those pieces.

So, I think it comes up in maybe how we talk with them. It comes up in our conversations outside our family. It comes up in the conversations they’re having with other people.

So, yeah, it is really worth the effort, I think, to just peel back the layers for ourselves when we just start to feel some shoulds and, “We have to do this,” when we feel those, it’s just such a great clue to dive in and just ask, “Do we have to? Why should we do that?”

Because even if we come to the point where, for us, yes, this feels like something I really want to happen, at least now we have the language and the understanding about ourselves and the self-awareness to be able to share at least, “I’m feeling,” to bring that to the conversation.

A conversation that starts with, “I’m kind of feeling this,” versus, “I think you should do this,” it’s a 180 degree difference as conversation starters, just to start feeling it with them and seeing what they’re feeling. And maybe we’re commiserating and maybe we’re coming up with some new ideas.

Maybe they’re thinking about things that we didn’t know about yet, and it’s like, oh, well that’s so much cooler. Because that is something else I realized. My plans, which were coming from expectations and, “This is how life should unfold,” just were never as creative and interesting as so many of the plans that they chose for themselves, because then all of a sudden it’s like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense for you.

ERIN: Well, and naturally, often teens do become more serious and focused on something in particular or maybe just generally. So, I think, it isn’t to say that they don’t drive some of that focus, because they do. They get passionate about things and they want to learn, and I think they are interested in their future. And so, they will find steps that might make sense or pieces that they might be interested in.
But I think it’s that idea of, what’s driving it? Is it external? Is it this fear that we are saying, okay. It’s time for things to get unpleasant.

ANNA: Right. And I think that “there’s plenty of time” piece is a really good place to start, because even if we can let go of the artificial timelines of it, just because they choose not to go to college at 18 doesn’t mean they won’t at 22 or 28. So, if we can let go of the rigid timeline, just even that alone provides a little breathing room to learn more about ourselves, to make sure someone’s ready for that step. Make sure someone’s ready to do whatever the next thing is. And so, even that’s a piece of work we can catch in ourselves and go, okay, right. We don’t have to buy into artificial timelines.

Again, I think the piece is tuning into the individual who’s in front of you, what do they need, what makes sense for them? And really just being there and creating that space. I think that’s a great place to start with all of this.

PAM: What bubbled up for me there, Anna, is just the reminder, not only tune into the individual and the things they’re interested in, but their personality and who they are in the world, how they like to engage with the world, to remember not only just introvert, extrovert, because we can be like, okay, now you should be doing this. We can start to see them as, “They’re adults now.” Group things. But introvert, extrovert. I was just reminded very strongly there of Michael’s more multi-passionate way of going, because he had applied and been accepted to college and had this job and was thinking about doing this thing and this thing. And it’s important for me not to get fixated on any one of those paths, because he’s just got so many possibilities that he loves. And again, just be curious to see how things unfold when these decision points come for now. For now. They can come again and again. But right now, oh, you know what? This is the path that he’s going to choose.

So, understanding that, for him, having so many different interests and paths and possibilities is just how he works and how he thrives. So, supporting that versus another child who’s just deeply into their passion and just diving into that deeper and deeper and deeper over the years. That is really cool, too. But to expect that out of another because their personality is so different, it just doesn’t work.
Knowing the individual and their unique interests and everything, but again, the root is that people are different and their personalities and the way they approach their life is just another great thing to keep mind, I think. Any last words before we go? I think we’ve hit everything.

ANNA: I think we’ve definitely covered a lot. I think there’s just lots to think about with this one.

PAM: So much. Yeah. I love this age, because I feel like it’s another one of the big seasons. The toddlers into choosing unschooling and then the teen years and I think it’s just another season where there are so many expectations that we have absorbed growing up, and that society is bringing in on us. It’s just another time when I found I needed to just get more purposeful and ground back in my why and ground back in remembering who we are and who I wanted to be as a parent, but in relationship with the people in my family, regardless of their ages. So, yeah, I’m glad we’re exploring this.

ERIN: Sorry, one more. Something came to my mind. I was thinking that it was kind of funny timing that I think when I joined two or three online groups within a season and I think my youngest was 15 at the time and my oldest was 21 or something like that.

And it’s such a funny time to start like diving into these, but it’s been so helpful and it continues to be helpful. So, I don’t know, I guess I would just like to put that in as a word of encouragement that, I think I’ll be curious to see as time goes on, but I feel like more and more people are doing that.

I’m noticing there are a few of us who still are wanting to talk about these things and sort these things out, because it’s the same principles but new life stage. There’s still a lot to think through and work through in ourselves. So yeah, just wanted to put that out there that I found that really useful.

ANNA: I love it, because I mean, when we started the Network, both of our kids, Pam, were grown whatever, but it’s like, right, because it’s so much about the journey. For me, it’s so much about learning how I want to show up in all my relationships, including the ones with my adult kids. So, yeah, it’s really a very cool time.

PAM: And it’s just very inspirational. It just reminds me, again, like are you making choices in the direction of the person that you want to be, regardless of life stages? I just learned that these questions are just so valuable for me and the reminder to live intentionally, don’t just get on this path even though you chose this path and do the things, just get your little to-do list, but moving through my life with intention and just hanging out with people who are doing the same thing is just very inspiring. Day in and day out.

All right. Well, thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun and I hope everyone listening has found this conversation helpful on their unschooling journey. And yes, you can come leave comments on social, on the post on the website. We would love to hear what’s sparked for you about this idea of, oh my gosh, my kids are going to become adults, this magical age of 18, where it’s like, okay, I’m done. Y’all take care of yourself now.

And as we mentioned, we would love for you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network. You will find links to that in the show notes, and we wish you all a wonderful week and we’ll see you next time. Bye! Thanks, Erin!

Marta Venturini joins me this week! Marta lives with her husband and daughter in Portugal. We dive deep into her unschooling journey, which began when her daughter was an infant, and discuss her deschooling process and how it continued to evolve as she grew as a parent. Marta also shares how much she values the online unschooling community and the wealth of resources she was able to learn from along the way.

Questions for Marta

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

Deschooling is a wonderful window to exploring ourselves and the person and parent we want to be. It quickly expands beyond “replacing school” and becomes a story of personal growth, doesn’t it?

What has been one of the more challenging aspects of deschooling for you? Can you share a bit about your journey through it?

And then it goes even deeper. The unschooling journey, if you embrace it, becomes an exploration of being human. We see it unfolding so beautifully in our children, through their interests and passions and on their own timetable. Our urge to judge others slowly fades as we come to see them more clearly as being on their own journey. Has that been your experience? What has struck you about how unschooling grows from a style of learning to the story of being human?

What is your favourite thing about the flow of your unschooling days right now?

Things mentioned in the episode

The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

Alex’s house tour – part 1, part 2

You can find Marta on Facebook and Instagram

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Holly Clark joins me this week, mom to two always unschooled children living on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Holly shared so many amazing snippets of their lives which all tied into the idea of choice—the choices we make as parents, the choices our children make, and our choice to support their choices! We also talked about fear about technology, when children want to quit an activity, and much more!

Questions for Holly

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?

When we were arranging our call, I asked if there was an unschooling topic you were particularly passionate about and you answered: choices. I love that! It’s a seemingly simple answer, but so incredibly far-reaching. Everything really is a choice, isn’t it? 

When it comes to unschooling, one important aspect is choosing to actively support our kids as they explore their interests and learn about the world. That’s not so hard to do when we feel like their interests have “value.” But eventually they choose something we’re not so comfortable with and that’s when our real work starts. Can you share what that process has looked like for you?

Another aspect of choice that comes into play is around parenting. We are surrounded by so much conventional parenting advice that it can be hard to wade through it all to discover the person and parent we want to be for our kids. Sometimes it feels scary to embrace that choice, but it’s also so freeing, isn’t it?

What has surprised you most so far about your unschooling journey?

Things mentioned in the episode

Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

Parenting a Free Child: An Unschooled Life by Rue Kream

Joyce’s Unschooling Toolbox

Holly is on Instagram as @holly_blossoming

Holly’s Facebook page, One family, Unschooling

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Daniela Bramwell joins me this week, an unschooling mom living in Ecuador. Daniela’s journey is fascinating! As a child, she was a student at an alternative free school, but, as an adult, found herself wondering if there was a better way to approach learning. She dove deep into learning about educational philosophies, including pursuing her PhD in the field. And then, as a mother, she found unschooling. We talked about her varied experiences in education, what she’s figured out along the way, and the joy she’s finding now, living and learning with her family.

Questions for Daniela

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

Your journey to finding unschooling is really interesting and I’d love to walk through some of the pieces with you. To start, you went to an alternative Montessori free school growing up. Can you share a bit about your experience?

Then you went to university and became very interested in studying education, completing your Masters, teaching courses, and now working on your PhD. What have been your big takeaways so far from that experience?

How did all that—your alternative ed experience growing up and your post grad education studies—weave together into you finding and choosing unschooling for your family? What pieces did unschooling bring that you felt were missing?

You mentioned to me earlier that your deschooling journey around “screens” was a big one because you grew up with so many negative messages around them. Can you share what that process looked like for you?

What’s something fun you guys have done recently that you don’t think you’d have done before finding unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen

Bernie De Koven’s work on play

No Contest by Alfie Kohn

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

Rachel Rainbolt’s podcast, Sage Family

Lucy AitkenRead’s article, 10 Things that are Worse for Your Child than Playing on the iPad

Pam Sorooshian’s article, Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children

Holly Johnson’s podcast episode

Akilah Richard’s podcast episode

Zakiyya Ismail’s podcast episode

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.

Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about navigating family gatherings, the theme this month on the Living Joyfully Network. With the holiday season ramping up, it’s a great time to explore how we choose to engage in larger family celebrations, but the ideas are definitely be applicable throughout the year, from birthday parties to weddings to family reunions.

Anna and I talk about making choices about how our gatherings will look over time, the fun work of preparing for events, and the joyful presence with which we can show up. We also discuss how these extended family gatherings can bring up difficult conversations and strong emotions, and offer some tools and ideas to navigate those. I hope you find our conversation helpful!

Discussion areas

• Attending family gatherings is truly a choice.
• It’s fun to play with traditions!
• Ideas to help set the stage for an enjoyable gathering.
• The value of showing up with a joyful, fun, and grounded presence.
• What if things go sideways?

Transcript

Read the transcript

Consider becoming a patron

I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the podcast archive growing and freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out Exploring Unschooling on Patreon.