5 March 2015

Our Reluctance to Trust and Other Croaky Thoughts


A week or so ago, three boxes arrived on our doorstep. Imogen cheered and jumped up and down, and said, “Wow! Our new home audio recording studio!”

Yes, we now have some new sophisticated equipment which should make our audio recordings sound more professional.

“You should make a podcast, Mum,” urged my daughter. “Try the new mic out.”

“You’ll have to help me work out how to use everything,” I replied.

So we connected everything together. Imogen grabbed some music and sang a few bars, and I made a test recording.

“It sounds good!” 

After lunch today, Imogen set up our home studio in the quiet of my bedroom so I could record episode 25 of my podcast.

So what did I speak about?

This week, while trying out my new home studio audio equipment…

  • I share a few thoughts on blogging and what the future holds for my Stories of an Unschooling Family blog
  • I ponder trust: Do people in general have a problem trusting? Do we like to be in control? Can we control all aspects of our lives? Is it wrong to trust too much?
  • I speak a little about homeschool registration: It’s time to re-register my girls as homeschoolers. Am I feeling confident about my Evernote records? Will I need to do any preparation before our Authorised Person from the education department comes to visit us?
My voice is croaky and my thoughts may be muddled, but I think the sound quality of my podcast is much improved!



Program Notes:


My Evernote posts


My Homeschool Records and Registration page

Posts about trust

Pondering Trust
Unschoolers talk about trust all the time. Do we have enough trust to unschool? I wonder what that means. Is it a case of putting trust in the unschooling process alone? Or do we trust because we feel unschooling is what God wants us to do? It could be both. I know there are many people without any faith who successfully unschool. It’s not necessarily a religious thing to do.


I have been musing over the reason why my girls are so open to my suggestions. And this is what I’ve come up with…

…And secondly, I think they trust me. Trust me? Isn’t unschooling all about parents trusting their children, not the other way around.

Trusting children to make their own choices sounds risky enough when it applies only to education, but what if you extend this trust to other areas of life? Will children decide they don’t want to go to Mass or eat healthy food? Perhaps they will want to watch inappropriate movies or play computer games all day. Some parents decide they just can’t pass control over to their children as it would be irresponsible. They wouldn’t be fulfilling their duty of protecting and caring for their children. At first glance this might all seem very true.


Now that we’re not directing our children’s learning, do we believe they will learn what they need to know in their own time, without us interfering? Do we trust our kids? Or deep down, do we still have certain expectations? Perhaps if they’re not being fulfilled we will start to doubt what we’re doing.


There are more posts about trust under the label ‘trust’.

READ  Misconceptions: Unschooling Children Will Choose Not to Do Difficult Things

Music

Music: Frammenti, by Andrea Carri, (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

Now onto this week’s podcast…

Our Reluctance to Trust and Other Croaky Thoughts:

Did you see Ann Frailey‘s kind review of my children’s novel, The Angels of Abbey Creek, on Catholic 365.Com? Thank you, Ann!

You can also find me on…
my Stories of an Unschooling Family Facebook page, 

Sue Elvis

I'm an Australian blogger, podcaster, and Youtuber. I write and speak about unschooling, parenting and family life. I'm also the author of the unschooling books 'Curious Unschoolers', 'Radical Unschool Love' and ‘The Unschool Challenge’. You'll find them on Amazon!

4 Comments

  1. How exciting to have new equipment, it sounds great! We all have croaky colds here too.
    It must be a real peace of mind to have your records up to date and ready to go, good old Evernote.
    Do we get to hear any of Imogen's song recordings?

    • Kelly,

      I'm sorry your family isn't well either. I hope you get better soon.

      I've really enjoyed using Evernote for the past year. I think my records look impressive. I only hope our AP agrees!

      Imogen is experimenting with the audio recording equipment at this very moment. She wants to record herself playing the piano. Then she'll record the vocals, put the two together, and then hopefully make a music video of her song. It's an exciting project! I'm sure, when Imogen has something she feels is worth sharing, she'll let us hear her song!

      Thank you for taking the time to listen to my podcast!

  2. Greetings from Anchorage, Alaska. We are a family of five ages 4 through 44. Wow. I didn't realize my husband was 40 when we had our little Lizzy. Hum. And we have been married for 19 years. Praise God.

    Well I simply wanted to reach out and thank you for your podcast. This was my first introduction to your r website and podcast. I googled Unschooling and that is how I came to your online journaling, thank you for sharing and many blessings to you and your family. Well we are off to go skiing today. We did not get much snow this year but there is still s little bit left at Alyesks so off we go.

    • Kim,

      I am so pleased to meet you and your family. Thank you for stopping by to leave such a lovely comment!

      You live in such a different place to us. I had a look at Anchorage on Google maps. What a beautiful place! I don't think I have ever chatted with anyone from Alaska before. I must find out more about your country.

      I have never been skiing. If it snows here, it is only ever a fluttering, and it hardly ever settles on the ground. We do have snow resorts further south in NSW in the Snowy Mountains. Some years the snow is good, and others it has to be supplemented with artificially made snow. Even in a good year, our snow is nothing like yours!

      Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. Many blessings to your family too!

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