Helping a Child Discover Her Talents
If a child has a talent won’t it just appear without any encouragement? If you’re meant to be an artist, it will be very evident. The same with being a writer or a musician or even a fireman. Surely, a…
How to Get Our Children to Trust Us
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How All Kids Are Amazing
The other day, I read a parenting article in which the author said that parents can love their kids too much. I told my daughter Imogen about this and she was horrified: “You can never love a child too much!”…
How Unschooling Saved the Dragon Mother
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Adult Peer Pressure, Clothes, Rules, and Compassion
Have you even made decisions based on other people’s opinions rather than the needs of your own family? I have. I almost ruined my relationship with my eldest daughter by doing this. I chose to listen to my friends rather…
Having the Confidence to Ignore the Opinions of Others
Gemma-Rose is eight years old, and she still can’t tell the time. Well, that’s not quite true. If I put my watch in front of her and say, “What’s the time?” she’ll screw up her face and look unhappy for a while, and then eventually she’ll give me the correct answer. But her calculating will be accompanied by a lot of huffing and puffing, and the answer won’t arrive instantly.Now this situation might shock some people. Can’t all school kids…
Giving My Unschoolers a Maths Test
I had this brilliant idea. Well, I thought it was a pretty good idea until this morning. It was all to do with maths. How do you prove your children are covering the required maths syllabus, and achieving the necessary outcomes, when they don’t use a formal maths program? I’ve been thinking about this for a while. My husband is a school teacher. Every year his year 3 and 5 students have to sit the dreaded NAPLAN test. (National Assessment…
How the Girls Are Going to Write Novels in Only One Month
The girls can’t wait. They’ve been planning for weeks. There’s only seven days to go…. until… NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. I heard about this yearly online event on Kari’s blog, Overflow, last year, when she announced her intention to write a 50 000 word novel in one month. Write a novel in only one month? Could I do that? No way. But then Suzie Andres said she was going to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge too.…
Tired and Cranky and Lacking Enthusiasm
I was awake nice and early this morning. Too early. I lay awake at 4 am thinking… How will I be able to run if I don’t get more sleep? How will I get through the day? But of course, sleep never happens when we most want it. So I got up this morning, a Monday morning, and I didn’t experience that wonderful Monday morning feeling I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you came to…
Forcing a Child to Do What He is Afraid to Do
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Resolving to Go on More Adventures
This afternoon I had to drive to town to buy a few essentials: cheese and biscuits, wine and coke. Andy and I are off to our parish’s trivia event tonight, and we need to take along a few things to nibble while we exercise our brains trying to answer the questions. I wanted to make the most of the 40 minute car journey to town and back, so I decided to turn the routine shopping trip into an adventure. “Who’d…
Love and Physics
This morning I asked Charlotte what she was planning to do today. “I might have a look at a periodic table video,” she replied. More chemistry. My third daughter is certainly a keen unschooling chemist. “Why don’t you broaden your horizons,” I suggested. “You could try some physics. I studied physics when I was at school. I had this great big heavy physics book I had to carry to school every day.” I stopped and corrected myself. “I had…
A Better Way to Get into University
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Preventing Childhood Trauma with Unconditional Love
Childhood trauma can follow us into adulthood, affecting what we do, how we feel about ourselves and how we relate to others. We can…
When a Child Can’t Cope
A few months ago, a family story made big news in a city newspaper. One Sunday, a married couple decided to take their small…
The Problem of Introverted Kids and Blogging Mothers
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Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Curiosity, Flexibility, and Trust
I’m a Lady Fixing the World! Cecilie Conrad kindly invited me to join her and Sandra Dodd for Season 2 of her podcastThe Ladies Fixing the World. We recorded our first unschooling conversation together in November 2024 before life got extra-busy with Christmas, and it has just gone live! The audio version. Here’s the audio version: You can also listen…
Unschooling, Attachment, and the Art of Letting Go: Building Trust Instead of Rules
We don’t make rules in our family, so how do my children know what is right and what is wrong, if they aren’t guided by clearly stated limits? Do I believe my own quiet example of appropriate behaviour is all that is needed in order to influence my children? Perhaps I stand back, hands-off, and let my children behave as…
Unschooling Isn’t Freedom Gone Wild: Why Choices Matter More Than Ideals
My husband Andy returned to work today after two weeks at home. Holiday time is over. We’ve now moved into term time. A whole term of possibility days stretches before me. I’m free to do whatever I like with my time while Andy is at school. My eyes light up with delight. But then I remember there are many…
When We Don’t Know What to Do
I’ve just updated my blog. I started at the first post I ever wrote and then worked my way through 14 years of stories, reading each one before deciding whether to keep it or revert it to draft. I then checked the formatting of the retained posts, rearranging paragraphs, eliminating dead links, and changing or improving the images. As I…
Should We Encourage Our Kids to Follow Their Dreams?
What did you want to be when you were a child? I wanted to be a writer. I had a cardboard box inside my wardrobe where I stored my scribbled stories about princesses, dragons and faraway kingdoms. At night, in bed, before dropping off to sleep, I’d think up stories about large happy families who were a lot like the…