My Unschooling Teenagers’ Typical Days
On a typical day, my daughter Sophie (16) gets out of bed soon after 5 am. By 6.10 am, she’s heading out the door with sister Imogen who drives her to work. A few minutes later, Gemma-Rose (14) and I…
Getting Older, Admitting One’s Age, Lines and Wrinkles!
I wonder if I am the only person who’s finding it difficult coming to terms with an ageing appearance.”A lot of women feel that way,” says Imogen. “I guess there wouldn’t be such a huge anti-wrinkle cream industry if everyone…
Podcasting Breaks and Unschooling Books
This is a very short blog post. All I want to say is: I’m taking a short podcasting break while I work on my unschooling book. If you’d like to hear more about Podcasting Breaks and Unschooling Books, you could…
Making Unschooled Kids Learn Maths Just in Case
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.…
A Podcast Transcript: Passing On Our Values and Beliefs to Our Children
This post is a transcript of part of my podcast, Episode 102: Sharing Our Values and Beliefs With Our Unschooled Children. I edited my original words to make them flow better. I reordered some of them, cut out repetitions, and…
Mud Pies, Stews and Cakes
Gemma-Rose and Sophie are outside. They have been in the garden for hours despite the cool winter temperature. They have sand buckets and spades, and a big box of odds and ends: plates, bowls, spoons, pots, all leftovers from different tea sets. On the outdoor table there are piles of flowers, berries, weeds, grass, twigs and pebbles. And a bucket of soil. Somewhere down at the bottom of the garden is a hole, a hole that is getting bigger and…
Doing Nothing?
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.…
Babies, Toddlers and Unschooling (Part 3)
Our 8th child, Gemma-Rose was our most needy baby of all. Unfortunately, she had silent reflux and was in pain for the first few months of her life. She screamed whenever she was awake, and never slept deeply, waking constantly to writhe and moan, and then she’d need settling again. She never fed to sleep: feeding wasn’t a pleasurable activity for her. There were many days when I was exhausted. If Gemma-Rose had been our first child I’d have fallen…
Babies, Toddlers and Unschooling (Part 2)
Felicity, our firstborn child was an excellent baby. She fed every 3 or 4 hours, I’d change her nappy, pop her in her cot and soon she’d drop off to sleep without a problem. Between naps, she was happy and contented. And at the age of 5 weeks, she started sleeping through the night… in her own cot… in her own room. I thought I was the perfect mother. Duncan was an almost excellent baby. He fed more frequently and…
Babies, Toddlers and Unschooling (Part 1)
Gemma-Rose is now seven. She is our youngest child and so it’s been a few years since we’ve had a baby or a toddler in our family. It’s been a long time since we’ve had to work our homeschooling day around the needs of a young child. For us, homeschooling is relatively easy. We have a lot of freedom to do what we want, whenever we want. But… … we no longer have a gorgeous little bundle to hold or…
In the Kitchen with a TV Chef Dad
Can I talk about food? First, I will have to start with a story that happened about ten years ago. My husband Andy was playing touch footy with a group of homeschooling fathers and children. It was a cold and damp day and after the game, everyone eagerly returned to the shed for a hot cup of coffee. All except Andy… After some time, I became anxious and went looking for him, only to discover he’d been abandoned by mistake on…
A Typical Unschooling Day?
Is there really any such thing as a typical unschooling day? Each day can be so different from the one before; each day is a new adventure; each unschooling day has its own delights. That’s one of the wonderful things about living an unschooling life. So perhaps the ‘typical’ unschooling day I described in my post What Next? wasn’t really typical at all. Perhaps I should tell you about yesterday: The day did start the same as our What Next…
What Next?
I will admit it: I am stuck. I don’t know what to write about. I created my blog to tell you some stories about our journey to unschooling, and all about Suzie Andres’ books and I feel I have done that. I really enjoyed writing those stories too! And having Suzie visit and everyone comment and share… But now I am sitting here thinking, “What next?” Could this be the blog with the shortest history in all the blogosphere? I…
How to Write a Million Unschool Love Stories
I used to think the defining word of unschooling was freedom. Freedom attracted me. I wanted to be free to do whatever I liked.…
Respecting Kids and Christmas Presents
Does having a simple Christmas sound good? It does to me. This year, like last year and the one before, I wanted to announce…
A Balanced and Productive Unschool Life
It’s good to read stories about unschoolers, isn’t it? What do they think? What do they do? What kind of people are they? Stories…
Unschooling Is Carried by Conversations
Dinner tables, car rides, bedtime chats, and café corners are the real places where unschooling lives and grows. Conversations—often unscheduled, informal, and unplanned—can become the central structure of a learning life. Gathering at the Dinner Table In our house, we never met for breakfast or lunch. Those were meals where people ate what, where and when they liked. But we…
Unschooling: Trust, Autonomy, and The Realities of Learning
The Ladies are Fixing the World again! Cecilie, Sandra and I are discussing the words ‘self-regulation’ and ‘limits’. When we say, “I’ve let go of control, and now I’m waiting for my child to learn how to regulate his time playing video games (for example),” do we have expectations about what that regulation should look like? Do we want…
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…
Radical Unschool Love, Praise and Joy
Do you ever praise your kids? Do you tell them you’re proud of them? Some people say we shouldn’t praise our kids. Maybe that’s because our children might end up doing things only because they want to gain our approval. And is there a risk a child might think she is better than everyone else if we praise her too…
The Problem With Being Too Nice
Are you too nice? I am. I want to help everyone. Support and encouragement are my middle names. Send me an email and I’ll spend hours answering it. Write me a comment and I’ll always reply. Ask for some mentoring and I’ll do my best even though you tell me you can’t pay. I write a book. And another. Then…