Parenting: Doing Our Inadequate Best
Do you ever look back - a few years, months or even days - at your younger self and wish you could have done better? Perhaps you remember dragon parent days when you failed to be gentle. Could you have…
Do Beautiful Photos Fail to Tell the Whole Unschooling Story?
Can photos reflect the beauty of an unschooling life? We could post loads of pictures of smiling kids involved with impressive activities or running wild and free, surrounded by the spectacular beauty of nature. How about sharing photos of the…
What Kind of Home Do Kids Need?
The other day, while walking our dogs through the bush close to home, I met a neighbour who warned me to watch out for snakes. He’d almost stepped on one and had sighted others that had slithered away. Years ago,…
A New Unschooling Year Begins
Andy returns to work tomorrow. He’s a primary school teacher. “This is Dad’s last day of holiday,” I say to the girls. They are quiet for a moment, and then it suddenly dawns on them. “You mean the new school…
A Better Way to Get into University
The HSC (or Higher School Certificate) is the exam all school students in our state take at the end of their final year of school. Homeschoolers are not eligible to sit the HSC. So how will our children get into…
Stories of Awful Hair Styles and Inspector Morse
I’ve been watching Inspector Morse, an old TV series, starring John Thaw. My dad was a great Morse fan. I contributed to his Morse DVD collection, buying him a new series for some of his birthdays. I knew my dad enjoyed this crime series but never wondered what exactly it was that attracted him to it. It didn’t occur to me to find out. I failed to say, “Hey, Dad, what is it about Morse that you like?” Months after…
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 worked on my blog, rereading the posts, I slowly moved forward in time. When I created this blog, my youngest…
Intuition and Independence: Unschooling Tips and Practical Advice
What do we do if a child refuses to brush her teeth? What if our kids choose not to wash their hair or shower their bodies? Personal hygiene is important, isn’t it? Without self care, our kids might develop cavities. They could end up not being accepted by other people. Should we insist our children bring their own dirty cups back to the kitchen? If we don’t, will they fail to learn responsibility and consideration? Will they become self-centred and…
Unconditional Love: the Glue that Sticks Us Together
I miss my Mother's Day breakfast. My husband, Andy, and some of our adult kids enjoy coffee and pastries after the early Sunday Mass without me. I’m at home, a blanket drawn up to my chin with razor blades scratching my throat and a drum beating in my head: I’m unwell. Mother's Days, like birthdays, can be full of expectations. We don’t expect to be sick. We want all our kids to remember us. Will they visit? Will they phone?…
A Birthday Chat
Every time I celebrate a birthday, going up a number, I ponder ageing anew. How do I feel about getting older? Am I reluctant to admit my age? Or am I grateful to be who I am at the age I’ve reached? I once saw a sign saying, Experienced cars for sale. Of course, this is a novel way of selling secondhand vehicles. Secondhand conjures up images of something that’s not as good as it used to be. The value…
Live a Radical Life of Unconditional Love
Cecilie and Jesper Conrad invited me to be part of their Self Directed podcast, so I met them online, via Zoom, and I had a fabulous time recording episode 65 with them. After the interview, one of my daughters said, “How did it go, Mum?” and I replied, “I must have done okay because the Conrads have invited me to record a second episode with them!” That second conversation, episode 66 – I’ve got back-to-back episodes on the Self Directed…
Encouraging My Daughters and Other Women by Embracing My Age
I was 58 on Christmas Day, 2019. If you do some real-life maths, you’ll soon work out how old I am today. There have been times when I haven’t wanted to admit my age and wished to appear younger than I am. Why? Did I fear no one would like me if they heard I was older than they were? Perhaps I thought I had to be young to be accepted and valued. But, bit by bit, I’ve come to…
An Unschool Conversation with Jesper and Cecilie Conrad on the Self Directed Podcast
Remember how I was talking about pushing ourselves to do things outside our comfort zones? Well, I almost said no the first time someone invited me to discuss unschooling on their podcast because I didn’t want to put myself in an unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable situation. I was confident talking about unschooling when recording my own podcasts: I was in control. I could stop, delete, and start again if the words didn’t flow. But what would happen if I had…
Radical Unschooling
Are you thinking about radical unschooling? Maybe you see the benefits of educational unschooling and now you’re thinking about letting unschooling spill over into…
Boy Stories
Usually I speak and write about my four youngest daughters. But not today. For this week’s podcast, I share some boy stories. I received…
Discouraged
I’m feeling discouraged. I wonder: why am I doing this? Why am I blogging and podcasting? I know the answer: I want to spread…
The Role of Repetition in Learning, Unschooling, and Shaping Identity
What if kids want to watch the same movies, read the same stories, or play the same games again and again? Should we try to move them on to other activities? Or is there value in repetition? Does repetition have an important role in our lives?…
Unschooling: How Do We Know They’re Learning?
There are loads of unschooling questions we could ask about learning: How do we know unschooling kids are learning? Should they be learning particular things? Is there knowledge that all kids need? Are our unschooled kids learning enough? Can they get behind? Should we just trust our kids are learning? But what if we have doubts? Or what if we…
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…
An Impossible Adventure
I never thought I’d become a Catholic unschooler. An unschooler? Maybe. A Catholic? Oh no! At one time in my life, that seemed impossible. When Andy asked me to marry him, of course, I said yes. “But I’ll never become a Catholic,” I added. I had to make it clear. Just in case. What if my cradle Catholic husband had…
Love or Fear? What Guides Our Lives?
There are so many things we could fear. We might be too afraid to send our kids to school if we listen to the loud voices telling us how bad traditional education is. We might choose homeschooling because of that fear. If we decide to homeschool, we’re still not safe. Fears could follow us. We might be too afraid to…