Bringing God into the Unschooling Picture
A few months ago, I wrote a post called Why This is the End of the Line for Me. I decided that I’d explored unschooling from every possible angle. What more could I write about? It was time for me…
One Day Life Changed
A few days ago, my sister suggested we swap a daily photo via email, so I’ve been looking around to see what I can capture with my camera. I used to take lots of photos of my kids. They’d be…
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…
Do You Need to Follow an Older Unschooler? (Part 1)
Our fluid intelligence – our ability to focus and problem solve – will inevitably decline as we age. Listening to Arthur C. Brooks say this during a YouTube interview, I instantly protested, “No!” What if I keep my brain active…
What I Discovered When I Became a Video Gamer
Discover how video games helped one person cope with difficult times and how finding the right game can offer a chance for success. Explore the benefits of playing puzzle games and how they can improve thinking skills and creativity. Read…
Does Love Keep You Awake While Others Sleep?
Lying in bed, trying to conquer insomnia, I noticed bright intermittent flashes of light illuminating the night sky. I slid from under the quilt, padded to the living room, and peered out the window, trying to locate the source of the light. White, blue, and green electric balls of light, accompanied by loud bangs, were exploding from the power line strung high on the other side of our road. Showers of red embers were falling to the ground. My imagination…
Ordinary Frida Kahlo Eyebrow Days
Quinn barked, alerting me to the policeman striding along the path towards our house. After securing the dog, I opened the front door, my heart racing, my hands shaking, thinking, “The police only make house calls when they’ve bad news to share.” “Have you seen any strangers lurking recently?” the officer asked. “Your neighbour reported some broken windows.” My heart rate slowed as I realised the man was talking about windows and stones and not car accidents and deaths. I…
Parenting: Doing Our Inadequate Best
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Words Matter
Yesterday, I sang happy birthday to a friend in a video message despite thinking I have a terrible voice. “I’ll sing the low version,” I announced before plucking up my courage, taking a deep breath, and attempting the first note. My low voice is the one I use when I’m messing around with my family, pretending to be a bass like my husband and not a soprano like my daughter, Imogen. We all giggle when I reach into my boots…
The Unanticipated Problem with Sharing My Kids’ Lives Publicly
When my kids were younger, I constantly had my camera in my hand, watching out for photo opportunities. I wanted visual evidence of all our learning experiences for our homeschool records book. I also wanted lots of photos to go with my blog stories. We had a rule in our home: we had to check if it was okay to use photos of each other before sharing them online. We all could refuse permission for the publication of images of…
Reluctant to Persuade or Engage
I create a Friends Club, write and publish an exclusive members-only story, and then display a preview of it – an excerpt and an image – on my blog. I look at the red-tufted, painted cow staring back at me from my homepage’s sidebar and grin. Surely, the cow will attract people’s eyes? It will definitely persuade my readers to visit my Buy Me a Coffee page and sign up for my fabulous membership posts. Before I know it, money…
I Need Your Help. Do You Need Mine?
I decide to abandon my unschooling blog, leaving it online to look after itself while I move on. But then I discover I can’t actually do that. Blogs need attention, whether we’re writing on them or not. If I don’t keep a close eye on my website, making sure everything is updated regularly, and paying for the latest versions of plugins, things start to go wrong. Something goes wrong. Despite my best efforts to protect my blog, it’s infected with…
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
“When I grow up, I’m going to be a YouTube Shorts video creator,” I tell Amina. My pretend friend raises her eyebrows and says, “But I thought you wanted to be a graphic designer.” “I could be a graphic designer who makes YouTube Shorts.” “When I was a child, I wanted to be a fashion designer,” says Amina. “I loved making clothes for my Barbie dolls. I had loads of ideas for fabulous clothes collections.” “Why didn’t you become a…
The Problem of Introverted Kids and Blogging Mothers
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We Should Say What’s in Our Hearts (While We Can)
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Unconditional Love: the Glue that Sticks Us Together
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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…
Learning to Read and Trusting Unschooling
It is absolutely essential that we are curious people who are excited about the possibilities in life. The atmosphere in our homes gets picked up by our kids so they think it’s normal to learn, to be curious, to follow thoughts and ideas and try things out… I was battling with my kids for a while. They kept saying, ‘Why…
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…
Losing Time
I’ve been reading a book called A Time to Die by Nicholas Diat, who visited eight monasteries to talk to the monks about the experience of death. Here’s something that caught my attention: One monk described how he cares for the old and sick, and how he has to guard against doing things in a routine way, trying to complete…