Latest

Santa, Books, and Expectations

Desires and Expectations Are desires good? What about expectations? Are these about control? Can our expectations lead to disappointment and spoil our family celebrations? Should we burden our kids with our expectations? Do our worries and concerns affect our kids’ confidence? Should the only expectation we have is that they’ll be okay? Challenges Should we set our kids’ challenges to ensure they work hard? Or is better to give them space to set their own? Do we need to challenge…

Crime Novels and Priestly Detective Rules

While browsing the books in the library, looking for a new author to read, a man thrust a novel towards me, saying, “You should try Baldacci. I love his books!” A few weeks later, our libraries closed, declared unsafe spaces by those who thought they knew best. We were isolated from our source of unread books. Fortunately, Big W was declared an essential shop and remained open, so I started browsing the book section of that department store, coming home…

Unschooling: Doing What Is Right

Unschooling is the right thing to do. That’s a bold claim that you might challenge if your ideas about what’s right are different from mine. What if my right is your wrong? Is that the end of the conversation? Or could we agree that we must all decide what’s right for our families, and then live by those principles? Knowing what is right helps us when we’re tempted to doubt our parenting or the way we’re educating our kids. When…

Wanted: Passionate Unschoolers

Wanted: Parents who are passionate about sharing unschooling with the world. Do you like writing and speaking? Are you willing to tell some family stories? Do you enjoy pondering new ideas? Are you continually learning and growing? Is unconditional love important to you? Do you enjoy my blog and podcast? Are we kindred spirits? Would you like to work together? For the past year or more, I’ve been wondering if I need to move in a new direction. Now that…

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 trace many of our adult problems back to something that happened as we were growing up. If we understand this, we’ll protect our kids, the best we can, from anything that might affect them adversely. But what about the trauma that's disguised as ‘good’ parenting techniques? Can we unintentionally harm our kids by doing what we…
1 13 14 15 16 17 109

My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

How Unschooling Doesn’t Guarantee a Fairytale Life

Yesterday evening, like all Sunday evenings, my kids who live locally came to dinner. Six of us gathered around our dining room table, savouring a meal cooked by my husband while enjoying the usual end-of-the-week lively catch-up conversation. There was a time when we dreamed that all our children would buy houses on the same street as our family home.…

Unschooling: Trusting the Process and Letting Go of Control

“I kind of love my title for this podcast. It’s very ambitious. Let’s fix it all!” And so begins another Ladies Fixing the World conversation in which Cecilie Conrad, Sandra Dodd and I dive deep into unschooling, sharing our thoughts and experiences. In S2E4, we discuss Unschooling: Trusting the Process and Letting Go.   Want to know more…

Christian unschooling

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…

Unschooling and Trust

I have been struggling with this post for a while now, and wondering why I’m having so much trouble finding the right words. And I have decided it’s the language. I want to write a story from a personal point of view like I normally do. And I can’t. We had such a gradual transition to unschooling, I didn’t really…
Go toTop