From Unschooling to University and Work (Part 2)

Ten Minutes on Thursday Last Thursday I posted the first part of From Unschooling to University and Work, a video interview with my 22 year old son Callum. This week, I’m posting the second half of our interview… Callum and…

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…

Encouraging Kids’ Ideas

The other day, I was telling you about my plans to transcribe parts of my podcasts. I want to make them into blog posts. I found some software called Transcribe to help me, and this afternoon, I tried it out.…

Latest

Where I’m At With My Unschool Blog

I’ve created a monster, a huge blog that needs a lot of maintenance. It’s sucking up my money and time and giving me headaches. Frequently, this blog falls apart or runs so slowly that readers give up waiting for new pages to appear. I understand how visitors might get frustrated. Some days, even I don’t want to go anywhere near my blog. I’m tempted to hit the delete button to eliminate all the problems I don’t want to fix. I’ve…

Unschool Cool: Why Being Different Is Our Superpower

When I was eleven, a girl at school asked, “What’s your favourite song?” Looking back, I realise her question was a trap. Of course, I fell straight into it. “Delilah,” I replied, plucking a random song out of my memory. “Delilah?” “Yes. Tom Jones.” The girl smirked and shouted over her shoulder to her friends, “Sue likes Delilah!” As I listened to the girls’ laughter, I realised that Tom Jones wasn’t cool. His music belonged to our parents’ time. I…

Why Unschoolers Are the Real Cool Kids

I was once a cool kid. And then I wasn’t. When I was nine, I was clever and lively, one of the kids who got noticed. Best of all, I was part of a girl band that performed on the concrete ‘stage’ behind the toilet block in the school playground each lunchtime. I couldn’t sing very well, but somehow I was accepted. And many girls in my class envied me. Not everyone could belong to our band. Then something…

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 things I must do that I may not want to do. I have housework, dinner making and dog walking to…

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 they choose? I decide to ponder a few ideas with my children, in an attempt to find the answers to…

The Saturday Unschool Examen

Every Saturday, while my husband, youngest daughter and dogs are still in bed, I sit on the living room sofa, journal on my knee, scrawny cat by my side, and by the light of a lamp in the pre-dawn dark, do my Saturday examen. I reflect on the week just passed, remembering the highlights, the low points, the successes and failures, and the little delights. I feel grateful, thankful, blessed, forgiving, and contrite. I think of the week ahead.…

Unschool Crime Connections

Did Erin Patterson murder three people with her beef Wellington? Did she use toxic death cap mushrooms in her deadly dinner? Many people worldwide have been waiting for answers to these questions. Some media dubbed Patterson’s trial as The Mushroom Murders as if there was no question she was guilty, and maybe most people assumed she was. The evidence seemed strong for the prosecution. When questioned, Erin Patterson said she wanted to cook something special for her unfortunate guests. So,…

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. They’d move one by one, just a few houses away, so that we could gather at each other’s tables and…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

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…

How Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions and Sceptics

My mother-in-law visited us for the birth of our son, Thomas. After he died and we’d buried him in his tiny white casket, Andy’s mother asked me if we wanted more children. As I replied, “Oh, yes!”, my mother-in-law’s face dropped into a disapproving frown. “She thinks we already have enough kids,” I thought as my defence hackles rose. But…

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…

Christian unschooling

Can Unschooling Be a Christian Thing to Do?

When a child has been controlled all her life, she just might grow into the kind of adult who says, “Nobody is ever going to make me do what they want ever again. From now on I’m going to do what I want.” She might close herself off, stand well back, not let anyone get too close. Because you never…

The Discomfort of Letting Go and Allowing Our Kids (and Ourselves) to Grow

We organise life so we’re not challenged too much. We don’t want to stray outside our comfort zone because that could be painful. We say no instead of yes to our kids, not wanting them to go to parties at night, ride their bikes on the road, run through the bush alone, or learn to drive. We don’t want thoughts…
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