Goodbye, Stories of an Unschooling Family

TThe other day, I found a 5-star review of my book, The Unschool Challenge, on Amazon. It was written by Patrice Fagnant Macarthur from Today’s Catholic Homeschooling website. In The Unschool Challenge, Elvis provides short essays on various topics related to unschooling…

How Light Can Turn into Deep and Serious

I love Sunday mornings. We usually go to 7.30 am Mass and then when we get home, we have a leisurely breakfast in the family room. While we’re eating toast and Nutella and porridge and syrup, we talk. “What’s the…

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Extracting Every Drop of Joy from Our Parenting Days

Did you go searching for joy today? Did you look for ways to turn ordinary moments into something special for you and your family? Did you linger in bed with a child snuggled up beside you, savouring the warmth and softness of little-person-skin instead of rushing to get on with your day? Perhaps you talked about your hopes for the day with each child? Did you say, “Is there anything special I can do for you today?” Did you stop…

A Message We Can All Share Even if Our Unschooling Lives Aren’t Picture-Perfect

When we’re posting photos or writing stories or talking about unschooling directly with our family and friends, do we ever stop and wonder if it’s necessary to have perfect kids when we’re sharing this way of life? Lots of people want to promote or defend unschooling. I do as well. So we all share social media photos and stories of our thriving, happy kids doing wonderful things. We want to say, ‘Unschooling works!’ But what if our family is going…

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 stunning places where we live? Or visit? The campervans, the rustic cottages, the self-sufficient farms, the yurts, the attractive bits of our more conventional homes, the piles of interesting books and other resources? We could share eye-catching images that might…

Unschooling Poster Kids

All seven of my unschooled kids went to university when they were 14 and got their degrees before they reached adulthood. No they didn’t. That’s wrong. I lie! But wouldn’t it be impressive if they had all done that? I could have written a book called Brainy Unschoolers: how to get your kids into university at a young age. I might have sold a million copies. Is it necessary that I impress? Do I need to prove my kids are…

When the Outside Looks Wrong Because We Don’t Understand

My daughter Imogen knows I love proteas so when she saw a bouquet of native Australian flowers while shopping, she decided to buy them for me. A day or two previously, I’d told Imogen about the magnificent native flower garden that was in front of the house where we lived when she was five years old. I loved that garden. I spent many hours peering out the living room window, watching the birds hovering amongst the flowers. When the weather…

Putting Our Kids Ahead of the Opinions of Other People

Have you ever put other people ahead of your kids? I have. And I wonder: how could I have done that when my kids mean so much to me? It doesn’t make sense, does it? Years ago, there were many times when I cleaned my house rather than spend time with my children because I wanted my friends, who might drop by unexpectedly, to think I was wonderful. I followed my kids around picking up their toys as they dropped…

When We Can’t Decide What’s the Best Way to Bring Up and Educate Our Kids

Do you ever swap between the various methods of homeschooling looking for the perfect way to bring up and educate your kids? I used to do that. I’d try one thing after another, confusing myself and my kids, while never finding what I was searching for. As I said in my book Curious Unschoolers: … I pondered lots of questions: What are the basics of a good education?  Are old ideas better than new ones?  Are the classics important?  Are…

Reinventing Ourselves

When I was younger, I often came home from social gatherings and replayed conversations in my head. Did I talk too much? Had I sounded silly? I’d wish I could go back and change what I’d said. I wanted to be a different person. I wondered: could I reinvent myself? I wanted to be interestingly mysterious, calm and collected. When I spoke, wisdom would be on my lips, not chatter. I’d look uniquely stylish, and I’d move with grace and…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

Is It Working? Wrestling with Doubt in Unschooling

A grey day arrives that completely blots out the memory of all the preceding good days. We feel overwhelmed, tired, worried and lost. We wonder why we ever decided to unschool. A puddle of doubt about unschooling forms around us. What do we do? Cecilie, Sandra and I are discussing unschooling doubts and sharing our experiences in episode 10 of…

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…

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…

Christian unschooling

Should We Encourage Our Kids to Follow Their Dreams?

What did you want to be when you were a child? I wanted to be a writer. I had a cardboard box inside my wardrobe where I stored my scribbled stories about princesses, dragons and faraway kingdoms. At night, in bed, before dropping off to sleep, I’d think up stories about large happy families who were a lot like the…

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…
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