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…
How Kids Need Something Better Than Perfect Lives
If it were possible, would you give your kids a perfect life? Or do they need something better? Sitting on my faded blue chair in our back garden, clad in my pjs, at 7 o’clock this morning, savouring the relatively…
Encouraging Kids to Say Thank You
How do we encourage our younger children to say thank you? Do they need only our good example to copy? Is learning good manners enough? Our kids could just repeat the polite words. But is it better if their response…
Pushing Ourselves Instead of Our Kids
Often, we push our kids to try new things, don’t we? We want them to be adventurous. We say, “If you give it a go, you might discover you like it. You might be good at it.’ But what about…
Taking Risks, Looking Strange
… And we shouldn’t be afraid of taking risks: doing something different and trying new things. People might look at us strangely, but then again, they might not. They might think what we’re doing is great. It’s strange how many…
How to Be Brave
The other day, I was thinking about bravery. What is being brave all about? Are we brave when we do something that might make people stare, such as having our hair cut startling short? Or is there more to bravery than that? After pondering a few thoughts for a while, I headed to my front doorstep with my phone camera and made a vlog on this topic. Along the way, I told some stories about open casket funerals, disastrous haircuts,…
Meander the Unschooling Way
There are two routes to our local town. The first one is the efficient way. Once we’ve left the road that leads out of our village, we drive along the highway, through multiple sets of traffic lights before we arrive in town. The other route is the meandering one, the one that winds its way through bush and paddocks, round bends, and up hills and down. If I’m not in a hurry, I like to avoid the traffic and go…
How Unschooling Saved the Dragon Mother
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Unschooling: Good Education
When I open the front door, a man with a winning smile immediately launches into a slick presentation. Do I have children? Yes, I have two. Would I like them to receive a good education? Yes. Do I want to give them the best start in life? Of course. It’s my lucky day. The young man tells me he has just what I need: a set of encyclopaedias. He thrusts a brochure at me and says he can give me…
Christian Unschooling: Letting God into Our Kids’ Lives
I used to tick off my spiritual boxes religiously every day. I said a lot of prayers and read my Bible. And I got extra ticks whenever I was able to get to daily Mass, so I made the effort to get there as often as life allowed. It wasn’t easy doing all that, but I did it. I had to because my checklist was my safety plan. If my boxes were all ticked, maybe God would leave me alone.…
Will We Have Done Enough?
Are our kids ‘doing enough’? Maybe we often ask ourselves that question. But what do we mean by ‘doing enough’? Do we worry that our children aren’t doing enough Maths, English, science? Or is there something far more important they need to know? My daughter Gemma-Rose was about 15 when I wrote this story about a day in our family’s unschooling life. I’ve been thinking about time, love, learning and doing ‘enough’. Early the other morning, my daughter Gemma-Rose and…
How to Unschool Maths and Still Fulfil Homeschool Registration Requirements
Can Registered Homeschoolers Unschool Maths? Perhaps you’d like to let your kids unschool maths, but you’re worried. Will you have enough maths notes in your records book if you let them drop the formal maths program they’re using? Can you satisfy the maths requirement for homeschool registration without traditional style workbook maths exercises? For us, the answer to these questions was yes. My youngest girls approached maths in an unschooling way, and we never had any trouble getting through our registration…
An End of the Year Unschooling Challenge
At the end of 2020, which was a very tough year, I wrote the following unschooling challenge. 2021 turned out to be a difficult year too. I think we could substitute 2021 for 2020 and do the challenge again! This week, we’re going to think about 2021 and write our end-of-the-year reviews. Maybe we don’t want to do this. It’s been a tough year, hasn’t it? We might just want to move on. Forget this year and hope that next…
Passing on Our Fears to Our Kids
How do you feel when your children try things out in public with everybody looking on? Do you admire their courage and say, “Have…
My Number One Unschooling Fan
I’m my kids’ number one fan. I cheer my children on from the sidelines, encouraging them to develop their talents and become the people…
Unschool Love Stories
About a month ago, I wrote the following story for my unschooling community: This morning, I didn’t want to go for a run. It…
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: A Lifestyle of Curiosity, Flexibility, and Trust
I’m a Lady Fixing the World! Cecilie Conrad kindly invited me to join her and Sandra Dodd for Season 2 of her podcastThe Ladies Fixing the World. We recorded our first unschooling conversation together in November 2024 before life got extra-busy with Christmas, and it has just gone live! The audio version. Here’s the audio version: You can also listen…
Resources for Unschoolers
Strolling towards the shopping centre, I spy an older man with three hand-reared brightly coloured parrots. A few wide-eyed kids are gathered around him, and as I watch, he transfers a parrot to one of their shoulders, where it bounces lightly upon its feet, nuzzling a little ear. The child grins, hardly daring to move. The children have questions which…
An Impossible Adventure
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Respecting Kids and Christmas Presents
Does having a simple Christmas sound good? It does to me. This year, like last year and the one before, I wanted to announce that I’m not buying a lot of Christmas presents. I thought about saying that I’m not buying any at all. I didn’t want to think and think until the perfect gift ideas came to mind. I…