Learning From My Children
My children are always eager to learn. “Wow! That looks wonderful. Will you teach me to crochet too? Do you think I could make a blanket like yours?” They always seem willing to have a go. They don’t worry about…
Opening Myself Up to Criticism
I’m It’s inevitable: someone is going to criticise my unschooling books. No one has yet, but someone will. How do I know this? Well, even though we would like to think everyone agrees with our ideas and likes our work,…
Why Do Some Children Love Writing?
The other day, Sophie appeared with a huge smile on her face. “I’ve written a blog post,” she announced, and then added, “I wrote it your way. It’s like one of your stories.” “Tell me about it,” I encouraged. “Well,…
Fighting on the Front Line
A couple of days ago, we had some good news: the status of our bushfire has changed from ‘out of control’ to ‘being controlled’. Isn’t that wonderful? The fire is huge so the fight to put it out is far…
Why We Need to Support Our Kids’ Choices
The other evening, we were watching an old episode of a cooking competition TV show. It was elimination night. For three hours, the contestants measured and mixed and baked and decorated. They also made mistakes, felt discouraged, picked themselves back…
My New Book!
Quinn barks loudly at a man in a mask who’s walking up our driveway. I open the front door, holding back the dog, and the man thrusts a box at me. No need to sign for it. No one does that anymore. The box is from Amazon, and when I open it, I see six copies of my latest children’s novel, The Angels of Wallaby Way. Yes, I’ve published a new book! I wrote the first draft of this novel during…
The Important People in Our Lives
About a week or so ago, I received a beautifully encouraging message from one of my friends in our unschooling community who’d listened to my podcast, The Problem with Being Too Nice. You might remember that I made that episode in March last year, at a time when I felt overloaded with various difficulties, including the pandemic lockdown. As I rarely received any feedback about the unschooling work I was doing, I wondered why I was sticking around trying to…
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 on to learn more about the surprising benefits of video gaming.…
Small Steps Towards Unschooling: A Challenge
For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been writing unschooling challenges for our Stories of an Unschooling Family community. Each challenge is designed to stimulate thought and discussion about a particular aspect of unschooling. Hopefully, the challenges help turn unschooling principles into something real in people’s lives. This week, I posted A Small Steps Unschooling Challenge in the community, but I’m posting it here on my blog as well! A Small Steps Unschooling Challenge Hey friends, it’s time for…
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 these tasks as quickly as possible without giving his full attention to the person he is looking after, his thoughts…
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 there somewhere in the picture. A beautiful scene and a person: that was my favourite kind of photography. But these days, when I’m ready to take photos, no one else is. Life is no longer as free as it used…
Solo Adventures
This morning, Gemma-Rose and I left home earlier than usual because we wanted to drive the scenic route to town instead of going the direct way. After my youngest daughter slid into the driver’s seat of her nifty blue car, we realised there was ice on the windscreen. A few squirts of water and swipes of the wipers, and we were on our way. Driving along the back road past paddocks of cows, weak winter sun in our eyes, we…
Acts of Love
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Tough or Unconditional Love? Parent or Friend?
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Unschool: Babies and Perfect Love
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Babies, Toddlers and Unschooling (Part 1)
Gemma-Rose is now seven. She is our youngest child and so it’s been a few years since we’ve had a baby or a toddler…
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…
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.…
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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Does Christian Unschooling Interest You?
I’ve written three unschooling books: I focused on the educational side of unschooling in Curious Unschoolers. I extended the unschooling story in Radical Unschool Love by sharing parenting thoughts and stories. And I offered practical suggestions for turning all those interesting unschooling ideas into something real in families’ lives in The Unschool Challenge. Three books. A trilogy. Everything I can…