What do Children Need for a Happy Childhood?

Sometimes my children’s words warm my heart. “Don’t you just love being us?” asked my daughter Imogen, turning to me with a huge smile. I was surprised. Why did she suddenly feel like a big ball of happiness*? It wasn’t…

Judging and Other People’s Opinions

Why do we judge each other? Why do we worry so much about other people’s opinions of us? And what would everyone think of me if they knew what I did? In this vlog, I tell a story about a…

Pi and Tea, and Our Dog’s Tea Bag Collection

Our puppy Nora has a tea bag collection. She keeps it under the conifer tree at the bottom of our garden. Every day she pushes her long doggy nose between the wooden slats of the compost bin, in search of…

How Do We Encourage Our Kids to Be Independent Learners?

I’m still podcasting while I’m writing this unschooling book series. Here’s this week’s episode! This week, I’m sharing and discussing the story Independent Learners, Toast and Heavy Washing Baskets. Show Notes Leonie’s blog: Living Without School podcast music: Twombly by Podington Bear, (CC BY-NC 3.0)…

Education Doesn’t Have a Use-by-Date

Yesterday Imogen was peering over Charlotte’s shoulder, looking at all the interesting things she is learning.  “You are giving yourself a much better education than the one I gave myself,” Imogen complained. “Look at all those wonderful books you’re reading.…

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Realising What’s Important

Many years ago, I discovered that a friend of mine never irons her clothes. She doesn’t even own an iron. I thought this was rather strange. Surely clothes need ironing? At the time, I ironed nearly everything. (I didn’t iron underwear!) And then one day, I stopped ironing my clothes. Maybe I got lazy. Or perhaps I was busy. Whatever the reason, I embraced the wrinkles instead of smoothing them away. And you know what? It was okay. No one…

Another Novel: The Unschooling Adventure Continues!

hat do you think? A safe and secure job? Or should we encourage our kids to follow their dreams? Should they give the more adventurous path a go? Could they work part-time while continuing to follow their passions? Recently, I’ve had a lot of visitors to my blog from Facebook. Someone shared my post Choosing Not to Look for a ‘Real’ Job. When I wrote this post, my daughter Imogen had just finished her Bachelor of Arts degree. Instead of…

Stories About Connection from Radical Unschool Love

In this week’s podcast, I’m sharing a few stories that can be found in my book, Radical Unschool Love: A Teenager’s Thoughts Learning Right from Wrong Developing a Sense of Right and Wrong Can We Be Both Parent and Friend? One-on-One Times In episode 165, I’m also sharing a blog post called Radical Unschooling: Something Beautiful. Show Notes My Unschooling Books Curious Unschoolers: Kindle Curious Unschoolers: paperback Radical Unschool Love: Kindle Radical Unschool Love: paperback My Amazon Author Page Blog…

Discouraged

I’m feeling discouraged. I wonder: why am I doing this? Why am I blogging and podcasting? I know the answer: I want to spread the word about unschooling. I want to pass on what I’ve learnt. Tell others about the joys of living this way of life. I especially want to give hope to families who are struggling with homeschooling and parenting. There’s a better way. But am I sharing the unschooling message successfully? Sometimes it’s hard to know. The…

Time and Trust and Letting Go

If Darth Vader somehow got into your podcast, would you still publish it? If you tuned into a podcast episode and heard some noisy breathing, would you continue listening? Why am I asking these strange questions? Well, the latest episode of my podcast isn’t perfect. And that’s because I’m experimenting with yet another recording setup. Oh my, I’ve had a lot of technical problems recently. Podcasting has become very difficult. For episode 163, I used Adobe Audition to capture and…

Asking for Help

A few weeks ago, I was feeling rather stressed out so I took a break from podcasting. It’s been good not having to produce a new episode each week. Podcasting is hard work! I must now be feeling more rested because a day or so ago, I suddenly felt like making a new podcast. I headed into my closet, set up my mic and started recording episode 162 of my Stories of an Unschooling Family podcast. So what did I talk…

How to Turn an Art Gallery Outing into Homeschool Records Notes

Awhile back, Gemma-Rose and I went to the art gallery in Sydney to see the Masters of Modern Art exhibition. When we returned home, I turned our outing into homeschool records. What kind of notes did I make? Well, here are some of the things I added to our Evernote notebook: Photos of Gemma-Rose in the art gallery and a description of where we went and what we saw. A screenshot of a google map showing the gallery location.  Scans…
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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 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

Christian Unschooling: the Foremost Task of a Parent

A few days ago, in my Stories of an Unschooling Family community, I posted these thoughts: A parent does her best to give her child a good education but should concentrating on academic success be her main focus? Perhaps a parent’s most important task is to teach a child about love. Intelligence and academic achievements are highly regarded by the…

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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