A Novel Writing Adventure
Imogen is sitting in the family room with her netbook balanced on the arm of the sofa. I look over her shoulder and notice she is writing a blog post…. another one. She always seems to be writing. The other…
Sew Easy
When I’m not writing, I love to sew clothes for my girls. And when I’m not sewing pretty skirts, I like to sew pictures. And the pictures I like to sew are red work embroideries. A few years ago,…
An Unschooling Imposter
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Turning Waiting Times into Unschooling Adventures
Do you spend a lot of time waiting? I used to. When my kids were younger, I had to wait while they had piano lessons, singing lessons, musicianship lessons and swimming lessons. I waited while they went to Brownies and…
Spreading the Radical Unschooling Message
Not so long ago, I made a podcast called Why You Should Consider Radical Unschooling. I wanted to encourage everyone to let unschooling spill over into all aspects of life, and not just the educational part. I wanted to say, “Unschooling…
Unschooling During a Crisis
Are there some things you hate doing? We don’t like gardening. Usually, we let our garden take care of itself. That’s why our hedges grew and grew until they were higher than the roof of our house. We should have pruned them back years ago. We shouldn’t have left it until a crisis forced us to do something about the branches that were overhanging our house. You might know that there’s a huge out-of-control bushfire burning not too far away…
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…
Unschooling Books and Bedtimes
Knock! Knock! My husband Andy looked at me and I looked at him. We both looked at the clock. Who could that be at…
How Unschooling is About Being Connected With Our Kids
Some parenting ideas seem to make a lot of sense. For example, children have far less life experience than parents, so we are in…
Learning from My Daughter and Other Unschool Stories
Once upon a time, I knew more than Sophie when it came to our shared passions. But I have to admit, these days, her…
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…
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…
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…
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…
About Me, About Being Different
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