How the Girls Are Going to Write Novels in Only One Month

 The girls can’t wait. They’ve been planning for weeks. There’s only seven days to go…. until… NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. I heard about this yearly online event on Kari’s blog, Overflow, last year, when she announced…

Stolen Paintings and Real Life Maths

Last week was a hunting week… My daughters and I watched as the FBI tried to hunt down a number of stolen masterpieces. And then I went on a hunt for some real life maths experiences. (Where’s all that maths…

Unschooling and Trust

I have been struggling with this post for a while now, and wondering why I’m having so much trouble finding the right words. And I have decided it’s the language. I want to write a story from a personal point…

If it’s Not on Facebook, Did it Really Happen?

If it’s not on Facebook, did it really happen? This strange thought has been going around and around inside my head. What do these words mean? Well, this is what I’m thinking: Do we have to turn every thought, idea, conversation…

Remembering to Trust

Our family is problem solving. The oven is broken so we can’t cook scones, muffins, cakes, and biscuits: all those treats we really enjoy. We talked over the problem while we ate lunch. “We do have a microwave…” I started…

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When Unschooling Doesn’t Seem to be Working

We decide to unschool. Everything goes really well. Our kids are learning. Our family bonds are strengthening. Life is full of joy. Then one day, things change. Something happens. Maybe a child makes a mistake. She could choose to go her own way. Do something we’re not happy about. We begin to doubt what we’re doing. We think: Perhaps unschooling doesn’t work after all. Maybe the critics are right: You should have kept tight control over your kids! Yes, we…

Unschooling is Just as Much About the Parent as the Child

We can’t make anyone become the person we’d like them to be. We can’t say, “If you only did this or that… you’d be a better spouse (or partner).” We can’t change people. But we can change ourselves. We can try and become the person we’d like those closest to us to be. We can treat others the way we want to be treated. Be a good example. And who knows? Our spouses may reciprocate. They might start treating us…

Parents, Teenagers and Opinions

Why do some parents want to impose their opinions on their children? Do they do this because they care? Perhaps they want their teenagers to benefit from their experience. Prevent them from going down wrong pathways and making mistakes, ones they might have made when they were younger. Maybe it feels safer to force their teenagers to adopt the ideas they think are right rather than let them develop their opinions for themselves. Sometimes it can look like teenagers have…

Playing for Ian

If you listened to episode 125 of my podcast, Connecting Unschooling and Ageing, you might have heard this story. I wrote it in 2012 and originally published it on one of my other blogs. I think it’s a story worth repeating because it’s about an extraordinary person, someone we’ll never forget. Ian freely shared his talents with my kids and affected their lives in a big way. Perhaps you know someone similar? My son Callum’s singing teacher suggests he audition…

Hitting the Pause Button and The Colin Show

In this week’s podcast, episode 128, Cricket is my unschooling guest podcaster. The Colin Show Cricket tells us about her family She shares their journey from school-at-home homeschooling to unschooling Cricket recorded her guest podcast with her son Colin’s help. Please visit Colin’s Youtube Channel, The Colin Show, and subscribe! Hitting the Pause Button I share some of the responses from my Stories of an Unschooling Family survey I respond to some constructive criticism I talk about some changes I could make…

Unschool Reading: A Slow Learner

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was helping my daughter Gemma-Rose learn to read. She’d choose a book and we’d sit side-by-side on the sofa and we’d enjoy the story together. Actually, I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ is the right word. Reading was a very slow process. We hardly ever got to the end of a book. I’d think, “Will Gemma-Rose ever read fluently?” which was a very silly question because I’d already experienced six other learner readers.…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

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 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…

Christian unschooling

Christian Unschooling: Should Parents Demand Obedience from Their Children?

Not so long ago, I was reading a spiritual book that mentioned monks and their life of poverty, chastity and obedience. And this got me thinking about obedience. Monks are obedient to their superiors and the rule of their order. They are imitating Jesus who was obedient to God the Father even until death. Obedience is obviously good so perhaps…
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