Can Unschooling Be a Christian Thing to Do?
When a child has been controlled all her life, she just might grow into the kind of adult who says, “Nobody is ever going to make me do what they want ever again. From now on I’m going to do…
Turning a Shopping Trip into Homeschool Record Notes
Earlier this year, when the covid restrictions eased, and life felt like it was returning to normal after our lockdown – and before the next lockdown arrived – my girls and I enjoyed a big shopping day out together. After…
When Rules for Teenagers Aren’t Necessary
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.…
From Unschooling to Successful University Learning
A couple of days ago, Imogen logged into her Open Universities account to check some details she needed for her youth allowance application. She checked her mail while online and received a nice surprise. “Hey! I got a Distinction for that…
What if Unschoolers Don’t Know How to Write Essays?
What if unschoolers don’t know how to write essays? Will they be at a disadvantage if they want to go to university? This post follows on from How an Unschooler Learns to Write. My daughter Imogen taught herself to write.…
Disentangling Myself from the Internet
I’m lying in bed. Thoughts are running laps inside my head. Of course, I can’t sleep. I wonder if I should get up and write down what I’m thinking. Write the blog post that wants to be written. But I don’t push back the blankets and head for my computer: It’s cold. Instead, I continue to write inside my head until, several hours before dawn, the thoughts crash into each other and fall in a tangled heap. I finally fall…
How Do I Turn Unschooling Life into Homeschool Records?
Sometimes life is quiet. We can stay at home and relax. There’s plenty of time to say such things as “Would you like to watch a Shakespeare play with me?” We read books and drink hot chocolate. We write and chat and work on our individual projects. And as we do all this, I add links and notes to our homeschool records book. But sometimes life races along at an incredible pace. We take trips away from home. I drive a…
What is Unschooling? A Transcript
Hayley from the blog Taking a kinder path transcribed my video What is Unschooling? allowing me to turn that video into a blog post. I’ve made minor changes to the original words so that my points are easier to understand – I never say things in a video or podcast as well as I’d like! – and to make the spoken words flow better as written ones. Being a perfectionist, I’m tempted to rewrite everything. (Perhaps, three years after making the video,…
No More Nice, Dead People!
This is a guest post by Carolyn Blessington. Late 2012, about when the world was supposed to end and more than two years before my first child was born, I took a class called REALationship 101 with a guy named Steve1. My boyfriend and I needed help communicating and working out our differences. So, we delved into Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication (NVC)2 and developed an awareness of our feelings, needs, and wants, and how to make requests (not demands) of…
Accepting, Respecting, and Loving Unconditionally: An Unschooler’s Thoughts
In episode 70 of my podcast, Trust, Respect, and Love Unconditionally. my daughter Sophie shared some very insightful thoughts about respecting kids, accepting them for who they are, and making them feel unconditionally loved. Here is a transcript of part of our conversation. Sophie was 15 at the time of this podcast interview. Sue: When you listen to other families talking to each other, what do you hear? Sophie: Parents always criticise: My child doesn’t do this. My child is…
Podcasting Breaks and Unschooling Books
This is a very short blog post. All I want to say is: I’m taking a short podcasting break while I work on my unschooling book. If you’d like to hear more about Podcasting Breaks and Unschooling Books, you could listen to this week’s very short podcast, episode 103. I hope you’ll watch out for a regular full-length podcast episode in a few weeks’ time! Podcast music: Twombly by Podington Bear, (CC BY-NC 3.0) Image: I didn’t record a podcast episode last week because…
Miles’ Model Munitions Germination
This is a guest post by unschooling teenager Miles Brack. About a month ago, my local home-schooling group held a “winter markets”. Mum suggested that I sell my wooden model guns… Setting up for the markets was a little hard. Seeing as I’d never met the audience I had no idea what to make for them. I had a hunch that the long guns had potential to be a best seller, but since they were the hardest and most expensive…
Ideas for Starting Unschooling
A few posts ago, I was talking about collaboration. Would anyone like to work with me as we try to spread the unschooling message? Could we light a gentle unschooling fire together? I was afraid no one would respond to my invitation, but quite a few people did! You might have noticed the recent guest posts which have widened the unschooling conversation. Instead of just reading my thoughts and ideas and hearing about what my family is doing, you’ve been…
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…
What if Adding Joy to Your Days Was Simple and Inexpensive?
When I ask my husband, Andy, what he wants to do to celebrate his birthday, he replies, "Let's go on a picnic." It's winter.…
My Unschooling Teenagers’ Typical Days
On a typical day, my daughter Sophie (16) gets out of bed soon after 5 am. By 6.10 am, she’s heading out the door…
Unschooling: Coping With the Unexpected
I used to think I could control my life. To achieve a perfect life, all I had to do was organise everything well, including my kids. What is a perfect life? My perfect life vision included a graduated row of good-looking and well-behaved children. I wanted people to admire my family and home, saying, “Sue is such a good mother!…
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…
Unschooling: Trust, Autonomy, and The Realities of Learning
The Ladies are Fixing the World again! Cecilie, Sandra and I are discussing the words ‘self-regulation’ and ‘limits’. When we say, “I’ve let go of control, and now I’m waiting for my child to learn how to regulate his time playing video games (for example),” do we have expectations about what that regulation should look like? Do we want…
Unschool: Greater Things
She was tempted to aim low, afraid to risk failure, but she knew she shouldn’t settle for ordinary. More was expected. So she gathered her courage, did what she should, and life got exciting. And she changed. How often do we aim low because we’re too afraid to risk disappointment or failure? We want to stay where it’s comfortable and…
Could Ebooks Save My Unschool Blog?
The other day, I logged into my blog hosting account to find out when my next payment is due and how much it will be. When I saw the bill due later this year, I gulped and said to my husband, “Do we want to spend so much money on a site that’s often slow or offline because of a…