Meander the Unschooling Way

There are two routes to our local town. The first one is the efficient way. Once we’ve left the road that leads out of our village, we drive along the highway, through multiple sets of traffic lights before we arrive…

Should a Child Be Given the Freedom to Choose?

If children are given the freedom to do whatever they want, will they choose to do nothing at all?… Imogen, would you like to discuss this question with me, in this week’s podcast?” My nearly 20-year-old daughter said, “Okay!”, so…

Taking Risks, Looking Strange

… And we shouldn’t be afraid of taking risks: doing something different and trying new things. People might look at us strangely, but then again, they might not. They might think what we’re doing is great. It’s strange how many…

Latest

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…

Watching a Child Learn

This is a guest post written by Elizabeth Johnson. As mothers (and fathers) we are blessed with an incredible privilege: watching our children’s minds unfold to the world around them. I used to take great pleasure from seeing an “A” at the top of my daughter’s spelling tests and would congratulate myself on parenting well done when my son could parrot back to me the correct answers for an upcoming science test. Never mind the distasteful preparation on behalf of…
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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: 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…

Christian unschooling

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…

The ‘Risky’ Business of Trusting Children

Trusting children to make their own choices sounds risky enough when it applies only to education, but what if you extend this trust to other areas of life? Will children decide they don’t want to go to Mass or eat healthy food? Perhaps they will want to watch inappropriate movies or play computer games all day. Some parents decide they…
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