Adult Peer Pressure, Clothes, Rules, and Compassion

Have you even made decisions based on other people’s opinions rather than the needs of your own family? I have. I almost ruined my relationship with my eldest daughter by doing this. I chose to listen to my friends rather…

Of Spiders and Saints and So-Much-Kindness

A Guest Blog Post by Suzie Andres My family and I are visiting my husband’s family in Florida. Yesterday my husband surprised me by getting up early (this is vacation!) and asking if I’d like to go with him to…

Trying Not to Complain

Hour after hour, day after day,  heavy rain dropped upon us. At first, we delighted in this extraordinary event. We searched for our long lost umbrellas. We remembered how to drive in the wet conditions. We took pleasure in the…

Trying to Be a Fun Mum

When my first two children were very small I had a best friend called Mellie. We got on extremely well despite being very different. I was an always-in-control type person. As well as liking an organised and spotless house, I…

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…

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Starting Unschooling

Initially, I liked the idea of unschooling so we set off down the unschooling pathway. But it didn’t take me long to discover a few things I didn’t like about this way of life. We ended up moving away, travelling down various side-tracks as I explored other homeschooling philosophies. For a few years, I searched for the perfect way to bring up and educate our children. Although I considered many different ways of homeschooling, I never intended to return to…

Kids and Computers

Each member of our family has a computer of her own which she is allowed to use without any restrictions. This doesn’t mean we spend all our time looking at screens. No, we like to do other things too like run and bushwalk, cook and read, sew and play music, talk to each other! But we do value our computers. We regard them as a very useful tool. They open up the world to us and allow us to get…

From Unschooling to University

My 17-year-old daughter, Charlotte, is now a university student. It’s hard to believe. When did she grow up? Charlotte is studying her first unit through Open Universities. It’s part of a Bachelor of Arts degree in Digital Design. She may go on to complete the whole degree. Or she may not. She’ll see. There’s no hurry. One unit at a time. “So how was your first week as a uni student?” I asked her last Friday. “Okay,” she replied. “I…

Real Life Maths Resources: Some Thoughts and Links

I often go looking for real life maths resources to strew under the noses of my girls. Yes, I like to tempt them with different maths experiences, hoping they’ll think, “Wow! Maths is so interesting, and useful as well!” So when I have a few free minutes I can often be found at my computer, googling the words ‘real life maths’ or even ‘real world maths’. And as soon as I hit ‘search’, pages of resources appear on my screen.…

Preparing Our Kids for an Unknown Future: Can We Do It?

The other day I bumped into Jane Fonda after not having seen her for many years. There she was in my Facebook feed, 70-something-years old and still looking rather good. Jane and I are old friends though, of course, she’s not aware of this. She doesn’t know she spent many a sweaty hour with me, years ago, as I worked my leotard-clad body hard. I’d stretch and bounce and breathe fast, as I listened carefully to her aerobic instructions. “Make…
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My Unschooling Books

Parents and Kids

The Ladies Fixing the World

Unschooling Isn’t Freedom Gone Wild: Why Choices Matter More Than Ideals

My husband Andy returned to work today after two weeks at home. Holiday time is over. We’ve now moved into term time. A whole term of possibility days stretches before me. I’m free to do whatever I like with my time while Andy is at school. My eyes light up with delight. But then I remember there are many…

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 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.…

Christian unschooling

Sharing the Catholic Faith With Our Kids

Maybe you’re thinking about unschooling. Letting children follow their own interests, and trusting they will learn all they need to know sounds great. But stop! Wait! What about religion? This is important. You think: “Can I just stand back and hope my children will want to learn about their faith? Doesn’t that sound a bit risky? What if they don’t…

Bringing God into the Unschooling Picture

A few months ago, I wrote a post called Why This is the End of the Line for Me. I decided that I’d explored unschooling from every possible angle. What more could I write about? It was time for me to move onto other things. Let my kids tell their own unschooling stories and find something else of my own…
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