A Typical Unschooling Day at Home
Yesterday… The phone alarm beeps at 6.10 am. A few minutes later, I swing my legs over the side of the bed, and pad down the hall to the girls’ bedrooms. I open their doors and say, “Anyone want to…
Pushing Ourselves Instead of Our Kids
Often, we push our kids to try new things, don’t we? We want them to be adventurous. We say, “If you give it a go, you might discover you like it. You might be good at it.’ But what about…
The Problem With Being Too Nice
Are you too nice? I am. I want to help everyone. Support and encouragement are my middle names. Send me an email and I’ll spend hours answering it. Write me a comment and I’ll always reply. Ask for some mentoring…
Choosing an Exceptional Unschool Life and Other Things
Do we sometimes want to use someone else’s plan for our lives? Or are we willing to embrace adventure? Do you journal? Analogue or digital? How do we achieve our goals? I’m sharing podcasts, books, videos and thoughts that I’ve…
Should We Buy Kids What They Need to Further Their Passions?
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Interviewing My Children and Other Family Movies
I have this brilliant (?) idea. I might have to learn a few new skills to put it into action. “Girls, do you want to learn how to make videos? We could make some and post them on our blogs.” “What will we film?” my daughters ask. “We could film our everyday lives, our outings, things we do… I could interview you, ask you questions. I’m sure you’ll think of some entertaining answers.” The girls roll their eyes. “Not only…
Giving Up My Perfect Start-of-the-Year Plans
On the other side of the world from us, homeschoolers are ‘going back to school’. Catalogues have been browsed, curricula, resources and books have been bought, plans have been drawn up, and hope and excitement are in the air. When I was a fairly new homeschooling mother, I had similar feelings of excitement and anticipation at the start of the new school year. After weeks of preparation, I was ready. I had a stack of perfect must-have resources. I’d written…
Live Life to the Full, Have No Regrets
Today we are going on an adventure. The girls giggle. “We’re going on a ‘school excursion’!” they say. We imagine a long straggly crocodile of paired off and name-tagged children, walking hand-in-hand. Where are they off to? The museum? The zoo? The fire station? No crocodiles for us. No museum or fire station. We pack a picnic, pull on our track pants and running shoes, and grab our cameras. We are off to the lake. We thump our water bottles…
Memories of an Inexperienced Mother
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When Worry Gets in the Way of Love
Sometimes life can feel very overwhelming. Parenting is not always easy. There are so many concerns and worries. It starts very early: Do I have enough milk for my baby? When will my child sleep through the night? Will she ever wean? How long will it be before she’s out of nappies? Then when a child gets to school age it gets worse, especially if we decide to homeschool: Will my child learn to read? Will she ever learn to…
What do Children Need for a Happy Childhood?
Sometimes my children’s words warm my heart. “Don’t you just love being us?” asked my daughter Imogen, turning to me with a huge smile. I was surprised. Why did she suddenly feel like a big ball of happiness*? It wasn’t as if we were doing anything special right at that moment. “You don’t wish you belonged to another family?” I asked. “No! We have a good life. I’ve been writing. We have our singing lessons later. But before that, we’re…
How the Girls and I Take a Weekly Trip Overseas
Every week the girls and I take an overseas trip. The week before last we went to Vietnam. We flew into Hanoi, the city of rickshaws and mopeds and many people. We stood, rather bewildered, as streams of two-wheeled vehicles surged past us. Before long, we’d mounted our own bikes and were puttering out of the busy city headed for the quiet and peace of the delta. “Rice paddies!” someone shouted. The Vietnamese farmers smiled and waved at us. We…
Favourite Sewing Books for Children: Gemma-Rose Sews a Mermaid
A book lands in our mailbox: Fleecie Dolls by Fiona Goble. The girls turn the pages: “Oh! I want to make this one! And that one… and this one too!” At last, a decision is made: “I’m going to make Tilly, the mermaid.” So we go shopping and come home with… a colourful pile of soft fleece, sparkling purple sequins and, a ball of orange and green, uneven knobbly yarn. I hunt out… a scrap of felt, reels of sewing threads,…
Unschool: Hair Dye Criticism
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Attachment Parenting and Unschooling
My first child was a perfect baby. She ate and played and smiled, and then when she was tired, she put herself to sleep.…
What Kind of Home Do Kids Need?
The other day, while walking our dogs through the bush close to home, I met a neighbour who warned me to watch out for…
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, Attachment, and the Art of Letting Go: Building Trust Instead of Rules
We don’t make rules in our family, so how do my children know what is right and what is wrong, if they aren’t guided by clearly stated limits? Do I believe my own quiet example of appropriate behaviour is all that is needed in order to influence my children? Perhaps I stand back, hands-off, and let my children behave as…
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.…
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 what I want.” She might close herself off, stand well back, not let anyone get too close. Because you never…
Reading Out Loud and a Generous Christmas
Do you like listening to stories being read out loud? I have to admit that this isn’t my favourite activity. My mind tends to wander and I miss half the words. But my kids are different from me. They love reading aloud time. Even though most of my children are grown up, they still like to gather whenever anyone opens…