What if…?
What if instead of doing what you usually do, you did some of those things your children have been wanting to do for ages. All that fun stuff that usually has to wait until all the serious stuff has been…
Sibling Rivalry: An Unschooling Interview
Sometimes people ask me if my children get on with each other. Have I ever had to deal with sibling rivalry? I think back through the years, and it wouldn’t be true to say my kids have never argued with…
One-on-One Times: Are They Important?
I got up early this morning. The house was quiet until our three cats, and one dog saw me. Meows and pitiful whines accompanied me to the kitchen. Apparently, our animals were on the edge of starvation. It’s just as…
Rules, Responsible Parenting and Radical Unschooling
If you do a Google search on unschooling it won’t take you very long to find someone criticising unschoolers. The most judged unschoolers are those who have adopted a radical way of life: those who do not force a set…
We Should Say What’s in Our Hearts (While We Can)
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Bite-Sized Pieces of Unschool Maths
So many people love the idea of unschooling and are even tempted to give it a go, but often there is one huge stumbling block… maths. Very few parents seem to be confident that their children will learn all the maths they need to know, without being prodded along by some kind of intentional instruction. Many homeschoolers who decide to unschool make a compromise. They might say something like, “We unschool everything except maths. My children do a couple of…
Enjoying an Unexpected Little Adventure
The kids pile into the car. I settle myself into the passenger seat and bang the door shut. My eldest-at-home daughter, Imogen makes sure her ‘L’ plates are attached to the front and back of the vehicle, before sliding into the driver’s place. We are off to town. Charlotte has a piano lesson and Imogen is going to drive us. When we get to the end of our street, Imogen pulls onto the road leading out of our village. She…
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…
Is it Really Okay to Give Unschooling Kids Unlimited Access to Screens and the Internet?
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Sharing the Ice Cream and Rejecting Tough Love
There’s a woman on YouTube who sips wine from a large glass while digging into a family-sized bucket of ice cream. She has some…
Connecting Unschooling and Ageing
I’m lying on my bed thinking about ageing when my daughter Sophie appears. “I thought I’d come and have a chat with you before…
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 Unschoolers Can Deal with Questions and Sceptics
My mother-in-law visited us for the birth of our son, Thomas. After he died and we’d buried him in his tiny white casket, Andy’s mother asked me if we wanted more children. As I replied, “Oh, yes!”, my mother-in-law’s face dropped into a disapproving frown. “She thinks we already have enough kids,” I thought as my defence hackles rose. But…
Unschooling: How Do We Know They’re Learning?
There are loads of unschooling questions we could ask about learning: How do we know unschooling kids are learning? Should they be learning particular things? Is there knowledge that all kids need? Are our unschooled kids learning enough? Can they get behind? Should we just trust our kids are learning? But what if we have doubts? Or what if we…
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…
Kids, Needs, and Church
Should unschooled kids be forced to go to church? I wonder if this is the wrong question to ask when our kids protest about coming with us. Would it be better to ask, Why doesn’t my child want to go to church? In this week’s podcast, I talk about this question as well as : The importance of trying to see…