20 years of unschooling

parenting teens, academic anxiety, and the pendulum swing

It’s been a little while since I’ve written on unschooling, education, and learning. As my kids get older, I’ve discovered less and less that’s definitive about unschooling! I can share with you what I’ve done, how my perspective has evolved, and my reflections on how all that has worked out for us - but of course, your kids are not my kids, and you are not me - so your mileage may vary.

Education is very important to me - and that’s why I started looking for alternatives to the public school system while I was still in it. Here’s my unschooling “origin-story” if you’re curious..

When my kids were little, homeschooling was still uncommon, and the folks I met who were doing it typically just tried to recreate school at home.

Instead, we spent our time and energy finding ways to provide a rich and stimulating environment for our kids, tried our best to ‘strew their paths with interesting things’, and then tried to nurture and nourish their interests as they came and went. Making space for our own creativity was a key part of this - whether that looked like working in the yard, or reading novels aloud to the kids.

Like most parents, we worried about whether we were connecting with them enough, instead of leaving them to their own devices (literally or figuratively).

My early experiences as a mom led me to take the opinions of “parenting experts” with a grain of salt, even though I read and listened to many - especially when my kids were little. I’m glad that I learned to let my intuition guide me in my mothering journey.

A huge part of my path as a relationship-based unschooler has also been about clearing the programming I received as a child about punishment and physical violence. I had to learn to engage with my kids in a way that didn’t involve threats and force, but brought accountability and guidance to situations where they might be causing harm.

We’ve encouraged our kids to delight in their freedom, to make choices consciously, to express their emotions and desires, (hopefully) secure in the knowledge that they will be received with love and understanding.

I’ve also done my best to raise them with a growing awareness that freedom does not exist in a vacuum, that our sovereignty is interwoven with the sovereignty of many others, who also have feelings, desires, and needs of their own.

Finding an alternate path - instead of choosing a polarity of either authoritarian, rigid, power-struggle parenting {fear-based} … or child-led, gentle, “nice” parenting {also fear-based!} - has been some of the deepest work I’ve engaged in as a mother.