Do Life Right

20 Unschooling Questions: Kara from Somers Point, NJ

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:07:54 +0000

Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post.

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DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.):

Kara: Kara Janson (41 yo) living at the Jersey Shore (Somers Point, NJ) right outside a family summer vacation hot spot with my darling daughters (9 ,8, 6) and a loving husband and father (Andy 38 yo). We have a dog, a cat and a guinea pig.

DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children?

Kara: They have never been to school.

DoLifeRight: Do you consider your family an unschooling family?

Kara: At this point, yes. But we went through many different stages and places before arriving here.

DoLifeRight: What does this mean for your family?

Kara: We learn all that we need for this moment in our lives through living day to day. We also feel free to share our passions with one another.

DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children?

Kara: No, but one stop at a daycare/child learning center before the birth of our first child set us on this path.

DoLifeRight: What is your own educational background?

Kara: Graduate degree, but I am not employed in “that field”. I can clearly see how I use the “other skills”, the ones most folks can’t grasp as worthy, that I gained from that type of educational experience in my daily home life and my work place.

DoLifeRight: Why did you decide to not send your children to school?

Kara: We love being with them, never felt the need to send them somewhere else to learn and grow.

DoLifeRight: What research did you do to make this decision

Kara: Lots of reading (Dave Albert, Sandra Dodd, John Holt, Alphie Kohn), read Home Education Magazine, internet blogs (Scott Noelle)

DoLifeRight: Were there any books, magazines, or websites you would recommend new parents (or parents who are new to homeschooling) read?

Kara: Home Education Magazine and the authors, etc. above

DoLifeRight: Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants?

Kara: I did not have this word to define our family situation but we definitely were - used baby sling until kids were too heavy for it (small kids so that was older than 2 yo), kids all sleep with us, we share a bedtime, etc.

DoLifeRight: How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?

Kara: Did not see a correlation between this and schooling

DoLifeRight: What specific benefits to your children (or family as a whole) have you actually seen since you became unschoolers/homeschoolers?

Kara: Hard to say, I started running again 4 years ago and I would like to think that re-ignited passion keeps my stress level down just as much as unschooling and enjoying one another. So it may have helped reduce stress but a few things happened at the same time.

DoLifeRight: Do you have a regular schedule in your life?

Kara: No

DoLifeRight: How does this work with outside commitments and responsibilities?

Kara: We keep a calendar and just make adjustments as needed.

DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you?

Kara: Somewhat important

DoLifeRight: Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture?

Kara: Mixture

DoLifeRight: How did your friends and families react when you told them your children wouldn’t be going to school?

Kara: I am a fairly strong personality but I recall my siblings and parents trying to “reason with me”.

DoLifeRight: Have their opinions changed over the years?

Kara: I can say for my parents it has been an absolute YES! But my siblings and I agree to just not discuss it - we agree to disagree. When I greet my nephews I ask about their life, not the default “how is school going?” Which is STILL what they say to my kids!!!

DoLifeRight: What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?

Kara: Kids are able to focus on themselves and that has helped them grow exponentially compared to their peers. When you have time to be with yourself it’s easier to relate to others.

DoLifeRight: How does your family make money?

Kara: My husband is employed full time

DoLifeRight: Do you have a job? Full-time or part-tme or something in between?

Kara: I work on Saturdays

DoLifeRight: Can you tell us about your choices and how you made these decisions?

Kara: I only recently returned to work but when I sought employment I returned to a company where I had worked previously. I knew there would be the opportunity to work more hours when and if I need it. But I am only working one day a week right now. My husband secured a very well paying job that offers him little stress and good health benefits - what a rarity! He is charmed.

DoLifeRight: How have *you* personally grown since you started unschooling/homeschooling your children?

Kara: That is a timely question because my husband and I were just discussing this. We feel so in tune with one another because we are in tune with the rhythms of LIFE. Our lives do not revolve around an artificial source. We are the source!

DoLifeRight: How has your relationship with your spouse/partner grown?

Kara:I hate to say it or even think about it, but we are one of the most grounded couples in our circle of friends - we are the go-to people for a listening ear.

DoLifeRight: Are you able to find time to have your own hobbies, interests, and friends?

Kara: Absolutely! I am a road racer. I train in the early morning and my family comes to every race! I am in a book club and I co-lead a home schooling group that meets once a month for support and gathers for outings.

DoLifeRight: Beyond your children (of course), what are your interests?

Kara: Running, reading, quilting, crochet

DoLifeRight: How do you respond to other people’s questions about the following:

completeness of education - Kara: refer them to the broad spectrum of education and that completeness in the Janson’s life is defined by the girls, if they are not able to complete something because of lack of skills then they work towards gaining those skills to move ahead or they table the plan for the future. We all have our own time table.

socialization - Kara: this may be an initial question but upon conversing with my kids, it becomes a no-issue.

college plans - Kara: the most asked question in my world. I explain that my kids will decide if they want or need college at the age of 18, maybe they will want to seek a degree after finding a mentor and when they see the need for a degree to advance them in a career. How many 18yo kids know what they want to do with the rest of their life????

DoLifeRight: Do you give different answers to different people?

Kara: YES

DoLifeRight: Why?

Kara: We get questions from everyone - from the customer service rep at Marshall’s to the dentist (transit vs captive audience). If I have a captive audience or someone we will have a long term relationship with I will be more likely to answer from the heart.

DoLifeRight: If you have more than one child, how do you handle their different interests and desires?

Kara: The youngest gets dragged around most often against her will, as she prefers hanging at home. To balance this I give her time (one-on-one) with mom, dad or grandparents so she can just hang at home.

DoLifeRight: What are the biggest issues you are currently having, or have ever had in regards to parenting and/or homeschooling/unschooling?

Kara: Being afraid that I am not encouraging them enough. Balancing my time so that I am present for them more often than not.

DoLifeRight: Any regrets? We want to hear the good and the bad! This is the best way to make informed decisions.

Kara: Have an open mind and listen to all the arguments for and against unschooling. Then be confident in yourself and you will be able to enjoy the unschooling life.

DoLifeRight: Do you have any websites, yahoo lists, etc. that you run or maintain? Please list them here with descriptions.

Kara: Atlantic Learning Network on yahoo groups. - for homeschoolers in my area of New Jersey - discussion, playgrounds, parent support, etc.

DoLifeRight: Any last thoughts or advice for DoLifeRight’s readers?

Kara: The confidence you feel within will relay to others that you are serious about this lifestyle, even if you are not articulate.

Your wife must be so patient!

Greg — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:34:52 +0000

My wife Lisa usually writes the posts here on Do Life Right, but I’d like to share a few thoughts that have been rattling around in my head.

Every so often, I’ll be out with one or both of my daughters and somehow the topic of homeschooling will come up in a discussion with a stranger. Usually it’s just someone making small talk - like at the dentist’s office or waiting with other parents for dance class to finish or just waiting in a checkout line. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Other person: What grade is your daughter in? (Or what school does your daughter go to?)
Me: Actually, we homeschool.
Other person: Oh! A lot of people seem to be doing that now. Your wife must be so patient!

Variations on this include “Your wife must be so organized.” and “Your wife must be so smart.” Or, directed toward my daughters, “So your mom is your teacher, huh?”.

While my wife is patient (and smart and organized, as well as beautiful, caring, and funny), I have to wonder (and I’ve been tempted to ask) just what it is about meeting me that leads people to think my wife needs extraordinary patience… In all seriousness, I realize that they’re just trying to be polite and complimentary. Their comments are generally meant to imply more about themselves than about me. The implicit continuation is “I couldn’t be that patient [organized/smart/other adjective].”

Which leads me to a couple of thoughts I’d like to send out into the ether. First, you don’t have to be all that extraordinary to homeschool. The key ingredient to successful homeschooling is a willingness to help your child find answers. That’s all. If you know the answer, great! If you don’t, do you know someone else who does? Can you look it up in a book or on the Internet? Regardless of your child’s education system - whether it be public school, private school, private tutor, homeschool, or direct neural programming (let me know if you know how to do that last one) - your child is not going to be taught and remember every fact there is. It’s just as important (if not more so) to know how to learn. The old adage is “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” I’d add “Teach him how to google, and he can eat something besides fish for the rest of his life!”

The other piece of information I want to convey is this: Dads can homeschool too! While I appreciate (and agree with) all the kind words directed at my wife, I’m an active part of my kids’ lives also. I answer their questions on math, computers, science, TV shows, movies, comic book characters, history, languages, and whatever else I can. Our kids know they can go to either Lisa or me. They also pretty much know what interests we each have and who would be more likely to have an answer for them. They’ve even been known to ask each other questions. :) The truth is that everyone and noone is their teacher.

So now I’ve said my piece, and maybe someone will see some value in it. Maybe I’ll tell some of this to the questioners in the supermarket checkout, but probably not. They’re just being polite and aren’t really looking for a lengthy discussion. I guess I’ll just have to learn to be patient with them…

13 Things Zoë has Given Me

Lisa — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:32:05 +0000

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of my oldest child. Zoë is officially 13 as of 8:35AM Iowa time!

It’s true, she’s been hesitant about this birthday. She has loved her parties over the years, but she has always been unexcited about the prospect of actually being a year older (and thirteen feels particularly significant). She loves her life as-is and has never wanted to be older and leave her happiness behind. It’s been fun and interesting being her mother, especially as we’ve discovered that passion for life never needs to be left behind.

Zoë has shown me aspects of life that I never knew existed before her. From the moment of her conception, I’ve been radically changed. She pushes me to become a better person, a better mother, every single day. In light of that, here is a list of things I would not know about if I hadn’t had Zoë. I’m so thankful that I have her in my life! She’s broadened my mind so much!

Attachment Parenting
Breastfeeding, especially extended breastfeeding and delayed solid feeding — listening to your body is important
Homeschooling, more precisely Radical Unschooling
Veganism for ethical reasons (I became vegan for health reasons, but she went vegan for ethical reasons and states these frequently)
Following dreams and passions — Zoë will not do anything in order to get through hoops and obstacles in order to accomplish someone else’s goals for her. She only does things that she wants to do because they are her dreams and desires.
Wearing comfortable clothing and comfortable shoes ALL THE TIME
Knowing that I always have options in everything
An appreciation of the little things in life (flavors, shades of colors, rocks)
An appreciation of the big things (where we live, the sunset, each other)
The realization that I don’t ever have to do things unless I want to — everything is a choice
The realization that everyone and everything is potentially interesting
There is nothing wrong with jumping up and down with glee, nor is there anything wrong with squeals of delight — they are actually contagious
Holding hands is always a good thing, so are hugs

Thank you, Zoë, for being in my life! I love you deeply and completely!

20 Unschooling Questions: Laureen from San Francisco Bay, CA

Lisa — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:00:43 +0000

Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post.

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DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.):

Laureen: My name is Laureen. My husband is Jason, and our kids are Rowan (7), Kestrel (4), and Aurora (1). We live on a sailboat, the s/v Excellent Adventure, in San Francisco Bay.

DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children? Do you consider your family an unschooling family? What does this mean for your family?

Laureen: Rowan’s the only one officially school age, so he’s the only one officially unschooled, but of course, when you’re living a philosophy, it stands for everyone.

DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children? What is your own educational background?

Laureen: I am a classically overeducated American, one thesis shy of a Master’s degree in treehugging. My husband was a “bad boy”, was in continuation school, and barely made it out alive. We both thought the system sucked, and were looking for a better answer pretty much from the moment our child was born.

DoLifeRight: Why did you decide to not send your children to school? What research did you do to make this decision? Were there any books, magazines, or websites you would recommend new parents (or parents who are new to homeschooling) read?

Laureen: Ohmygosh. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s research. I read freaking *everything*, and then filtered it through the lens of my own and my husband’s experiences. And what finally capped it was the fact that it’s not about education, it’s about faith. Do you, as a parent, have the faith in your own kids to think that they will learn what they need to know when they need to know it? And for us, that answer is an unequivocal “yes!” so we proceeded onwards.

I was lucky enough to get tapped to participate in the Life Without School collective blog (thank you Tammy Takahashi!), and that did amazing things for my learning curve. Not only did I have to examine my process once a month for my post, but I got to read what these other, very experienced mamas were doing in their processes.

I also looked at the schools around me, and honestly, none of them looked like places I wanted to go, let alone places I wanted to send my kids. In a state where the budget is an international joke (California), I don’t blame the schools, but I sure don’t want to participate.

DoLifeRight: Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants? How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?

Laureen: Oh, absolutely. Attached and then some. But that really was a separate set of decisions; I’m pretty sure there are a heap of attached parents who send their kids to school, too. They’re not mutually exclusive choices. My decision to unschool was more informed by the rest of our life choices. We live on a 47-foot catamaran, and in October, are taking off to sail around the world. We’d be yanking the kids from school for that anyway, so why send them in the first place? I also didn’t want to give them the mixed message that curricula was important, and then, not. (more on this below).

DoLifeRight: What specific benefits to your children (or family as a whole) have you actually seen since you became unschoolers/homeschoolers?

Laureen: My child will never have to raise his hand to go to the bathroom. That’s invaluable, right there. He’s ragingly non-compliant (wonder where he got that? LOL!), and no one’s gonna squash that out of him, so that’s another major bonus. He is not fenced-in by someone else’s idea of what he should be interested in, and I think that’s the biggest bonus. I think the entire idea of “age-appropriate” is evil.

We are going to be cruising the world. My kids are going to learn about geography and navigation and culture and food and language and art and people by going there and being part of it. There is not a thing that they will be doing that is part of recognized curricula. But the value is obvious. So! I believe that what they’ll be learning, by being out in the world, is infinitely more valuable than what they’d learn while locked in a room, sitting at a desk.

Rowan knows about Edo-period Japanese art. He can completely disassemble, clean, and reassemble space heaters. He can climb nearly to the top of the shrouds, he can run the dinghy (once someone else starts it for him), he can surf the web, and he can recite half the Jackie Chan movies ever made. Typical kindergarten? Nope. But fabulous and enriching nonetheless.

And finally… Rowan is a spatial learner. Typical schools have no room for a kid like him. My favorite story about this is the day he was experimenting with writing his brother’s name, and wrote “K E S” but did the S backwards. When this was pointed out to him, he stared at the page for a good few minutes, then rotated the page 180, and wrote “T R E L” but also backwards, so the entire name was correct, but mirrored, perfectly. There’s no space on worksheets for that kind of creativity, you know? It was amazing when Da Vinci did it, but for a child, to a harried teacher with 30 other kids, it’s “wrong”.

DoLifeRight: Do you have a regular schedule in your life? How does this work with outside commitments and responsibilities?

Laureen: Nope. We are Chaos. But in a good way!

DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you? Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture? Please list any you want to share.

Laureen: Because of the whole boat thing, my support group is scattered across the globe, so we don’t have a lot of local support. But we’re doing OK. I’d like the kids to have a more stable group of friends to grow with, but I’m guessing that as soon as they can email, that’ll resolve itself. Rowan and Kestrel both are great at just bombing up to other kids and making friends fast.

DoLifeRight: What resources do you use for your children’s “educations”? Feel free to comment on the word “education”.

Laureen: Oh geez. We spend hours belly-down on the dock with field guides, trying to figure out what’s swimming down there. We spend hours belly-up on the dock with weather guides, trying to figure out what’s going on up there. The kids have spent hours working on the boat, figuring out what tools we’re going to need next, and how to use them. We cook. We talk (oh man, do we talk). The librarians know us on sight. And our Netflix subscription takes a beating.

Interestingly, museums and such aren’t a real help with my boys. I think because living on a boat is such a very hands-on kind of thing, they don’t have a lot of appreciation for stuff they can’t mess with. We just saw the Samurai exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Rowan was really disappointed that the armor was behind glass and he couldn’t fiddle with it to see how it worked.

I don’t get too bogged down in the semantics (although I loved reading Frank’s deconstruction of the Latin! Go Frank!). In my brain, “education” and “learning” are all one big thing, absent coercion. But I totally understand how those word choices impact thought, and how they make some people twitch.

DoLifeRight: How did your friends and families react when you told them your children wouldn’t be going to school? Have their opinions changed over the years?

Laureen: The Grandparents are delighted. One Grandma is a little nervous about it, but she’s coming around. But honestly, the proof is in the kids. You can’t miss the fact that they’re thriving, and isn’t that really what matters most?

My friends are divided on the issue, so we don’t talk about it much.

DoLifeRight: What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?

Laureen: I remember what my first few years of school were like, and what they did to my head. Rowan’s not going to experience that. ::whew::

DoLifeRight: How does your family make money? Do you have a job? Full-time or part-time or something in between? Can you tell us about your choices and how you made these decisions?

Laureen: I was a fulltime corporate mouse jockey until January, when I got laid off. We decided that meant it was time to go, so we’re taking off in October. My husband has a retail job at a marine supply store, and also does work on boats. And we are frugal, uber-frugal. It means we really don’t fit in in this part of the world, where everyone has nice cars and the newest cell phone and all the gadgets, but it’s worth it.

DoLifeRight: How have *you* personally grown since you started unschooling/homeschooling your children? How has your relationship with your spouse/partner grown?

Laureen: That faith thing I mentioned above? That. We are all intertangled in each other’s activities and interests and business, and because of that, we have all increased respect for and appreciation of, each other.

DoLifeRight: Are you able to find time to have your own hobbies, interests, and friends? Beyond your children (of course), what are your interests?

Laureen: You have to have a life if you’re going to share a life. The biggest, of course, is the boat thing. The kids didn’t pick it, but we’ve managed to help them love it, over time, and I think that’ll get bigger as soon as we cut the lines.

I personally have a passion for birth advocacy, and travel the country giving talks about social media and birth choices, so the kids hear and see a lot of that kind of stuff.

Jason is an athlete (never met a sport he wasn’t instinctively and instantly good at), so the kids are gaining appreciation for that. It also is helping them recognize that they have the same set of skills.

DoLifeRight: How do you respond to other people’s questions about the following: completeness of education, socialization, college plans, etc.? Do you give different answers to different people? Why?

Laureen: Pass the bean dip. Seriously. I have been dealing with faux questioning (where the questioner is more interested in proving you wrong than in informing themselves) for *years*, starting with the questions about birth choices, so I’ve gotten really, really good at just changing the subject. If they persist, I usually head into discussions of logical fallacy and unclear thinking (the socialization one is great for that; where did anyone get the idea that school was good for socialization?). But my children and their achievements are not up for examination or discussion. People that attempt to quiz my kids get shut down and hard.

DoLifeRight: If you have more than one child, how do you handle their different interests and desires? If you have one child, how do you handle his/her desires to be with other children? How do you reconcile these interests with your own?

Laureen: That hasn’t been an issue for us yet, since Kestrel is still pretty young, and hero-worships his brother and anything his brother is doing.

DoLifeRight: What are the biggest issues you are currently having, or have ever had in regards to parenting and/or homeschooling/unschooling?

Laureen: Choking down my own schoolish thoughts. Rowan isn’t reading yet. He can navigate the web, he can spell the stuff he wants to put on the grocery list, he can play video games, but he can’t officially read yet, and I’m panicking, because I had already been reading for three or four years by his age. But I am a word-based creature, and he is not, and remembering to honor his skills and strengths (which are prodigious, and utterly different from mine) is a daily challenge. My joke is that I have to send the School Gremlins off to the potholder factory.

DoLifeRight: Any regrets? We want to hear the good and the bad! This is the best way to make informed decisions.

Laureen: I regret that I was in school for so long!!! =) Otherwise, no. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.

DoLifeRight: Do you have any websites, yahoo lists, etc. that you run or maintain? Please list them here with descriptions.

Laureen: I blog about the boat, the trip, the kids, unschooling, and birth, at http://theexcellentadventure.com, and am on Twitter as LaureenH

DoLifeRight: Any last thoughts or advice for DoLifeRight’s readers?

Laureen: Life is short. Really short. And kids are young for such a very short amount of time. I think that what they learn about being a family is far more important than what they learn by being part of a societal institution, and I think that what I learn by being with them 24/7 is more important than what I could buy them were I in a societal institution for most of their waking hours. I think that families function as a unit only if they practice being a unit, and that can’t happen if everyone’s haring off in different directions for the majority of their days.

I also believe that children are best served by providing them with a sound and solid emotional foundation. It’s almost impossible to not learn, but if someone is scared or uncertain, they don’t get as much from their life as they do if they are confident and assured. I’m not so worried about packing random facts into their heads as I am about making sure that they have the self-assurance to face and integrate whatever they encounter in their lives.

20 Unschooling Questions: Jeff from Carlsbad, CA

Lisa — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:42:27 +0000

Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post.

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DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.):

Jeff: We are a family of five: me, my wife Ginger, our daughter Annie (19), and sons Kai (10) and Kade (7). We have lived in Monterey, CA; State College, PA; Nashville, TN, and now reside in Carlsbad, CA, just north of San Diego.

DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children? Do you consider your family an unschooling family? What does this mean for your family?

Jeff: Annie did not live with us when she was of school age; she went to public school through the 6th grade, and then went to Waldorf through high school. Kai went to public school kindergarten only, and Kade has never been. The boys have always had an interest in learning things at their own speed and in their own way, and we have never used a formal curriculum at all. We do consider ourselves unschoolers, although that term has a variety of meanings and looks different in every household. We tend to think of it as following the principles of unschooling by focusing on the pursuit of passions and life learning – for the parents and the kids.

DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children? What is your own educational background?

Jeff: As I mentioned, Kai went to school for his kindergarten year. I grew up with the paradigm that my kids would go to a good public or private school, and that my wife would either work part time or not at all. My grammar school education was okay until I discovered social pursuits, which led me to value other things more than school from grade 7-12. My grades reflected my new focus on non-school things, so I had limited college options. I attended college a bit over the next 7 years, taking a class here and there, with little direction or interest in going or learning what they had to teach. When I turned 25 or 26, however, I decided I wanted to get a degree, and completed my BA full-time while I was in the Army full-time. After I got out of the Army, I worked for a few years and then want back to get my MBA from Penn State. Both of my degrees were with honors, which is amazing for a guy who scraped through high school with a 1.7 GPA.

Jeff: Kindergarten for Kai was an ok experience overall, nothing too wonderful and nothing too terrible. I would have been okay continuing along that path, but that is primarily because I never really thought about homeschooling – and I had certainly never heard of unschooling. After the kindergarten year, we moved to Tennessee into a neighborhood in which the school bus came at 6:30 in the morning, and we quickly figured out that that was not going to work out too well. It is very easy to homeschool in Tennessee, so we started to do that while learning about what homeschooling actually looked like. Somewhere along the way Ginger discovered unschooling, and began to read about it. The more I learned the more I liked it. While there have been some fits and starts, we have never looked back. The one book I read that meant all the difference for me was “Parenting a Free Child”, by Rue Kream. It really answered all of my questions about how my child’s future would be impacted by unschooling. It was hard to believe at first, but it has all born out.

DoLifeRight: Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants? How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?

Jeff: We were uber-attachment parents, and still are, although some things have changed. After Kai was born in the hospital, we began researching different ways to parent. So in a nutshell, we started out as: no-circumcision, birth at home, cotton diapers, breastfeeding three-year-olds, co-sleeping, non-vaccine, baby sling, organic food, etc, etc. We also had mostly educational videos, no violent toys, no internet (or microwave for that matter), no cable TV, and the like. I don’t know that parenting our young ones this way made unschooling an easier choice, but I do know that as we began to relax control over some of the things like toys, TV, internet, and food, I certainly had a huge paradigm shift to make. It was, and sometimes continues to be, hard.

DoLifeRight: What specific benefits to your children (or family as a whole) have you actually seen since you became unschoolers/homeschoolers?

Jeff: Seriously? I don’t look at it this way. Unschooling can not be measured by short-term goals or milestones or growth. I think that when you truly adopt unschooling, you’re taking a long-term view of your child’s life and setting them up for success beyond your wildest dreams. How? By setting up an environment in which we model the pursuit of our own passions without expectations or conditions; by allowing and encouraging our children’s passions and exploration without judgment; by trusting that our children will do what’s right for them even if it’s not what we would choose for them or for ourselves. Doing this authentically and wholeheartedly helps our children understand that their views have value, that their passions have value, that their thoughts have value - that they have value. And that builds a confidence that enables them to try new things and explore their passions as well as their fears. But most critically, it enables them to see the world through their own eyes and to define success on their own terms.

DoLifeRight: Do you have a regular schedule in your life? How does this work with outside commitments and responsibilities?

Jeff: Well, Annie and I have a regular schedule – Ginger and the kids, not so much! Not only is there no real definition in their schedule, but it shifts day to day. In general, their schedule is as follows: eat when you’re hungry, wake up when you’re ready to be awake, go to sleep when you’re tired. That all works pretty well, and our folks who stay up late are respectful of others, just like our early risers are. When we do have something that we want or need to accomplish during the day that could alter our regular schedule, we simply talk about it. For example, if Kai wants to stay up until 5:00am but also wants to go to park day at 11:00am, we simply explain what that means to him so he can consider how to work with those timelines. How else could we do it? Bedtimes and awake times are arbitrary, and if they’re not tied to when someone is actually tired then they have no relevance.

DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you? Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture? Please list any you want to share.

Jeff: “Support” groups have been hit or miss for me. At various times, I have subscribed to Yahoo groups (Always Unschooled, Unschooling Basics, SSUDS) and participated in local unschooling groups (which have mostly become play groups, not necessarily unschooling-oriented). Of greater value for me were the unschooling conferences I attended, where I got to see families at all different ends of the spectrum, listen to and bond with other unschoolers, and really see it in action. If there is one piece of advice I could give to unschoolers, new or old, and especially Dads, it’s this: get thee to a conference!

DoLifeRight: What resources do you use for your children’s “educations”? Feel free to comment on the word “education”.

Jeff: I’m okay with the word education, but not okay with the assumption that “I” use or select the resources. If we start with a basic presumption that unschooling is about learning about the world through experience, then the idea of resources (prescribed or otherwise) is a pretty silly one. The question then becomes, how do we interact with the world? We experience the world in whatever ways we choose, often simultaneously: relationships, talking, listening, TV, internet, board games, video games, sleep, books, shopping trips, exercise, cooking, lounging, eating, etc. The world itself is the most amazing resource of all; all formal resources, like books and curriculum, are simply ways to organize and categorize the things we see and experience. Wouldn’t you rather just experience it than read about it?

DoLifeRight: How did your friends and families react when you told them your children wouldn’t be going to school? Have their opinions changed over the years?

Jeff: I think our family learned long ago that we were planning on parenting in a way that worked for us, not for them. Accordingly, they did not push back at all. While they may not always understand it, I get the feeling that they respect it. Friends have been slightly more challenging, especially other families with kids the same age as ours. Since our “rules” are different, that can lead to some tension, and I am sure that some of them think we are crazy. My reaction to that is pretty simple – who cares? If our kids like playing together, let them play. If they don’t, they’ll let us know. If it’s a problem for the other parents, well then so be it. Provided other people are not making judgments about me because of unschooling, it’s all good. Otherwise, if they want to judge we may have to call it quits.

DoLifeRight: What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?

Jeff: We don’t unschool for the benefits, we unschool because we believe that our children have the right to experience the world for themselves and develop their own tools for making their own choices in pursuit of their own interests. I cannot make that happen, of course, but I think they stand a better chance of it through unschooling. There have been some pleasant surprises as we have relaxed control of things like bedtimes, food choices etc. No more fights over inconsequential family logistics!

DoLifeRight: How does your family make money? Do you have a job? Full-time or part-time or something in between? Can you tell us about your choices and how you made these decisions?

Jeff: We decided before Kai was born that we would be a one-income family, and I would be the income earner. Over the years, I have increased my earning power and now have a reasonable balance between pay and workload. It’s not always reasonable, of course, but on the whole it works okay. Every once in a while I think I’d like a job with a bit more flexibility to work from home or take some time off, but I really have it pretty good where I am.

DoLifeRight: How have *you* personally grown since you started unschooling/homeschooling your children? How has your relationship with your spouse/partner grown?

Jeff: One thing I did not expect was the degree of introspection that I would undergo, mostly around the idea of control. Most Dads relish and exercise control, but not because we like to be controlling. We need it because we need to keep our lives in order and in pace with our expectations, and with the expectations others have of us. And as we make the change to unschooling, and we feel control slipping, it’s scary. But here’s the creepy thing; I think we actually have more control when we unschool than if we don’t. We like to think we can control things like what a child learns, what job they have, how happy they are, how healthy they are. We infuse our children constantly with what our expectations of them are. And then we send them to off to school, where we have no control over what they learn; we send them off to college, where we have no control over the direction their lives will take; we control what they eat in our house, where they only spend 20% of their waking hours; and we control what activities they participate in in pursuit of happiness. What we do not do is give them the trust and tools they need to make their own choices and set their own course, thereby putting them in the exact same position as we were once in - unsure, fearful, with the parent’s definition of happiness and success. We create the illusion of control for ourselves and our children, and then we use it to build a house of cards that we pray won’t fall down until the kids are too distracted to notice. So, in our efforts to control we actually do a great job; we control the rest of their lives for them in fact, unless they can break the shackles. What is a Dad to do? We want and in many ways need to control and share our expectations, but we risk screwing things up if we do so. What we can definitely control is the way we help our beautiful children navigate through this world, and the way we help them chart and steer the course that is best for them. We can share our expectations like these: “I want you to be happy. I want you to see the world for all it can be. I want you to find the things you love to do and do them as much as you want. I want you to develop your own definition of success, and then pursue it like a dog on a bone. I want you to know that I will support and love you, even if you’re down. And I have only one real expectation and hope - that you believe what I just said, and that you call [...] me when I deviate.” Regarding my relationship with Ginger, we have learned that unschooling is definitely not the easy choice; it forces you to engage in decisions that most families take for granted, and to confront your own personal baggage about expectations, parenting, and education. We have not always agreed, and we have rarely agreed at the exact same time. But we have learned to disagree peacefully, as well as learned more about the depth of the feelings and trust we have for our children.

DoLifeRight: Are you able to find time to have your own hobbies, interests, and friends? Beyond your children (of course), what are your interests?

Jeff: Well, I have to make the time. I firmly believe that if we want our children to be free to explore the world at their own pace, we have to be willing and able to do the same. My interests and passions vary: music, history, certain TV programs, going to the gym, boogie boarding, and playing with my family. It’s critical to my sanity (and therefore my family’s sanity) that I make the time for myself once in a while.

Jeff: For many people, the difference between the SASS (Sad American School System) and unschooling is so foreign and inaccessible that they have a difficult time getting it. While this is frustrating for some unschoolers, I don’t mind it at all. I clearly remember taking three steps forward and then two steps back throughout our unschooling journey, and of course I still occasionally falter as I try to reconcile my own paradigms of the Modern Success Story with the innate and complete trust that I have in unschooling. So as the folks at work have expressed an interest in learning more, I have tried to be patient and understanding of their journey, as well as open to a continual rethinking of my own viewpoints and ideas about what it is we’re doing here. A recurring theme of late in these discussions is a pretty simple question: “Why did you decide to unschool?” My usual response to this query is something like “Why do you think we decided to do it?”, which, while frustrating, makes the other person think quite a bit. Their answers usually come in one of these forms:

Because you did not like the quality of education in public schools.
Because public schools are unsafe.
Because public schools are underfunded.
Because public schools cater to the lowest common denominator.
Because you could not afford private schools.
Because your wife doesn’t have to work, and you must be rich.
Because you like/need to be different, to rebel a little bit

While all of these are true to a degree (not the rich part!), they are not the reasons we unschool; not in the least. But more on that in a minute.

After we get through that part of the conversation, their questions then inevitably focus on the differences between the SASS and unschooling, many of which I have blogged about before:

In school, they socialize with other children. Aren’t you worried about socialization?
People need to learn math and science.
How can they learn discipline if they aren’t in a structured setting?
What do you mean they don’t have to earn their allowance? How will they learn that you have to work for money?
If they don’t do chores, they won’t learn to be responsible.
Kids are not capable of making intelligent choices about TV and food; what if they sit around eating candy and watching South Park all day?
No bedtimes? What the hell is the matter with you?

Hey, let’s be frank – we’ve all heard these questions before, in one form or another. We could easily get agitated, angry, defensive, quiet, or something else, and if that works for you then go for it. But lately I’ve taken a very different tack that I wanted to share with you. I take off my glasses, look them in the eye, smile, and say:

“It seems to me like you are focusing on everything that you believe unschooling is not; I prefer to focus on what it actually is, which can put some of your questions in better perspective. Would you like to hear about what it is?”

If the answer is yes, then we’re off to the races. No one has said “no” yet.

The lesson here is, to me, quite obvious. When we focus on what something is not, we restrict our thinking to view things as opposites – good or bad, happy or sad, effective or ineffective. That has its place (especially at work, most days) but it doesn’t focus on solutions or understandings. As such, it forces us to take sides and we become interested in ensuring that our views are heard and understood, without giving equal weight to the validity of a different viewpoint, eventually reducing our ability to evaluate that viewpoint to see if it might work for us. However, when we focus on what something is, we affirm it: we recognize that it exists and that it works for some people, and we are then able to evaluate whether or not the good parts of it will work in our own lives.

In our family, I believe that we unschool because of what unschooling is, not because of what any other educational choice is not. Unschooling is amazing, freeing, flexible, provocative, enabling, interactive, solitary, expansive, focused, connective, learning, being, living, touching, easy, hard, scary, peaceful, loud, messy, and neat. As I continue to answer questions about this amazing life we have chosen, I will continue to focus on what unschooling is, and let what it is not be someone else’s worry.

Jeff: We don’t handle it; we roll with it. We’re interested in experiencing life, and our kids are too. Things only get tricky when our own expectations about what our lives “should” be get in the way.

DoLifeRight: What are the biggest issues you are currently having, or have ever had in regards to parenting and/or homeschooling/unschooling?

Jeff: The transition from unschooling as an educational philosophy to unschooling as a lifestyle has been amazing. It’s one thing to say “My kids should lead their own learning”, and quite another to say “It’s ok for my house to be messy and for my kids to eat donuts while playing the Wii at 2:00am.” That’s not an “issue” for us, per se, but it was sometimes challenging to get here!

DoLifeRight: Any regrets? We want to hear the good and the bad! This is the best way to make informed decisions.

Jeff: No regrets at all. You can read all you want, talk all you want, use every available unschooling resource and website, channel John Holt, or whatever else you need to do to ground yourself in the philosophy. But you can never use any of that as a substitute for your gut and your heart. For us, unschooling has been the hardest thing we’ve ever done - it’s definitely advanced parenting. But it has always felt right. For everyone who is just dipping their toes in the water and thinking about moving to unschooling, do so with your eyes and hearts open, and be as cognizant as possible of the change you will undergo. But once you get there, you just could not ever, EVER imagine going back or making any other decision.

DoLifeRight: Do you have any websites, yahoo lists, etc. that you run or maintain? Please list them here with descriptions.

Jeff: I used to blog about unschooling at freeboysdad.blogspot.com. I do occasionally speak at unschooling conferences, and may do so again in the future.

DoLifeRight: Any last thoughts or advice for DoLifeRight’s readers?

Jeff: Let go and trust; at the end of the day, it all boils down to that.

20 Unschooling Questions: Frank from Seattle, WA

Lisa — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:00:37 +0000

This week’s 20 Questions is a real treat! It’s the first time I’ve had a Dad answer the questions (hint, hint to other Pops out there). The perspective is definitely uniquely wonderful. I had a blast reading these answers and I’m sure you will, too. Please note that I edited it to keep the G rating of this site, but Frank’s personality still shines through (check out the photos, too — wow)! I want to go on this family’s adventures! Enjoy!

Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post.

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DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.):

Frank: I’m Frank, my wife is Ronnie, and we have two daughters, MJ almost-17 and Chloe 15. We live in a bedroom community of Seattle, WA (Everett). More info disclosed in the subsequent questions.

DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children? Do you consider your family an unschooling family? What does this mean for your family?

Frank: They were in public school until 3rd and 4th grades, respectively. We’ve been unschooling since then. Radically unschooling, in the most common usage of that label. We don’t just unschool as an educational philosophy, we unschool as a weltanschauung.

DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children? What is your own educational background?

Frank: My wife and I were thoroughly educated in the typical American usage of that word; we both attended college on National Merit scholarships, so we clearly know how to play the education game. I have a degree in Secondary Education. We discussed all the manifold variants of educational philosophy before our first was born. Ultimately, we decided to give the public school system a try, knowing that we could simply pull them out at any time if we wanted/needed to, and planning to homeschool by/for middle school in any case, even if their grammar school experience was acceptable.

Frank: Ronnie and I had different school experiences but they were both unsatisfying. I had read and studied most educational philosophies while working toward my degree in secondary education and Holt spoke to my intuition about learning and schooling. Ronnie connected online with the early generation of unschoolers and came to her own intuition about unschooling. My recommendation would be to read Holt. Sandra Dodd has a good collection of info and links on her website (She even quoted me on the “dads” page once, so it must be an informative site! *grin*):

DoLifeRight: Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants? How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?

Frank: We didn’t know of that label until after our kids were older but we essentially followed the AP path. The two are similar at their roots so it makes sense that AP would feed into unschooling.

DoLifeRight: What specific benefits to your children (or family as a whole) have you actually seen since you became unschoolers/homeschoolers?

Frank: This is a question where my answer could drone on and on forever; however, I can reduce it to a simple statement: time and connection. We all have time to simply think and to pursue interests plus we are free to make a wide variety of real-world connections, not just the same-age, narrow-focus connections available in a brick-and-mortar school setting.

DoLifeRight: Do you have a regular schedule in your life? How does this work with outside commitments and responsibilities?

Frank: When one of us is working, we’re limited to the workweek cycle for activities as a complete family. Of course, the parent who isn’t working is free to pursue non-limited activities with the kids. Also, now that the girls are older, they more frequently are off pursuing their own interests and activities, independent of the unified family group.

DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you? Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture? Please list any you want to share.

Frank: Tough question for me, personally. Ronnie has always relied on her online pals and, more recently, real-life pals as a support group or sounding board. I’m more of a loner at root and have been swimming against the current most of my life and was used to that mode. In the early 60s I was a privileged White male who acted for Civil Rights. I went to a money & power prep school but found the philosophy there distasteful. Etc. So, I’m used to acting alone in opposition to an entrenched and widespread belief system. However, in the last few years we have interacted with other unschoolers IRL and I’ve found them to be wonderful friends and a truly fabulous support system. They help to lighten the burden of carrying all that [stuff] alone. I was used to carrying a lotta [stuff] alone but it’s sure nice to be able to drop some of that load with a little help from my friends.

DoLifeRight: What resources do you use for your children’s “educations?” Feel free to comment on the word “education.”

Frank: Ah, you’ve been burned by unschoolers before! While some would argue that debating the word “education” is mere semantics, I’d counter that, at root, all language is mere semantics. In a sense, this is the core differentiation between unschooling and all other forms of educational philosophy. Therefore, it is significant and worthy of discussion.

Let’s use some of that classical education I suffered through as a child. We get our word “educate” from the Latin verb “educo” which does literally mean “to educate” but the root implication is “to lead” or “to draw out from.” Caesar ducos his troops; a teacher educos his students. I dislike the parallel, especially because I find it painfully accurate. This is most obvious in the Elenctic method popularized by Socrates. The teacher leads the student to the conclusion the teacher wants the student to accept by drawing the student out with a series of structured (leading) questions. It seems like the student is engaged in a meaningful intellectual exercise but it is, in fact, carefully choreographed and completely controlled by the teacher.

This is precisely what happens in “education” or “teaching,” the other word unschoolers dislike. It is not genuine. It is not honest. It is not really “learning.”

Empire-period Romans knew the difference two millennia ago. Dum spiro, disco. While I’m alive, I’m learning. Disco not educo. And one I like: Nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur. Nobody understands anything unless they like what they’re studying. Cognosco not educo. “To know,” “to understand (for yourself),” not “to be led (to someone else’s opinion).”

As I said in my opening paragraph, for me the core difference between unschooling and all other educational philosophies is freedom vs. coercion. Disco and cognosco vs. educo.

(E)duco is fine for military troops or slaves or domesticated animals. I find it inappropriate for thoughtful human beings. And that’s why *I* don’t like the word “education.” YMMV.

We are discoing every moment we’re alive and we’re cognoscoing things we find attractive or interesting (per amicitiam). If you wanna educo me, you’d better bring some Marines cuz I ain’t getting dragged somewhere I don’t wanna go without a fight.

DoLifeRight: How did your friends and families react when you told them your children wouldn’t be going to school? Have their opinions changed over the years?

Frank: Snicker. The usual shock and horror. Superficially, they’ve changed but I believe that’s mostly an artifact of the reality that they’re tired of picking at us.

DoLifeRight: What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?

Frank: Time together. Getting to know each other. Having fun and growing together. Having wonderful adventures. Missing that whole teenage-rebellion experience because we respect each other.

DoLifeRight: How does your family make money? Do you have a job? Full-time or part-time or something in between? Can you tell us about your choices and how you made these decisions?

Frank: Our story goes something like this: In the late 80s and early 90s, Ronnie and I were both employees of Microsoft Corp., making pretty darned good money and accumulating some nice stock options. When she had our first daughter, MJ, in 92, she quit work, giving up those potentially valuable stock options and eliminating one full salary from our family income. However, when we married, we said “family first” and we meant it. I like money but I love my family. Chloe followed soon after and as she approached her first birthday we had a long discussion about “family comes first” because *I* was not happy being a workforce-intensive dad; I was interested in being more of a real dad. After looking at our family budget and life philosophy, I, too, quit working in 95, when Chloe was a bit more than a year old.

We traded full-time employment for part-time consulting work and guaranteed that we’d never be rich. However, it gave us a full, rich family life, with loads of time to be together. For us, for me, that was a worthwhile tradeoff and an easy decision. For many (most?), it’s a scary, even stupid, decision. De gustibus non disputandum.

We have, however, because we are not working and/or attending school for most of the calendar, taken several multi-month roadtrips around the US. In 2005, we lived on our sailboat and experienced hurricanes Katrina, Rita (rode her out at anchor in a bayou near New Orleans. Phew!), and Wilma (in the Florida Keys). We sailed multi-day ocean crossings, with no land in sight and only occasional pods of porpoises for company. We “studied” marine biology by snorkelling on tropical reefs. Last year in the Fall we spent more than a month in Europe, standing at the first milepost of the Appian Way in Rome (That gave me a shiver! I could practically hear Martial reading from his Liber Spectaculorum.), watching glass blowers on the island of Murano in Venice, listening to traditional music in an Irish pub (Yes, they let our teenage girls in, although they didn’t serve them liquor. The girls had sodas while Ronnie chewed some Guinness and I sipped some Jameson Irish whiskey.), etc. MJ and Chloe spent two weeks around New Year’s with friends in the San Francisco Bay area. In April, Chloe spent a couple of weeks visiting friends near Atlanta. In May, we all spent a week at an unschooling conference near Portland, Oregon. In June, we attended a campout/gathering in British Columbia. In September, we’ll be at an unschooling conference in San Diego. Blah, blah, blah.

Time is the gift more precious than gold. It must be spent wisely or it’s wasted and it cannot be regained. We’ve chosen to spend our time together, having adventures, living life. It is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m not a millionaire and never will be but I am the husband of an exquisite woman and the father of two fabulous young women, with whom I’ve had the most exciting, most treasured times/adventures you could imagine. That’s ever so much better than mere money.

DoLifeRight: How have *you* personally grown since you started unschooling/homeschooling your children? How has your relationship with your spouse/partner grown?

Frank: My personal growth is definitely personal to me and not really universally applicable. I was historically a depressed person with a distinct tendency toward anhedonia. Psychiatry helped but experiencing life with my family is what truly cured me. Me being a happy person instead of a depressed lump certainly made my life better and obviously also improved my relationship with my wife and my kids.

DoLifeRight: Are you able to find time to have your own hobbies, interests, and friends? Beyond your children (of course), what are your interests?

Frank: Of course. Children learn by example. Hell, we all learn by example. If I show them, by example, a person who cannot find time to be interested in the universe in general or particular things specifically, what kind of example am I? They may (more likely, will) not be interested in the same things I find interesting. That’s not important. What’s important is that they see that the universe is full of an infinite variety of things which are potentially fabulous and they have the freedom to graze that delicious smorgasbord for their own choice morsels.

As for me, I always say I’m a wannabe Renaissance Man. I’m interested in pretty much everything. Except country music.

Frank: I value my time. Because of that, I have a layered series of responses to queries about what we do. For obviously superficial queries, I simply reply that we’re homeschooling. Most people understand that and that’s all they really wanted to know so we both avoid wasting a lot of time being more specific than either of us really wanted in the first place. If someone is interested beyond that, I’ll ask if they know of Holt. If not, I’ll mention that our kids choose their own learning path and suggest the questioner get some Holt next time they’re at the library. If they’re interested beyond that, it’s time for some adult beverages and snacks to go with a discussion about educational philosophy.

DoLifeRight: If you have more than one child, how do you handle their different interests and desires?

Frank: We have two and we manage to do a pretty complete job of addressing differing interests. When there’s an unavoidable conflict, we have a family discussion and try to work out a plan which is acceptable to everyone. I knew a shrink once who said that a functional family is one in which most of the people get most of what they want most of the time. He was speaking of mainstream families but I still like the realistic nature of that comment. I think we do better than that, mostly because our focus is on following interests, so we work at making things happen.

DoLifeRight: What are the biggest issues you are currently having, or have ever had in regards to parenting and/or homeschooling/unschooling?

Frank: It seems to me that time and money are the single biggest issue in general, and also specifically for unschooling, because they are two side of the same coin. We’ve structured our lives to create lots of time and therefore sometimes we’re shorter on money than we’d like to be. Not a huge or fatal issue but it’s always there.

DoLifeRight: Any regrets? We want to hear the good and the bad! This is the best way to make informed decisions.

Frank: Only regrets are that we didn’t start sooner and that we occasionally fall into our old schoolish, mainstream habits. When we do that, the kids are usually pretty quick to call us on it.

DoLifeRight: Any last thoughts or advice for DoLifeRight’s readers?

Frank: My life path is mine. Yours is yours. I always hesitate to give advice because it’s as likely to be inappropriate as appropriate. I guess my best advice would be to read widely, listen to lots of folks who have experience and knowledge, then distill all that down to something you can use for yourself and your family.

DoLifeRight: For more information on Frank and his family, check out his blog: http://www.pvmaro.blogspot.com/

20 Unschooling Questions: Cat from Manitoba, Canada

Lisa — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:22:22 +0000

Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post.

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DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.):

Cat: We are Dave and Cathi, and we have four kids ages 13 down to 7. We live 6 miles from the middle of nowhere in Manitoba, Canada.

DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children? Do you consider your family an unschooling family? What does this mean for your family?

Cat: We’ve homeschooled/attached-parented since birth. Our kids are unschooled, with curriculum available if it suits what we’re investigating. It means we’re really close, and have a lot of adventures together like learning to sail and travelling all over North America. It also means our kids are very independent-minded and good at collecting information for whatever they want to learn.

DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children? What is your own educational background?

Cat: I (Cathi) was secular unschooled from Kindergarten to Grade 7, and bored and confused by public school’s unnatural environment from Grade 8 to 12. Dave was Christian homeschooled with a curriculum throughout high school. We each have a bit of university education (Dave in music and education, myself in music) and Dave is now a power engineer.

I did not actually plan to have children, as I wanted to be a career-oriented person teaching at a university. Dave, on the other hand, always wanted to get married and have babies when he grew up. This is true. As it turned out, he developed a career and I had the babies.

Cat: The research was done for us by our parents, who let us be happy-go-lucky guinea pigs. Dave was very committed to the idea of homeschooling, but I’m the one at home, so I was more tentative at first. (This being when our oldest was maybe a year old.) By the time they were school age, there was no way I was sending them away.

For recommendations, In Canada, Homeschooling Horizons is a really good magazine. There’s a strong unschooling presence on Twitter which is my support group.

DoLifeRight: Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants? How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?

Cat: I was raised AP, before the jargon existed. My mom was a La Leche League leader. None of this was really something I had to think about, it was just the natural response. I hated letting my babies cry, and I love playing with them and getting them into new and interesting adventures.

DoLifeRight: What specific benefits to your children (or family as a whole) have you actually seen since you became unschoolers/homeschoolers?

It’s a lot easier to deal with Dave’s shift work, which is unavoidable in an industrial setting. We’ve done things we never could otherwise, and found it very easy to do so. We don’t have to wrangle with someone else’s system imposed on our lives in order to take off for a month to California in the spring, as we did this year.

If the kids were in school five days a week, there would be times when they’d go nearly 2 weeks without seeing their Dad. He would be a stranger to them. As it is, they get him for two to three full days, every two to three days.

DoLifeRight: Do you have a regular schedule in your life? How does this work with outside commitments and responsibilities?

Cat: We have some regular elements, like everybody has their own self-determined time they get up and go to bed, and certain things they’re expected to do to help keep the household running. I’m not a big stickler on any of it, and it changes as they grow. Usually when we sign up for “extracurriculars” we schedule our week around those–e.g. if music lessons are on Wednesday, then that’s also library day.

DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you? Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture? Please list any you want to share.

I don’t have a huge need for support groups. We mainly have friends we hang out with, homeschooling and non-. The main thing to me is diversity of relationships. That’s the real challenge in a small-town setting. I’ve learned not to make a lot of outside commitments–it’s not something I feel is a need in my life right now. Tagging along with the kids and their interests gets me into enough.

DoLifeRight: What resources do you use for your children’s “educations”? Feel free to comment on the word “education”.

Cat: We use a lot of internet resources, the library, Dover books, reading aloud, tons of critical thinking discussions, and going out and experiencing the world for ourselves. We use some curriculum on and off. For instance, I don’t have a background in relevant, sensible hands-on math. This year, one of my educational goals is to do middle years math with my kids using a program called Systemath, and patch up the holes in my own learning.

DoLifeRight:. How did your friends and families react when you told them your children wouldn’t be going to school? Have their opinions changed over the years?

Cat: Our families are fine with homeschooling because they did it themselves. There wasn’t much to tell. Our extended families are always commenting on how bright and interactive the kids are, and how interested they are in learning everything they can get their paws on. We’ve had some skepticism from those who don’t know us well. One friendly local took our son for a run in the grain truck, years back, and came back astounded at how much the kid knew about birds, botany and such.

DoLifeRight: What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?

Cat: A lot of financial benefits, in that we don’t have to deal with our kids wanting to keep up with the Joneses. Cultural benefits in that we can choose our culture intentionally rather than a peer-based culture being imposed on us. (This is a factor for adult health too.)

DoLifeRight:. How does your family make money? Do you have a job? Full-time or part-time or something in between? Can you tell us about your choices and how you made these decisions?

Cat: Dave has worked his tail off to create this environment for me and the kids since day one. He’s a strong believer in the benefits of full-time parenting. Currently, his shift work allows him to have more time with the kids than a regular schedule would, and he’s a full-time parent whenever he’s around.

Having made the decision not to be a career woman after all, I was personally relieved to have his support and advocacy in wanting to be a full-time, nurturing parent. (He was also my biggest homebirth/unassisted birth advocate, though those days are behind us now.)

DoLifeRight: How have *you* personally grown since you started unschooling/homeschooling your children? How has your relationship with your spouse/partner grown?

Cat: Okay, get this: I am more secure as a person. I have a much deeper sense of unconditional love and my place in the world. I’m in my thirties, and yet the fullness and freeness of my children’s love and attachment meets needs in me similar to what I’m told I should meet in them. I am okay with myself as a person in good part because of what they pour into my life every day.

I enjoy my life more. I can say from experience I wouldn’t be this happy any other way.

In terms of spousal relationship, we suddenly began to feel this crunch as the kids became more aware, more scrutinizing and more in need of adult interaction. I’m really noticing that their social learning phase right now is figuring out how men and women interact with each other. (Ah, pre-puberty.) As such, we live in a fishbowl. Dave and I are having a lot of discussions between us about mentoring the kids through what it means to grow up, to have healthy boundaries, to be self-aware and others-aware, etc. And I think that’s growing our closeness.

As the same time, our oldest is now the legal age to babysit. Recently, we went out for a movie night with my parents, while the kids stayed home for their own. It was amazing to recover some of our independence as a couple. I take this as proof that there is a God.

DoLifeRight: Are you able to find time to have your own hobbies, interests, and friends? Beyond your children (of course), what are your interests?

Cat: I’m a writer and musician. Dave’s a sailor and mechanic. This is sort of a trick question, because in unschooling, everyone’s interests merge and flow together. We may not take up each other’s hobbies, but we share about them and learn from them. My 11-year-old is writing a humour novel. My 13-year-old has already started fixing up an old junker car in preparation for turning 16. The 9-year-old is a singer, and the 7-year-old is a fearless deckhand on the boat.

Cat: Completeness of education…don’t even get me started on what that is and isn’t. However, I rarely have to answer that question as the kids demonstrate the answer all the time. Socialization, likewise. They’ll talk to and mix with all ages, and they don’t just chatter about their little world, they listen and ask questions.

College plans, we’re not really there yet. We intend to continue this type of schooling through to graduation. I did ask our government rep about entering university as a homeschooler, and he told me that in Manitoba, because we have so many international students, homeschoolers can use the standardized placement testing that internationals do.

There’s also the option of independent studying and challenging exams in the trades, particularly if they find someone willing to mentor them in the practical aspects. Or they can write their GED (high school equivalency) at the age of 19. There are a lot of ways to go about it.

Cat: By hands-off, rather than management. They’ll pursue their interests if they’re given materials and occasional consults. Again, it’s a question more applicable to a family trying to live by a one-schedule-fits-all approach.

They know what activities we can afford to enroll them in, and they pick and choose. We have a family of homeschooling in-laws 2 miles down the road, and we can trade off kids to attend different events as each are interested.

DoLifeRight: What are the biggest issues you are currently having, or have ever had in regards to parenting and/or homeschooling/unschooling?

Cat: As I watch international trends toward imposed standardization and monitoring (thinking of the UK currently), I’m concerned by this for unschoolers in particular. There’s no way to standardize unschooling.

Really, the biggest “issue” in my family life is that we’ve been living in a major renovation of an old house for the last six years, and it’s getting tiring and inconvenient. We’re on the home stretch though.

DoLifeRight: Any regrets? We want to hear the good and the bad! This is the best way to make informed decisions.

Cat: I sort of regret that we live so far from the city, but we have most of the same opportunities here in the country, thanks to a pretty strong arts community. If I regret anything, it’s…hang on…Nope, I can’t think of anything.

DoLifeRight: Do you have any websites, yahoo lists, etc. that you run or maintain? Please list them here with descriptions.

Cat: We keep an unschooling journal at www.LifeLedLearning.blogspot.com where I break down our activities by what standard subject areas they address. I use this as a portfolio, as it takes less room than paperwork. This spring, we blogged our way down the west coast of the States, looking at volcanoes and geological features. Redwoods and ocean stuff too. We even found the SETI program by accident.

I have my own continuing unschooling at www.ScitaScienda.wordpress.com, where I journal different things I’m interested in learning about, and weird real-life tidbits for sci-fi/fantasy writing projects.

DoLifeRight: Any last thoughts or advice for DoLifeRight’s readers?

Cat: Only, get out there and have fun with your loved ones while you can. It means making it a priority. But we make priorities out of all kinds of less-important things.

20 Unschooling Questions: Idzie from Montreal, QC, Canada

Lisa — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:14:10 +0000

Click here for more “20 Questions Answers from Unschoolers” around the world. If you’d like to answer these questions yourself, please read this post — I’m actively seeking more people to answer these!

NOTE: This is the first time that an Unschooled “child” answered these questions for me! While Idzie isn’t a child anymore, she has answered these questions having grown up as an unschooler. I really appreciate her perspective and I’m sure you will, too.

———————–

DoLifeRight: Tell me a bit about yourself and your family (name, children’s ages, where you live, etc.):

Idzie: No kids yet! I, however, am an 18 year old longtime unschooler who lives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with my parents and 16 year old sister.

DoLifeRight: How long have you homeschooled your children? Do you consider your family an unschooling family? What does this mean for your family?

Idzie: We’ve been “homeschooling” of one sort or another for 13 years. I left kindergarten part way through the year, and we started out as relaxed homeschoolers. Over the years, we got steadily more relaxed, so that by the time I reached my teens, we were full fledged unschoolers. What unschooling means to my family is that children and teens are people too. People with their own aspirations, their own interests. People who have the ability and desire to make important decisions for themselves, and lead their own life, instead of having their life led for them by someone else who “knows best”! In short, unschooling means freedom and respect, no matter your age.

DoLifeRight: Did you plan to homeschool your children before you actually had children? What is your own educational background?

Idzie: My mother wanted to homeschool me from the start. My father, however, had different ideas. So off to half-day kindergarten I went! However, there were problems with other kids, and a horrible principal, so after a pretty bad experience, my father decided that maybe homeschooling really was the best option! As for me, I most definitely plan to unschool my own children, when they eventually come along.

Idzie: I can’t really answer that accurately, but what I can say is that I highly reccomend the Teenage Liberation Handbook to all teens, both in and out of school!

DoLifeRight: Did you consider yourself an “Attachment Parent” when your children were infants? How did this (or didn’t this) affect your choice to unschool/homeschool your children?

Idzie: My mother never used the term “attachment parenting”, and I’m not sure she even knew the term existed, but we (we being my sister and I) co-slept, were never left to cry alone, lived in my mom’s sling when we were little, and I was breastfed until age 2 1/2, my sister until 5. So basically she practiced attachment parenting! And I’d certainly say it affected her choice to homeschool. We were always a tight knit family, and I think it felt incredibly wrong to her to send her little girl away to school daily!

DoLifeRight: Do you have a regular schedule in your life? How does this work with outside commitments and responsibilities?

Idzie: No, we do not have a regular schedule.

DoLifeRight: How important have support groups been for you? Do you have online ones, in person ones, or a mixture? Please list any you want to share.

Idzie: There was never any unschooling support groups in real life in our area, which was very hard for us. That’s why I’m currently working on getting an unschooling support group started up here in Montreal! I think it’s incredibly important to have others support your choice to unschool, which is why I want to create a community that supports and validates each other, as well as simply enjoying each other’s company! I feel this is especially important for those new to unschooling. In the last few years, my family has become more involved in the greater unschooling community, first through Yahoo! groups, then through Not Back to School Camp and the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering, as well as other conferences we’re going to later this year. We were involved with our local homeschooling community when my sister and I were young, but it was a very school-at-home type group of people, so didn’t really make us feel better as unschoolers…

DoLifeRight: What resources do you use for your children’s “educations”? Feel free to comment on the word “education”.

Idzie: I’ve used the library, the internet, and the people around me. I’ve researched whatever strikes my fancy through both books and the internet, written a ton, and most importantly had many amazing conversations. I’ve learned (and continue to learn) more from long discussions about important things than almost anything else I’ve ever done. I’ve also danced in the rain, taken long walks, ran, swam, giggled late into the night, meditated by a campfire, looked up at the stars on a clear night, lay around in people piles, talked too long on the phone, and a million other things I consider equally valuable. Life is learning. I’ve simply lived my life, and through living, I’m learning!

DoLifeRight: How did your friends and families react when you told them your children wouldn’t be going to school? Have their opinions changed over the years?

Idzie: I’m not so great for telling you how people reacted way back when, but I can tell you what reactions I get as an unschooler who’s now 18, and is neither “in school” (I consider myself to still be learning, of course. Learning never ends!) nor working a paid job. That reaction is very split. Unschoolers and similarly freethinking people are very supportive, and seem to be impressed with how I “turned out” as an unschooler. Some more traditionally minded family friends, however, are considerably less supportive, feeling that I should be working if I’m not in school. Also, as my schooled friends go into higher education, I feel there’s some “what is she doing with her life, anyway?” feelings being sent my way… Handling negative reactions can be hard, but since the people I interact with are mostly supportive, it balances out!

DoLifeRight: What have been the benefits (unexpected and expected) to homeschooling?

Idzie: The benefits of unschooling have been that I’m a happy, healthy person who knows my own mind and isn’t afraid to express myself. I refer to myself as a “social introvert”, meaning that I love being around people, but find large groups incredibly draining. Had I been in school, I have no doubt that I would have hid in a corner most of the time, made few friends and most likely no good ones, and become a complete grade slave, struggling to please teachers and get good grades, while enjoying none of it. I am not a person who would have thrived in school, and I’m eternally grateful to my parents for never forcing me to go to school!

DoLifeRight: What are the biggest issues you are currently having, or have ever had in regards to parenting and/or homeschooling/unschooling?

Idzie: For me, personally, the biggest issues I’ve had are with not having a supportive community in real life (the internet is an entirely different story!). It’s hard when even the most open-minded schooled people still don’t really get it, and don’t quite approve, no matter how much explaining you do! This is especially hard for me since I’m a person who really seeks validation from others, and wants my closest friends and family at the very least to be entirely supportive of my life decisions.

DoLifeRight: Do you have any websites, yahoo lists, etc. that you run or maintain? Please list them here with descriptions.

Idzie: I have a blog, which I consider to be my home online, a place where I write about unschooling, anarcho-primitivism, environmentalism, freedom, anarchy, and whatever else I feel like. Basically, it’s a place to share my feelings, thoughts, emotions, interests, and simply my daily life. It can be found here. I also have a Yahoo! group, recently started, but that’s only for people who are actally going to be participating in the Montreal unschooling group!

Vegan Recipe: Cheesy Stuffed Mushrooms

Lisa — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:02:40 +0000

Here is a quick and easy recipe for those of us who love cheesy stuffed mushrooms, but now eat a strict vegan diet.

Ingredients:

One large container of mushrooms
One container of Tofutti cream cheese (or similar vegan cream cheese)
Parsley
Paprika (optional)

Wash mushrooms thoroughly. Break off the stems and chop them into little bitty bits. Stir vegan cream cheese in a bowl until it is smooth (you just need to warm it up from being in the refrigerator). Add chopped mushroom stems into the cream cheese. Add about a Tablespoon or so parsley (more if fresh). Put mushroom caps into an oven safe container. Fill them up with the cheesy mixture - use up all the mixture if you can. Sprinkle with paprika. Cook at 375F for 20 minutes or so. Eat and enjoy! These are also good with other spices added and/or sprinkled with vegan parmesan.

How to make: Homemade Lightbox and t-shirt decorating with bleach pen

Lisa — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:55:15 +0000

For Father’s Day presents, we had a lot of fun making decorated t-shirts. Click here for a bunch of really cool examples (with directions).

Since those turned out so nice, I decided to have a try at putting my Wright on Time books turtle logo onto some shirts. I printed out the design as large as it could be on a plain piece of paper. Since it wasn’t as dark as I wanted, I colored in the design with black Sharpie. When I put this paper inside of a light shirt (like light pink), it was easy to see. When I put it inside of a darker shirt (like black or army green), I couldn’t see it at all. Since I don’t currently have a light box (and putting this up to a window to trace just wasn’t going to work), I made a homemade quick-and-easy lightbox.

To make a homemade lightbox:

Gather two chairs, a lamp without shade, a large piece of glass (I took mine out of a picture frame that was hanging on my wall.
Put the glass inside the t-shirt — be careful not to cut yourself (this is not something for children to do),
Put your design under the top layer of shirt.
Rest the glass and shirt in between two chairs — do not put any weight on this or you could break the glass.
Put the lamp underneath the whole thing. Use pillows to prop the t-shirt up if necessary (this also gives the glass a bit of cushioning.
Turn on the lamp and trace your premade design. I sat on a stool to make me taller which made tracing easier.
If you still can’t see the design, have another adult hold the glowing bulb in between the glass and the back of the t-shirt — this give the light one less layer to have to go through. Trace quickly though, since holding the lamp for very long isn’t fun.
Turn your lamp off immediately when done.

It was really enjoyable for my daughters and I to see what colors the bleached areas of the shirts turned. Red turned pink (so I bleached it a second time so that it became a bright white), dark green turned peach, light green turned yellow, medium blue turned white, black turned a glorious orange, purple turned pink, etc. Here are a few photos of the Wright on Time turtle on t-shirts:

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