Unschooling: Am I failing my kids?

My nine-year-old son sat staring at his comic book, lengthily, before raising his eyes to meet mine in the glassy glare that has always alerted me to my failings. He told me his friend, who was a year younger, was already doing grade five math. 

"So?" I said, wanting to reassure him, but already knowing that the river of his disappointment would overcome my small boat of hope before it launched. "You're unschooled. We don't even know what level of math you do. Who cares."

His eyes pierced me, and he muttered, "I can't even do math."

I knew it wasn't true. Sure, he would probably test 'below grade level' if we tested him, but I disagreed with testing, and besides, though he was ignorant of long division at the time, he was able to Google a useful formula and calculate the speed at which his theoretical space-station would need to spin in order to simulate earth-gravity for those on-board. I didn't really have any concerns about his ability to 'do math'. But his eyes told me that I had, indeed, failed him. If not academically, then socially. Or maybe in supporting his sensitive heart and competitive nature. There's always something. My boat was sunk.

I've been consulting for unschooling families since the beginning of the pandemic, and by far the biggest and most common reason people call me is because they're afraid of failing their children. I struggled with that so much, myself, in the earlier years (and off and on even now that my kids are grown!) I struggle with it as a teacher, too, and I'm pretty sure it's actually most parents' niggling deep fear. 

I think we always want to do the absolute best we can for our kids, but the truth is we can't ever know what the best is for each individual kid, and for our family as a whole. We won't even know when our kids are grown if we've done what might have been best for them. All we can do is to keep an open heart, an agile mind, and work through every challenge as it arrives. But picking through our human insecurities and finding ways to re-imagine them is kind of my life's work, so I've decided to dig into this one a bit. Every one of my thoughts won't apply to every one who reads this, because we're all unique, and in that uniqueness is an infinity of different possibilities and outcomes. So don't take this essay as advice, please--just some thoughts on our mutual journey and a jumping-off place for your own thoughts and conversations. And be reassured, although this list may bring up many deep-seated fears, I'm going to talk about how to overcome them later on.

Have I set my kids up for failure if they want to go to school (or quit school) later on?

Luckily, in most places, if you have the legal right to homeschool your kids, then you also have the legal right to send them to school, later on. Some systems make you jump through hoops in order to determine appropriate placements for new students, but some also make coming and going from school quite easy. And regardless, we can rest assured that many kids leave school for a variety of reasons (travel, illness, poverty, or exploring different education options) and manage to return when the time is right. The system is always willing to take kids back. 

Then there's the fear that kids will be 'behind' if they join school later than their peers. From the experiences I've had as a parent and also witnessed in other eclectic homeschooling families, I can say this is actually rarely the case. Sure, there will be differences between our home/unschooled kids' experiences and the schooled kids' experiences, but every school year begins with quite a bit of review, and home/unschooled kids are often quite skilled at harnessing learning opportunities. They 'catch up' quite quickly. 

The bigger issue I see here is the possibility of failing our kids' learning and self-esteem in general by succumbing to our own fears about 'grade levels' or 'keeping up' or 'being behind'. These competitive thoughts often lead to our kids feeling insecure about their learning. My son's insecurities about math were absolutely rooted in my own 'encouraging' him to practice math. I thought I was being mostly positive, but my actions made him aware that there was a bar he needed to reach, and he always felt in danger of failing. That's really no different than the very visible bar that school-going kids are expected to reach, so I'm not going to kick myself too much for bringing it into his world. Still, since my conviction that competition and coercion is detrimental to learning was a big part of the reason we chose to unschool, I really did fail myself, in this case. And my son's ongoing insecurity about his own intelligence is the result.

I don't know if [insert educational philosophy here] was the best choice for my child!

It might not be. Maybe you chose unschooling and now your kid is passionately yearning for the excitement and rigidity of the school her friend attends. Maybe you and your child researched the hell out of all the school options, then maxed all your credit on 'the best school', and now you're all miserable. Both of these situations have happened to me. Things change. Things can change. And the way we navigate these needs and unexpected changes with agility will be the greatest lesson to our kids. And after it all? Our kids will almost certainly blame us for choices we made that didn't serve them. That, too, is an opportunity for growth. How we work through our feelings of regret and uncertainty as a family is another of life's greatest learning opportunities.

I'm antisocial. How can I socialize my kids?

This one is hard for me. I have really deep social insecurities, and I passed them on to my children long before we even considered educational options. Unschooling, and being a part of an incredibly small homeschool cohort, was in some ways easier for me, because of the possibility of forging closer relationships with fewer people. But it was also devastating to all of us when friends moved on to school, or other communities, or just other friendships. My kids have witnessed my depression upon realizing that close friends had moved on, and this didn't help their social confidence at all. My experience with this led me to see, yet again, that the way I navigate this challenge is hugely important to how my kids will grow. Yes, unschooling in a small community amplified this problem for us, but that just gave us a chance to meet it, head on. 

My kids and I talk a lot about our social lives; our thoughts and feelings about why we or others behave the way we do. They know I don't have many answers, and frequently I have learned more from them than they have from me. As a whole, these conversations are one of the most important things we do. We all know that our house is the place we can safely air all our thoughts and feelings, that we'll love each other no matter what, and that we'll always have our hearts held, here. Dr. Gabor Maté "believes that most mental health conditions originate from unresolved childhood trauma" (Human Window, 2020). We can't avoid emotional trauma, but we can work to resolve it. So, rather than hold back about topics that challenge or frighten us, we talk about them. I'm not a psychologist and I'm not confident in my understanding of humanity, but I am my children's confidante, and that means it's my job to support them and to take their social and emotional journeys with them. Wherever we go, we go together. At least there will be someone there at the end of the road, holding their hand.

I'm no good at [insert subject here]. What if my kids want to learn things I know nothing about?

In my consulting work as well as on homeschool and unschooling discussion groups, this question comes up often, and in many different forms: 'My daughter is interested in sewing clothes, but I have no idea where to begin!' 'My child is asking to learn to read, and I don't know how to teach them.' 'I failed math in high school, how can I teach my kid at home?' In fact, the reason my son was so worried about his math level was likely because he sensed my own and his father's lack of confidence in math. I really don't understand much about math, but his father studied engineering and physics in university. His actual skill may have passed on to his son, but so did his lack of confidence. The confidence we lack as parents is normal, but it's also a detriment to learning, both for ourselves and for our children.

This issue is complex, but relatively simple to solve. First of all, we need to dismantle our thinking that learning is a top-town dissemination of knowledge. Many of us were raised in the school system and/or at home to believe that that's how learning works, but this system no longer serves our population, and even school boards across the world are beginning to change. While it's entirely possible to seek out a more experienced person as a guide or mentor in a specific subject area, that person is still growing, too, and there is always more to learn; more to share, and more ways to grow than just by collecting knowledge. The best mentors are just sharing their enthusiasm for learning with others. As parents, we can be those best mentors simply by finding some kind of enthusiasm as we go on the learning journey with our kids.

The learning can be direct, where we (or our kids) seek out information and learn it through whatever means suit us best (my own kids have variously accessed local experts, online courses, YouTube tutorials, in-school classes, and library resources). But it can also happen through undirected exploration and play, which happens to be how most of my kids' lifelong passions and skills have developed. The point is that my own skills were not needed for any of this. Maybe, especially when they were younger, I helped them access the resources they needed, but I didn't have to actually understand the subject matter to do so. My enthusiasm was for supporting their learning--whatever that was. I was the excited buyer-of-microscopes. I was the diligent driver-to-the-library. I was the supervisor of Googling, and the provider of the computer. I was the lady who made the muffins and insisted we were going to eat them in the woods, because I like the woods, damnit! That's our role, as parents: to be unflinchingly passionate, supportive, and true to ourselves. This is how our children learn to do the same, and how they learn to learn.

How to Support Our Kids:

Our kids are watching us, and they're learning 'how to human' from every nuance of our lives and behaviour. Working through our own insecurities is always the best work we can do, as parents. We will most definitely fail our children. All we can hope is that we've done our best to model resilience, agility, and a kind, supportive heart, so that when our failings rear their heads in our children's lives, our children are prepared to meet them with confidence, and grow.

How We’re Trying to Celebrate Sustainably While Holding on to What Matters Most

I had my annual Christmas tantrum, yesterday. It happens every year, as the list of stuff on my plate grows, and the time shrinks, and I--the mother around here--am nagging everybody, everywhere, every day, then finally reach my breaking point, and cancel Christmas. And then everybody has a big family talk, and they all agree that they'll help more, and I begrudgingly uncancel Christmas. The tension points are pretty much the same as during the rest of the year: too much to do, too much stress, and some members of our household are better at living in the moment than looking ahead and preparing for coming events (preparing food for dinner, preparing the yard for snowfall, cleaning gutters before rain, etc.) And at Christmas it's SO much more. There are the cards and the gifts to prepare, the house to clean and decorate, the various foods to prepare ahead of time, and all that time the necessary positivity-building; the encouragement and ensuring that these activities are happy. The days when I just got it all done myself are behind me now. So I am mostly the whip-cracker, and that role makes me miserable, as well as everybody else.

So every year on Mama's Tantrum Day (no, there's no actual date for this, but there's some guarantee it will happen in early December), some little thing pushes me over the edge, I yell at somebody or break down in tears, storm away, and then eventually come out to apologize, and calmly explain that if people want Christmas, we need to get some things done, and I can't do it all myself. Then they all make a truly good effort at not only preparing for Christmas, but also developing some real joy for the rest of the season. The resentful mutterings are quieter, and I slink off to my little corner of guilt and shame. This is not ever how I envisioned what in my heart is the happiest time of year. But it's the price of creating that illusion. As the years go by the tantrums are milder and the celebrations are easier, but that isn't the end of it.

Lately we're facing another foe to Christmas joy: the veil of innocent shopping sprees has been lifted from our eyes by the recent parade of floods, fires, storms, droughts, and disasters. Now we really just can't deny the fact that Christmas is unsustainable! We've known for decades that consumerism (including buying gifts) was destroying our future, but have been unable to break out of that tradition for various reasons (AKA various people's hearts being broken at the thought of not buying gifts). Add to that the gas spent on extra travel and shipping, the money we don't have that we borrow from the future to fulfill expectations, the imported foods that are a part of every December in our household, the new decorations, new candles, and total abandoning of our efforts at non-consumerism in order to over-fill stockings just so they look "right".

So this year I decided to see if we can dig down to the heart of what's important to us, and focus our time, effort, expense and expectation onto just those things that matter most. We wrote down the truly gigantic list of things we normally do at Christmas time, and sorted them into categories: what we would be happier without, what we don't care about either way, what we enjoy but could live without, and what we feel our hearts absolutely need to enjoy the season. The results were interesting.

My daughter had to make a special list item for "dogs everywhere", which I had never realized was an important part of Christmas at all, but now that I think about it, those fluffy smiling faces enjoying the gathering of family is really a traditional part of our celebration. I personally realized that I like making paper stars, but not hanging them in most of the windows, and it turns out nobody else likes them either. This was a part of both my partner and my childhood traditions, so we never questioned it. Now we know! Every single person had the same things at the top of the list: the wild tree we annually collect from our neighbours' driveway (we consider it sustainable because it's doomed, there, already), along with decorating and music and family gatherings. 

And gifts? They didn't register on three out of the four top lists! In fact, my son had them on the "rather not have" list, although opening his stocking was still enjoyable, and then followed by a feeling of guilt. My daughter, however, had gifts near the top of her list. This major discrepancy led to a lot of conversation in our home. It turns out we all carry so much ecologically-rooted guilt associated with consumerism that gift-giving has become stressful. We imagine it would be just fine if people gave gifts that were truly needed, like boot repairs, or the mixer my partner refurbished for his mother after she broke her arm. He gave her the gift of still being able to bake. Or time. Time together is the gift everybody in my household loves. It was consistently in the "can't be happy without this" category of our experiment. Singing with the family, gathering for anything and everything--those were also at the top of the list. Heartbreakingly so, during this time of pandemic restrictions, but knowing this means we have to find more ways to be together, safely.

This list activity has given us some great conversation and helped us to focus our hearts on what matters. We are boldly acknowledging that overspending on time, money or our future is absolutely not OK, and now we have a way forward out of this mess: Togetherness. A wild tree. Singing and playing music. Those things at the top of the lists are what we'll focus on, knowing now that our hearts will be filled without those things at the bottom.

How to Prepare for Scarcity and the Great Inflation

Illustration by Taliesin River

"You’d better prepare for the greatest inflationary wave in human history." That's the line that stuck out to me, near the end of umair haque's REALLY good article, "Why Everything is Suddenly Getting More Expensive -- And Why It Won't Stop". If you haven't read this article yet, or aren't already familiar with the idea of the Great Inflation, and how we're now paying for the affordability of past generations, I recommend reading that article before reading this one. 

umair's article was very helpful to my understanding of why our groceries are getting so expensive or why, for example, I looked into second hand electric cars a few years ago and could find plentiful good options under 9K, and now there are none. So we know the Great Inflation is happening. My question is, how are we preparing?

Emergency kits and Go-bags are not going to cut it. Home preparedness is totally underway at my house. After this year's excruciatingly horrible wildfire season, we made plans to back up our family photos and prepared a little waterproof box for our phones, wallets and hard-drive, for when we'll inevitably have to jump in the ocean and swim. After this year's heat-wave, we bought an air conditioner that doubles as a dehumidifier for the now annual warm-and-foggy (read: in-house-moldy) season. After the deep freeze we insulated our chicken-coop. After the current flood-caused highway (and whole-town) washouts, we put emergency supplies in our car. After gas prices jumped and the flood-caused supply chain disruptions made gas rationing necessary, we looked into electric cars. I already told you how that went. 

But what's next?? We all know that none of this is enough. We can hardly predict the next climate-change-related disaster. Who knows how we should prepare? The one thing we all have to do is learn to live differently. And the change needed is so drastic we can hardly fathom it. Personally, I need lists to help me fathom. So I'm making one. In my mind it breaks down to three broad sections: things we need "much less", "none" and "more". My list is not complete or well-organised, but it helps me sort out my mind, so here goes:

We need much less of this:
Most things in this first section should actually be on the "none" list, but at the moment our culture is such that we're going to need a transitional phase. I guess that's what this is. This gives us time to learn and share some skills we've abandoned and get prepared for the time when, whether we like it or not, all these things move to the "none" section.

Travel: As fuel and steel prices rise, it's going to become impossible for most people to travel, anyway, and the many industries that depend on travel tourism will die, regardless. But on top of that, it's already becoming impossible to commute for work, to send our children to non-local schools or programs; to visit our parents. We're going to have to use our great ingenuity, as we have already proven capable of during the pandemic, to work around this.

Dependence on government: I'm not sure what makes us think that the government will just keep creating resources to fix and replace those destroyed by climate change, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that right now our government and military are pretty taxed just dealing with the constant march of disasters. At some point that's going to break. There won't always be soldiers available to build dikes and put out fires. We might as well get used to that, and expect to do the work, ourselves. Yes we can.

Clothing: I have such a clothing addiction! I think I buy very few things--just a garment or four a year for each person in my household. And recently I try to buy sustainably. But I also still own, alter and wear many clothes from my teens, and every decade between then and now. I probably have about ten times as many clothes as I actually need, and it's not like giving them away would be any more sustainable. Some parts of the world are drowning in our "donations" (take time to watch that if you, like me, still thought donating clothes was helpful). The only actual solution to this is to stop buying, entirely. I know I have enough clothing to last the rest of my life, if I do more mending. And I could clothe the rest of my family, too.

Non-local food and industrial agriculture: We know that industrial agriculture, along with fossil-fuel driven production and transportation, is a disaster for our future. Thousands of chickens and cows just drowned in my province when the artificially-drained land they lived on flooded, because of climate change. Our flimsy, human-made systems are going to crash so hard they can't recover. We might as well accept that now, and start something new so we're ready when they're gone. There are many viable solutions for this problem, and they begin with all of us eating more simply. 

Imported food: We can do this now. My family is Dutch, and we LOVE our imported cheese. My family is also Mexican, and we--wait! We already figured out how to make our own tortillas from local corn! This isn't going to be as hard as I thought. This isn't as big a deal, perhaps, as how our food is produced, but it's one way we can make a difference to our impact, and become more engaged in local food production.

Fossil fuels. Resource Extraction. ALL. THE. WASTE: We're already making some progress with this. As we limit our needless use of office buildings for computer terminal work than can be done online, we will need less concrete and steel. As we commute and travel less, we'll need fewer highways and less fuel. As we drive less, fewer cars. And on it goes. The stuff that supported our wasteful consumerist existence will no longer be needed, and we can stop pillaging and burning our earth's resources.

We need none of this:
We already know these things are destroying us, and we can eliminate them, now. Yes, there will be devastating job losses, and huge shifts needed in our culture and thought patterns. We'll have to get very creative. But you know how when a close family member dies we're devastated and we don't know how we'll ever recover? But then we do, and we grow. And we end up somewhere new we never could have imagined before the loss. This will be the same.

Tourism: Yep. That's probably the end of the travel industry. Airlines. Cruising. Little plastic souvenirs and the trusted income source of so many communities, including mine. We'll find other ways to enjoy our world, along with other ways of supporting our communities.

Careers that depend on global travel: So much of our current air-travel is related to needless work-travel. It's the end of my career as an artist who exhibits in Amsterdam. A few years ago I might have said, "at least I got to do it once..." Now I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't make this realization before that. Lucky for us, technology has brought the world to our handheld devices. We can make the most of this.

Needless consumption, supporting mega corporations, escapism: I, like most of us, grew up in an age where Christmas was actually about presents; about light shows in shopping districts and buying stuff to feel happy. I learned to satisfy my soul by shopping, by travelling; by escaping my real-world life into screens, food, shopping, and travel. Now that that world is falling apart, it's no longer satisfying to fulfill those consumption needs. For Christmas I want to be released from the "age of stuff", as my friend recently called it on Facebook. Oh yeah. Facebook. That has to go too. I'm going to have to actually go to out and talk to my community members in person. I hope I find some walking around without their phones.

So now what? Now that we've dispensed of most of the biggest industries in the world, most of the jobs, and everything we actually loved about life... how on earth are we going to survive? Well, maybe not on earth. The billionaires are already playing with spaceflight. Let them move to Mars. The rest of us will dig deeply into that "More" category, and thrive. 

We need more of this:
This is the beauty section. This is where we take all the grief and fear from the previous two sections of my list, turn it on its head, and marvel at all the joy we've found.

Local food (and other resources): The more of us go find sustainable, local producers to satisfy our needs, the more such producers there will be. It's not cheap to do this, so a huge part of it is valuing the food for what it's really worth. My partner and I decided to eat very little meat, a few years ago, and what we do eat should be sustainably produced. So in order to afford this (both ecologically and financially) we went from eating meat three or four times per week to a maximum of once a week. And we eat cheese about twice a month. I'm still looking for a really good local cheesemaker. When I find one, that cheese is going to be as expensive as it should be, but deeply, deeply appreciated. When you don't get something very often, it becomes so much more valuable. It's the scarcity principle, but this time it's working for us.

Sharing: My family has chickens, now. Sometimes we don't have enough eggs even to bake bread. Sometimes, we have enough to bake, make quiches, and share with our family. Those are happy times, when we feel rewarded by our ability to contribute. Like when my neighbour grew so many apples she asked us to come pick some. We ate so many apples that year. Sharing isn't always about food, or even objects. We make a point of learning and sharing knowledge with our neighbours, as well. Sharing isn't just necessary for the equitable use of community resources--it's necessary for our survival.

Finding sustainable ways to contribute locally: This is the joyful counterpart to the misery of losing jobs and entire industries; economical collapse that will be a natural fallout from rampant inflation. This is where we find ourselves working instead of for money, for survival. And I can tell you from my experiences supporting unschooling parents, teaching and writing for free, and raising plants and animals for food, it's the most rewarding work I've ever done.

Connecting with community and local ecology: We protect what we know and love. Those who know and love us are our resources, and will protect us. This is the foundation of a wholistic society, but it's also the root of love and joy, so... what more can I say?

Pointedly appreciating what we do have: This comes back to the scarcity principle. My family has been regularly cutting back our consumption for a few years, now. We're eating mostly rice, corn, beans and lentils, along with what we grow, ourselves, and locally-grown veggies in the winter. We really enjoy our mushrooms, now that we only get them when they decide to pop up in the garden, or when we find them growing in the wild. It's the same for our homegrown chicken, eggs and veggies. It's the same for clothes we've mended or repurposed. Now that we rarely get to see our family (because: travel), we appreciate phone calls so much more. I make a big deal in my heart of what we took for granted, before. And that leaves me feeling deep joy.

~~~

Maybe it's weird to be talking about deep joy in relation to climate change disasters and our current basic needs becoming unaffordable. But maybe we're just not seeing straight. The cost (as opposed the price) of our lifestyle has been astronomical since our parents and grandparents were children. Now we're finally paying for it, in climate change disasters and rampant inflation. That's going to hurt a lot, no matter how we slice it. But maybe some mental preparation can make the hurt more tolerable. 

Maybe, instead of dreading the fires or floods or the housing crisis, we can prepare by living more simply, by forming strong communities of people who support each other; by building and living within our means. Maybe instead of rushing to the stores to stock up when we hear there's a shortage of microchips, maple syrup, or gas, we can embrace scarcity. Those last few spoonfuls of maple syrup are extra special now; I can feel resilient by making do with older devices, and I can walk instead of driving. I can even stay home. I can change careers, if I need to. And most of us will. Maybe, instead of working ourselves to death and spending more than we earn on big homes; spending time and money we don't have on travel and products that cost us our future, we can work less, spend less, love more, and look at everything we do have as if it is a gift. Because it really is. And we're finally learning to cherish it. That cherishing--that appreciation and finding of deep joy--is how we prepare our minds for the inevitable.