COVID-19: How to Unschool During Isolation

Here we all are (hopefully) busy flattening the curve by staying home for a few months... and keeping our kids home from school, which causes some legitimate concerns for parents who either can't stay home or worry about finances, their children's welfare, or academic success. For some people this is an opportunity to unschool, as evidenced by the handful of people who have already asked me about how to jump onto this path, during isolation. We're all trying to figure out how we can support each other while keeping isolated, so I'm very happy to provide coaching for free during this time (as much as I can manage, time-wise). I'm also happy to provide a supportive ear, if you just need to talk. But here, to get you started, are some basic guidelines that answer the questions people most commonly ask me. This is going to be an interesting time, and if we work through it thoughtfully we may emerge a much more successful civilization than we were when we entered it.

With thanks to my auntie Lidia Patriasz for this poignant piece of art.

What is Unschooling?
"Unschooling is a generic term for a form of homeschooling in which, loosely speaking, education happens without the use of a schedule, curriculum, testing and grades. It's an approach which is used in varying degrees by different families. Unschooling is child-led education, so if the child chooses to go to school, they are still unschooled, as they were not coerced or persuaded to go there, but chose to do so of their own free will. Unschooling is the rejection of an imposed education. Other synonyms are natural or non-coercive learning, auto-didactic, self-learning, free range organic education."

~Unschooling.ca

Why Unschool?
Each of us has our own unique set of reasons for unschooling. We went into unschooling for different reasons than we continued it over the years. I can say that for me and my own circumstances (and personal ways of thinking), unschooling was less stressful than homeschooling or schooling. It was like improvising a meal with the ingredients at hand rather than shopping for the ingredients to a specific recipe. It gave me the emotional freedom to do what I and my children thought was right, and to problem-solve along the way, instead of sticking to somebody else's plan that may not always have been right for us. It also gave me and my children the flexibility to identify and solve issues for ourselves, thus becoming more adept at doing so. It makes us stronger, more self-reliant and confident people.

De-schooling
The first thing that happens when we stop going to school is de-schooling. In fact, any children who don't continue with tutoring and summer courses do this every summer, so it's not as alien a concept as it might seem. De-schooling is simply the transition period between schooling and not schooling. It's the time where our minds slowly release themselves from the constraints of one system and begin to sort out the constraints of another. It can be an incredibly difficult time, as we're accustomed to the way things were, and usually uncertain about the way things are becoming. Many unschoolers report a euphoric time of peace and contentment with life after an arduous, tumultuous period of de-schooling.

The difference between school and un-school is all about determination (control) and responsibility. At school, children are set on a path that is largely out of their control. There's a defined set of goals for them to achieve, and a defined set of methods for achieving it. This lack of self-determination drives some kids crazy, but for others it's comforting. For all kids, it can be terrifying to be suddenly handed the reins to their own destiny - every moment and for the long haul. But that's unschooling.

De-schooling will probably take longer than you expect. For some families it takes years. I think the shortest de-schooling periods we've had were those in which I didn't push. I remained patient and expected nothing, and usually just ignored my kids and got busy with my own things. The times when I nagged them to get active or start projects have always been the longest-lasting, most fraught times.

I've gone through periods of de-schooling a few times with my kids, as they tried out school programs and then de-schooled over the breaks, or when they returned to full-time home-based unschooling. It was never easy. But some support and encouragement goes a long way to helping us get through. The best advice I can give other parents on this front is to find an unschooling community (online, during the pandemic) and get involved. Share your experiences and ask all your questions. Listen to others. Unschoolers are here for each other and there are thousands of other parents out there who will understand your trials and offer support.

What to do While De-schooling?
Like everything else about unschooling, that's up to you and your kids! Some people just sit back and do nothing. Let the kids play video games until they're blue in the face. Let them read the same book over and over and over until you think you've lost them. Let them really just do nothing. There's nothing wrong with that; their brains are doing something. They are processing. De-schooling is a process, leading both kids and parents to discover their own boredom. Boredom is like a swear word to so many of us; we're accustomed to filling every spare second of our time with activity. But space of time and mind is needed to embark on a new adventure, and boredom is that space. Silence is a good space too. Let it be.

De-schooling isn't about what you're doing as much as it's about what you're not doing. Make a lot of big bored silent space, just asking to be filled. This will cultivate the desire to do something, later. And unschooling is all about finding and following our hearts' desires.

Wait -- Who Makes the Rules?! What About Safety?
I don't see unschooling as mayhem with the kids ruling the roost. I see it has a contract between all the household members to work for the happiness of everyone. We're all responsible. This means lots of conversation; lots of vulnerability. Total honesty. If I made the food too spicy just because I like it that way, but one of the kids is suffering, then maybe I need to serve the spices separately. If you don't like the way I do your laundry, you can learn to do it yourself. This isn't a punishment; it's a fabulous learning opportunity and a pathway to self-reliance. If you don't want me to show you how to do the laundry, figure it out yourself. If I, as a parent, am hiding in my room because my kid is watching horribly violent movies and it's too much for me, then maybe it's too much for the whole family. My needs matter too. If my kid is hanging off a cliff and it terrifies me, perhaps I need to explain the reasons for my fear. Kids can handle the truth better than they usually navigate a blurry field of unexplained rules.

Safety in our family means lots of talking, and sometimes taking risks that I don't approve of. However frightening it is, I know that my children learn how to be safe from risk-taking, and I have to stand back, cover my eyes, and let it happen. I try to model calculated risk-taking, myself. My hope is that if they follow my lead, the accidents will be fewer and smaller, and so far this has proven to be true. Children learn far more from what we do than from what we tell them.

But Screens!!!
It turns out most kids will eventually grow bored of sitting in front of their screens and find something else to do. And it seems that almost always takes more time than we parents have patience for. It's really hard to watch our kids drowning in activities we see as useless or detrimental. Many of my family's struggles have been related to screen-time, and I almost always lose an argument when trying to convince them to cut back their screen-time. I've laid down the law quite a few times, and this kind of coercion has been detrimental to their own feelings of taking responsibility. The times I've been more successful, I've had more patience. Reminding ourselves that more time is needed, and seeking encouragement from other parents is helpful in this regard.

What to Do; What to Learn
One of the wonderful things about unschooling is the opportunity for kids and parents to learn life skills that otherwise may have gone by the wayside, in lieu of time spent doing homework or extra-curricular activities. Unschooling is about living life to the fullest, and this includes taking care of ourselves, along the way. In doing so we're bound to learn how life works, how our bodies work, how our home and family works, how to live well in community. These are the essentials of life. All the facts and figures learned in school make their way into what we learn from life, but in real and tangible ways. It astounded me that when my son finally went to school in grade seven, he not only understood math at grade level, but understood why it worked. His twelve years of exploring the workings of the world without formal math instruction had fully prepared him to understand the functions and relationships of numbers.

Unschooling is about exploration and experimentation, so what to do is anything that you find engaging!

Maybe you need some inspiration. Here are some things we love to do:

• Go on family adventures (mostly brief, local, and low-cost, as these usually seem to be the least stressful and most rewarding). 
• Make some new recipes - experiment in the kitchen! In times of isolation we may have to get creative with fewer ingredients, anyway. Try old recipes with new ingredients or try making things you may have purchased ready-made before.
• Start reading those books that have been beckoning from the shelf for years. 
• Sign up and follow one of the many free online courses available from universities around the world. 
• Learn a new language with Duolingo! 
• Wilderness camping or hikes are probably a fairly safe activity for virus-isolated families, as long as you stick to the less-travelled wilderness areas. If nobody else has been there for at least a week, you're probably safe. And bonus: it's a welcome distraction from screens, as well as being one of the best possible activities for health, happiness, and education. 
• Those fortunate enough to own a vehicle can go on road-trips (as long as you stay in your car through towns and villages; don't go into shops or other populated areas). 
• If you have access to land, or even a balcony, plant a garden! I once had a three-foot-wide balcony in the city, where I grew beans for shade and privacy, a pumpkin that failed to make fruit, a bunch of lettuce and basil, spinach, and a tiny two-by-two-foot lawn!

Do you hear the excitement in my typing? That's because I'm listing the things I love doing, myself. Even if our kids don't want to be involved, modelling fun, healthy activities is the best possible education we can give them. My kids get up to all kinds of other things like fort-building (both with lumber and with sticks in the forest), geocaching, making videos to share online, performing with their self-taught instruments, and just simply hanging out with friends (online during coronavirus). I'm sure your kids will have their own ideas. Mine frequently surprise me, as they did with this cardboard vending machine which they built and spent two days entertaining our community with! But don't follow my ideas. Your own and your children's will be far more interesting. Obviously, during isolation season, geocaching, busking, cardboard vending machine operation, and any other activity that involves touching things that are also touched by other people, are out of the question. This definitely poses some problems, but sometimes the internet solves these problems. Get creative!

What About Academics?
Our kids will be fine. They learned to crawl and to walk and eventually to speak without formal instruction, and when they're similarly inspired they'll learn to read, write, and calculate. They may not do these things at the times school-going children do, but they'll do it at the time that is right for them. I've known a few unschoolers who didn't take an interest in reading until they were ten or more years old, and within a year or two of developing an interest, they were reading at or beyond what many would call "grade-level".

Of course there's always a chance that kids will struggle with academics at some point, but in my experience it's no more likely for unschoolers than for kids who've spent a lifetime in the school system. In fact, unschooling often gives struggling kids a chance to succeed on their own terms, while not being compared to classmates. Just don't worry. Children sense their parents' fears and then they battle those fears too. The best thing you can do to support your children is support yourself, so that your fears don't become theirs.

Structure
Some kids just love structure. All of us can benefit from it in some ways. I have no problem with structure, but I've usually tried to let my kids define it for themselves. My daughter seemed to be born passionate about planning, and has often had schedules and other plans for herself, even when I wasn't so organized. She had lists in books before she could write (only she knew what they said, but they were very important to her). My son didn't find planning very important at all until he decided to quickly earn his graduation diploma, and suddenly found himself scheduling all his time down to the minute, as he raced to finish an impossible-seeming number of courses he wasn't quite prepared for. He made it by some miracle, and now has an appreciation and aptitude for planning.

So let them create the structure they need, and create your own. In our family, it's me who generally has a master plan, and my challenge is to learn to adapt when it doesn't suit the needs of others.

Loneliness and Support

Skype charades

Lastly, and most importantly, build a support network. Social interaction really can be difficult for families staying at home without a wider community. We struggled quite a bit with this during times when there were few other homeschoolers, and all our children's friends were busy with school and extra-curriculars. We had some lonely times, which were always the reasons my kids tried out school programs. During this pandemic, isolation will be an even greater challenge, despite our great efforts to achieve it. We'll have to find ways to connect, and the Internet is likely to be our best friend. Skype, Zoom, and other visual platforms can be great for kids. When they were much younger, mine had a few Skype visits with their friends who were living aboard a sailboat. It was amazing to me to watch them have costume parties, make crafts, play music jams, and sword-fight each other over Skype.

I personally prefer my old-fashioned phone, and am happy to make myself a cup of tea, snuggle in with my rotary, and have a long-distance tea-date with a friend. I get my parent-support by participating in online unschooling forums. Facebook has quite a few, often linked with other homeschooling groups, and also often local.

~

I wish you well in your unschooling and life explorations. It's an adventurous path to take, and I've never regretted our personal journey. I hope yours is fabulous! I'll leave you with a quote from one of my favourite radio shows: Stay calm, be brave; wait for the signs!

COVID-19: Holding Our Children's Hearts as Their World Changes

What a rough few days in my house. Meltdowns everywhere, and some of them have been my own. We took a mini vacation to a neighbouring island with my partner's mother, and it did provide a much needed reprieve from the stress, but we came back home to more stress; more cancellations; more sadness. It's hard.

Kids everywhere are suffering as the seriousness of the corona virus pandemic becomes apparent, and their worlds begin to crumble around them. Maybe their parents are fighting over pandemic measures. Maybe there's no toilet paper because the neighbours literally had every last roll delivered to their door but the shop shelves are empty. Maybe they're out of ramen. Maybe their vacation got cancelled. Maybe they just feel the existential threat of Disneyland closing. Or maybe, as in my daughter's case, the musical she's been obsessing about performing in all year is in grave danger of not going ahead, and even if it does, it's unlikely she can perform, because both she and her mother have autoimmune issues and just can't risk her participation. Maybe she feels the existential despair of knowing that her friends are getting together without her. Maybe our older kids, like my son, feel a deep fear of failure, as college courses may not be completed and academic next-steps may falter. Maybe it feels like their parents are being way over-dramatic about all this, and destroying their lives for nothing, or maybe they see our fear and ill-advised panic-shopping as a true existential threat. Maybe they just see our helpless feelings and now struggle to contain their own. And we all melt down.

A few days ago I thought this pandemic presented a really great opportunity to bond with my children, to grow a better garden and get to some long-ignored projects. Now I just see stress everywhere I look, and I worry that we won't make it through.

I ask myself what matters most to me and, as always, the answer is my children's welfare - both physical and psychological. And I see that both are now threatened. At the moment, ensuring their physical welfare means isolation, and isolation is deeply psychologically harmful, especially to a couple of teens who are just learning to make their way in the world, without me. And let's not forget: It's a world full of people who are currently stressed over a pandemic, running the gamut from panic shopping to selling off their stocks, to running for the hills, to mocking anybody who uses hand sanitizer. That's a hard landscape to navigate even for me, never mind for a kid whose existence seems to revolve around people and activities that are suddenly all threatened.

We can't change this terrible feeling, but we can hold our children's hearts close to our own. We can continue to remind ourselves that our meltdowns come from fear, and that love can't cure corona virus or bring back all the things that have suddenly been cancelled, but love is a poultice. We can take comfort in our children's heads resting on our shoulders, in knowing that our love is helpful, if not always accepted, and we can enjoy the brief moments of happiness we find in distraction. We can hold our own hearts gently. We can inch forward with discovery and invention as we find new ways of living in our quickly changing world, knowing that our children will grow from being a part of the change. We didn't ask for this pandemic, but we can ride it. Maybe right now it feels like hanging on for dear life, but let's hold our loved ones' hearts close, as we do.

Respect Yourself: Unschooling Reading

On our journey as an unschooling family, the very first struggle we had was with our own presumptions about reading. It seemed like one of the most important parenting tasks we had was to make sure our kids were reading-ready before Kindergarten. According to things I'd read at the time, this amounted to my kid having a firm grasp of the alphabet, and a strong love of looking through books and being read to. This was the bare minimum, since other parents we talked to already had their preschoolers reading short sentences, and studying phonics. The stakes were high.

From age two to four, our son was passionate about reading and language. He spoke clearly and carefully, expressing his feelings and ponderings and discoveries, and when he didn't know how to put these things into words, he drew or described, and requested the correct words for his needs. He trusted us to supply him with whatever new words he needed when he needed them. Without reading a word, in the conventional sense, he "read" to his baby sister every day, as he enthusiastically entertained her with great stories and descriptions of the books he presented her. He sang, too - long story-songs full of angst and emotion. He drew diagrams of his complex inventions, and instructed me to label them for him so I would understand all the important details. Sometimes he tried labeling, himself.

By the time my son was four, I began to worry that all this expression wasn't enough for Kindergarten, and I began tracing my finger along as I read to him, to let him see which words I was reading. My hand got in the way of not only the pictures in the books, but even of the words he was looking at. So I began reading more slowly, and giving him time to look at the picture after. He complained that I was ruining the story. Do you see what's happening, here? Because I didn't. But I do now. This was the long series of moments I stopped respecting my son. I listened to the voice of my own fears instead of his voice. This was the moment that our beautiful story times stopped being about enjoyment of stories and words and togetherness, and began to be a kind of manipulation. He stopped reading to his sister, and read only silently to himself, on the bedroom floor. I knew he was capable of figuring out the words, so I tried to get him to read me some. He refused, so I bought a new book. Jake Bakes a Cake. My son is 17 now and as far as I know he's never read that book. You know why? Because that innocent book was the last straw. After I sat him down with Jake Bakes a Cake, he didn't read another book for nine months.

Nine months later, he was in Kindergarten, fighting his own rebellion against the teacher who wanted him to respond to stories in his journal. I had finally given up completely and decided I'd trust the system to teach him, since I had clearly failed. Then we went on a road trip. Somewhere along the drive from Victoria to Nanaimo, we stopped at an intersection, and our boy whispered tentatively from the back seat: "S -- TA -- AW -- PUH". We waited. "S -- TAW-P". I remember being afraid to carry on driving, but we did. The sign was gone, and in a moment he said, "did that sign say 'stop'?" Well if I know one thing about my son it's that my enthusiasm about his discovery would kill it for him, so I put my hand on my husband's leg, and said "yes", like it didn't matter at all.

By the time we got home he had read a handful of signs, quietly to himself. And then, as we parked outside the bank: "Mama, what does 'par-kinje' mean?" It might sound like I learned to respect him at that point, but I didn't. I still thought we were on the right track to learning to read. I still thought he was measuring up. I failed to see his innate curiosity for what it was, and to nurture it without judgment. I told him that i-n-g makes the sound 'ing', and celebrated quietly when he carefully pronounced 'parking'. I failed to see soon enough that my kid had his own interests, needs and life-path, separate from those arranged for him by me and the school system. But this idea began to grow on me, and we pulled him out of school the next spring. The world of unschooling opened our minds. I began to explore the idea of respecting my kids, in order to foster self-respect in them. My son did grow to love reading again, but I will never know what might have been his life if we'd been a little wiser to begin with.

So I also need to stop judging myself. Self-respect is learned partly by modelling, and unfortunately I'm not a terribly good model for my children. Like every other parent, I am fumbling along, making mistakes and trying to learn from them. Who knows what kind of life we'd have if I'd sent my kids to school? Or if I'd been unschooled, myself? Who knows what would have happened if I had pushed Jake Bakes a Cake on my son, or had shown too much enthusiasm when he read the word 'stop'.

My son now likes to read fiction: sci-fi and a little fantasy. Exciting but not cruel. His spelling is not always accurate, but he uses spell-check when he feels it matters. His writing reads like speech; he uses punctuation so that I hear his voice in it. He's not much into poetry or song lyrics, and although at age nine he read an incredible amount of advanced physics research, he now reads more how-to manuals and science humour. He drops in to read over my shoulder if he hears me laughing. My daughter, who benefited from and earlier start to unschooling, is a voracious and passionate reader and reviewer of youth and historical fiction, and has memorized the scripts of countless musical theatre productions. Interestingly, she was also into advanced books at age nine, reading as much as she could from Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics because she fervently wanted to create a free economy. But eventually that interest waned, and now she spends almost as much time reading and writing SIMS manuals as she does writing her first novel. Her spelling is usually immaculate, but she hates ending sentences, and often forgets to put a period at the end of a paragraph. My kids are individuals, like we all are, using reading like the simple tool it is in whatever way suits their needs.

Reading is as individual a pursuit as wearing clothes. Society expects us to do it most of the time, and there will be people critical of our choices no matter what we do, but how we enjoy it is entirely up to us. Today I am respecting myself by wearing pajama bottoms and my partner's sweater. Tomorrow I'll dress up fancy for going to town. Sometimes I like to wear black with band t-shirts and sometimes I like to wear multiple big flowery skirts. Sometimes I wear those things together, and I really really hate blazers. Some days I'm a novelist and some days I'm a poet. Some days I write about parenting.

Reading is something that happens to us, because it's all around us. As long as our kids live in a world full of written words, they'll learn to read. The more we can foster self-respect in them, the more they will be empowered to make sound choices about what, when, and how they want to use this tool. The more we respect those choices, the better they will become at making them.

(A little something to remind us of summer.....)
The Novelist and the Poet go for lunch
Novelist : ​I want them to turn the pages.

Poet : ​I want them to linger.
Novelist: ​That’s not a good plot.
Poet: ​There is no plot.
Novelist: ​How interesting is that?
Poet: ​ It's all about what's happening now.
Novelist ​: But where does it go?
Poet​: Here.
Novelist:​ What is here?
Poet:​ Everything.
Novelist: ​ I can't follow.
Poet: ​ Just be here and listen
Novelist :​ To what?
Poet : ​ The stone in the rain. The walls of the house. The bridge in the dark.
Everything has something to say.
Novelist: ​What does the bridge say?
Poet : ​Don't jump.
Novelist:​ The bridge has no voice. The readers don't want fairy tales.
Poet : ​The bridge has many disguises.
Novelist :​ There was a bridge and thousands of cars drove over it and once in awhile someone jumped from it and died. An old story.
Poet: ​Some bridges transport cars. Some connect souls. Others fill in the gaps. Some rise out of the mist.
Novelist: ​ Why mention the mist?
Poet: ​Because visibility was limited.
Novelist: ​Is that why she jumped?
Poet: ​That's why she waited.
Novelist: ​ This is too slow.
Poet: ​I want them to know her.
Novelist: ​All they want to know is whether she jumped or not.
Poet:​ Maybe they want the real story.
Novelist: ​ That's what I have been saying. They want to know if she jumped. They don't want to hear her musings on the mist.
Poet : ​ Maybe they want to know what stopped her from jumping.
Novelist :​ Someone comes along and saves her?
Poet: ​Maybe she remembers something.
Novelist: ​That it's a long way down and the water is cold?
Poet: ​She remembers summer
Novelist: ​ This isn’t going anywhere.
Poet: ​ Butterflies, dragonflies, fireflies, hummingbirds, robins' eggs,
bare feet on fresh cut grass, sweet corn, peaches, plums.
Novelist: ​All those things might make the reader just close the book and go outside and play in the sun and not bother reading to the end
Poet: Yes.

used with permission from:
lisa shatzky
from The Bells that Ring,
published by Black Moss Press, 2017

 ~ ~ ~
 *Hello! If you're new here, this is my unschooling blog. Eighteen years ago, just before my first baby was born, I'd never heard of unschooling, and hadn't given my kids' education any thought. Now that we've traveled a few meandering paths, and have two children who have made very different life and education choices, I'm writing a little series about some of the things we've worried about, struggled with and overcome, on this journey. This isn't intended as advice because, as we've learned most assuredly, one person's experience cannot ever be another's. But if you're a new unschooler or unschooling parent, I hope to reassure you. In many ways, unschooling is just like schooling: We're all different, and most of us manage to find our ways through whichever systems we choose, especially when we listen to our (or our kids') hearts, and respect ourselves. This series is called Respect Yourself - it's as much about respecting ourselves as parents as it is about giving our children the space to respect themselves.*

Love Against the Machine: The Enormous Joy of Discovering that Unschooling Works

Me in my garden - photo by my son Taliesin River.

I started unschooling my kids rather out of a place of despair, when my son's learning style (his way or no way at all!) didn't mesh with the system. I quickly realized how similar unschooling was to the way I already taught other children, using explorative creative play and art-making to teach them about the workings of the world and their own hearts and minds. So on pure blind faith and a good chunk of sheer determination, my husband and I just let our kids go, free-range for the most part, trying to follow their interests and our own, and cobble together some sort of symphony of it all.

And there's the machine, of course - the socio-political one. I've never been someone to follow the masses, myself, so unschooling suits my personality. It wasn't until recently that I realized (thanks to my mother) that everything in my life is a rebellion against the machine - even gardening. I grow food to prove to myself that I don't fully depend on the agriculture industry. I grow it to prove to my children that we're skilled and capable of looking after ourselves. I grow it to teach myself how - to feel less frightened about the looming possibility of social collapse, and to know that I'll be able to feed us, if need be. And I grow it because it's an interesting challenge. I garden exploratively. I unschool gardening. And recently - at long last - I'm having a bit of success with it.

My son, now seventeen, unschools photography. I'd love to say I taught him that, because I love photography too, but I didn't. I just gave him the freedom to teach himself. And I let him use my cameras. He explores photography. He breathes photography. He leaps around the city and wilderness, seeing it all in his unique way, and using whichever camera he has as a natural extension of his own eyes. He mastered the technology on his own, through exploration, as a child masters the use of a crayon, or his fingers. He mastered it intuitively, because he has freedom to explore.

He has a volunteer job, now, exploring beaches and documenting his discoveries in image and words for a forthcoming marine atlas. Yesterday he let me join him on one of his explorative adventures, and he told me that he was off to look for the anemones that he knew lived on the other side of the lighthouse. I realized with total delight that we were on the same sort of adventure we did almost every day of his younger childhood, but this time, with camera in hand and the confidence of a great strong wind, my son was leading me.

There was a day many years ago, when I led a wilderness exploration group (including my own kids) into the meadow, and somebody asked my daughter if she ever gets sick of being with her mother. I was offended, and then worried, and really questioned our decision to live so closely with our kids, especially because my daughter has always been looking for ways to engage separately from the family. There have been SO many days like this. So many doubts and fears and blaring warning signs cast up by others and by my own fearful mind telling me to turn and run back to the norm. But we didn't. My daughter is fiercely independent, and she taught me how to let go of her so she could go gallivanting in the city with her much-older friends. Unschooling demands of both of us to live bravely and trust. Our deep connection built over so many years of living life in close proximity makes her independence possible. I know I can trust her to look after herself, and to reach for us when we're actually needed.

And yesterday I looked into my son's lens, as he towered above me on the rocky beach, and realized he was taking a photo of my smile - his smile - the smile that exists because of him. Whatever he explores in this world, with or without me, I am reassured that he loves me and is happy in his life and in himself. Whatever more could I have wished for in the world? This is the enormous joy of discovering that unschooling works.

Unschooling, Defiance and Motivation

"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."                ~Assata Shakur

Our family didn't originally discover unschooling because it aligned with our beliefs. We discovered it during a desperate-feeling time when my five-year-old son was so defiant that school seemed an impossibility. He was only interested in pursuing the things he'd thought of himself, and even then would lose interest as soon as somebody tried to push or even encourage him. Many days he flatly refused to leave the house. Unschooling seemed at the time like the only way, and I can say now that he's on the brink of graduation that although it has been extremely difficult, I think it was the best way.

I'm a bossy person, my controlling nature fueled by the fear drilled into me at school that any wrong action could lead to failure, or even death. So I make decisions that feel right to me, and I expect people to see reason and follow my lead. My son has defied me every day of his life, to the extreme frustration and benefit of both of us. So unschooling, which challenges me to allow him complete autonomy, and challenges him to take responsibility for his actions, has been our solution over these past twelve years.

This road has never been without struggle. I watch him every day like a mother owl whose fluffy chick is teetering on the edge of the nest, knowing that if he falls out he'll be prey for the wolves. At every turn I feel like he's making grave miscalculations of safety and feasibility. At every turn I attempt to warn him, coax him, steer him to safety or provide him with advice. All of my efforts are unwanted, and many, I admit with shame, lead to arguments and threats. Worst of all, my controlling behaviour causes my son to lose faith in himself, and then I know I have truly failed him.

I pick up the baton again and again, setting myself back on the unschooling track I chose, and he makes some gains of confidence and autonomy before I fall of the rails again. It has never, ever been easy. But it has been right.

In their 2009 article for the Journal of Educational Psychology, Maarten van Steenkiste et al. revealed that "to foster good quality motivation, teachers and school principals need to create a school and class environment that allows students to satisfy their basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness." This is what unschooling does for us. And if we've truly given our children autonomy, they are bound to defy us when we try to control them.

Defiance is necessary for autonomy. A wholly obedient person can never go very far along a path of inspiration before being led astray by somebody else's advice or admonishments. How will our children learn to make safe decisions if they aren't given an open testing ground for experimenting with decision-making? They need the freedom to tell us no when we're interfering with their autonomous motivation. We need the courage to watch them make mistakes.

My son, after all this unschooling, is now considering getting his highschool diploma, and may graduate in a couple of months. This very short timeline has meant a lot of work and stress for him, and a correlational rise in my level of parenting fears. I find myself constantly checking in on him, begging him to stop playing video games, get working on whatever is most urgent for his courses, or just get some exercise and eat a proper meal. He is learning to deflect my concerns with less bitterness than he once did, and I am learning to keep my mouth closed more often. I find cooking him a healthy meal is a better use of my energy than standing in his door lecturing him about time management.

Respecting our children's interests, decisions, and independence means that they don't want to be compliant when we ask them to. It's hard for us as parents, but in the end it gives them the experience and confidence to succeed. Our kids' defiance is an essential part of the desired outcome, whether we like it or not.

It is not lost on me that parents of unschoolers are by default defying the current school system, and it's not likely that many of us have relinquished control to our children without a struggle. After all, our children began life nearly helpless in our arms, but the measure of our success as parents will be when they overthrow us, making their world far better than we imagined. So keep going, brave parents - the terrifying struggle to empower our children is worth it.

On Being a Colossal Failure - and Growth

Every great story has a crisis in the middle. Well, maybe many crises, actually: a rising crescendo of trips and falls and failures and flat-out terrifying leaps of insanity that land the protagonist smack in the middle of chaos or terror or hilarity, and then they learn something, and there is a conclusion, and we finish the story wiser than we began it. Hopefully.

Let me tell you one of my stories. This one began in 1993 when, at 17,  I went to the Netherlands, heart full of love and head full of dreams, hoping to become an artist. With the encouragement and guidance of my uncle, I took my portfolio and Canadian grad transcripts into the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in the Hague, the Netherlands, and walked out with a hearty invitation into the second year program. They loved me so much they put me into second year!! Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

My parents dug deeply and funded my great adventure, and I moved to the Hague in September, 1994. I was 18, and had rarely lived outside of the rural island I grew up on, apart from a year in the rural Shuswap, and short trips to the suburbs of Vancouver for family visits. My uncle picked me up from the airport near Amsterdam and brought me to the room he had arranged for me in a small flat in the Hague. Nobody else was home. The room was tiny. About eight by ten feet, with one enormous ten-foot-wide window on the side that faced the street. There were blinds, but the street-lights, the tram-lights, the sounds of trams and cars and scooters and sirens and drunken wee-hour partyers, the many neighbours all sliced upwards through those blinds and reflected off the ceiling to where I lay on the floor, huddled in a blanket on the folding mattress my uncle had given me. I cried so long I couldn't sleep.

At midnight on that first night my first room-mate walked into my room, introduced herself as Margriet, but said I could call her Daisy, if I wanted to, and I could use her dishes until I got my own. I was alarmed, but she became my first friend in that new and terrifying city. The first piece of news I read there described various female body pieces found in a garbage can in the park just a few blocks south of my new home. In the two years I lived there, I never went to that park.

I picked myself up in the morning, shopped with my cousin for essentials, as we were both setting up our new residences in neighbouring cities, and argued lengthily over who would buy the few white and orange cups, and whether each would look better with wine, beer, water, tea, and milk in them. My parents funded this shopping trip.

My tenure in the Netherlands was wonderful and terrible; I made some dear and treasured friends, and connected with my Dutch family in a way I never would have managed had I not lived there. I learned to speak Dutch, to cook and clean for myself, to live on very little income, and to find and create work for myself in a complex city that, at first, was completely foreign to me. I fought off a rapist in the middle of the night and then used my wits to force him to walk me to safety. I became courageous. I became an adult. It was perhaps the most powerful time of my life, and I have my parents' open minds and generosity to thank for it.

Me at the Royal Academy, 1996 - photo by A. van der Vlist

Art school, though? Well, I learned a few things, among them some basic printmaking skills that have stayed with me throughout my career, and the basics of oil painting. But mostly, after one and a half years, I learned about failure.

I majored in drawing and painting, and that department was set up like an open studio, where each student had a personal work area, and we gathered in some common spaces for lectures, lunches, and hashing out our ideas. As a working group it was great, but there was little support from professors. They wandered around and gave critiques irregularly, but basically in third year we were expected to self-direct and develop a practice. At the time I was working on womb-like forest paintings and abstractions of the same. I was working through feelings of homesickness for my forested island home, while living in the most urban environment I could imagine. While I lived in the Netherlands, a news story came out about a homeowner accidentally cutting down the last bit of indigenous forest. It was not the home I knew and longed for, and art is always a form of therapy.

So in early 1996, as I was deeply entrenched in this visual exploration of my heart's home and longing, the professors came around for the quarterly review, and requested that I come to the back room. But why? Don't we need to be in the vicinity of my work? Nope. They had only one pertinent question: Who were my influences?

Well, that was easy enough, I thought. I told them that probably my greatest influences were Georgia O'Keeffe, Emily Carr, and West Coast indigenous art.

They looked at each other knowingly, and flatly explained that while Georgia O'Keeffe is marginally acceptable, Emily Carr is "kitch", and "Indians don't make art". I can't remember anything I said after that - I'm sure it was useless. My mind was numb. They told me that since I was painting landscapes I should learn to paint like real landscape painters. They told me to get a print of a particular city landscape by Camille Corot and replicate it, stroke-for-stroke, until I had learned what a landscape should look like. I tried. I really tried. I laboured for weeks on this painting of two damn monks standing on a pale terrace overlooking a washed-out Italian cityscape. But the glowing ball of fire in my chest that brings me to paint had died. I was an empty shell pushing meaningless lines of paint onto a barren panel, and nobody - not even the professors - came to talk with me anymore. Until they did.

Sometime that spring the professors returned, ominously as a group, again, to give me an ultimatum: My work was going nowhere. They were going to give me a "Fail" for the year. My only alternative was to leave the school early and they would give me an "Incomplete", instead. With a newly blossoming relationship, a desperate homesickness, and a ticket home to Canada waiting to be used, I left. I went home knowing I had let my parents down, wasted their money, and caused them and my whole family irreparable shame. I soon discovered when I tried to continue my studies in Canada that an "Incomplete" is essentially the same as a "Fail", and I was unable to enter a Canadian university until I'd raised my grades by attending college. I was, truly and wholly, a failure.

Obviously, passion is a short-lived endeavour, as living generally requires a more moderate approach, and my passionate self-loathing waned over the years I attended school in Canada, married and learned to keep house, and eventually raised two children. This is the denouement of my story - the slow tumbling resolution to the crisis of my great failure. There was never a moment where I became un-failed or wildly successful. Never any particular redemption, although installing one of my works in Amsterdam last year did feel like a healing salve. The visceral memory of my firm kick out the door of the Royal Academy of Visual Arts gave me a whole lot more self-reflection, upon which to build a fire. I have now returned to my art career with a great but less fragile ball of fire in my chest. If I hadn't failed so colossally and grown to discover the beauty of it, I never would have arrived here. And perhaps I never would have laughed when my son sadly announced to us that he had received 38% on his math test.

My son Taliesin failed his math test. Colossally. So badly, in fact, that the online school he took it with is allowing him to rewrite it. It was nothing like the 15% I vividly remember receiving on a math-test, myself, but he, having held off telling us out of shame, was surprised that we just smiled and laughed about it. I imagine this single test failure to be just one small but positive experience in Taliesin's journey into academia. Go forward with courage, my love. May you live many adventurous stories, and may you overcome much greater failures than this one!

Patience with Democracy

We recently brought a kitten into our home, on the advice that this would help our three-year-old cat's loneliness. Well, it's not the kitten who's afraid and reluctant to connect; it's the older cat. This sweet, careful, and exceedingly tiny kitten takes every opportunity she gets to come close to the older cat and introduce herself. Sometimes she goes up and sniffs the older cat's nose, which generally leads to growling. Mostly, the little one approaches quietly to a safe distance, assumes a small, still position... and waits.

This has been going on for about a week, and the little one's patience seems to be endless. We humans (and probably she herself) know there is a potential friendship, but as long as the older cat is not open to it, it's not going to happen, so the little one sits and waits.

My human little one has been going through a similar process. She spent about a year and a half turning one of her favourite books into a script for a musical, then presented it to her theatre group and had it approved. After nearly two years of intense work, she had just finished the casting process, and was digging into the big job of co-directing her first play... when issues of race and representation came up. She's a girl of European descent adapting and directing a very Chinese play with mostly white children, on unceded Coast Salish territory. As settler parents, we thought this was wonderful! I was so proud of my girl for taking an interest in other cultures. But not all parents in our daughter's community felt this way, and the theatre group has tumbled over and over trying to grapple with the issues, to resolve racist connotations, to take white privilege into consideration, to make sure that the play is deeply rooted in an understanding of Chinese mythology and history, and that the lead roles are not primarily white. Everyone concerned with this issue thinks s/he knows what's right. Everyone thinks that if everyone else would just see clearly, all would be sorted out. Everyone is also open to change, to consideration and to keep coming back to the table until the issues are resolved. And of course the play is on hold until that happens.

It's a serious disappointment for a child who has put so much heart and effort into a project, only to find that she has a lot more work to do. Even for an adult this would be upsetting. But despite this setback, my daughter pointedly attends every meeting, considers every point of view, and is in this thing for the long haul. Seeing her bravely take on this challenging process, I am now far more proud of my girl than I was when all she had done was write a fabulous script.

And of course a number of people have told me that our choice to unschool, or our daughter's specific theatre program are the problems. People suggest we quit - find something better. And you know what? That's enticing! It's always easier to turn and run away, and I have certainly done that in situations where I felt I could make no headway, or simply was too immature to stay. But we are working hard for democracy in education as well as in the world, and that requires us to stay the course.

Democracy isn't an easy thing to achieve; it's not a set of standards or a system one just steps into. It requires work and acceptance and patience and most of all compassion. It requires listening to others even when we think what they're saying is stupid.

Democracy is part of every day for all of us. The issues can be small, or overwhelmingly huge, and we often make great sacrifices in waiting for others to come to the table, but until they do, no progress will be made. No matter the differences and apparent insurmountable odds, nothing gets anywhere healthy unless all parties come together, of their own volition, with a desire to move forward. This is why we unschool, why we parent openly and honestly, and why we keep reaching for democracy.

Look at those cats' faces. While admitting I surely don't know what's going through feline minds, it seems I see the little one expressing calm, curiosity, and a little fear. The older one is expressing indifference and rejection. The little one is just waiting for a sign of hope. Every time she gets one, she takes a step forward, and if the older one growls, she steps back. Literally: baby steps.

Forest Therapy

You may have heard of Forest Bathing, or Shinrin Yoku. The miraculous power of the forest to calm and to heal seems to be gaining popularity. From Japan to Europe to North America, there are various guides, retreats, and programs available to help you connect with the forest, and make use of these wonderful healing powers.

In case you are skeptical about this, do check out some of the documented evidence. A  Chiba University study found that “Forest environments promote lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity than do city environments.” (Pubmed)

Children in the Wild Art program are just like all people in all communities: sometimes they have difficult days. Whether the problem stems from physical illness or injury, social/emotional struggles at home or at school, new and awkward situations, or just a plain old unexplained malaise, kids arrive with an assortment of attitudes. Today when I arrived to pick them up after lunch, one was running and jumping across the table-tops, one was quiet and removed, two more were sliding gleefully across the wet porch, unconcerned about the group's desire to get going, and two were patiently (and then less-patiently) waiting to go.

Enter the forest. Or, to be more precise, we entered the forest. It took about ten minutes for the group to settle into an exciting, engaging, and creative couple of hours. They built little clay houses, harvested clay and mud from the creek banks, built three impressive dams and various other creek and creek-side creations, and sorted out all manner of social stumbles ably and compassionately. In the calm, productive atmosphere of their forest play, they were able not only to take into consideration the needs and ideas of their peers and the technical constraints of their creations, but also the needs of the forest. In the video below you'll hear one of the kids call out across the creek to others who were collecting moss for plugging a dam: "You're wasting all the moss from it. You can't take that much, or the whole tree will die." He was referring to something these kids learned from me last year: that the moss on our trees and rocks is part of the trees' water-retention system, as well as a vital substrate for many other living things, and that taking too much from one area will deprive the tree of too much water, before that quantity of moss is able to regenerate. You'll hear the kids agree, and move on. I loved that this sharing of advice and information was going on without judgment or shame, between a few kids who are quite new to sharing this space with each other.

Ahhh... the healing power of the forest. What a gift.

Unschooling on a Budget

Have you seen those articles proclaiming that unschooling is a privilege of the wealthy? In some respects I agree with them. The way our culture works right now means that in order to get ahead (or just break even) financially, a family must have at least two full-time working parents, and send their children to school. I know plenty of parents who openly call their children's school "babysitting". We are pressuring our governments for more affordable childcare, because, frankly, many of us can't afford to live without it. The privilege of staying home with our children is increasingly only for wealthy people, and homeschooling or unschooling requires a parent or other caregiver at home during the first ten-to-twelve years, or so. Add to that the fact that a great unschooling lifestyle includes a lot of exploration, which is often interpreted as travel and other such expensive experiences, and you have a very, very expensive proposition.

But I don't believe it has to be this way. If we want to change the way things are, somebody's got to take the first steps. It's not only the landscape of education that's changing, but the landscape of employment, shelter, and community - and there are some things about these changes that benefit each other.

Working from home: With the rise of huge corporations, working from home has become more difficult to imagine. For the past hundred or so years, entrepreneurship has dwindled, and schools raised children to fit into the "work force". But things are beginning to swing back again, as more of us want to work with our own passions, and to develop careers from our own hearts and minds and homes. Sometimes this means working for an employer remotely, as my husband does twice a week. Last time he went job-hunting he began his letter with the preface that his children were his priority, so he would always be home for dinner, and he would work from home at least twice a week. A few employers scoffed at him, but he quickly found someone who admired his integrity and openness, and he's been with them for ten years, now - home for dinner and working from home twice a week. Now that the children are older, I am managing to work a couple of days a week, and between the two of us we juggle the rides and meals and attention that our children need.

But there's also the option of quitting the corporate agenda entirely: Some people have in-home businesses, such as daycare, music teaching and production, graphic design, tutoring or farming, and these allow them not only to stay home with their children, but also to involve their children in these businesses... and after all... that's just another great experience to grow from! My children often join in or volunteer with the programs I teach, and they've also had some great experiences helping me with gallery shows and tours. I know kids who help at their parents' retail shops, and who accompany their parents to gardening job sites. All of these are worthwhile experiences that blur the lines of education, home, and employment.

Living frugally: Obviously, saving money is as important as earning it. My family is managing to save money in various ways, from owning one very used vehicle, to growing some of our own food and dispensing of expensive things like the dryer and single-pane windows. We are fortunate to rent a small house from my parents (which means that in the current horrifying rental squeeze we haven't lost our home or even had an increase), but I know of other families who have kept accommodations affordable by renting very tiny apartments in the city, moving to (cheaper) rural areas, home-sharing, or spending part of the year road-tripping while sub-letting their apartments. We also get most of our electronics from the free section at the recycling depot. Sure - they're not always great, but we've managed to supply our growing computer needs this way.

You might wonder how we afford all the wonderful adventures that are the supposed perks of unschooling. We don't! And we're OK with that. We attend mostly free events like festivals and wilderness outings, concerts put on by family and friends, and free (or by-donation) museum days. We also look for unconventional experiences like tours of industrial or education complexes, and sometimes we just walk into shops and look around. Explorative learning is everywhere - from the back of the pebble under your foot to the bottom of the receipt you find in the ditch. Keeping an open mind about what constitutes a 'learning experience' will make all kinds of free experiences absolutely valuable.

Less travel: While we know that some unschoolers afford fabulous journeys all over the world, we gave up on the idea of travel, with exceptions: I once managed to work one of my art projects into a road-trip, with free accommodations, which allowed us not only to visit all kinds of lovely places along the west coast, but also to attend our first and only unschooling conference... which was amazing. (Again, work, family-life and learning are one.) We have also been saving up since the children were babies to take them to Europe and meet their family, there. It's a long time coming, but it will be worth it when we finally go! And in between, we make a couple of small camping trips in our own area every year, and many fabulous day outings. There are so many wonderful things to discover in our own backyard, that we are a long way from having seen everything, and we haven't missed traveling at all!

Supplies and resources: As our kids explore and get interested in various things, it can be tempting to provide them with heaps of resources to support those interests. When my son spent years trying to teach himself parkour and rock-climbing, I looked into some lessons, or membership at a climbing gym. But we couldn't afford them, and that was just something we had to give up. These things happen, and we have to accept that not everything is within our reach. Going to school wouldn't have helped that, anyway, since we may have had more money, but less time.

We have made some larger purchases, like a microscope, accordion, and guitar, as well as music lessons and a (used) mountain bike. We've also found great ways of supplying ourselves through thrift shops, the recycling depot, and our local facebook exchange group. We have used many free programs for academic study online, from university courses to language learning programs to coding, math, writing and science programs. Joining online groups is a great way both to connect with others and to discover these resources. But amazing things often come from our own community. One kind local resident donated his telescope to our physics-impassioned son, and a neighbour with serious electrical skills made Tesla-coils with our kids and some friends. You never know what opportunities will pop up if you just look around and keep an open mind. What you find may not always be exactly what you thought you wanted, but sometimes it'll be better!

Yes - Unschooling requires sacrifice. But so does having children. And we assume that the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices. I gave up my career and a good chunk of future income in order to unschool. My husband and I committed to renting indefinitely, with no plans to purchase a home. But look at the big picture: here we are, happy with the way things are going, and without a regret in the world. It's just a matter of shifting priorities and learning to see the glistening rewards in the kaleidoscope of every day.

Setting Up an Unschooling Room

Not.

No you're not. If you are, you're not unschooling. So... no.

Unschooling Supplies? Also no.

Because of the way so many of us were raised, with the notion that learning happens at school, and school happens at a school (or in some other designated time and place, like a class field trip or the dining room table), we parents often still long to provide such a wonderful nurturing space for our kids to grow. Remember supply-lists? And new clothes shopping for September? I do!!!! Because of the scripted and often gorgeously new and shiny way our school year begun, we want to offer such delights to our children. We want the shopping sprees! The shiny packages of all matching pencils and erasers and pretty binders and pencil cases!! And new shoes. I want these things.

So we find ourselves drawn away by the ads in our mailboxes, the back-to-school manic glee; the big eyes of our little ones (and not-so-little-ones) as they pass displays of 'supplies' they actually don't need. We see our homeschool friends posting smooth bright photos of their homeschool rooms, all sparkly and colour-coordinated, with books full of information lined up on the tidy shelves, above little woven cubbies with their children's names, and we long for such orderly wholesomeness.

I am here to remind you that this is what we are escaping!

Remember why we unschooled in the first place? Unschooling means unscripted learning. It means unfettered learning in every place, all the time, without boundaries of any kind. Unschooling means learning happens everywhere, and with every thing. In fact... that's not really unique to unschooling; that's just the way people learn: always. The difference with unschooling is that we encourage and trust that process instead of trying to corral or direct it. We break down the walls of traditional schools. Which means, both figuratively and literally, no walls. No boundaries.

Boundaries defining the space for learning? Nope! Boundaries defining the tools used for learning? Of course not. Boundaries defining age-appropriateness? Nope! Subject areas? No way!

Your children will learn like you do: by finding some interest and following it - be it sewing or horticulture or minecraft or script-writing or peanut butter sandwich making. They will explore and discover and learn, and they may even benefit from some of the traditional "school" supplies... but you won't know ahead of time how those things will most helpfully be arranged on a shelf, and you won't be able to predict what to bring home until the things are needed, anyway. Unschooling means a lot of jumping around and learning from what happens to be in front of you, as well as learning to navigate the big wide exciting world of resources that is everywhere. This is what will give our children the skills to navigate the rest of their lives, anyway.

This is not my children's, but my own book shelf. These things matter to me because I have gathered them along the way as I needed them. And I'm willing to share... but mostly nobody uses them except me.

So next time you walk past the school supplies display and stretch your neck out to take a whiff of that binder-plastic, or run your fingers along the spiral-binding on the notebooks, just keep on going. When and if your kid needs that stuff, they'll have it. When they need a quiet corner for reading, they'll find or create that space, too. There is nothing in human physiology that requires these things for learning, and nothing in the Earth's rotation that requires such purchases to usher in September.

Back in the days when there were more unschoolers in our community, we used to have not-back-to-school parties. That was a pretty awesome way to sidestep the back-to-school frenzy and celebrate our choice to unschool. I guess I'm recommending some good old rebellious partying to soothe the tingly longing caused by those pretty social media postings of our schooling friends.

Are Homeschoolers and Unschoolers Too Attached?

Long ago, when my daughter was somewhere in the range of five to eight years old, she came to me during a wilderness outing I was leading and said that a stranger had asked her if she gets tired of always being with her mother. She came to me because the question was absurd to her, and at the time I thought it was absurd, too - especially when asked of such a young child who was happily participating in her mother's program.

But that experience has stuck with me over the years, because in some ways it's a valid concern. Homeschoolers are often seen as too-attached, unworldly, homebodies, and inexperienced. Unschoolers are often less so, since the philosophy usually includes giving children a lot of freedom, and exposing them to a wide range of experiences... but we still carry the burden of that stereotype. Some people may shrug it off, but I am one of those parents who is always questioning myself and the many decisions I make in parenting, so I have worried about this often. Am I too close to my children?

Today this is on my mind again. Although my kids now attend various programs and events in the city, and leave the house three to five days every week, without me, I am still a stay-at-home parent, trying to develop a career while also managing school and home details. There are a LOT of such details, and I am never caught up. Even when the kids are out for the day, I never seem to get a good day's work in, always distracted by pending meals, telephone contacts, or kids coming home. So this weekend they're away visiting my husband's family for three days in a row... and I'm getting stuff done! In just thirty-six hours, the tally is seven loads of laundry (washed, hung outside, taken down, and folded), taxes and other such awful ordeals completed and filed, various messes tidied, three enormous stacks of papers sorted and filed, a nice little garden visit with my Mum, a good night's sleep... and this blog post. This gives me a hint at what I might accomplish if I wasn't so involved with my kids, and I admit to longing for a little more of it.

At a recent festival goofing off with their Pappa. Photo by Linda Wilke.

So why are we still unschooling? Here's the thing. Being a stay-at-home parent and unschooling are choices I made with my partner that I don't regret. There are trade-offs, and one of those is my own independence and time for a career. My kids are twelve and fifteen. They help around the house, make more than half of their own meals, get themselves where they're going without demanding rides, and generally only need my engagement to help them manage their growing and changing lives, and to share their many wonderful activities. They share with me because they want to, and I am enormously grateful to still have this connection. They still snuggle me every day - even if we've been fighting. They still share with me their deepest longings and fears, whether through late-night whispers or quiet hints dropped in innocuous-seeming creative writing sent to my inbox. They still trust me and want to be with me, and that allows me to sleep at night, trusting that they are safe, and that when trouble comes their way, they'll be able to come to me.

How many years do I have left of this chaotic, manic bliss? Five? Maybe? I'll take it!

too much

Today I spent hours trying to make sense of the snarl of information pertaining to my son's science pursuits. Between the many university options, the many routes to get there, and the many ways of getting to those routes, there are thousands of options. And I became overwhelmed. When my brain felt like it was the size of a pea, and I couldn't continue, I found myself near tears, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again I made a list of my current five jobs:

• homemaking (cooking, cleaning, organizing, shopping, book-keeping, etc.)
• the yard and garden (it's soil-preparation and sprouting season!)
• managing the kids' education (a complicated assortment of activities and prospects)
• my art career (currently 3 weeks out from an installation and performance in the city)
• my wilderness/art teaching career (a busy spring as usual)

What the hell?!

How did I get so many jobs?!

It suddenly hit me that my time, body and mind is stretched in so many directions that I can barely breathe. And yet... there isn't a single one of them I'm not passionate about. So, instead of falling asleep, which my body seemed to be heading for, and without any apparent solution to my situation, I made myself a cup of green tea, opened a tab to Youtube, and clicked something that looked distracting. This is what I watched:

OK... So actually I watched four videos of this beautiful woman cooking for her family. I couldn't stop watching her hands slowly squishing the food; her grand-children slowly cutting and peeling ingredients on the upright knife. Her food slowly cooking. Her great-grandchildren lazily enjoying the food she made. It was the slowness that captivated me. I am craving slowness.

What has happened to us? How is it that every hour of every day is packed full of plans and activity, so that, although the sun is shining on the bursting spring, we sit inside answering emails and planning our next moves, or, when necessary, rush out to use machines to turn the earth and fill it with food-production as quickly as possible? Why am I afraid to sit in the sun and watch the pond, for fear that someone will see me and think I'm lazy? Why, when I make dal, do I get the work done with the end of a big spoon in less than 1/2 an hour, and then rush off to accomplish other tasks while it cooks? Why do I plop it on my children's plates, consume my own, and find things to fill the time with if they don't finish quickly enough? How did I become afraid to enjoy the time spent cooking and eating?

And what am I doing to my children in leading them in this manic race? The lyrics to the 21 Pilots song my son often sings around the house these days are:

Wish we could turn back time

to the good old days

when our mama sang us to sleep

but now we're stressed out

What does that tell you about his generation and the life we're living?

I want to feel my food with my hands; I want to take a whole hour for dinner and not feel pressured to get moving. I want to spend twenty minutes just feeling the warm dirt and not worrying that the time is passing. I want to think more about life than about productivity. I want to think more about the present than about the future.

I don't know how to move forward to the life I imagine; none of the five jobs I have is something I can give up. This isn't a have-answers-will-share sort of post, it's just a yearning. I'm posting to my blog to help me think. Somehow something has to change, not just with me but with all of us and the way we've come to measure our worth by busy-ness.

Mothering, Employment and Worth

Photo by Kim Weedmark.

My friend gave me this photo a few days ago. She came along as a parent helper with her older son's Wild Art outing, and she brought her younger sons along, too. This is me dumping some of the creek out of one of her sons' boots, as he said "you need to dump it out, but not on my leg. You need to dump it over there."

When I saw this photo I felt so happy. That's something I can almost never say about a photo of myself, so when it happens it feels amazing. And I had to think for a while about why this moment was so wonderful to me, or this photo of me in my muddy rain gear dumping out a child's boots.

Then I realized: It's not just muddy rain gear. That is the muddy rain gear that I wear when I take people adventuring in the wet wilderness. That mud is my badge of joy. It's not just any water. That is some of the creek that filled up so much it ran out and filled the trails in the meadow. That is the creek these kids know as part of their home, and I have had the enormous privilege of sharing their experiences of getting to know it. It's not just any child - it's a boy I've been adventuring with many times, and I adore him. There are moments of his wonder-filled face etched in the crevices of my brain, so that when I walk through certain areas I will think of him, just like when I paint a certain way I will think of other people I've painted with, or when I climb a certain tree I will think of the people who first climbed that tree with me. Now when I dump out boots I will remember his deliberate instructions to not dump it on his leg - always.

I have had difficulty finding work for a few months, and on top of the financial woes that situation brings, I've been feeling worthless. It's easy to slip into worthlessness when mothering. Even though you know your presence is needed, it doesn't always feel that way. And when your kids are as old as mine are, and they don't even really need you to cook for them, they want rides but you know it's better for them to transport themselves, they don't particularly want your loving advice, and you don't want to alienate them with criticism, but you find yourself doing it anyway... then you might become lost. I was so lost. And as my employment dried up over the last year it felt like the world had conspired to remind me that I was unneeded. I couldn't even bring home an income, let alone be of value to somebody.

Luckily I did have a job lined up, and it began last week. It's only once (sometimes twice) per week, but it's my work. It's a job I've created out of my own passion and I love my work. I love going out in the woods and beaches and meadows and creeks and just launching myself full-force into impassioned exploration and discovery. I love coming back to a warm cup of tea and my richly inspiring studio and either creating what my heart feels, or sharing a wonderful material exploration with others. I love sharing these experiences with other people. I love my work! And now I realize: I love that I have work. I love that there is something I can do that brings the joy I experience into reach for other people. I love that even if it's just because somebody needed his boots dumped out, I made a difference.

There's nothing like a few months without plumbing or potable water to make you realize how much you treasure the clean water. There's nothing like returning to work after a time of employment drought to remind you that you deserve to exist in the world.

Thank you, world, for making a space for me and the work I love to do. Thank you, parents, for trusting me to take your kids gallivanting in the wild and in the art. Thank you, adventurers young and adult, for tromping into wildernesses with me. And thank you Kim, for taking the photo that unlocked all this gratitude.

I guess I needed the opportunity to work again to renew my spirit. But I also needed some extra time to process what had happened. Until I saw this photo I didn't even realize what had been missing in my life. I guess more time is always a good thing. My young friend gave me some advice on that, too:

"You need to bring the clock with more minutes. How many minutes does your clock have?"

"Sixty," I replied, uncertainly.

"Next time you should bring the one with a hundred."

.

Letting Go of Comparative Schooling

Homelearning-related terms can seem like a quagmire, so I think I'll start with a glossary of terms used here:

• Brick-and-Mortar School: This can refer to a public school, independent or private school, or even a DL school, as long as the school has a building where students attend, at least some of the time. It has more to do with the fact that it's in a dedicated building than anything else, but the term is also used to describe a traditional one-building school where students attend five days per week and complete a prescribed curriculum.
• Distributed Learning (DL): This is a classification of schooling in our province that often involves home-based learning either directed or managed by parents and/or DL teachers. It also often includes part-time or alternative classroom studies. DL students are evaluated by teachers according to current provincial curriculum and have reports registered with the ministry just like students of traditional classroom programs.
• Homeschooling: Registered Homeschoolers are registered through the province and do not receive any curriculum, guidance, or financial support from the province or from the registering school. Homeschooling is in fact a legal term, and while it is often used in the homelearning community to differentiate families who set up a school-at-home scenario vs. families who unschool, there are in fact many registered homeschooling families who do not use curriculum or 'teach' school at home, but follow some degree of unschooling philosophy. It is important to maintain the legal meaning of this word in order to ensure that this remains a legal option for those families who choose it.
• School-at-Home: Parent-led curriculum-based schooling that happens in the home. The family may be registered homeschoolers, distributed learners, or students registered in a brick-and-mortar school who for whatever reasons are doing some of their work from home. The curriculum may be provided by a school, bought as a package by the family, or created by the parents with or without input from education professionals.
• Unschooling: Learning on one's own terms, defining one's own goals and path without coercion from parents or teachers. Unschooling often happens outside of the school system, but is sometimes practised by families who enroll as distributed learners, or even families who enroll in more traditional schools. Unschooling often involves the whole family, and can include varying degrees of parental guidance or control, depending on each individual family. The term unschooling was originally coined by John Holt, and refers to the process of unlearning some of the constraints taught in traditional schools. Alternate terminology for unschooling includes self-directed learning and life-learning.
• Homelearning: This is a handy catch-all term for people learning from home. Unschoolers, registered homeschoolers, distributed learners and those who school-at-home can all be considered homelearners, provided they do at least some of their schooling from home.

All those terms are useful in describing the ways we raise our children and interact with the school system, but they can also be divisive. They lead us to look at the ways we raise our children as comparative to other families', and this can also lead to insecurity.

Homelearning parents in general are often confronted with the question 'what makes you think you are better qualified to teach your children than the school system?' We unschoolers then sometimes explain that we chose this path precisely because we are not teaching our children, but instead allowing them to learn on their own terms, on their own schedule, in their own ways, etc. etc. ... and then people get worried for our children's welfare and future prospects. So, predictably, some of us try to win people over with delightful stories of unschooling successes and triumphs. We tell all the good stories, because we want to ease people's minds and because actually many of us really truly love this journey we're on, and love to talk about it!

That's when some people get their hackles up. They ask whether we think there's something wrong with their method of schooling. Or they ask why we think we're so much better than they are. They defensively tell us that their children need such-and-such or that they want their children to have better options than we're providing (cue more encouraging unschooling success stories). Or they shrink away and say that their children are not smart/diligent/motivated enough to teach themselves. Worst of all, they tell us they feel we're looking down on them for not unschooling their own kids.

I am writing this today because I have finally come to a place in my unschooling journey where these things are mostly a memory, and I just realized how relieved I am. Maybe my circle of friends has been stable for long enough that everybody is comfortable in our own choices; maybe my kids are old enough that people have stopped worrying. Whatever the reason, boy am I glad to leave that behind me!

Today I had a lovely chat with a friend of mine who can well be described as a diligent and loving parent of diverse distributed learners who use a combination of classroom, mentor, online, and home-based schooling to accomplish their many goals. They are now deeply engaged with researching and planning for university, and my friend is a master organizer. Her family life is in many ways opposite to ours. While ours is messy, scattered and rich with surprises and adventures, hers is well-managed, orderly, and equally rich with surprises and adventures. Interestingly, some of our kids encounter similar challenges with their activities, and also have similar triumphs. We even arrive at some of the same places! The two of us have the most wonderful discussions about life and life-learning, school and home and parenting and community - and none of it with any judgment whatsoever. This is what it feels like, I think, to have left the insecurities of early unschooling behind, to not feel inclined to defend our chosen path, and to not feel the burden of others' defensiveness on our shoulders.

Obviously unschooling families have a reason for our choice to unschool our children, and for specifically how we unschool. We probably also think this is the best we can do for our kids, or we wouldn't have chosen it. That does not, however, mean that we think it's the best option for everyone, or that other families' choices are inferior. The world is a beautiful and diverse place. We are evolving faster because of our diversity, including the diversity of our children's upbringing and education. Whatever experiences we give our children, whether in or outside of the school system, directed or undirected, goal-oriented or free-range, will make them the people they become, and nourish their own individual futures. We can't know what will be best for them - we can only do what our hearts tell us is right.


So whoever you are out there, let's stop comparing. Whether your children sit in the most stringent academic classroom, or get their education from the stream running between their toes, I honour and respect the choices you have made for your children, and I am grateful we share this world together. Our children will inherit the diversity we have created among us, as well as our appreciation and acceptance of it.