How We Become

back cover illustration from "Emily and Arthur", 1975

This morning I got up as I have almost every May morning for as long as I can remember, and went barefoot out of the house to wash my face in the dew and pick flowers for my mother. I don't know why I do it, and I don't know that my mother even knows I get that dew all over my face and feel so at peace in the world this way. Something inside me just feels this is right, so I do. I used to take my own children out to do it when they were little, but I don't think the practice has stuck with them in adulthood. Why do I do this? What makes it so important to my identity?

I came back home after visiting my mother to find this old book on my table. Emily and Arthur, by Domitille de Préssensé. It was there because my daughter and I were recently going through the children's books, reminiscing, and I'd pulled out a few of my old favourites. 

In these old books from the 70's, I saw how I became me, and some of how my children became, as well. The girl in the image above is Emily. She's wearing red--always--and holding her beloved hedgehog Arthur among the flowers. She has interesting things in her house like a "long stocking" that I always thought must have been a wonderful thing to have. And because my name is Emily, I grew up thinking this little red-clothed Emily represented me. Is she the reason I love to wear red? Maybe! Red just feels like it belongs with me! I remember feeling a lot like the way this Emily looks, as a child. I remember the feeling I had one May morning when I went out to find my mother some flowers and got distracted looking at woodbugs on the log where I eventually broke off a beautiful Turkey Tail fungus to bring in for her. I remember when I handed her that beautiful Turkey Tail with a couple of flowers how it couldn't encapsulate all the beauty of the woodbugs on the log, or the special curve of the broken wood, or the smell of the bark or the happiness of my heart. But I hoped she knew it meant I loved her. I became that girl on the back of the book--the one who is delighted by small found things--and am now a mother and artist who is also just still Emily. Still wearing red and going into the flowers to be me. How many Emilys have been somehow defined by this book?

As a parent, and former educator, and as an artist I know how much our childhood experiences mean to our identities. I sat wondering this morning how the idea of washing my face in the dew came about. I feel like I've been doing it all my life, but I can't ever remember doing it with my mother. Then I saw another of the treasured childhood books, and I remembered: The fairies drink the dew! When I turned four, my father gave me a book called In Fairyland, Pictures from the Elf-World, by Richard Doyle. In this book the fairies dance and fly and race snails... and drink the dew! I remember trying to drink the dew off the plants as a child, imagining I was one of the fairies. I guess somehow this became part of my personal May Day celebration. This is how traditions are born, how they grow and change and define us. And... this is the power of art!

page 13 of Richard Doyle's "In Fairyland, Pictures from the Elf-World", 1870

I always knew these and other images were drawings made by artists. Even the text of Emily and Arthur is a hand-drawn piece of art. Now I can see its influence in my own birthday-card making, and I can see how Eric Carle's rainbow of fruits for the Hungry Caterpillar informed the way I set up any painting, now. Nothing is complete for me without a whole rainbow.

So what have I given my children through the books I chose for them? Some I'm not so proud of, I confess, and some I can see in their life-choices, now. Obviously they were also more drawn to the books that suited their personalities--this isn't a one-way system of influence. And I chose things that suited them. We know that every move we make as parents will have effects on our children's psyches, that every mistake we make will cost them in self-doubt and therapy dollars, one day, and we hope they'll carry our triumphs forward as courage and happiness into their adulthoods. Our children become themselves in the environment they're given. 

But our sphere of influence doesn't end with our children. It grows from each of us into the world around us, whether we're artists or teachers or foresters, diplomats or farmers. We're all creating and influencing each other every day. The choices we make in the language we use, in every bit of media we consume, and in the products we bring into our lives all influence everyone we come into contact with. And through our contact we become ourselves, in community. Living with this in mind is self-determination. This is how we become, as a species, or perhaps even as a planetary ecology. It's good to remember that in everything we do, we have a choice.

Adult Unschoolers: An update on our kids' lives! (And the Careers Situation)

 

This morning my daughter sent me a photo of her dog, Clara, sulking on the couch. She's not a morning-dog, apparently, and I guess sometimes she just doesn't feel like going for a walk, even if it is to review a new dog park for Rhiannon's work. Whatever "work" is. Clara gets treats no matter what, so should it matter whether she's helping with a reel, going on a doggy field trip with her hiking buddies, or just sitting at home waiting for Rhiannon while she's at her other work? Clara has adapted well to city-living, since leaving her island home with my two unschooled kids, just over a year ago. I'm told she likes to walk up to automatic doors to make them open, and she knows where her favourite treat-dispensing doggy store is, and will pull Annie towards it from many blocks away. Thankfully, my kids have adapted to city-living, too.

About eighteen months ago, my 17 and 20 year-old children started planning to move out, as soon as they could get jobs and a place to rent on the mainland. I encouraged them but carried on as if nothing was happening, because I wasn't prepared to live without my kids. At all. They, however, were absolutely prepared to live without their parents, quickly arranged jobs and a rental for themselves, and moved out on January 2, 2023. 

In the month between them finding a rental and actually moving into it, my heart was crushed. I was terrified for their safety in the city (they'd spent most of their childhood on a small rural island), but mostly I was just bereft. What does a mother do when the greatest joys of her life just up and go elsewhere? Well she uses a phone, that's what. And it turns out I'm OK after all. In large part because the bond that began with pregnancy and was nurtured through attachment parenting and unschooling is secure, so no matter where my children are, we know our hearts are connected, and by whatever means necessary, we're there for each other. Whether that means sending photos of their sulking dog, phoning for advice on banking or tenancy rights, or gleefully texting us photos of the steam clock at midnight on New Year's Eve. It's been an amazing year of growth and discovery for each and all of us, and my heart is just fine!

So last year I wrote something about unschoolers building careers, and people have asked for an update! Here it is. ☺ I won't pretend it's been completely smooth for them, but I do feel that both kids' struggles have been needed challenges that led them to important personal discovery.

“Photo of Rhiannon and Taliesin (not photoshopped)”
... I asked the kids for a photo of them and the dog
for the article and this is what I got. I love that our relationship is silly.

Rhiannon

At the outset, Rhiannon's plan seemed to be the most sound: Following her passions for childcare and dog training, she had arranged a 4-day/week nanny-share job that would cover her cost of living for the first year, while she planned to attain her dog-trainer certificate, work evenings and weekends as a trainer, and build a base of private training clients that would enable her, eventually, to only nanny sometimes. She still held some interest in pursuing her Early Childhood Education certificate, but maybe later. She's a remarkable organizer, and things went pretty close to her plan.

Rhiannon (or Rhi, as she is known) at Raintown Dog Training

Rhiannon lucked out massively (or perhaps she's just very socially astute) with her employers. The owner and staff of Raintown Dog Training not only took her under their wings as a very young new trainer, but continue to treat her as an equal, respect her decisions and values, help her to advance her skills, and to employ her as much as possible, even in slower seasons. Her nanny-share families paid her as promised, including sick-days and paid vacation, provided whatever was necessary for her to care for their children, and shared her values of inclusiveness and diversity exposure for their children. It was, in fact, important to them that she uphold these values, which made her feel she really had something to give. 

What I think she didn't expect was how physically and mentally draining and isolating it is to care for other people's children every day, and the barrage of viruses she'd fall victim to. When we raise our own children we make choices that suit our needs, our routines, and the simple practicality of living. But when we hand our children over to a caregiver, those same choices may not be as convenient, and when that caregiver has two children from different families with different choices, things can get a bit complicated. Rhiannon took this all in stride, and never complained, but quite frequently she and the children were sick, and in those (many) weeks, the complexity became exhausting. Then throughout the autumn, as she transitioned to working full-time as a dog trainer, she was frequently working six or seven days a week--common for young adults now--and she was absolutely drained. 

I think by the end of the year she was grateful to be moving on to a career that would involve more engagement with the public, and really just looking forward to a little free time. She now has a deeper appreciation for the physical challenges faced by early childhood educators, and no longer wants to work in that field. That's not to say she's lost interest in working with children! She's still taking on a few shifts with the kids she's cared for in the past, and is glad to be able to maintain those connections.

Because my Annie seems intent on filling every spare second of her time, she also now volunteers at the SPCA. I get the best deal, here, as she sends me photos and updates of all the adorable dogs she works with, how they're recovering from their various issues, and the great news when one of them finds a home. I'm amazed she finds the energy for this, and am also extremely proud. Not just because she's such a values-driven, generous person, but because she is somehow managing to continue seeing the positives, even when working in a place that often sees so much tragedy. That is a gift I'm constantly impressed by.

And then there are the books... BOOKS!!! If you've followed my kids' story for some time, you will know how important books are to Rhiannon. Maybe you already follow Rhiannon's Reading Corner, where she reviews books with an eye for authenticity, inclusiveness and diversity. So this year, finding herself in the glorious land of thrift stores (the city), she began thrifting children's books, and putting them into the hands of grateful young readers through her Loved Books program. She is intensely morally-guided, so when she feels that she won't have a use for the books she's thrifted, she donates them to free libraries around the city. Financially, this program is still costing her money, but she feels great about it, and that's the important part. She has also recently arranged to read to children at a local kids' and parents' café. You can take the ECE career out of the mind, but you can't take the mind out of ECE...

Taliesin

OK, Let's talk about Taliesin. He saved up quite a bit of money while working from home on various contracts as a digital artist, so when he moved out the plan was to fund the first few weeks out of his savings, until he could find a 9-5 job at a Vancouver office. Well... that didn't go exactly as planned!

Tali wanted to work in games or film, so continued developing his modelling and art skills from home, while diligently applying to every company he could find. As the weeks became months, and a few people told him that nobody in the industry was hiring, he began applying to remote jobs, even as the situation of building his portfolio at home, alone while his sister was out working, became more and more isolating. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck behind his computer, working from home. But he persisted. As the months dragged on, despite fears of his savings running out (and the worst-case-scenario of having to return home loomed) he kept himself sane by going out daily for walks and photography inspiration. He got to know his city, and began experimenting with all the great food and entertainment options he now has around him. If I caught him at home while applying for jobs, he sounded unhappy, but if I happened to call while he was out jaunting around his city, he sounded the happiest I've heard him in years. He sent us photos of sunsets from the bridges, and kilometer-counts from his increasingly frequent runs. He bought himself a new tripod and proper running shoes. He made new friends and in a very non-career way, I think he found a piece of himself that had been missing during his recent isolated years at home on the island.

And then he got a writing job. Yes, this once-upon-a-time kid who used to abhor writing assignments (but who has a wonderful grasp of communication and language), got a job writing Blender tutorials! I think he was more surprised than we were, but there he was, financially limping along through last summer, employed as a writer! It didn't surprise me at all that this was so easy for him, but it was completely delightful to watch him gain confidence in an activity that I had, unfortunately, accidentally turned into a childhood misery for him with the likes of the "Painless Junior: Writing" workbook (yeah... that was never going to go over well with my wildly creative son, despite and because of the book's front cover declaring "Don't be a chicken, it's fun to learn!" 🙄) Well, he overcame that particular learning-injury, and became a paid writer! ROCK ON, Taliesin!!

But writing is what he uses to communicate, and his heart is in science and art. So all this time he continued applying for modelling and other digital art jobs, exploring his city with a camera, and making unabashedly science-related art for his portfolio. 

And then... He got my dream job!!! You know how sometimes you look at a kid and you think: "Wow--I can see his career written all over him!!" And for my son the career I saw was science educator... but then that little person grew up and did other things, and lost his passion for science, and I thought... wait... what? Where did that little boy go who I was convinced would be an interpreter at the planetarium?! I thought he would become one of those tall gawky long-haired science geeks doing explosion shows!!

And then last fall my son video-called me to practice his interview performance for the Space Centre, where he demonstrated Newton's laws and how they apply to space travel, using a little flashlight with some "fire" taped onto the end... And my heart exploded because that kernel of inspired joy that I remembered so well was growing right out of my son into the world around him!!

Tali's first-day selfie at the Space Centre.

Of COURSE he got the job, even though his confidence has taken a big hit through his teen years, and last December I found myself sitting in the audience watching him demonstrate explosions and rocket propulsion on the stage at the planetarium, and tears were running down my cheeks. I watched my son up on that stage and I saw that he shares the gift of every gawky science geek I looked up to as a kid. He has the spark of childish excitement of my first science teacher, Mr. McAllister. He has the gentleness of his beautifully geeky father in the way he acknowledges and responds to kids in the audience. And he has back his own confidence in the astounding base of knowledge he holds about physics. It was a joy to watch him.

So, what many of us don't realize (I certainly didn't) is that our non-profit agencies are always in financial crisis. Those inspired science interpreters can't earn enough to live on, and despite their vast knowledge and serious dedication to educating our children, they can't afford to do their jobs. After my son leaves a day of running physics and astronomy workshops for school-groups, shows in the Star Theatre or Ground-Station, telescope nights, or long sleepless overnights with a hundred Girl Guides, he comes home and has to make money. So, like most of the interpreters, Taliesin will shortly only be able to work one day a week at the Space Centre, as he's finally landed a full-time job as a digital artist. He's creating car accessory advertising for a company called Protex. It's maybe not the most inspiring job, but it allows him to use his art skills, and he'll finally stop using up the dregs of his savings! What a relief!

How did unschooling play into all this?
I asked Tali and Annie about this. 

Taliesin says, "[I have] a wide variety of interests that keeps me learning things even if I’m not in university or at work, and I’m used to having to figure things out myself so I’m able to adapt to new situations." He also credits unschooling with enabling him to maintain a "great relationship" with his sister, but feels that it also made it very challenging for him to find friends.

Annie says, "I like what I’m doing right now and what ended up happening in my life, so if I had the chance to go back and change stuff, I wouldn’t. But I don’t know what specifically causes the things I’m doing right now to happen; it could have been benefited by unschooling or not... I don’t know. I feel like sometimes it’s harder for me to relate to other people, or to feel like I know what to do in different situations because I just haven’t been in them before, but I wouldn’t want to change anything, because I like my life right now!"

I think it's totally fair to say that unschooling as we did in a small community without other unschoolers set my kids up for some social hurdles. In their teen years they missed out on a lot of social events and rites-of-passage that their peers enjoyed, from school to birthday parties, to sharing the drudgery with a cohort of same-aged kids. We tell ourselves they also missed out on all the things we don't like about school (bullying, competitive education, coerced learning, lack of time to follow passions, etc.) and we don't regret our choice to unschool them at all. In fact, I believe their success in living independently at 18 and 20 is largely due to the lifelong-learning, agile thinking, and self-motivation that unschooling instilled in them. But the fact remains that they're quite unique in this. Most of their peers are off at universities now, or still living with their parents. It can be hard to relate, and my kids are among the youngest of the young professionals, so they don't easily fit into any of the major groups in our society. Still, unschooling also provided them resilience, and they are finding their way: managing not only to make new friends, but also to continue developing their very solid sibling relationship, now living as room-mates. They're finding themselves in the city and within the context of their society, and they meet challenges with courage and a solution-seeking mindset. I can't hope for anything more.

I always said that the only important thing I wished for my children was that they would be happy. I now know that happiness is not a goal but a mindset. My kids are learning to find satisfaction in the diverse activities they've occupied themselves with while simultaneously holding multiple jobs to afford Vancouver's increasingly unaffordable rent. They're unschooling adulthood. They're becoming emotionally and financially resilient, and when things are just too hard, they have each other, their parents on the phone, and a big fluffy dog who will snuggle the love back into them. Even when she's lazy in the morning.

Clara hogging the blankets.

How Unschoolers (and all of us) Build Careers

High priority interest for my kids right now: experimental cooking!

My unschooled kids moved out recently, and now I'm processing all the choices we made! It's not so much the unschooling; there is no doubt in my mind that it served us all well. But the smaller choices we made on our twenty-one-year (so far) parenting journey have had huge impacts on our kids' career options; their confidence and courage, and even the way their interests have filtered into their careers. How DO people follow their interests into satisfying lives and careers, and what if they don't? I'm watching my kids' changing lives with fascination, remembering my own early adulthood, and discovering so much about how we grow and build our lives. So I thought I'd write a bit about this, from what is now my contemplation couch in my newly-empty, way-too-quiet nest.

 

Unschooling in the First Place: Why It Serves Us Well

The root premise of unschooling is freedom to grow along one's own path, following ones own interests. It means not being confined by the needs of classrooms, social expectations, or parents' expectations. Of course, unschooling parents raised in a schooled society (which is most of us) struggle very hard not to reproduce those constraints, so our kids rarely have pure freedom, but with our eyes on the unschooling prize we're supposedly holding that freedom of mind and growth in our hearts, and working towards it. I titled this section in the present tense and with 'us' very intentionally: It doesn't just serve our children well, and it didn't just do so while they lived at home. The freedom and responsibility of making and following all of our own expectations has served each of us well, and it continues to do so, now that the kids have moved out.

Unschooling isn't easy for anybody. That's because it's all about taking life at face value and being responsible for our own actions. It's actually what everyone everywhere is doing every day, but unschoolers do it intentionally--and life is just not ever easy. But it's good. It's good to have to make hard decisions. It's good to be disappointed or hurt and have to become resilient. It's good to learn to honour one's own needs; to put them before conformity, while always keeping the needs of others in mind as well. It's good to learn balance and responsibility and independence. All of these things are values that my various schools attempted to teach me, but I didn't learn them there. I learned them after I left, lived on my own, and began (slowly) taking responsibility for my own life. This is what unschooling does for children (and the caregivers who raise them): It gives them the responsibility as soon as they want it, so they can learn to handle and navigate life as it comes to them, instead of after they get out of school. 

The schooled mindset relies on following a plan laid out by staff and administrators--or by parents and curriculum writers, in the case of homeschooling. The point of unschooling is to step out of that mindset, set our own paths, and fumble along until we meet our own expectations. Or not, as the case may be.

Confidence and Courage

Fumbling and failing is a huge part of unschooling--and life, of course. My partner went to all the schools his parents chose for him, took some courses he liked and some he didn't, had lots of great experiences, and then went to university to study engineering. The first thing he did when he got there was to leave his religion behind. He was called to the university chapel after they got news of his arrival from his parents' church, and he gently told them he wasn't interested. I believe this, and a permanent change from short to long hair were some of the first steps he took towards making his own life-choices. Then he meandered over to a focus on physics and astronomy. It was around this time that I became Wiccan, and started dating conventionally-unacceptable people. Lots of them. I had to find my path! By the time I met my partner, I was no longer Wiccan, having re-embraced my atheist roots, and he was working in a Chinese convenience store and studying computer science. He was deeply interested in philosophy, which he processed muchly through conversations with the people who sat drinking concealed bottles-of-something at his corner-store-coffee-bar during his night-shifts. None of this was where we thought we'd end up when we left high school. It's just the fumbling that adults do, once we are handed the reins to our life and have no actual idea where we're going!

 

Back to my own (adult) kids: Right now they're experimenting a lot with food. Having moved out of our rural home and into the city, they've discovered all kinds of options for foods that didn't exist when I was doing the shopping. They've already had Door-Dash deliveries, signed up for a local Too-Good-to-Go discount grocery program (through which they've had some successes and some --ew-- failures), and explored all kinds of local grocery stores for the best deals on new and interesting and familiar foods. They sometimes tell us about the meals they invent, or send photos. The biggest deal of the photo up above, for me, is those beautiful smiles. My kids are quite obviously proud of themselves, and what more could I possibly want, as a parent? That pride will buoy them over all the fumbles and tumbles of life.

This fumbling--and the chunks of pride that carry our resilience--is how we build confidence. We experiment and meet failure after disappointment after unexpected adventure, and at every turn in the path we find a little more resilience; a little more determination and courage to make the next decision. To experiment more and learn more. Unschooling is all about facilitating that growth throughout childhood instead of afterwards. (Not that the growth ends with adulthood, as we and my kids are demonstrating!)

 

How We Follow Interests

As parents, caregivers and educators, we're often focused on identifying our kids' interests so we can support them. Oh--you like circus? Let's find a circus program! and Oh, you're interested in science? Here's a microscope. Sometimes these 'supports' are just the ticket our kids needed to the railroad of their dreams. Sometimes they couldn't care less, and even worse, sometimes our enthusiasm tethers them to fleeting interests that weren't empowered by or even embodied in the supports we offered. 

As a parent I've often felt disappointed when my kids didn't use the fancy tools we got for their supposed interests. I know I passed that disappointment onto them, and it turned into self-doubt, shame, and confusion about the paths they were on. How could my music-loving daughter possibly not want to play the Appalachian dulcimer that my mother bought for her? It's a tradition among the women of our family, for goodness sake, and she already plays guitar! It took me quite a while to leave my disappointment behind and accept that her journey might not include dulcimer. Or even music. She's now nannying and working as an assistant dog-trainer, while studying to become a certified positive reinforcement trainer. None of this was what I expected when she was ten and dressing up as Melanie Martinez. But she's happy. Likely happier, in fact, than she might have been trying to climb the ladder to pop stardom. And in the end, isn't that all we actually wanted for our children? 

 

Oh, and the dulcimer? She took it with her to the city, where it's hanging on her wall, and enjoys being played there by her and her friends. What looks like rejection to us parents is sometimes actually just reinvention.

Having an interest-driven career isn't even necessarily important. Or a single career. I often think my partner may have gotten more personal growth out of his needs-based night-shift convenience store job than he's ever gotten since out of his programming career. Now he follows his personal interests on YouTube, raising his children, building his home, and down at the docks talking to some boat guys. He likes his job as a software developer because it's stable, the people he works with are generally friendly, and he doesn't have to take it home with him. I guess for some people that's what matters in a career!

I'm not like that. I can only concentrate on an absolute passion. Too bad for math class and social studies in high school. I became an artist and then an art teacher, and then as I passionately unschooled my kids I drifted on to become a wilderness and explorative learning educator. Now they've moved out and I'm taking my art career more seriously. And it doesn't seem odd at all to me that all my installations are about social change. I guess what didn't interest me in high school does now. (What looks like rejection might just be reinvention...) Because I found out through fumbling how social science matters in my world. But most of my time is spent gardening or raising chickens. And I like that too.

What About Skill-Building?

What if my kid actually wants to become a concert violinist, and I allowed him to skip out on lessons just because his heart felt like digging a "mine" beside our driveway?? Sure. It could happen. (That was my son.) And what if we destroyed their passion for violin by pushing lessons when they just weren't into that? (Speaking from experience, here...) What if we destroyed their confidence in making choices for themselves by telling them we knew better, and that one day they would WANT to have learned to play violin? (Also us...) So my son never did pick up his violin again. He taught himself piano, instead, and digital music, and now sometimes he uses his music in videos. His career focus at the moment is digital art, but self-taught music makes him happy. We can't know what skills our kids will need, and we certainly can't know when or why they'll need them.

The amazing thing is, they WILL build them when they need them, if we can keep our fears and convictions out of their way. Once I finally stepped out of my kids' way, they taught themselves all kinds of skills they really needed: Math, piano, cooking, social skills, and even job-seeking and career-building. Once in a while they came to me for help, like when they wanted me to read over their resumes, and it felt like all the sparkles of joy got dumped on my head!!! Sometimes our kids do need us, but they need to be on their own for both skill-building AND deciding what skills to build. No matter how painful the process is for us parents to watch.

 

Building Careers

What career? What goal? What if "having an interest" is not the goal? What if instead we spend our kids' lives encouraging flexible navigation of any and all interests? We don't all have a single interest, and in fact most of us are always navigating a few. And they change. Maybe our kids were going to be concert pianists yesterday and today they're going to be magicians or farmers. Tomorrow they just want to bake cookies. Not for a career. Just because YUM. Maybe we work at our dream job, and focus all life around it. Or maybe we volunteer at what we're passionate about, and work to make ends meet. Or maybe we just work at a place where our friends work because it makes us happy; maybe friends are the current passion. Or cooking new foods each night, or reading, or parenting...

 

I have no clue who my children will be in another ten or twenty years. I have no clue who I'll be! But we keep on unschooling through life--reminding ourselves of the importance of recognising and following our hearts' needs--and we trust that we'll build the courage and resilience we need to stay upright around the unexpected turns. Or to right ourselves after we fall. We don't know where we're going, and we're learning to love the journey.

Big Changes at the Phantom Rickshaw

Big change is afoot at the Phantom Rickshaw house. It's been the nest of this family unit for over twenty two years now, and the space where I figured out attachment parenting, then unschooling, and made explorative learning theory my main occupation. As of next week it will be officially an "empty nest". Both kids are moving to the city, which brings up so much for me around parenting, personal growth, my relationship with my partner, Markus, and also life-choices in general. 

For the curious: The not-so-kids have rented a sweet little basement suite in an ideal spot, right between beaches and dog-parks, and Rhiannon's various city jobs. They and Rhiannon's dog Clara are sharing a two-bedroom, which they were extremely lucky to find in these housing crisis times. Taliesin is a digital artist, and though he's been contracting from home during the pandemic, is looking forward to finding an office job where he can get out of the house more, now that he's in the city. Rhiannon works as a nanny and dog trainer, while also still studying with the Karen Pryor Academy. It's amazing to me that my kids are such good friends that they look forward to starting their adult life together. And it's hugely reassuring, of course, to know that for the first year, at least, they'll have each other to come home to. That sibling connection is partly due to attachment parenting and unschooling, I think, since it's not too uncommon amongst the unschooling families we know.

I hadn't anticipated what a huge deal this move would be until I gave my glowing reference to my kids' new landlord. Then it hit me: This is it! Every triumph and mistake I've made over the course of the past couple of decades is going to play out now, and I can't fix the mistakes. Markus and I put together a first aid kit for the kids, and we're in the process of writing down all the recipes we anticipate they might want, in boxes that Markus made. He also took them to Value Village for some home essentials, and we bought them mattresses from IKEA. But that's all just stuff. How do we give them the courage and resilience they'll need in the wide open world? As an unschooling family, we tried to expose them to a variety of experiences all along, encouraging and leading them to explore. All we can do now is hope the seeds we've tried to plant in them will grow as they continue to experience life (mostly) without us.

I recently watched this poignant short documentary on APTN, where Harry Schooner says "the elders blessed me to be a thunder mask carver. They did a ceremony for me when I was about seven years old." I've heard so many times of such hereditary blessings, but today, as my kids are both packing for their exit from the family nest, I find myself reaching back to the lives we've built, trying to cobble some idea of how we might have given them any such thing: What are our kids carrying with their hearts into their new lives? If I look at my kids I can see their strengths and passions, all nurtured through our unschooling lifestyle. Is unschooling (the freedom and experience of choosing their own paths) the blessing we gave them? I don't know. It doesn't seem the same. I've wondered if perhaps their knowledge of the land, the local ecology, and animal husbandry is a kind of blessing that they will carry with them. I certainly carried that on from my childhood. We have chicks hatching tomorrow, and my kids know the sound of the hen singing them into the world. I hope these memories will stay with them.

So in my somewhat despaired wondering, I read this to my kids, and I'm happy to report that they feel respected for the roles they've built for themselves in their family and community--even if they're eager to leave for the bustle and friendships of the city. Rhiannon tells me she was recently asked to work again for the daycare program she worked with when she was younger. Taliesin is frequently called upon for cooking fabulous meals, taking photos, or helping solve problems. I'm feeling a little more positive about this, now we've talked about it.

It's been hard for me to face the loss of my kids in my space. All the things we've shared that we'll do mostly separately, now. Like toothbrushing, even! I like that we talk to each other through our toothpaste before running off to spit! I like all the unique-to-us things that we do and say, and I wonder how these things will carry over into our new lives. We have traditions of celebrating the food we grew, of going to see and relish natural phenomena like phosphorescence in the late summer (we laugh and call them 'flossers'), the frozen lake in the winter, and the young nettles in spring. Will my kids look for spring greens in the city? Or maybe come home for the harvest? Will they phone me while brushing their teeth?

Most of the time I feel like all I have is questions, and I guess that's a huge part of this transition. Anticipation and a wide-open future is a pretty great thing. I feel that way about my relationship with Markus, too. We sure aren't the people we were before we had kids, and we're starting to put out little experimental tendrils to the future we're going to share. For the first time, the kids declined to make Christmas decorations this year, and Markus and I ended up making them together in the night, just the two of us. It was strange and strangely beautiful. I discovered he likes sparkly blue ribbons.

After the question of how my kids will fare and grow, 'out there', the personal growth bit is probably the biggest deal and mystery for me. I lived parenting with every cell of my body, and now what?? People tell me I'm still a parent--well yes, obviously--but it's not going to be my every day, anymore. I built a life out of volunteering, teaching, and more recently explorative learning consulting with other parents and educators, and this blog was in many ways the face of that life. Parenting and teaching was the inspiration for what I wrote here, and all the progress I made in explorative learning theory. Now that long covid has made most teaching impossible for me, and my kids are increasingly less connected to my daily life, I find I have very little to write. People have also stopped contacting me for consulting. It's like the universe is preparing me for the shift but I don't know where I'm shifting to! I guess I'll drift into the art career I've always kept percolating on the back burner. Even my art has been largely parenting-focused, though. More questions. 

I guess I probably feel like most parents of kids moving out: Like I'm standing on the edge of a very tall cliff, in a cool, fresh, unpredictable wind, arms spread with little kites attached, and no idea where or how I'll land. It's terrifying, thrilling, and deeply strange.

Do You Really Want Your Kid to Be an Artist?

Me at 7, trying to be an artist.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist. Or a botanist, or a hair-dresser. My parents and grandparents gave me wonderful art supplies, and my father even made me a palette with a hole in it for my thumb, and positioned the kitchen stool in front of the wall of our trailer for me to use as a painting stool. That’s me in the photo, in the early nineteen-eighties, feeling wonderful and accomplished, but with absolutely no idea of what it meant to “be an artist”.

So What, Exactly, Is an Artist?

I'm an artist, now. Twenty-five years and two kids after I got my degree in visual arts, my career is built on helping people reach beyond societal expectations to un-silence themselves, and connect genuinely with the world we inhabit. I do paint, and I do have gallery exhibitions, but I also tromp in the forests, use materials I never imagined would one day be called “materials”, and make art I never imagined would be called “art.” The focus of my work is to connect people with our own deeply-held stories; as an explorative learning consultant I also encourage parents and teachers to do the same with their children. It turns out art was just a vehicle for something more important to me. And I’m still an artist.

The stereotype of the famous artist making masterpieces in his (he's almost always male, white and powerful) studio has almost nothing to do with a successful art career. I wish somebody had explained this to me when I was a kid. Picasso was an abusive, deceitful creep, and we don't have to appreciate his work to be artists. There’s SO much more wonderfulness in being an artist than I had imagined! So much more diversity!

Artists are responsible for not only the beauty we see in our human-made world, but also for the connection we make with neighbours, for the realizations we make about our own lives and feelings when we watch movies, listen to music, or read books. Artists determine how easy it is to use the devices we buy. Through media, artists determine which devices and foods and colours will be more popular. They understand the influence of shapes, colours, sound, movement and texture on our emotions, and... like it or not, our emotions govern much of what we do. Artists are powerful. A “career in the arts” is a massively open-ended term, but also, having a grounding in artistic practice and theory means a deeper foundation or influence in any career we choose. Moreover, having the ability to express ourselves is an important foundation of meaningful connection.

I like to imagine a world full of people who were encouraged in this way. How happy, satisfied, and valuable could we all be? How would our chosen paths be enhanced by a facility with self-expression and material, sound, or movement exploration? Do you really want your kid to be an artist? And if so, how can you support them?

What NOT to do: Unsolicited "Help"

It's incredibly easy to break kids' confidence in art (or anything) and less easy to build it. As with so much in life, the first thing we can do to "help" our kids succeed is to get out of their way. It's not easy, especially when we're watching them struggle with something we know there's an easy solution for. But we zip our mouths, find something else to occupy our attention, and trust that they'll get where they need to go. And never, ever critique.

Criticism is more likely to break our confidence than to teach us something, and a shattered confidence is a massive barrier to success. My daughter is a writer, and was recently working on her second novel. I edited her first novel for her, judiciously reporting back on only glaring typos and missing punctuation. It was an amazing realistic fiction coming-of-age story, written from the bold heart of a young girl whose grandfather had recently died. I love it so much I heartily recommend it to readers of all ages. Her next novel, though, was a departure from the world she knew and understood so well, and required a steep learning curve. It was an epic fantasy, full of people from different cultures and a massively complex magical world... all of which she dutifully researched and developed before writing. But then she was challenged by trying to fit this enormous complexity into a single story. And when it came time for me to edit her book, I didn't hold back with the criticisms and suggestions. Some chapters were confusing, some events seemed out of place, and mostly I was confused by the timeline. Sure, she was only fourteen, but I just knew she was capable, so I critiqued! Despite my attempts at being gentle with my criticism, it all seemed insurmountable to her, and after a few attempts at editing, she abandoned the book. To her credit, she's keeping an open mind about the possibility of writing it in the future, but unfortunately I feel I threw a hammer at a beautiful glass sculpture she was creating, that actually she just needed more time with, alone. Without my critiquing.

So that's how not to build confidence. Just think of all the ways we're doing that, in every part of our kids' lives, and even our own. So many of us have an overachieving inner critic. And a culturally-supported fear that that critic is what's keeping us on the straight-and-narrow. But you know what? It's not. What would happen if we just didn't correct our kids? Well I have some experience with that, now, both in teaching and parenting. It's ridiculously hard to shut up my inner critic sometimes, but when I do, the kids thrive.

My daughter is truly an excellent writer--so much so, that in her frantic enthusiasm she charges ahead, forgetting to put periods at the ends of sentences, capitals on names, or sometimes misspelling words. She edits herself, and (as we all are prone to doing) sees right through her mistakes to read what she intended to write. What if she asks me to edit and I just ignore those mistakes? I've experimented with that. Sometimes she looks over her work later and discovers her mistakes. Sometimes she puts it aside for a few months, grows and learns, and comes back to it to realize she would now write it differently. Sometimes, even, she submits or publishes something with mistakes. And you know what? That's just fine! I frequently go back to my own work from years earlier, and see how much I've learned and grown since my thirties--and yet my work was appreciated then, as well. Have you any idea how many typos I still find in my writing? Tons. I'm especially accomplished at missing words and totally redundant examples. Sometimes I don't even bother to correct them. Because they're part of my humanity. Our kids deserve that space to be human, too.

Honouring Growth

Rhiannon, age 5, experimenting with paints.

As a visual artist, I love to look back and see all my mistakes. I look at portraits I painted years ago, and wonder why I did them the way I did; sometimes I also notice things I thought were problems at the time, that now inform new directions in my work. Growth is where it's at, people! Otherwise what are we living for? In some deep place, children know this, as from the moment they're born they challenge themselves to grow by exploring different tastes, movements, and expressions.

Children, like my daughter in the photo, above, want to represent their world. But it isn't always as we might expect! As parents, we have a choice about whether to show our children how to draw things the way we think it should be done, or to allow them to discover their own ways, through experimentation. My son was once drawing a whole page full of lines, and I asked him what he was drawing (something I've since learned not to do), and he told me it was a drum. I was totally perplexed, and asked him where the parts of the drum were. This was a boy who had no problem drawing a circle--why would he choose to represent a drum with a whole lot of unconnected lines? "It's the sound of the drum." He said. Boom.

He didn't need my assumptions. He needed my appreciation, and the freedom to keep exploring. As long as we respond to our kids' experiments with curiosity and loving encouragement, they'll continue to know that where they are on their journey of growth is perfect. And that will be the impetus they need to keep growing with enthusiasm. I have no idea how my son's drawings of sound influenced his life, but considering he now is employed as a visual artist and makes music to accompany his personal visual projects, I'm relieved I didn't get in the way of that particular growth pattern by showing him "how to draw a drum."

Asking Helpful Questions

I realized during my children's earliest years that questions like "what are you drawing?" are extremely limiting. In that question I have determined that my child must be trying to represent a specific thing, and the assumption is usually that it's a visual representation of something we know. But what if it's not? What if it's our children's experimentation with colours, shapes or lines? Or sound, as in the drum example? That kind of experimentation--without intent to satisfy outside demands--is essential for learning to use materials. Professional artists actually bill for material experimentation; it's called "research". We even sometimes mount gallery exhibitions composed entirely of experimental output--often to great acclaim. So why would I limit the possibilities of my own child's artistic output?

But we want to ask questions! We know it's important to engage and encourage! So how can we ask questions that promote growth-dialogue about art (or anything), without limiting our children's growth or expression?

Think about the words in the question "What are you drawing?" The word 'what' carries the assumption they're trying to represent an object. The word 'drawing' means we assume they're focused on the output of the material in their hands, as opposed to the feeling, taste, smell, or movement of it. How are these assumptions limiting the range of acceptable answers?

Drawing by Taliesin, age 3.

Maybe we have a kid who is happy to contradict us, and says, "I'm not drawing anything. I'm dancing the pen," or, as in my son’s drawing, above, “Nothing. I didn’t tell you.” (I learned a lot about parenting from that bold rejection.) But more likely, our kid wants to please us; to learn from our example, and will find a suitable answer, like, "some lines," or as my daughter used to do, look at a bunch of lines she was experimenting with and come up with a wild explanation like, "it's a dog on a house with the family having dinner." It's tragically very common that kids learn to minimize themselves to match what they perceive coming from adults. I've seen plenty of kids who were making successful attempts at depicting what might have been people or animals declare that they were “just scribbling.” Why? Because maybe they feared hearing our criticisms, or maybe we've previously defined their drawings of animals as 'scribbling', or maybe, because their own inner critic is already developed enough to silence their voice.

Adults are notoriously bad at asking kids questions, and kids generally have rote answers ready to respond to each of them: How old are you? How is school? What are you making? What is your favourite colour/subject/sport/etc.? How are we so uninspired?! These questions aren't about engaging with kids or developing rapport; they're expected. What if, instead of asking what they're drawing, we invite them to tell about what they're doing? This is an open invitation to consider what they're doing and talk about it. It's up to us to be open to hearing their response, no matter how long, unexpected, or confusing it may be. Not all questions will be helpful for all kids in all situations, but through practice we can become better at asking good questions. Here's a list of interesting open-ended questions to use in engaging kids to talk about their art:

• Interesting! Can you tell me about this?
• Does this have a story or feeling?
• How do you feel about what you're doing?
• Show me how you like to use [material]...
• What do you think about the materials you're using?
• Are there any other materials you'd like to use?

Materials

Ah how I love shopping for materials!! And hoarding them!! Don't we all?! How much of our parenting waste is comprised of once-used adorable kits that were soon replaced by something newer and more exciting? I won't go on at length about this, because I've previously written a whole article about Materials for Open-Ended Art Exploration. But suffice it to say that well-chosen art materials are the foundation of good artistic experience. And I don't mean the expensive stuff. I mean well-chosen. Materials can be anything from kitchen supplies to mud and sticks outside, to a mish-mash of mark-making, gluing, cutting and melting tools. The important feature of all of these things is that they do not come with instructions or intended uses. How we present and use materials is much more important than what they are.

Modelling

From the moment they were born, and possibly earlier, our kids have looked to us to lead them. The important thing to remember about modelling to our children is that it's happening all the time; not just when we do it intentionally. Our kids see our hesitation and fear with art as much as they see our enthusiasm. They see us avoid trying new things, and they see us when we courageously do them, and when we have small successes and failures. They emulate not only our actions but also the way we emotionally deal with these things.

With this in mind, the absolute best thing we can do for our children is to use any and all materials available to us to explore creatively, for our own happiness. That last bit is important. Kids can smell a fraud from a mile away, so we have to be creative in the way that we want to be. Otherwise we're just teaching our kids to put on a show for someone else's benefit, and that's nothing about authenticity.

And we should stretch ourselves. If we're accustomed to buying craft kits and following the instructions, we should absolutely try to break that habit (more on why in the materials article, above) and try experimenting with new materials. We can also stretch our definition of art-making. Try experimental baking! Try sewing or crocheting! Try putting on your favourite music, getting dressed up in fancy dress or costumes and dancing your heart out! Try painting your whole self and rolling around on an old sheet, outside. In the rain! It doesn't matter what or how you engage in art, just as long as you do it. And if your output isn't what you expect? Even better. Keep experimenting. You're modelling growth to your children.

Living a life full of joyful exploration and learning, ourselves, is the best way we can teach our children.
 

Nurturing Important Skills

Me at 4, being an artist.

We’re culturally trained to associate specific skills and attributes with art: dancers should be thin and flexible, visual artists should be able to draw realistic depictions with technical skills like shading, perspective, and colour theory; musicians should first learn to read music and do scales. Unless we’re born talented, of course.

Oh hell, I hate the word ‘talent’! It's such a harmful concept. I wasn't born talented; I developed some skills in accurate rendering of my observations by having a keen interest in observing how things are put together; how the light plays on them, and being given room to experiment with materials throughout my life. It was easy for me because I loved it, just like my daughter loves telling stories, so writing is easy for her to learn. We develop the skills we need when we realize we need them, and as long as we're not discouraged from exploring them.

As parents and teachers, we need to help build foundational skills for life, and trust that those material skills will come when needed. As an artist, I owe a huge amount of my career satisfaction to some less-concrete skills and passions:

• seeing the big picture in life, art, etc.
• a keen interest in social phenomena
• a passion for exploration and discovery

We really can't know what skills will be foundational for each of the unique kids we work with. Neither can we know the cultural landscape our kids will grow into, nor what careers will be common, when they’re grown. Who knew, when I was in art school twenty-five years ago that people would be making virtual and even invisible art to sell online, one day? Who knew I’d raise a son who gets paid to make thousands of geographically plausible planet renderings by using procedural generation techniques? His art process looks like a bunch of visual programming. I could never have predicted this, never mind taught him these skills. So when trying to support kids I parent and teach, I try to encourage growth of all sorts of skills. Life is not divided by subject. Careers are not determined by skill-acquisition. It's all interconnected. The more we learn, the more we can learn.

So Do You? Really?

Yes. I guess I really do want my kids to be artists--however that looks for them, and however it looks in the future we can only dream of. I want them to explore all the materials and develop all the skills I can’t even fathom right now. I want them to change the definition of the word “artist” to mean new and wonderful things, and I want them to keep on growing as the world grows, around them.

Parenting and Gardening with Climate Change: The Aesthetic of Allowing Diversity

This morning we put the tomato and pepper seedlings out on the porch again. They've been waiting for the ground to warm up enough to be transplanted, for weeks. It was nearly freezing last night, just above ground, in early May. And now weather forecasters are predicting that La Niña might stick around all summer. Bad news for the Atlantic hurricane season, great news for our Pacific fire season, and... sad prospects for my warmer-weather food crops. Climate change is one thing for sure: unpredictable. And along with the weather, our food, finances, and children's futures are all unpredictable, too.

Diversity in the Garden
Our strategy for dealing with this unpredictability has been to become more independent. I guess psychologically it's about keeping control of our own actions, when so much else is now reeling out of control. But practically speaking, it's also very helpful: The more we learn about the way we and our needs work, the more capable we are of supporting ourselves, of creatively solving problems that arise, and of adapting to our rapidly-changing world. So we're growing many of our own foods now, unschooling our kids, and diversifying our own skillsets. Put simply, we're diversifying how we live, just like financial investors diversify assets. Thrivent says "the idea is to avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket—because something bad could happen to that basket."  We don't have any financial investments, but the same strategy applies to living, eating, educating ourselves, and planning our future, in general. So we grow warm weather crops, cool weather crops, fruit trees of various types, summer crops and winter crops, and root, leaf, flower and fruit crops. It looks like this year we'll have a lot of potatoes, celery, spinach, kale, broccoli and cauliflower... and apples, if the bees do well, which is still in question.

There are a lot of questions, these days. Among them, how to save seeds. I received a newsletter from our local seed supplier recently, in which he explained the importance of diversity in seed-saving: 

        "We’ve all experienced accelerated climate change and it’s important to prepare for more of the same if we are to have successful harvests. The best strategy can be summed up in one word: Diversify!
        "We can be hit by extreme cold, heat, wind or rain at anytime during the growing season. If we can, we should not trust all our seeds to one sowing. We should stagger and expand our plantings as well as planting our crops in both shade and sun. We can also think about working with friends and neighbours to mutually maximize our locations."
                            ~ Dan Jason, Saltspring Seeds

See that? This is a seed supplier encouraging his customers to grow and save our own seeds, to share with neighbours, and basically to evolve away from supporting his seed-growing business. Why? Because obviously, he and his business will do better if we all do. He's diversifying his own network of seed-growers and customers, as well as his output. He also wrote a small book about seed saving, and frequently writes blogs, articles, newsletters and other things about how to grow plants and seeds in these changeable times. A greedier businessperson might not encourage seed-saving, when they can make more money upfront if their customers remain ignorant about this practice. Dan Jason is looking at our mutual future, and diversifying all of our prospects, in community. There will always be a place for that.

Diversity in Life and Education
Which brings me to the human side of this picture: How do we diversify our own human community; our own skill-sets, to ensure our adaptability as the world changes around us? I threw out the word unschooling back there, like it was nothing, and for our family it really is nothing these days, but I know it's rather out-of-left-field for some people. Here's what I'm going on about: Unschooling is the practice of allowing our kids (and ourselves) to explore any and all of their interests, on their own time, in their own ways, and just seeing what comes out of it all! Without going too far into our own experiences (read more about our unschooled young adult children at our blog, if you like), our family is now reassured that unschooling was an excellent choice for our kids' future. After many years of determining and following their own interests, they have become agile thinkers, able to check in with their own needs, fulfill those needs successfully, and change course when the need arises. What more can one ask for, in a future where no career choice is guaranteed, nor even the ground we stand upon?

But that's our kids--what about us? We're a couple of middle-aged adults, one dependent on a satisfactory job that doesn't meet our evolving ethical standards, and the other now disabled by long-covid. Can we still unschool? The answer is yes, and we've been doing it with our kids these past many years. Our skill-sets have grown as our needs changed, and we find ourselves becoming reasonably adept at growing food, raising and processing chickens, building needed devices, implements and home-improvements, and also learning to live together, twenty-four-seven, peacefully. We're also becoming very good at living more simply, and finding joy in a life far less cluttered by activities and must-haves than it once was. Life is always about unending personal growth--it's just that climate change and related social change have caused us to appreciate that more.

The Aesthetic of Natural Diversity
What I sometimes struggle to appreciate is the absolute chaos of natural diversity. I mean when you just let things grow however they're going to. It's a mess. Truly. My garden, my kids' educational careers, my own career and even my living room is just truly an absolute mess. But I've learned to see its beauty.

See this lovely mess of a garden bed? We had an open garden here a week ago, and I heard a few people comment on the number of "weeds" we have. And they're not wrong! But the tone of their comments was. Now that I am coming to understand the importance of diversity in my regenerative garden, this picture is pure joy, to me! 

one of the diverse salad-green beds in our garden

What you're looking at here is a few indoor-started heads of lettuce, now ravaged by our salad-needs, along with some dark green kale on the right, flowering out as it does every spring and fall. On the left there's a tiny pink flower--that's a Robert Geranium, considered a weed by most people, but it's antiviral and edible, so I put it in salads and smoothies. Along with this there is a whole plethora of edible asters: dandelions, wild lettuces (and some seeded from our previous years' crops), lambs' quarters, and others. There are teeny tiny bittercress plants everywhere, their leaves and tiny white flowers delicious in salads and sandwiches. There's some chickweed coming up, which will brighten my summer smoothies and delight our chickens, and in the woodchip-covered pathway at my feet, there's a lively mat of winecap mycelium, that pushes up big tasty mushrooms at totally unpredictable times. This garden feeds us. And when I see the diversity of flavours and promise, it's absolutely gorgeous to me.

Parenting can be like that, too. When my kids were young, I used to feel irritated by the drifts of toys, costumes, and craft materials that seemed to cover everything. But I also saw how it mirrored the creative mess of my own art studio, and how my kids dug in their mess, explored and improvised, and eventually also desired to tidy it themselves. Now they're older, their social lives are also somewhat of a primordial stew. I look at my own young-adult memories and how different my social life is now than what I thought I was building, at twenty. I have a few of the same friends, but our interests and priorities have changed many times. My children, of course, are no different, even though right now it's hard for them to imagine how life will change them. Their activities are an eclectic chaos of experimental successes and left-behinds. At twenty, our son is paid as a 3D modeller, but also practices music, concept design, drawing, and is a life-long physics and engineering enthusiast. Our seventeen-year-old daughter runs programs for kids, organizes an alternative education festival, publishes a magazine by and for kids, and has recently also begun a side-career as a dog-trainer. Three or four years ago I could not have predicted many of these directions, but our kids found them and followed them with enthusiasm, and that has set them up for success in our unpredictable world. They're accustomed to wrangling interests and commitments in multiple different directions. They're accustomed to changing course when needs demand it. Our kids' comfort and ease with this chaotic, changeable lifestyle is the gift that unschooling gave them. As our social climate becomes more chaotic, they will fit right in.

The Struggle of Allowing
Then there's the concept of allowing. I'm not really as comfortable with all this as I make it sound. Excited by the prospects; reassured by preliminary observations--yes! But I fight change like the devil, and I am not good at just going with the flow. I'm a child of the eighties. I thought I would pick a career and stick to it forever; have kids who went to school, grew up through birthday parties and grocery shopping and family holidays, and I'd always live a typical low-to-middle-class family life. I also thought Caesar salad would always be easy to buy. Now lettuce is too expensive, eggs for the dressing are even more expensive, chickens are dying by the hundreds of thousands in their barns from flooding and bird flu, and I'm allergic to croutons. Damn. I had to allow my palate to change with the times. 

Sometimes allowing my kids to make choices I don't understand or necessarily agree with feels like gluing my back to the wall; peeling my eyes from the view and willing my voice to fall back into my throat. I pound down my own fears to let my kids thrive or fall flat on their faces. It's like letting the weeds and lettuce seedlings stay under the dominating squash leaves, knowing they'll just die there, but that their failed lives will feed the squash. And then discovering that one of them grew and fed my family, anyway. Allowing is when I know for sure I could make things better in the short term if I just take control, but I also know that I can't see all the variables, so any control I think I have is just a sham, anyway. As our world becomes ever less predictable, I can't predict how my controlling actions will play out in my garden, my life, my kids' education, or even this article. So I force myself to quit trying.

Luckily I've diversified my needs and the seeds I plant, and am learning to cooperate with the changing climate.

I've Changed my Thinking on University Entrance and Attendance

Taliesin in his early years, trying to get some lift. Photo: Emily van Lidth de Jeude

I thought about calling this article 'Getting into University as an Unschooler', because that's what people ask me about, knowing that I parent two young adults who are currently in this stage of life. But by the time I finished writing it, I realized that I can't even recommend university anymore. Not the way it's traditionally done, anyway. University is a beautiful little corner of a much bigger, beautiful picture, and I mean to let my kids have the whole picture.

I have two different kids who have traveled through life in the same community, sharing the same upbringing, home and family, and often the same activities, but with vastly different journeys towards what our culture calls "adulthood". They're both now on the precipice of finding meaningful employment in fields that inspire them, still living at home during the pandemic, but eagerly researching the rental market since, one day soon, they plan to move out and build their independent lives. Here are their stories, followed by my current thoughts on university.

Taliesin
He's my firstborn. He was passionate about science since he opened his eyes, though it took me a few years to see it. He observed the whole world around him, figuring out how everything worked. He was passionate about making art, too, but since he was mostly drawing machines (albeit very imaginative machines), I figured science was his thing. By the time he was nine he was begging to go to university and study physics. He was fully unschooled, so we went out to our local university (UBC) and their particle accelerator for tours and to listen to lectures whenever we were able. It was wonderful to see him so engaged, but other than attending lectures, there was little to interest him, scientifically. All the kids' programs were too condescending and boring, having little to do with the science he craved so much, and the teen programs that graciously let him in before he was of age were too few and far between. And as his friends became busier with school activities, he was becoming lonely. We tried gifted homelearner social groups, but both he and I feel an aversion to the 'gifted' classification, and we weren't interested in defining ourselves that way. 

So he went to school. Taliesin did two years at our local private middle school where his uncle teaches, followed by three years at the democratic school in the city. We always approached school from an unschooling perspective, with no concern at all for grades or attendance, and always the option to take a different view of the projects than what was expected. Mostly this served him well, and he managed the shift from unschooling to school quite well. He found science classes boring, because the material is presented in such a slow, methodical manner that there was little room for him to explore his interests. He aced most of the tests because he knew the material, but he stopped pursuing science, on his own.

He still wanted to attend UBC for physics, but now understood he had to wait, and decided to go through the usual route for entrance, by graduating and applying like most others. He graduated with honours at the end of his grade eleven year, and then spent a year taking additional grade twelve and first-year science courses at college, while volunteering in his community and applying to UBC. He only applied to UBC, because that was all he had ever wanted. And at the end of this long haul that started when he was nine, and in the middle of a pandemic, he was denied entrance to what had been for many years his constant life's goal. It wasn't a big deal to me, but I think it was to him. I think it felt like failure, simply because of the competitive nature of our school system and the application. However, he tells me that by the time he received his application rejection, he was already losing interest in the program.

Taliesin moved on. He began teaching himself digital music composition and 3D rendering. He says he's just not that interested in science anymore--and it's true he's been creating art and music all his life--but what I saw as his high school career ended was a young man whose interest in science faded away as he dragged himself through the system that was meant to teach it to him. What I saw was my son's enthusiasm dwindled, his confidence shattered, and his life's goals just thrown out the window. But, because he had little else to do, he continued drawing, rendering, and composing. Within months of self-teaching from his bedroom, he had mastered rendering to such an extent that he found a volunteer job rendering a space station for a show being produced by the College of Southern Nevada's planetarium. 

And now, eighteen months after he dropped out of college and failed to be admitted to university, I am finally seeing a resurgence of his enthusiasm for learning. He has developed the beginnings of a successful career as a digital artist. He still works entirely from his bedroom, but with a fancy convertible desk and insane computer setup that he created and funded through his work. He did rather over-commit with his many contracts (he's still mostly employed designing planets and space vehicles), so is now consciously working on his health, making sure he gets free time, outside time, and family time. He's also now talking about using some of the money he's earned to pay for a mentorship to help him establish a good careeer. The great thing about all of this, to me, is to see that all of these decisions were his. He identified the needs in his life, and is finding and actualizing solutions according to his means. I never could have imagined his career developing this way, but honestly could not be more proud.

Rhiannon
She was born communicating. She smiled her first gigantic toothless grin at only two weeks old, as she watched her big brother walk by and followed him with her whole upper body. Stories, music, and social interactions are her lifeblood. As young children, she and her brother sat for hours looking at books together every day, but while he was tracing the mechanisms of the machines, the families, the buildings, or whatever else he could find, she was telling the stories. She was looking in the little faces of the characters and feeling their feelings. By the time she was six or so, she frequently stopped her brother from telling about science, declaring, "science boils my brain!" 

Like her brother, she was unschooled for many years, until social interactions became too infrequent, and she went to school. She attended a part-time Distributed Learning program, and then the same democratic school as Taliesin, but focused more on writing and musical theatre than anything else. Over the years she enjoyed many personal projects, including publishing magazines online, working and volunteering for local childcare centres, reviewing books for middle grade readers, and babysitting every chance she got. By the time the pandemic hit, she was nearly finished preparing her first novel for publication, and finally self-published it at the end of 2020.

It's funny how people often struggle with the things they excel at. Despite being a highly social person, or maybe because of it, Rhiannon's struggles have mostly been social, and the pandemic isolation has been the worst of it. Her decision to quit school entirely and register as a homeschooler, returning to a fully self-directed unschooling life was difficult for a girl who thrives on social connection. So after cutting herself off from all the social interactions she relied upon, she began livestreaming, teaching online, and writing like her life depended on it! She's still reviewing novels on the website she built herself. She's expanding that website to include relevant articles about writing for children and teens, and she now publishes a successful magazine for middle-grade readers. She's not going to graduate from high school. She's just living.

But what about university? Well, Rhiannon still hopes to study Early Childhood Education at Capilano University, so before she quit school she made sure that would still be an option. I helped her find a contact, but other than that, this process is hers. She had a conversation with someone in the ECE department and discussed how she might apply without a high school diploma. Capilano University doesn't really have much of a homeschooler admission policy, but they were delighted to hear that at fifteen she was already enthusiastically pursuing her goals, that she already knew enough about those goals to know exactly what her own educational values are, and that she intended to apply. They will, eventually, look over her activities and projects from the last few years and admit her according to whatever those have been. 

There's no guarantee, just like her brother wasn't guaranteed a spot at UBC despite an honours-standing graduation, a scholarship for his biology-related community work, and significant long-standing attendance at UBC lectures. But then, there's really never a guarantee about life, is there? Amazing grades in all the relevant subjects don't create success. The only thing we can do to prepare our children for the reality that there are no guarantees is to equip them with resilience, resourcefulness, independence and confidence. That's where unschooling shines.

University
That brings me to what I've learned. I've learned that not only is there no guarantee of admission to university, but there's no need to worry about it, either. I've learned that university, like school or a job or a friendship, offers a lovely and important opportunity for learning, but it's not everything. 

When I was a kid, we were expected to go through the gamut of school until high school graduation, and then either get a job or access further education if our career goals required it. College or university has now been tacked onto that expectation as a part of the gamut. But why? What's the point? Not only do most kids not have firm career goals by the time they finish high school, but increasingly, people are having a multitude of different careers over the course of a lifetime, and accessing further education only as needed. There's little point in spending four years in training for a job that may not even exist when we finish. There's equally little point in spending all that time in school, when we can be learning and growing on the job, or while working on other pursuits.

So what's university for? A friend of mine pre-read this article and asked me to explore this a little more. Her comments made me realize that many of the skills and experiences I gained from university are now unneeded in our society in general, like outdated job-search skills, now-antiquated writing conventions, and working in a pre-social-media world. Other skills I gained, such as time-management, a sense of self and community engagement, mature social skills, real-world career-building skills, and, most importantly, independence have already been mostly acquired by my unschooled kids, simply because they spent their teen years exploring rather than schooling. During one of the many parent meetings at the democratic school both of my kids attended, the principal explained that at a democratic school kids are encouraged to do whatever they like, even when that means spending every day playing video games or sitting out on the grass chatting with their friends. She then said something to the effect that "we let them do this in their teens, instead of during their first year of university, when they're paying high tuition fees just to sit out on the lawn chatting with their friends." Right. At the time, with a couple of unschooled teens I could already see had more "adulting skills" than I did at twenty, her words hit home. Resilience, resourcefulness, independence and confidence are often what we gain through attending university, but we can also gain them through unschooling, at any age.

This current expectation that everyone should attend college or university just to have a diploma or degree that allows us to apply for the next degree, or for a particular job, is not a long-standing tradition. Universities used to be simply a hub for research and discovery. They still are, and in addition to that, they offer kids who haven't already had a chance to gain independence a space to do so. More excitingly, they offer a place for people to gather in pursuit of common interests, and because of this (and their ancient position as research hubs) they still hold more resources for the exploration and pursuit of those interests than other parts of the city. The only particle accelerator in this little part of the earth is at our university, for example. And much of the pertinent medical research happens at universities. It's good to have a place to gather in community and pursuit of knowledge and understanding! We need that! Universities still offer this, and the greatest professors are those who show up not to impart knowledge, but to gather people together in pursuit of it, sharing their enthusiasm as they do. The best classes are not rungs on the ladder towards a degree, but those that welcome in the public and people of all experience levels to just get excited and share ideas. I hope and imagine that as humans and education continue to evolve, universities cease to be an expected part of "growing up", and continue to be, as they have been for many centuries, a hub for growth.

I love how my kids are making their way into adulthood without following the prescribed route. My son felt he needed some education in rendering, so he found and accessed an online course. Now he needs help developing his business, so he's looking for a mentor. All his own initiatives, and both through universities, but only on an as-needed basis. Both my kids are on the precipice of their adult lives, and finally free to jump. Maybe one day university will be a bigger part of my kids' lives, but I imagine it will be just one strand in a great weaving--definitely not something to spend their teen years fretting about. It turns out they can spend their teen years doing what they love and each of those other activities will be equally valuable strands in the same big weaving of their lives.